Do angry bosses cause ‘sheer panic’ or get results? Fierce debate breaks out on GMB over whether managers should shout at their employees

Can a shouty boss ever get the best out of their staff, or should they take a more gentle approach?  

According to a recent study carried out by the American Psychological Association, the softly-softly approach that today’s leaders are widely expected to take may not be the most effective when it comes to getting results. 

Raised today on Good Morning Britain, the question of how whether bosses should shout at their staff proved divisive. 

The hosts of the ITV show, Richard Madeley and Kate Garraway, referred back to a clip of celebrity chef Gordan Ramsey lambasting contestants on his US reality TV show Hell’s Kitchen before inviting two guests to debate the topic. 

Tina Knight, who ran a successful computing and electronics business between 1985 and 2002 and now works as a business consultant, argued against the idea that  bosses who ‘give a good rollicking are bad bosses’.

Taking the opposing view, Danny Gray, 38, an entrepreneur and founder of men’s makeup brand War Paint, argued that an approach like Ramsay’s does nothing more than cause ‘sheer panic’ and fails to ‘motivate’ workers. 

Revealing that he never raises his voice in the office, Gray said: ‘Before I was a boss, people raising their voice to me never worked. It would probably get the worst out of me.’

Arguing that ‘mental health is definitely impacted’ by bosses who shout down their employees, he also made the point that an argument or disagreement would never be fairly resolved as only one voice – the louder one – will ever be heard.

He continued: ‘If you were on the street and someone was to come up and have a disagreement and a man, especially to a woman, starts screaming and shouting in their face because they believe that they’re right, it wouldn’t be accepted.   

Meanwhile Knight, who is in her seventies, wasn’t especially troubled by Ramsay’s reaction, perceiving it as ‘sheer frustration at incompetence and not working as a team.’

While she distanced herself from Ramsay’s style when she recalled a boss who had advised her to ‘always praise in public and… chastise in private’, Knight suggested that sometimes such strong reactions are necessary. 

‘There are times when you can see everything slowing down and everything coming off the wheel so you call a group together and you let them have it,’ she said. 

For Knight, giving employees ‘a good talking to’ often means they ‘come out with 10 per cent more than you thought you were going to get out of them’. 

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Admitting that she doesn’t ‘want the popularity vote’ as a boss, Knight recalled a time when one of her employees told her they didn’t like her but they respected her. 

Gray, however, disagreed that respect is gained by speaking harshly to employees, stating that ‘respect is about abilities, qualities and achievement’. 

He added that ‘it’s going to be very hard to respect someone you can’t approach.’

But Knight wasn’t convinced, arguing that sometimes bosses need to properly assert themselves. 

She said: ‘Employees think you should listen to them – and so you should – but you’ve been round the block a few times’. 

The Good Morning Britain debate certainly stirred emotions with viewers taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, to share their own experiences of angry bosses.

One woman recalled watching her boss ‘scream at someone’ before asking ‘if they had their bike clips with them’. Without any kind of formal warning, her boss told the employee to ‘get on it and go!’

Another person argued that a shouty boss creates fear in the workplace, which is ‘the wrong atmosphere’. 

While a third suggested that Gray was ‘just a snowflake’ for insisting on a more gentle approach.