Whether due to pressing deadlines, overwork, or employees believing they lack support, anger in a work environment is sometimes unavoidable. Over time, anger and frustration can compound, causing anger to spread through the entire team or organization and creating a “culture of anger.”

In her research, Olivia (Mandy) O’Neill, an associate professor of management at Mason’s School of Business and a contributor to C-Suite leadership training programs, found that a culture of anger not only leads to problems for individuals, such as increased alcohol consumption, work-family conflict, and high-risk behaviors, but it also presents problems for the team as a whole.

In a study of a large retail organization, O’Neill found that employee anger stemmed from a culture in which employees did not feel supported by their managers, leading to more employee absences, higher turnover, and decreased workplace safety.

It’s important to draw a distinction between a team experiencing occasional anger and a team defined by a culture of anger.

“All emotions have a social functional purpose,” said O’Neill. “Anger can serve important purposes around, for example, moral outrage against social injustice, or action tendencies that cause a person to rise up against obstacles thrown in their way.”

However, in a culture of anger, “it’s not just one incident … Rather, it’s when anger is kind of everybody’s default emotion,” O’Neill said.

Often, team members’ emotional health can become a blind spot for executives. A leader should be trained to recognize when a culture of anger is developing and intervene to reinforce a healthy workspace.

O’Neill highlights two common methods of fighting anger that can actually make matters worse. “Emotion suppression, which is essentially to put the lid on an emotion and not let it be expressed, is very destructive,” said O’Neill. “\[Anger\] leaks out in ways that you may not necessarily be aware of or able to control.”

Additionally, allowing team members to vent their anger without restraint can serve to reactivate and spread anger rather than resolving or calming the feeling.

So, what can be done to help improve an angry team culture?

Through interviewing emergency responders at fire stations in the southeastern United States, O’Neill found that the most effective teams were those who supplemented feelings of anger with joviality.

“Expression of joviality and humor is a way of channeling anger in ways that actually can promote group bonding,” said O’Neill.

She also found that companionate love, “the connection felt between people whose lives are closely intertwined,” also helps fight anger. Affection and caring creates a sense of familiarity between team members that can help to resolve issues and foster a jovial culture.

Introducing joviality and companionate love to a team can help team members work with anger to turn it into a positive, productive emotion. “Anger paired with positive emotions lends itself to a very different scenario than if you have anger without these emotions,” she said.