Aggression Loses Some Of Its Punch

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In retail brokerage, where greed rules, the picture is also changing. For most brokers, the era of trading stocks all day is gone. The business today is about acquiring assets, which may involve mortgages, retirement and estate planning, even selling houses. Many brokers still get commissions, but the trend is toward fees based on a percentage of assets. And serving the owners of these assets means working with others in your firm. In May, for example, Merrill Lynch announced it was aiming to have 40% of its 16,000 brokers work in teams to rev up its service to high-income clients.

Companies are also paying more attention to the dollar cost of fallout from overly aggressive managers. "Lawsuits for harassment or creating a hostile work environment have made companies more concerned with the consequences of badly controlled aggression," says Marilyn Puder-York, a psychologist and executive coach to FORTUNE 100 companies. Conflict has costs: that's the message many are getting. Tapping into this new consciousness, HRTools.com , a company that supplies analytics to HR managers, has introduced the Organizational Conflict Financial Cost Calculator eTool. Just plug in the numbers (including employees involved in conflict) and estimate dollars lost from wasted time and the exodus of good staff.

Of course, companies don't summarily fire their most talented aggressors. They parole them first for coaching. At AFLAC, says HR vice president Sharon Douglas, the hard chargers may be assigned to a more aggressive team, perhaps in strategic planning or the R.-and-D. segment of IT, where they can be "a catalyst."

"I'm not sure we want to get rid of the aggression," says Puder-York. She trains people to turn their aggression from "reactive" to "strategic." When a person's internal anger or anxiety is provoked and he or she reacts without deliberation, Puder-York explains, "the reaction could take the form of a nasty comment or e-mail to a colleague or a tantrum." She helps clients channel their anger to achieve results.

Jay Levine, 44, a director of technology at a large publishing business, was sent for coaching to David Peterson of Personnel Decisions International. "I'm very Type A, very driven," says Levine. "I was very aggressive, results oriented. It was alienating to my peers." His style had worked fine at a previous job where he had been "master of my own ship" of 120 souls. But when he moved to a company of 800 with five colleagues of equal rank and a more complex structure, his style got him into trouble--because he had to compete for resources, like the in-demand folks who know the company's legacy systems, such as mainframes. Working with Peterson for several months, Levine learned patience and skills--how to listen, when to step back. Now he says he can do what was hard for him before--"work with five other people to get one thing done."

Search firms say they have their work cut out for them finding hires with the right brand and degree of aggressiveness. Aggressiveness is still the reigning qualification for some companies and some jobs. George Ludwig, a sales skills trainer who teaches courses like "You Gotta Be Bold," insists that companies are demanding his courses more than ever. Yet even in sales, he acknowledges, managers expect top performers to share information or technology skills with others on the sales force to benefit the company. "The mind-set used to be," he recalls, "if a guy was a top producer blowing the numbers away, he could be an obnoxious, arrogant, cigar- smoking so-and-so, and they would keep him." Now they might show him the door--aggressively.