5.6 Anger Management
First, the lawyer must recognize that he is feeling angry and the reactive effect on his behavior. With this self knowledge in hand the lawyer can plan what to do if the feeling of anger arises; including using role plays and developing habits, to better control the anger.
Some suggest that an effective way to manage anger is to develop a self-regulatory plan and implementation strategy. Just as a smoker who is trying to quit might plan for what to do when he or she craves a smoke, the lawyer might plan for when he starts to feel angry. The more specific the plan, the better your chances of overcoming the feeling.For example, a lawyer might plan as follows:
1. When the lawyer accuses me of being unreasonable in my demand for damages, I will cite specific recent decisions and settlements of similar size.
2. I will say to myself, this little mantra, “Do not get angry. Anger is not helpful, and will harm the client.”
3. If the opponent rejects those cases and refuses to discuss them because my client was negligent, recognize the tactic as a position bargaining tactic, and not a personal affront. Plan, instead, to ask the opponent to place probabilities on the jury so finding, and if the opponent refuses, plan to write down your own probability, in order to keep yourself more analytical, and less emotional.
Anger management has steps. It involves recognition of the feeling, and the development of a mantra. It often gives the person something physical to do; like writing down what you will do next, or writing what you will say before you say it, or playing with a piece of tape. In addition it provides for a backup. In other words, when the feelings are very powerful, give yourself someplace to go, take a break or something else to talk about, or someone else to talk to or involve in the process.18
When the negotiator sees anger in his opponent, the negotiator can also plan for what to do.
Naming it (saying that your opponent is angry) and taking a time out are common effective strategies. Examining your own behavior to determine whether you might have unfairly caused the anger, and apologizing, is also a very good place to start.19Experiences with adversarial bargaining have caused conflict resolution theorists to yearn for a better model for conducting negotiations resolving conflicts.
A problem-solving model seeks to create a set of negotiating steps and procedures that will better control against the biasing effects on client decision-making, and better control the social and psychological forces that lead to deadlock. It also tries to create a different more creative strategy to devise more particularized creative solutions.
Problem solving attempts to learn from psychiatry. Psychiatrists recommend that counselors, negotiators, and mediators seek to listen for understanding before attempting to persuade, in order to keep the emotions from biasing the decision making.20 In order to resist the adversarial role-playing involved in most position bargaining, the problem solver should initially serve the role as “listener.”21 The need for true understanding is a threshold for any connectedness and necessary empathy and is best described in the work of psychiatrist Tom Rusk.22 He writes,
It’s mysterious and ironic that after millions of years of evolution—and a hundred or so of modern psychological theorizing and research—we humans have not advanced very far in person-to-person communications. We can generally exchange thoughts and ideas pretty well, but nonetheless we often fail to understand each other. For the most part, what we fail to communicate clearly is our feelings, those nonverbal, deeply rooted energies that can lead us to act in contradiction to our will and our rational decisions. Between people, strong feelings can easily escalate a simple misunderstanding into a senseless battle of wills.
Even wars between nations have begun that way.Modern psychology has done relatively little to help us comprehend our feelings, or learn to manage them in understanding, caring, and fairness in order to create happier, more fulfilling lives. (Emphasis in the original.) Many successful books on communication strategies have sought to teach people how to expedite problem solving or gain the upper hand in all kinds of negotiations. But these strategies almost always ignore the power of feelings in all kinds of relationships, and the need to uphold explicit social values in the conduct of human communication.
As far as I’m concerned, there never was or will be a better basic communication strategy than the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Ethical persuasion is a practical, strategic method of applying the Golden Rule to every kind of important communication—not as a means of merely doing a “good deed,” but as a means of giving everyone a fair hearing, creating the optimal solutions for thorny problems, and fostering long term, trusting relationships.
Rusk’s ethical persuasion is the practical “how to” for the moral philosophy of persuasion. Rusk describes seven steps to good listening.
1. Establish that your immediate goal is mutual understanding, not problem solving.
2. Elicit the other person’s thoughts, feelings, and desires about the subject at hand.
3. Ask for the other person’s help in understanding him or her. Try not to defend or disagree.
4. Repeat the other person’s position in your own words to show you understand.
5. Ask the other person to and keep restating his or her position.
6. Refer back to your position only to keep things going.
7. Repeat steps 1–6 until the other person unreservedly agrees that you understand his or her position.23