职场怒火扑救指南

    我们不妨设想一下这样一个情景：你正精神抖擞，打算给自己来杯咖啡，好开始一天的工作。然而，当你走进休息室，却发现里面已经被邋遢同事弄得一片狼藉——到处都是咖啡渣，香皂盒里满是香皂液，甚至都溢到了洗手台上，地面垃圾遍布，已经打开的糖包散落其间……

    这种事实在让人无法忍受。如果和大多数人一样，你的第一反应肯定是大发雷霆。你肯定没想过因为某人乱扔糖包就请他走人，或者煞有介事地找当事人谈话似乎又小题大做了。但是你的确需要发泄一下怒气。

    其实，发泄是一种能量的传递，想“大发脾气”是因为有怒火在胸中燃烧，如果不释放出来就会不断累积，直到最后某个时机一股脑爆发出来。发泄怒火和抱怨是两回事，抱怨的含义更多在于表达某种担忧，而最终目的是想做出改变或解决问题。

    有些人往往只是单纯地发泄怒火来得到某种畸形的快感，而不去找出怒火的源头，想办法改善不如意的情况。但研究表明，发脾气并不会使怒气消失，反而会激化负面情绪。

    这种以发脾气来发泄怒火的方式有一些明显的弊端——诸多研究表明，脾气火爆的人更容易得心脏病。但除了健康上的危害，爱发脾气的员工还会破坏工作环境。

    即便如此，发泄怒火仍然是职场上的家常便饭。美国弗吉尼亚大学达顿商学院（University of Virginia's Darden School of Business）工商管理学教授克里斯汀•贝法尔说，平均每位员工每天发火或者目睹同事发火的次数可达四次。“大部分研究都只局限在证明发泄怒火的负面效应，而没有作更深入的研究。这些研究并没有关注听众的行为。”贝法尔和她的同事进行了一项研究，力图寻找最佳方法来减轻发泄怒火所带来的破坏性影响，目前该研究正处于归纳总结阶段。

    研究人员发现，听众最糟糕的行为就是对怒火中烧的同事表示认同。“一旦助长了别人的怒火，它就会燃烧得更长久，”俄亥俄州立大学传播学院（Ohio State University's School of Communication）研究“愤怒情绪”的专家布拉德•布西曼说。“听众一旦表示认同，发泄者的愤怒情绪就会持续，但解决问题的关键却在于熄灭怒火。”

    实际上，听众可以平息消极的怒火，但在工作时却不太容易实现。首先，有一小部分员工可能只是为了发泄而不计后果地发脾气，贝法尔说。在这种情况下，听众就无计可施。

    Picture this: you're pumped to start your work day with a cup of coffee, when you see that your jerk co-worker has left the break room in shambles: grounds everywhere, dish soap oozing on the counter, half-opened sugar packets on the floor by the trash.

    So frustrating. And if you're like most of us, the first thing you want to do is blow off steam. You don't really want to get the person fired for sugar packet litter, or even have some kind of awkward conflict resolution conversation about it, but it's inconsiderate. And you need to vent.

    We think of venting as a transfer of heat; as "blowing off steam," meaning anger, which would otherwise stay inside, creating pressure which could cause us to explode at an inopportune moment. Venting is different than complaining, which means voicing a concern with the goal of changing something or addressing the cause of the problem.

    You can get a kind of warped satisfaction from talking about being angry without necessarily wanting to change the circumstances that trigger that emotion. But research suggests that venting anger doesn't get rid of it. Instead, it amplifies those negative feelings.

    There are some obvious downsides to showing your anger in this way -- some studies suggest that angry people tend to be at greater risk for heart disease. But besides the larger health risks, fuming employees can corrode a workplace environment.

    Even so, venting is an office staple. The average employee either vents or hears someone else vent about four times a day, according to Kristin Behfar, a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. "Most papers on venting find that it's negative, but they stop there. They don't find what the listener does," Behfar says. So she and her colleagues worked on a study, currently under review, that looks at the best way to mitigate the damaging effects of venting.

    The worst thing a listener can do, the researchers found, is agree with an angry co-worker. "When you feed the flame, it burns longer," says Brad Bushman, an anger expert at Ohio State University's School of Communication. "Listeners who agree are just keeping angry feelings alive when the key is to let them die."

    Listeners can diffuse destructive venting, but it can be difficult to do at work. First off, a small percentage of employees probably enjoy venting for the sake of it and may not care about the consequences, Behfar says. In that case, there's little a listener can do.