Managing Temper at work

I have seen lot f people in my professional life, who took pride in loosing their cool. Their reasoning was that they were passionate people with zero level of tolerance. Not that some of them were not successful, but definitely not effective and were seen hopping jobs or at least roles pretty frequently. It is very important to understand once temper and manage it at the work place because if not controlled well, a bad temper could easily lead to sharp decline in performance and high level of stress for the people around leading to high turn over of the team.

There can be numerous causes for loosing the at the temper, from small petty instances of bad comments to the exposure of work related issues. So, how can one control.There is a small story, someone sent to me a few months ago on email on controlling the anger. Lets first read that:

There was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, to hammer a nail in the back fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Then it gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won't matter how many times you say "I'm sorry," the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one

So, In short, realizing the ill effects of the bad temper is important first step in our effort to manage temper.Some other tips, which one can keep in mind are:
1. Politely walk out of a discussions/situations, which are getting heated up-  It is always better to have discussions and confrontations when you are not in an agitated frame of mind.
2. Take two three deep breadths, tell yourself that you want to be a good professional, whenever you are about to raise your temper.
3. Set clear expectations, communicate and over communicate: Most of the time, the issues arise due to communication gaps. Minimize the reasons by over communication and more so in the written form
4.Proper work life balance- If you are compromising a lot on your personal life due to work, stop doing that, because, it can create a bad attitude at work, which will impact temper and performance. Have meals at the proper time, give time for your personal fitness etc.
5.Praise in Public and Preach in Private- Never put your team members and peers down in public. They will hate you and will create reasons for your stress. If your boss is pulling you down in public, you might have to raise that first with the boss and if that doesn't help, you might have to have HR involved

There are many other things one can do, what's important is to realize that in order to be successful in the professional world, one has to be happy and smiling most of the times.