A few weeks ago we met Emma. Her boss is Eric and he is sometimes challenging to work for. When he has life under control, he is actually a reasonable boss and friendly guy. For the past couple of months Eric’s boss has been on family leave and is expected back in about six weeks. Having to do his own job plus his bosses has proven to be difficult and challenging to Eric.
A few weeks into his bosses absence, he found himself getting short tempered, angry and abrupt. He often raises his voice to his employees at work and he knows that his wife and two children are getting the worst of him. When he gets home his temper flairs even more. To his way of thinking, he has been working hard all day, when he gets home he shouldn’t have to continue working. While he hasn’t been physically abusive toward his family, his words, attitude and overall demeanor toward them are damaging. He has unfortunately put his fist through a wall, which he justified was “better than hitting a person” – and dented the side of his car when kicking it.
He has given a lot of extra work to his assistant Emma, but she isn’t working quickly enough or efficiently enough. Internally he’s thinking “I didn’t know she was so stupid”. He is starting to see more and more flaws and faults of those people around him. Something that he has noticed himself is the cutting sound of his voice and the amount of sarcasm that he has been using with others.
While under stress, Eric is displaying a Stress Coping Style of Aggressive. Under stress he will attempt to control the situation by aggressive behaviours, words and actions. His words are often clipped, he uses short sentences and simply expects others to just ‘get it’. He often invades others space and makes his work a priority above whatever else they might be doing. He puts others down, thinks less of them and has an air of “I’ll get you before you get me”.
Many would simply call him a bully.
The payoffs for this behaviour for Eric is that he feels like he is in control. Even at home – his family are hurt and miserable, but he is in charge. He may not be relaxed, he may not be having fun and he may not feel good – but he’s in charge. To Eric, being out of control could lead to being vulnerable.
Luckily Eric’s boss will be back in a few weeks. If he kept his Aggressive style around for too long, he might push people completely away by his actions. His health may take a toll as people with Aggressive tendencies often have high blood pressure and potential issues that come with that.
As we saw from meeting Emma – Meta Programs can be changed. If Eric were to realise that this behaviour is actually more harmful than useful, we could look at some of Eric’s patterns that might lend themselves to this agressive behaviour.
Remember – no matter what the behaviour a person is exhibiting – people are not their behaviours. Yet, their behaviour is a very important piece of information to have.