More likely than not, you cannot be summarily terminated from your job for simply yelling at your boss. However, there could be a few exceptions depending on how you reacted. Yelling at your boss or direct reporting manager is no trivial matter. It carries substantial consequences that can impact your career. The triggers that led you to a tipping point that caused your behaviour must have been tough.
So let’s understand the law, the aftermath, the triggers and the impact this incident has on your job based on your situation and tenure. Knowing this is key to dealing with this scenario and safeguarding your career.
Table of Contents
- The Legal Aspects
- What You Can Do Now
- Triggers And Self-reflection
- Your Situation
- How Tenure Can Have An Impact
- Tips And Insights On What To Do Going Forward
The Legal Aspects
Insubordination: While yelling at your boss or manager may be considered as insubordination, you won’t get fired for it in most organisations. You could only be subject to disciplinary action.
Review Your HR Policies and Employment Contract: A thorough examination of your organisation’s HR policies and employment contract or clauses mentioned in your appointment letter would help you understand specific guidelines and consequences related to inappropriate behaviour. Even if an organisation has mentioned that insubordination could be subject to summary termination, you could still challenge this decision by filing an ‘Application for Unfair Dismissal’ with the Fair Work Commission.
Unfair Dismissal Considerations: As per the Fair Work Act 2009, you could only be terminated from employment in cases when your behaviour is considered a serious misconduct. Examples of serious misconduct are as follows:
- theft
- fraud
- violence
- sexual harassment
- serious breaches of occupational health and safety procedures
As you can see from the above examples, only violence comes close to the yelling behaviour. And, violence here means physical violence. So, your act of yelling does not really constitute a part of serious misconduct and thus could ideally be subject to disciplinary actions where it becomes mandatory for the organisation to issue you a warning to correct the inappropriate behaviour in writing.
What You Can Do Now
Document The Incident: The importance of keeping detailed notes on the incident can’t be underestimated. Make your notes including what triggered you and all relevant details that come to your mind. The objective of this exercise is to safeguard your case for your future reference or discussions with HR or any other authorities (like the Fair Work Commission as mentioned above).
Assess Your Options: Of all actions that you might consider taking, keep in mind that at no point in time do you need to question your self-worth. Based on your rapport with your boss and your past work history with the organisation, you could pursue one of several options at your disposal:
- Apologise (although, assertively as mentioned below)
- Talk to a therapist
- Talk to your trusted colleagues
- Talk to a family member, a close friend or spouse just to get a third-party perspective
- Talk to HR
- Serve your notice to resign
- Summary resignation
- Look for another job
All of the above options are neither to be considered chronologically nor mandatory. You would need to take an action based on your specific situation. Perhaps talking to a therapist would help you assess all the above options.
When you’re faced with fear, anxiety or stress from what has happened, seeking help through hypnotherapy can be a good coping mechanism. Hypnosis puts you in a calm and relaxed state of mind, which is perfect when you’re dealing with unpleasant emotions. Under hypnosis, you often reduce fear or any other negative emotion and get more relaxed. By entering into a peaceful state of mind and body, hypnotherapy can lower your blood pressure and help think through what’s the best way forward for you.
Assertive Apology: While an apology might be necessary, it is important to assert yourself and express your valid concerns or grievances in a calm and composed manner. Here, you need not try to invalidate your anger. Anger is a response triggered due to the unpleasant experience that you are going through. All you need to do is to acknowledge that something that’s not in line with your mental health well-being has affected you and you simply need to convey this to the person who triggered it. Use I statements to express how you feel and how you’d like the situation to be handled rather than pointing out what’s wrong at their end. You can only speak for yourself. There is no need to waste your mental energy trying to figure out how they think about you. What you have control over are your own thoughts and actions and not someone else’s thoughts and actions.
As long as you understand this and deal with it with your manager or boss with the above mindset, you’ll be able to stay calm and express yourself without getting highly emotional about the incident.
Triggers And Self-reflection
There could be several triggers that made you react aggressively to your boss. Let’s look at some scenarios:
Workplace Stress and Pressure: High stress levels, tight deadlines and heavy workloads can push anyone to the edge. When you feel overwhelmed, you might react emotionally and yell at your boss. If this is the case, make sure you tell your boss what you’re going through and explain to them what’s causing your stress. Maybe they didn’t realise it could affect your health or didn’t know the workload was beyond your capacity to handle it. They could delegate some of your tasks to other colleagues or they may realise it’s time to hire more people for the tasks. Remember that stress is the result of the environment you’re in and is not your own doing.
Conflict and Disagreements: Disagreements over work-related matters, conflicting opinions or misunderstandings can lead to heated arguments. If these issues are not dealt with early on, they can build up and lead to big outbursts. Don’t assume that small conflicts can be ignored. They can grow quickly. It’s best to clear up even the smallest disagreements and find a solution that works for both you and your boss. This helps to reduce the chances of future conflicts.
Unfair Treatment: Experiencing unfair treatment from a boss, such as favouritism, unequal work distribution, or not being recognised, can lead to frustration and anger.
Micromanagement: Being closely watched and having little freedom can be very frustrating. If you feel overwhelmed by a boss who constantly checks on you, it could make you angry.
Unclear Expectations: Ambiguous instructions, inconsistent feedback or goals that are not clear could cause confusion, irritation and annoyance. When one is unaware of what they ought to do, there would be conflicts.
Power Dynamics: Hierarchical power dynamics can play a role too. If your boss or supervisor is incapable of showing respect to you at the workplace or has an attitude that communicates to you that “I’m in charge here and you’re not”, then you could be on the defensive side.
Personal Issues and Emotional States: Unlike the previous triggers, sometimes, personal problems, health issues or emotional distress can spill over into your workplace. Your emotional state due to issues or stressors in your personal life could affect your interactions with your boss. Depending on how supportive your boss is and how comfortable you are with your boss, you can convey what you’re going through with them and let them know that it’s just because you’re currently going through a lot in your personal life and you’re working on resolving things at your end. A considerate boss would surely empathise with you. If you feel uncomfortable sharing personal details with your boss, talking to a therapist or a close friend or relative might help.
Yelling at your manager or supervisor is usually considered inappropriate. It’s important to handle such situations in a constructive manner. Taking time to reflect on your actions would help you better understand your triggers and discover ways to deal with work-related difficulties in a much more mature manner.
Analyse Your Situation
The following are some likely circumstances in which the incident took place:
Yelled in front of management in a meeting: This situation can be highly damaging to your professional reputation. It shows a lack of control and professionalism. Consider the context and whether the issue can be resolved privately.
Yelled in front of other colleagues: Yelling in front of colleagues can create a hostile work environment. It affects team dynamics and can lead to strained relationships. Apologising and addressing the issue promptly is essential in this case.
Yelled in front of management and other colleagues: Similar to the previous case, this situation compounds the negative impact. It reflects poorly on your emotional intelligence and ability to handle stress. However, don’t beat yourself up due to this. There are always ways to resolve conflicts and tensions with your superiors and colleagues. If you have colleagues and other people in management who know how diligent and non-provoked you otherwise are, you could get their support. However, if there’s no one standing up for you, you still can stand up for yourself and clarify things.
Yelled over the phone: Even though it’s not face-to-face, yelling over the phone is unprofessional. It can escalate conflicts and damage professional relationships. But, worry not. Your effort at looking at this situation from different perspectives and you reading this article to find ways to make the situation better shows that you are not self-centred and are looking for solutions.
Yelled during a private meeting with your boss: Here, the boss was being professional as they were interacting with you one-on-one which is being considerate to a certain extent. Taking time to understand why you yelled can guide you towards finding a solution.
You’re already fired: If you’ve been fired due to yelling, you can assess to see if your behaviour meets any of the serious misconduct criteria mentioned earlier above. If you believe that your behaviour did not really warrant a termination, you can apply for Unfair Dismissal as mentioned above.
How Tenure Can Have An Impact
You might want to consider the stage at which you are in terms of your career. How you look at the situation would depend on how critical the job you’re currently in and where you are now on your career path. Let’s see how that will affect your responses to this incident:
After joining a new job: In this case, since you’ve most likely not been fully integrated into your new role and you might not have any support from any of your coworkers or even the boss, it would be a good idea to take initiative from your end to resolve the matter as early on as you can. However, in the end, the choice remains with you. If you feel that you ended up yelling due to a toxic work environment, it’s not too late to move on to a different job. However, if that’s not the case, you can at least give it one attempt to resolve issues and resume your job after an assertive apology.
Fired soon after being hired: Here, it’s completely your responsibility to decide how important the job was for your career. However, it’s very much possible to find a suitable job that works for you. Start looking for one while you might still apply for unfair dismissal if you feel that the way you’ve been terminated wasn’t right.
Your tenure and rapport with the manager: A longer tenure and a positive relationship with your manager can mitigate the impact of your behaviour. If you’ve built trust and contributed significantly, your boss might be more than willing to consider your stance and you both could work towards a mutual resolution respectfully. In either case, it would be best if you take the first step rather than waiting for your manager to get back to you. An empathetic manager would immediately take you aside and look for ways to improve the situation.
Career stage: Consider where you are in your career. Early-career mistakes may be more forgivable, while senior professionals are expected to handle stress better, although there is no such set rule in stone.
Tips And Insights On What To Do Going Forward
Whatever situation led you to a tipping point and whichever next steps you take, we’ll leave you with some final thoughts that you could consider now and if you ever have to deal with it again.
Stand Up Assertively: Standing up for yourself is essential, but it doesn’t mean mirroring your boss’s behaviour. You can assert your rights and boundaries without resorting to yelling or aggression. Being assertive can still come across as aggressive or rude, however, all you need do is express how someone made you feel and convey how you’d rather appreciate or prefer things to be that would be mutually beneficial to either parties.
Avoid Reacting in Kind: Just because someone behaves poorly with you doesn’t justify you responding in the same manner. Because, then, there’s no difference between them and you. Maintain your composure and choose a more constructive approach. This won’t happen overnight. You need practice. Try expressing yourself without being emotionally charged. Because, if you allow anger to go untamed, it will take control of you. So, whether it is at the workplace or anywhere else, try practising asserting yourself which simply means, conveying your feelings to people and telling them how you’d rather be treated versus how they actually do.
Stay Calm and Clarify Intentions: When others misinterpret your intentions, take a deep breath. Calmly explain your perspective and clarify any misunderstandings. Reacting emotionally won’t help.
Reflect on Your Reactions: Our default way of being is to let the wind drive the sail. Regularly assess how you react to unfavourable circumstances. Are there patterns you can change? Self-awareness leads to growth. It’s time you steer your own boat rather than let the wind take you wherever it is heading.
Beyond Anger: Remember that anger isn’t the only way to express disagreement. It’s a learned behaviour, not an inherent emotion. You learnt anger from other people who displayed anger in your past, either consciously or subconsciously. Think of alternative ways to communicate effectively.
Assertiveness vs. Domineering: Asserting yourself is healthy while being domineering isn’t. Find the balance. Stand your ground without overpowering others.
Hopefully, these insights will guide you toward healthier interactions and better emotional management in the near future.
Incorporating these insights into how you handle circumstances can help build healthier relationships, maintain professionalism and manage conflicts efficiently. Understand that your responses and approaches can greatly impact the results you achieve. Raising your voice at your manager is undeniably a serious matter. However, taking considerate actions can safeguard your professional trajectory while also nurturing stronger bonds with your coworkers and supervisors.