My boss is angry again today. I don’t know why he’s mad, but instead of helping him along, I am finding myself snapping right back just a little.

Anger raises everyone’s metabolism and decreases enthusiasm. My coworkers and I need to hear his anger sometimes to keep us focused—though the cost this degrading attitude places on my office? I’m not always sure that the aggressive, football player, cream your butt kind of attitude works outside of the playing field.

We hold little control over the attitude of others; we have control over ourselves, though. You can’t make people around you better so much as you can make yourself a better person.

Marshall Goldsmith addresses management through anger in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. His book, a bestseller, holds a lot of tips on how to improve yourself, specifically in the office environment. He writes, “We save a special place in our minds for our chronically angry colleagues. No matter what else they do, we brand them as easily combustible. When we talk about them, the first words out of people’s mouths are, ‘I hear he has a temper.’”

I don’t think that you can make aggressively angry people change. You can only change how you respond to their attitude. If you keep your mouth shut, no one can know how you feel, and that’s a good thing. Once you can appreciate the ability to resist a crude comment, the benefits start to roll in. Goldsmith points out that you won’t embarrass yourself. You won’t create enemies. And best of all, you can resist better in the future.