CEO Rage: How To Get it Under Control

July 19, 2009— -- Tom Adams, the chief executive officer of Rosetta Stone, the language software business, says he never blows up about big stuff, like aligning the objectives of an entire board of directors. Smaller things get to him more. He remembers being furious when a long-term employee was let go without his OK.

Douglas McKenna isn't surprised. With his background in psychology and leadership development, he coaches executives in dealing with stress and anger.

One of the first things McKenna does is try to find a pattern to the anger. CEOs don't generally walk around in a rage all day. Something has to trigger it, maybe a particular concern, person or even time of day. He worked with one CEO who got up early every day and became prone to outbursts at around 11:30 a.m., when she started getting hungry for lunch.

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Such patterns are common, he says, but sometimes the job is just too much. "There's a theme in anger," he explains. "We get angry when we're thwarted. CEOs have a thousand opportunities every day to see their goals get blocked."

Chief executives may be more resistant to stress than the rest of us, but their personalities and environments often exacerbate hostility. They tend to be Type A personalities and very impatient, says Nathan Bowling, an industrial and organizational psychologist who studies job attitudes and performance and the role of personality in the workplace. They're goal-oriented go-getters who want things done now. All these traits tend to lead to frustration. "It makes sense that a fair number of CEOs have anger issues," Bowling says.

Not that they care to discuss it. Almost every CEO we asked about anger for this article refused to comment.

Does the boss's anger do more good or harm? In general, it's a tradeoff that depends a lot on how that anger is expressed. Robert Hogan has studied what he calls "derailed managers," looking at their personalities and performance, since the 1960s. When a manager throws a tantrum, he says, there is almost always a short-term, immediate benefit. Someone runs off and gets what you wanted, or makes a promise they can't necessarily keep to appease you.