In 2016, when I took my first management role, I knew absolutely nothing about human psychology. As the meme goes: You know nothing, Jon Snow. ❄️

I approached team building the same way I approached a game of Civilization or Age of Empires. I thought if I just combined the right units — a high-DPS coder here, a tanky manager there — we would win the map.

It's never that easy. I quickly learned that while code is logical, people are compiled on a kernel of messy, volatile emotions. And the one that destroys team cohesion faster than any bug is Anger.

Anger is rarely just Anger. In the workplace, Anger is almost always a "secondary emotion" — a UI wrapper hiding a deeper system failure.

If you peel back the layers, you usually find one of the Three Horsemen driving it:

Shame 🔔

Not the GoT "Walk of Shame," but the micro-dose version. The botched presentation. The code review where you felt exposed. The dismissal of your hard work. Most people process Shame by converting it immediately into defensive Anger. As a leader, if you see someone lashing out, check for the wound to their ego first.

Envy 😒

This is a transparency bug. Envy breeds in the dark. "Why did they get promoted?" "Why did they get the greenfield project?" When a leader fails to explain the "Why," the team fills the void with resentment. That resentment eventually compiles into sabotage or passive-aggressive jokes. Envy is usually just ambition with no clear path forward.

Fear 🐺

The big one right now. Will AI replace us? Are layoffs coming? Is my skill set obsolete? Biological evolution dictates "Fight or Flight." But in a job, you can't "Flight" — you need the paycheck. So you "Fight." You become irritable. You argue over semantics. That's not aggression; that's panic in a suit.

The Debugging Protocol

Being a leader feels like being on the Night's Watch. You are on the wall, scanning the dark for these threats. Your job is to spot when a team member is acting out of Fear, not malice. Your job is to illuminate the context so Envy has nowhere to hide.

If you feel your own anger brimming this week — at a colleague, a client, or the market — pause and ask yourself which Horseman is riding:

  • Is it Shame? → Own the glitch
  • Is it Envy? → Request the missing data
  • Is it Fear? → Calculate the blast radius

Name the demon, and you strip it of its power.