Using "Fight" in a positive way during change

Anger has a job to do. It's trying to get you to move.

For the last several weeks, I've had many moments of frustration.

It's the steady drip of AI headlines. The "this role won't exist in two years" predictions. The snarky way people are talking about the AI tools being rolled out, and the emotive reactions I get when I ask peers how they're using it. 

Please keep reading. This isn't a take on whether AI is good or bad for work. It's about anger, and the biological purpose anger serves: to fight.

Anger plays an important role during change. It's often the catalyst that gets people to do something. To start raising constructive questions, to push back on a rollout that feels rushed, or to undermine an effort quietly behind the scenes. Anger gets people going.

That's exactly why it shows up so reliably whenever a major change—like AI moving into everyday workflows—lands on people's desks. "This isn't fair," "nobody asked us," "they don't understand what we actually do," are all anger talking, and anger is trying to mobilize you toward something.

Unfortunately, a lot of the public conversation about AI at work runs on outrage. Doom threads, hot takes, "AI will replace you" reels designed to spike a reaction rather than start a conversation. The angry voices get louder, and the soundbites more sensational, and meaningful dialogue gets lost in a culture with short attention spans.

I don't like how I feel when I consume this kind of content. It activates my sympathetic nervous system response. Biologically, this response evolved to protect us from danger. Hormones like cortisol and adrenaline flood the body, helping us run faster, see more sharply, and feel temporarily stronger.

My body fills with that anxious energy. I feel jittery, on edge, quick to react. It's a self-perpetuating loop.

The science: what's actually happening in your body

This is where it helps to understand the biology a little more precisely, because it explains why anger feels the way it does and why it's not the enemy.

Polyvagal theory, developed by neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Porges, describes three nervous system states our bodies move through constantly:

• Ventral vagal—the "safe and social" state. We feel calm, curious, and connected. This is where collaboration, trust, and clear thinking happen.
• Sympathetic—the "fight or flight" state. We feel mobilized, urgent, on alert. Anger lives here, alongside anxiety and frustration.
• Dorsal vagal—the "shutdown" state. We feel numb, withdrawn, or disconnected. This is where freeze and collapse live.

Anger is a sympathetic-state emotion. It's mobilizing by design. That's exactly why it shows up so often during organizational change: change is, by definition, a departure from safety into uncertainty, and the nervous system responds accordingly.

Here's the part that surprised me most when I first came across it. Most "unpleasant" emotions—fear, sadness, disgust—are withdrawal-oriented. They make us want to pull back, avoid, disengage. Anger is the exception. Research by psychologist Eddie Harmon-Jones found that anger activates the same left-frontal brain pattern associated with approach motivation—the drive to move toward something, not away from it. Anger doesn't just rev the engine. It points the car forward. (Harmon-Jones research on anger and approach motivation)

That's the heart of "fight" used well. Of the four instinctive stress responses—fight, flight, freeze, and fawn—fight is the one that moves people toward the problem instead of away from it. I've written before about how to recognize all four of these patterns in Squashing the fear gremlins: How to recognize fight, flight, freeze, and fawn reactions (the 4Fs). Fight is also the one most likely to get labeled "resistance" at work, when really, it's energy with nowhere productive to go yet.

Anger is not about connecting with others; in its raw form, it's about distance. That's part of why so much AI-anxiety content online doesn't actually help anyone. It runs on division and separateness. It's "us versus the tool", "us versus leadership," "us versus whoever rolled this out," even while it's technically "approach-motivated," just aimed at a target rather than a solution.

Ironically, all that anger eventually makes me want to opt out entirely. Close the tab, mute the channel, stop reading about it, which is the flight half of the sympathetic response showing up right behind the fight half.

Where anger fits in the change curve

If you've followed my work, you know the emotional pattern of change tends to move through Fear → Mad → Sad → Glad, a modernized take on Kübler-Ross's stages of grief that I describe in The emotions of change. Anger ("Mad") typically follows fear. Once people move past the initial "Am I safe?" question, the next move is often "This isn't fair" or "Why is this happening to us?"

That's a normal, predictable, even necessary stop on the curve, but it's also the stage where teams get stuck if leaders don't know what to do with it.

What this means for change leaders

Here's where the behavioral science gets practical, and where my own changecapable method comes in: the goal isn't to eliminate anger during change. It's to give it somewhere productive to go.

Research on habitual anger reactions during organizational change found something important: how people regulate their anger predicts whether they become active supporters or active resisters of change. Venting and humor (without resolution) tend to increase deviant resistance to change. But downplaying the emotional charge and seeking feedback tends to increase active support. (Effects of habitual anger on employee behavior during organizational change)

Other research has found that anger, channeled well, can actually fuel constructive voice behavior—employees raising real issues and real ideas, not just complaints. (Anger and voice behavior research)

In other words, the anger itself isn't the risk. What a leader does in the 90 seconds after someone shows it, or after a leader notices it in themselves, is the risk.

This is exactly what the 3N Influencing Technique (Notice, Name, Nudge) is for. I wrote about how to use it in How to talk about emotions at work:

1. Notice the fight response—in a raised voice, a cynical comment, a pointed email, a meeting that suddenly gets tense.
2. Name it, gently and without judgment: "It sounds like this change is frustrating right now." Naming an emotion measurably reduces its intensity within about 90 seconds, per neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's research on the emotional cycle.
3. Nudge the energy toward something useful: a question, a piece of feedback, a decision about what to do next.

If you want to see this play out in a realistic scenario, That spicy email Cera almost sent is a great example of a leader catching her own fight response. Rather than follow the urge to send a command-and-control mandate under pressure before it costs her the trust she'd need for real adoption.

What I did with my anger

So this week, when I noticed my own fight response flare up reading yet another "AI is coming for your job" thread, I needed two things: to turn that energy into something constructive, and to support my nervous system back toward that ventral, connected state, back to safety and curiosity.

Anger serves a purpose. It motivates and energizes the body into action. But it's equally important to notice it, name it, and let it move through you rather than letting it run the show. That return to a calmer state is what helps you choose wisely what to do with the leftover energy:

• Ask more questions to understand what's really changing—for your role, your team, your day-to-day work. Often the anger isn't at the messenger, but the business challenge behind the person.
• Express your point of view (write the newsletter, send the note, raise it in the next team meeting)
• Decide how you want to contribute. Pilot the new tool yourself, mentor a colleague who's stuck in freeze, or give leadership the feedback they need to design the rollout better

If you're a leader wondering what your own team is actually feeling about an AI rollout right now, and how predictable those feelings really are, that's worth its own conversation. I explore the behavioral side of AI adoption in Why your AI adoption is stalling.

From that calmer place, I can engage with almost anyone about almost anything, including AI. Mastering change starts with mastering your response to your own emotions, beginning with simply noticing the very human reactions you're wired to have. I don't need to keep replaying the anger to put it to good use. I just need to notice it, name it, and decide what it's for.

Take the next step: Bring this message to your organization

Help your team shift from reacting to change to responding with clarity and courage.

Book a keynote on emotional intelligence and navigating change with courage. Your team will learn to recognize fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses, apply the 3N Influencing Technique, and turn the energy of change into momentum. Learn more about keynote speaking services.

For leaders seeking deeper exploration, read my book Inspired by Fear: Becoming a Courageous Change Leader, where I dedicate a full chapter to using the 3N Influencing Technique and to the changecapable behavioral science approach behind it during organizational change. Buy the book.

Updated June 2026 to strengthen the research base and connect to related articles on the emotions of change.