In a café, yet quiet and sunny. The barely polite waiter throws the soda on the table. Upset ? At the end of my rope ? We hear him screaming from the back of the kitchen. Elsewhere, there are outbursts in a warehouse, on a construction site or at the cozy table of a management committee. We listen, we stop to look and we see the aggressive person shaking his middle finger vigorously in “attention” mode and taking out everything he has in his heart, while the other remains stunned, clinging to his smartphone. The scene, played out at every moment in the world of work, is part of social relations. Sometimes, we ourselves are at the forefront of this explosion that Rage Against The Machine would not deny in its Killing in the Name… until the last verse. A classic, even if the chef attacked by the angry person doesn’t expect it. Never. A classic for doctors faced with a person in crisis, or the GIGN dealing with a madman. The manager confronted with this experience, sometimes stunned, would like to disappear or, on the contrary, respond to the provocation. Do neither. “Above all, we must take into account the person in their entirety,” analyzes Brice, speaker at Conseil SRD (training and consulting organization in security, research and deterrence).
Accustomed to these situations, the expert (who wishes to remain anonymous) recommends finding out about what the employee is experiencing. Does he feel betrayed by his superior? Is he experiencing personal problems? “You have to practice active listening,” he emphasizes. Discuss. Defuse this self-feeding tension as best you can. De-escalation is not intuitive, but it is the only solution to get out of a bad situation. It is accompanied by a physical attitude that is far from harmless, because, with a smile, visible hands and as little tension as possible, you have to bring the angry person back to reason to resume dialogue.
But to do this, you must first fight against stress, says Yves Golder, author of Anti-stress strategies. Tactical guide to freeing yourself from stress in all its forms (Gereso, January 2024). “There are two forms of stress,” he explains. The first is “stress by appointment”, in the case of a conflict situation included in the agenda. The specialist recommends preparing with breathing exercises half an hour before the confrontation. The brain is able to withstand and fight back without doing the irreparable. The second is the one that comes by surprise. More complicated. “If we can negotiate a ten-minute period to breathe and relieve stress, that’s preferable,” suggests the specialist. He adopted the cardiac coherence method, described by David Servan-Schreiber in Cure stress, anxiety, depression without medication or psychoanalysis (Pocket, 2011). “Phase 1: exhale then inhale long and deep twice. Phase 2: visualize and feel the location of the heart, then imagine breathing in and out slowly through it, for five minutes. Phase 3: focus on feeling a feeling of warmth surrounding the heart, almost as if you wanted to warm it in your hands.” If isolating yourself is not possible, Yves Golder also recommends moving on to reformulating the words – second step.
Role theory
Third step: fix the problem. “The manager must ask himself if he is a resource or a liability for the team.” He must also look at the attitude of the person who challenges him. “At work, when we try to explain someone’s behavior, psychology is a false lead. We must look at the question of role” – which he describes in the book Fertile Management (Gereso, 2020), theorized by sociologist Philippe Bernoux with the theater universe. How does the employee imagine the boss? What should the latter do? Know ? Say ? And, himself, what idea does he have of the role he has to play? Faced with his colleague’s representation, the manager will be able to defuse the conflict and explain to him how he sees the scene.