Dave Kashen argues that founders can use anger constructively as a leadership tool. Setting firm boundaries, calling out underperformance, and expressing anger directly when someone is late or failing can become a superpower for leaders who learn to access it.
Founders, leaders who aren't comfortable with anger, they don't hold firm boundaries with their team, right? Like, I'm often having a conversation, hey, you know, hey Dave, I don't know, people just like are coming late to meetings, or, you know, how do I get my team to work harder? Or I got this person on my team, they're not performing the way I want. And most of the time, if we dig into the root, they're not allowing— the leader is not allowing themselves to feel and express anger and say, this is not okay. This is how we do things around here. There's a boundary that they want to set, but because they can't access their anger, often they're not even aware of it. They just notice this sort of dull frustration of like, ah, why can't I get people to do what I want? Um, and the truth is it's because they're not feeling their anger. And I, I know this, you know, as I mentioned, for me, anger was like a What? No, I'm just a kind, nice guy, right? Like, and I've learned over the last several years in particular to really feel anger. Um, and when I'm really practicing it, I can literally sense more fine— it's like a more finely tuned sense of when something I want isn't happening or something I don't want is happening, and then, you know, speak to it. So it's a real superpower.
