Meredith Parfet and Aaron Solomon* say because outrage is easy, it prevents us fully appreciating the behaviour we wish to sanction.
Between protests over lockdown rules and shaming over whether people should or should not be wearing masks, it seems like everyone is outraged at how someone else is dealing with the coronavirus crisis.
Now that a significant portion of the workforce is telecommuting while potentially balancing caregiving and home-schooling responsibilities, that outrage has spilled into the fabric of our daily work interactions.
Why can’t she keep her dogs from barking during our conference call?
I know he has small kids at home, but it’s ridiculous that he couldn’t complete the report on time.
There is no question that frustrations are running high, at all levels, and that tightening the constraints of social norms might feel like an appropriate response.
But when left uncontrolled, outrage will tear a work team apart faster than any violation of norms it was intended to counteract.
What exactly is outrage?
Outrage is not simply disagreeing with the actions of another.
It’s that internal churning, about a person or situation, that triggers feelings of anger, indignation, and righteousness.
It is scornful and full of judgement.
Outrage is also one of the most common ways we respond to violations of what we perceive to be the principles of our community.
Indeed, we are hardwired as social animals to respond to violations of norms in this way.
Expressing outrage at transgressions shows that you are committed to the values of the group.
That is why times of crisis, when community unity is most needed, often heighten our sense of outrage.
Yet, like many natural reactions, when placed in the context of modern social dynamics, outrage can be self-defeating.
Because outrage is easy, it blots out more nuanced feelings such as sympathy, empathy, and contextual understanding that would allow us to fully appreciate the behaviour we wish to sanction.
Outrage feels good because it makes us feel right and superior, but this feeling deadens our ability to assess our own behaviour.
Outrage causes us to stop evaluating the reasonableness of our rules and consequences.
The English essayist William Hazlitt observed that “[e]very man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality”.
If we are outraged about wrongdoing it is easy to believe we cannot be wrongdoers.
How outrage destroys
One of the major purposes of working in teams is to combine a diverse set of experiences, skills, working styles, and aptitudes into something that is collectively stronger than the sum of its parts.
Working effectively in a team requires adherence to the team’s norms.
But it also requires the team to accommodate the individuals.
Forcing everyone into the same cookie-cutter patterns destroys the very diversity that makes the team so powerful.
How to temper outrage
Coming to grips with outrage requires connecting with our own emotions, digging under the surface to ask ourselves “Why am I reacting this way?”
This can be uncomfortable.
It is much easier to judge or lash out at someone rather than acknowledge that we feel scared, stressed, or depressed.
Suppressing those emotions is part of what feeds moral outrage.
On the other hand, accepting them and giving them a name puts us on the path toward empathy.
Perhaps the actions of others that we judge so harshly are also driven by fear or stress.
We can diminish the negative effects of our outrage in a few simple steps.
Take inventory
Often in a crisis our inner world diverges from our outer world.
We try to project confidence, calmness, and a sense of control, but on the inside, we may be experiencing panic, grief, or fear.
Take some time to consider what is going on in your life.
Get out a pad of paper and map your inner world.
Often we don’t take enough time to acknowledge our worries and consider how those feelings affect our interactions with the world.
Have you developed a short temper, been ignoring people, or started having trouble concentrating?
Where is that coming from?
Take an inventory, acknowledge how crowded, noisy, and even painful your inner world feels.
Translate your inner world to the people around you
News flash — your family or co-workers can’t see inside your head.
We diminish outrage and diffuse volatile interactions by intermediating between what is going on inside and how we communicate with others.
This can be as simple as saying something such as “I’m sorry I’ve been so short-tempered lately, but I’m worried about …” or “I am feeling really stressed trying to juggle work and my children”.
When we fail to let others know how we really feel, it leads to destructive communication failures.
When we yell at work because of stress at home (both of which are in our living room), our co-workers can be confused and hurt.
The act of translating our inner emotions for others extends a bridge that allows for compassion and connection, and better understanding.
We live in a world inundated with moral outrage.
We have normalised public dialogue that is vitriolic, dehumanising, and shaming.
We seem to have lost any instinct for evaluating our own behaviour.
Counteracting that requires that we be honest with ourselves and lead with empathy.
We must learn to temper our outrage with nuance and self-reflection, to recognise that we have also sometimes failed to hit the mark, required accommodation, or fallen short in various ways.
Everyone has an inner world, whether they are willing to translate it or not.
You can safely assume that everyone on your team has some sort of inner stress.
Translating our inner worlds and communicating our willingness to support those around us will make a big difference in reducing outrage and supporting our teams.
* Meredith Parfet is the CEO and Aaron Solomon is the Director of Strategy for the Ravenyard Group, a crisis communications firm.
This article first appeared at www.fastcompany.com.
