{"id":371354,"date":"2025-07-15T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chiefexecutive.net\/?p=371354"},"modified":"2025-07-22T11:25:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T15:25:26","slug":"lencioni-the-dark-secret-of-ceo-anger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chiefexecutive.net\/lencioni-the-dark-secret-of-ceo-anger\/","title":{"rendered":"Lencioni: The Dark Secret Of CEO Anger\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor\u2019s Note: Pat Lencioni, bestselling author of The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, The Advantage and many other leadership classics, will keynote our 2025 Leadership Conference in Austin, Texas, Nov. 6-7. Join us! https:\/\/chiefexecutive.net\/leadershipconference\/<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anger is a funny emotion. No, check that. It\u2019s not funny. It\u2019s angry. But it is often strange and hard to understand. That\u2019s especially true when otherwise affable or thoughtful people become leaders and start to exhibit anger more and more frequently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anger provokes the people being led to question what they thought they knew about their leader\u2014CEO, department head, principal, pastor\u2014and it often causes leaders, themselves, to wonder whether they\u2019ve suddenly given in to the dark side of power. It\u2019s all pretty awful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s particularly strange and ironic about this is that in many cases\u2014and I say this from experience\u2014unintended anger on the part of leaders is actually the result of a tendency to want to be, you guessed it, too nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many leaders begin their tenures determined to be more likable and beloved than the leaders they\u2019ve worked for in their careers. And this is where the problem starts. In their less-than-conscious pursuit of approval, they withhold criticism for a missed deadline here, and overlook a poor decision there\u2014all in the name of empathy and reasonableness. Over time, the people who work for the leader naturally start to worry a little less and a little less about the consequences of making mistakes until one day, a slightly larger screw-up occurs, and the leader blows a gasket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The magnitude of that blown gasket seems so out of proportion to the mistake itself, because people don\u2019t realize it is actually a function of all the mistakes that were overlooked in the past.\u00a0 It\u2019s as though the leader is saying, \u201cHow could you people not appreciate all those other times that I let you off without saying anything?!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trust me. I\u2019m sad to say that I know what I\u2019m talking about here. And then things can go from bad to worse when the kind-hearted leader feels an onslaught of guilt, which is especially painful given his or her private commitment to being nicer than other leaders. One might think that this guilt would cause the leader to calm down and back off, and sometimes that happens.  But sometimes it exacerbates the problem, like gasoline on a fire. \u201cHow could you people put me in a position to have to get angry and feel so guilty?!\u201d I think many of us can relate to this in our roles as parents. (\u201cI said I would never get angry at my children, and here they are making me be angry!\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most cases, leaders can recover from these painful moments through genuine ownership of and repentance for their behavior. But if they don\u2019t understand the underlying reason for their unintended and uncharacteristic outbursts, it can become a painful pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution to all this isn\u2019t that ridiculous piece of advice, \u201cDon\u2019t get so mad.\u201d It\u2019s like telling a person in the midst of anxiety to \u201cstop worrying.\u201d Instead, leaders who find themselves getting angrier over time, need to understand that their feelings are not actually the problem. In fact, there is nothing wrong with having those feelings; they are often a sign that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. It\u2019s how a leader deals with those feelings that needs to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the best advice I can give for addressing that. Leaders who are beginning to feel the initial signs of anger or frustration or deep disappointment, need to stop and say something subtle to their direct reports like, \u201cHey, I\u2019m starting to feel angry\/frustrated\/deeply disappointed here.\u201d Putting it out there and letting people hear it and begin to deal with it, is precisely what will prevent a leader from having to display it. And it gives people the opportunity to change their behavior or performance rather than be on the receiving end of an irrational tirade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only way that a leader is going to be able to do this is if he or she realizes that being perceived as nice or lenient is actually\u2014and I mean this\u2014selfish. It\u2019s about them. Or us. Or me.  Rather than wanting to be seen as nice, choose instead to be fair and firm and clear. And self-controlled. People appreciate those qualities a lot more than nice, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When leaders become angry, it’s a symptom of a larger problem in the organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3812,"featured_media":371355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[871],"tags":[57692],"class_list":["post-371354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadershipmanagement","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLencioni: The Dark 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