It seems like a lot of people are frustrated these days. Frustrated about life. Frustrated about the traffic. Frustrated that something didn’t go their way. And sometimes they bring that frustration to work.
Even if an employee who’s agitated manages to settle their nerves as they walk through the front door, emotions may still be simmering below the surface. That’s not an ideal foundation for innovation or working through team challenges.
What can leaders do to settle the workplace?
Right off the bat, you have to rule out dismissing it, telling yourself that people are fine, or busying yourself with the agenda at hand. Figures from a recent American Psychological Association report showed that 24 percent of respondents experienced yelling or verbal abuse in the past year.
What’s more, 45 percent of employees report regularly losing their temper, and 65 percent experience office rage. Stress, burnout, and conflict are major contributors to these feelings, with many employees experiencing negative effects, such as irritability and exhaustion.
Like many other emotions, anger can be nuanced or disguise itself well. People don’t always overtly express it. When individuals passively communicate anger, managers tend to overlook it.
Author Sam Parker takes a different stance. Rather than view anger as something to avoid or overlook—a common default many of us have—Parker argues that becoming comfortable with your own anger and communicating its root cause with others is a massive advantage in the workplace today.
Parker ‘s book Good Anger: How Rethinking Rage Can Change Our Lives is about understanding that anger’s purpose: to alert us to a change we need to make in our lives.
If addressing frustrations in the workplace feels like a daunting spectrum with denial on one end and Parker’s view on the other, try starting with Five Workplace Essentials from the U.S. surgeon general.
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This framework emphasizes the cultural role that workplaces should play in promoting the psychological health and well-being of workers and communities as a whole, and it lays out five essentials for pursuing workplace mental health and well-being:
1. Keep people safe, inside and out. If folks don’t feel safe—physically or emotionally—they can’t give their best. Safety isn’t just hard hats and protocols.
2. Build real connections. Work’s easier when people trust one another. When teams feel like a community—where belonging beats competition—collaboration, creativity, and loyalty grow naturally.
3. Respect life outside of work. Everyone has a world beyond their job. When leaders allow flexibility, set clear expectations, and honor downtime, people show up sharper and more engaged.
4. Help people know they matter. Everyone wants to feel that their work counts. Recognize effort, say thank you, and show how each person’s contribution moves the mission forward.
5. Give room to grow. Stagnation kills motivation. Offer ways to learn, mentor, and advance.
Anger doesn’t disappear when people clock in. It rides in with traffic, the headlines, the bills, and the pressure to perform. What leaders can do is lower the temperature with a healthy view of anger as an opportunity rather than something to avoid.
Workplaces that get this right explore the hard emotions—they create space to handle them well. That’s how innovation happens. That’s how trust sticks. And that’s how you lead when anger comes to work.
