Anger and Change Facilitation
Anger is one of the emotions that contribute a great deal to making change difficult. People respond to anger in varying ways...from being able to process it effectively, introspect, separate their assumptions from facts, set healthy boundaries, and even step into the shoes of those who they feel offended them and understand the experience from their perspective...to shutting down, lashing out, and being highly reactive.
For quite a while, Neuroscience studies have lumped complex emotions like anger as one thing, in an attempt to identify brain regions that correspond with certain emotions. As studies become more nuanced, these big emotions are broken down into different responses, so anger can mean many different things, depending on the skills people master.
This is important when it comes to change facilitation because when we as change facilitators understand, for example in this case, what kind of anger response patterns an individual, a team, or an organizational culture "prefers" we can now have better insight into where in the brain their pattern "lives" and hence how to support people out of it, if it blocks change.
Attached is an article that illustrates exactly that - the specific brain regions activated in one anger response (trait anger). If you are still trying to explain things logically and rationally to people who respond with this type of anger, according to this research, you are wasting your time (since this type of anger response activates motor and sensory areas, you are probably better off suggesting to go for a walk and paying attention to your tone of voice to get their brain to be more integrated before they will listen to logic :)).
Exciting new findings and applications - check it out: Here
