I'm Angry!

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Anger: delicious
A fellow student told me this story:

"The other day I got angry. It doesn't happen often. I was in a meeting with a client, and I guess she found one of my "hot buttons" in implying I had been untruthful. I didn't lose my temper, but even so, I felt my response was not demonstrating calmness:  I was angry, and I found myself reacting "point by point" to the accusations. Of course this resolved nothing - it just made us all more tense. Thankfully we ran out of time and agreed to continue the discussion later.
"In the meantime, I devoted some thought to what problems she might be having, that caused her to accuse me. I've often seen people in business situations express their frustration and anger toward vendors or their reports, when they're really upset about other things, like instability in the company or a difficult boss. I realized that this client had a lot going on. It may have been unfair that she took it out on me, but so be it.
"A few days later we re-opened the discussion. Now that I had made a decision not to feel threatened, I was able to address my client's underlying concerns: helping her demonstrate the business value of her work, offering options to work within her budget constraints. Everything went smooth as butter."
This story resonated with me - I've seen again and again the way anger gets in the way of resolving problems:

When I'm angry, my knee-jerk reaction is to respond to the words the person is saying - to what's on the surface. In aikido we would call this "responding to force with force." It never works. It just keeps escalating: I punch, you kick, I use a sledgehammer, you drop an anvil on me, and so on.

When I'm calm, I can more easily look behind the words, to what is motivating the person to become angry, and also to what I really want out of the interaction. Then I can turn my attention to that problem. Often this tactic completely undercuts the whole argument. If it truly does address what the other person is unhappy about (and are unable to admit, or don't realize they want) it can be such a surprise that resolution can be surprisingly easy.

It is no coincidence that this sounds exactly like a well executed aikido technique.

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