Time to revisit the benefits of seeing red: Why mediators must be acutely aware of their own comfort with conflict

It has been a long while since I last posted about the value of getting angry. For a review of some of the emotion's benefits, please read these past posts:

 

• Good brain, bad brain? Bring it all to the negotiation table
• Anger—your inner fiend or your friend? Or both? What's the role of emotion?
• Grit your teeth and bear it: Get angry for all the right reasons

I was reminded today of the plus side of getting a bit heated when reading "Anger Gives You a Creative Boost" (Scientific American). From the article:

Perhaps, in some contexts, feeling angry [is] actually beneficial. This counterintuitive idea was pursued by researchers Matthijs Baas, Carsten De Dreu, and Bernard Nijstad in a series of studies  recently published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. They found that angry people were more likely to be creative – though this advantage didn’t last for long, as the taxing nature of anger eventually leveled out creativity. This study joins several recent lines of research exploring the relative upside to anger – the ways in which anger is not only less harmful than typically assumed, but may even be helpful (though perhaps in small doses).

Of course, the benefits of anger are not universal; they are situational and more true for some people than for others. Nevertheless, in some situations, good, clean anger can be honest, productive, and aligned with one's most deeply held values.

I don't know why, in some circles, anger is nearly always shunned or considered unskillful communication. Give me a little

precise and well-placed anger any day to season and leaven the process of conflict resolution; it is sometimes the most important part of the resolution recipe.

In my experience, one of the biggest dangers in mediation is the squelching of the parties' anger by a mediator who is uncomfortable with conflict and holds down the anger level to satisfy her need for "peace." In my very first mediation training back in the '80s, an essential lesson I learned was to be very aware of my own comfort level with conflict so I do not get in the way of what the parties may need to move forward. That self-awareness about conflict comfort is, to me, one of the top 5 most important attributes a conflict professional should possess. Comfort with conflict, even high conflict, invites into the room anger's benefits.

Note (added August 29, 2011): Jonah Lehrer's post about this research and some benefits of anger: "The Creativity of Anger" (Frontal Cortex at Wired.com).

Comments

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[Amanda Bucklow]

Stephanie, I am so pleased that you raised the subject of 'appropriate anger' again and I have enjoyed reading the other posts about this. You make the point well about the mediator being comfortable with conflict and neither squirming in the presence of anger nor 'squelching' the anger down.

I would go one step further and say that there are times when the mediator can express anger (at attempts at abuse of process for example). Conscious, well expressed anger, despair and other emotions can shift the creative juices for all involved and if the mediator can do it at the right time in the right way then that is a valuable modelling of what constitutes human communication.

I use a marvellous quote from Aristotle in my training which I share with you here:

Anyone can become angry.
That is easy.
But to become angry with the right person
to the right degree at the right time
for the right purpose
and in the right way...
That is not easy.
That requires some thought.

kind regards
Amanda

[StephanieWestAllen]

Thanks very much, Amanda. Thats a powerful quote. I repeated it to several people while I was in Santa Fe. And am sure I will quote it again in the future. With attribution to you, and Aristotle, of course.

[ashok panikkar]

Thank you Stephanie,

I was very glad to read your peace about being 'comfortable' with anger. In my experience even if a mediator tries to hold "down the anger level to satisfy her need for "peace", he/she often ends up unwittingly 'leaking' their anger in unhelpful ways either towards their clients or co-mediators.

They also unfortunately enough lose out on critical insights and epiphanies that they could gain if only they were unafraid to watch and hear its expression without wincing or ducking.

We have to not only learn to get comfortable with anger, we need to see it as a legitimate expression of denied interests, hurt, betrayal and so many other things that engagement with people and life brings about.

Most of all we shouldn't hide from our own anger and try and repress it just because conventional wisdom tells us that peace makers should be Zen like and it does not behoove us, as mediators, to feel it or show it!