The Other Emotion That Comes With Crisis: Annoyance

 I was having a great day.

I’d just been trained on a new animal at the zoo—a box turtle named Max. I was looking forward to getting real work done. I was looking forward to knitting a sleeve for a sweater I’m making.

And I did none of that.

Because a crisis showed up and took my entire afternoon—and now, several of the days ahead.

That’s how crisis often works. It doesn’t just scare us. It steals time. It interrupts momentum. It rearranges priorities without asking permission.

Once the immediate danger passed and I knew everyone was okay, the dominant emotion I felt wasn’t fear or sadness.

It was annoyance.

Annoyance Is Part of Crisis Too

I was annoyed that my day had been derailed.
Annoyed that this was going to cost us money.
Annoyed that the next two weeks of my life are now full of logistics, paperwork, and follow-ups instead of the things I had planned.

My real work—once again—has been delayed.
My hobbies. My fun. My focus.

All of it displaced by something I didn’t choose.

That emotion surprised me at first, but it shouldn’t have. Annoyance is a completely normal response to crisis, even though we rarely acknowledge it.

Multiple Things Can Be True

We tend to rank emotions during emergencies. Gratitude is acceptable. Fear is understandable. Relief is expected.

Annoyance feels… inappropriate.

But multiple things can be true at the same time.

You can be grateful that things weren’t worse and frustrated that your life has been disrupted. You can feel compassion for everyone involved and resent the practical consequences that now belong to you.

Annoyance isn’t a moral failure. It’s a reaction to lost time, lost control, and lost momentum.

The real risk isn’t feeling it. The risk is getting stuck in the idea that this isn’t fair.

The Trap of “This Isn’t Fair”

“This isn’t fair” is an understandable thought—and a useless one.

Crises don’t arrive on schedule. Accidents don’t check your calendar. Illness doesn’t care about your plans. Life doesn’t distribute inconvenience evenly.

From a Humanist perspective, this isn’t personal. It’s not punishment. It’s not meaningfully unfair.

It’s just reality doing what reality does.

Once I accept that, I can stop arguing with what happened and shift back into motion:

This happened.
I don’t like it.
Now what needs to be done?

That shift—from grievance to action—is what keeps annoyance from turning into resentment.

What This Looks Like at Work

This same emotional pattern shows up in the workplace all the time.

An employee’s partner gets sick. A child has a crisis. Someone’s mental health collapses. A sudden emergency pulls them away—and now your carefully planned week as a leader is disrupted too.

Deadlines slip. Projects stall. Your own work gets pushed aside.

It’s okay to feel annoyed about that.

Good leadership doesn’t require pretending those feelings don’t exist. It requires not letting them drive your response.

Strong leaders give people grace not because it’s convenient, but because it’s realistic. Every one of us will eventually be the person whose life explodes at the worst possible moment.

Designing for the Inevitable

If there’s any practical takeaway here, it’s this: systems should assume disruption will happen.

Not because people are unreliable—but because life is.

That means:

• Building slack into timelines

• Avoiding single points of failure

• Cross-training instead of hoarding knowledge

• Creating cultures where asking for help isn’t punished

This isn’t indulgence. It’s resilience.

Organizations—and leaders—that plan for uninterrupted productivity are fragile by design. Don't be fragile by design! 

Accept, Adjust, Continue

I don’t think annoyance needs to be fixed or reframed into gratitude. It just needs to be acknowledged and then set aside.

Accept that crisis will steal time.
Adjust what can be adjusted.
Continue doing the next solvable thing.

That’s how we stay human in the middle of disruption—without letting disruption take more than it already has.

Crisis is a VUCA moment—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Good leaders don’t eliminate those conditions; they help people function within them by grounding teams in reality and focusing on what can be done next.

Leadership Takeaway

Crises don’t just create fear—they create disruption, frustration, and lost momentum. Strong leaders don’t deny those emotions. They acknowledge them and help teams refocus on what can be solved next.

Reality-based leadership means:

• Giving people grace when life intrudes

• Designing systems that expect disruption

• Helping teams move from “this isn’t fair” to “what’s the next actionable step?”

These skills—emotional regulation, realistic problem-solving, and strategic response—are core themes in my book and course, Mastering the Five Managerial Superpowers, which focuses on leading humans as they actually are, not as we wish they’d be.

Related Reading

If you’re interested in how a Humanist, reality-based mindset helps people cope with crisis itself—not just manage its fallout—you may also want to read:
When Crisis Hits: A Humanist Way of Coping

Clarity and Professionalism: VUCA

I can live with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. What I have trouble with is clarity.

You may have heard the acronym VUCA before. It stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. It's used in a business context to describe the reality of work. Which is that - things happen.

If I have a professional relationship with someone – the thing that gets us through the volatility and ambiguity and to work through the complexity – is having clarity on what it is we are trying to accomplish. Who is responsible for what etc.

To me – clarity is what helps makes getting through VUCA doable. It’s what reduces my stress. To me, this is what professionalism is. It's about being professional enough to help increase clarity so that the team can deal with the volatility and complexity  and ambiguity as a team.

Let me give you an example of what lacking clarity leads to.

I get booked a lot to give talks. In order to give a talk - I need information.

Like - WHEN is this talk going to take place. WHERE is this talk and HOW am I going to get there. WHAT exactly do you want me to talk about? WHY do you want me to talk about it?

These are all reasonable questions and without answers to them - I can't give someone my time.   When people book me - I expect clarity on these questions. When I don't get that clarify - I can't help anyone or participate in the meeting, or even if I do - I can't support the objectives of the meeting if I don't know what they are.  Providing me with this information - so that I can do my job - despite the unknowns - is what it means to be professional.

When I get a contract, the first thing I do after winning a contract, is call the customer and ask questions and answer questions so that - there is clarity between us about expectations, roles, duties etc. 

Things happen. A Professional works to make sure VUCA isn’t going to negatively effect us – and if it does, that we have the trust we need to overcome it.

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If this is something you struggle with - consider taking one of the following courses.

How to De-Escalate Conflicts Using Science: https://humanistlearning.com/de-escalate-conflicts/

Or Bridging the Millenial Divide - which has information on humanistic communication strategies: https://humanistlearning.com/generationaldivide/

Professionalism as a cure for VUCA

I can live with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. What I have trouble with is clarity.

VUCA is a new-ish buzz word. It means Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. learning how to cope with VUCA helps you - cope and therefore be more successful.

I don't think I have a problem with VUCA. What I have a problem with is clarity.  I am ok with the struggles inherent in trying accomplish something. I expect things to change and be uncertain and to be more complex then original thought. I plan for that to happen.
What frustrates me to no end, to the point I'll lose my cool - is lack of clarity.  If there is not a clear understanding of what we are trying to accomplish and how we have decided to accomplish it - then getting through the difficulties - is impossible.

Without clarity - I have no clue on how to proceed to overcome the obstacles because I have no basis on which to judge - what a good solution to the problem is. I can live with volatility and uncertainty. I can't fix what is wrong though, without clarity.

I had a moment of clarity the other day. I have been working with an individual who is absolutely crappy about providing clarity. Most of the time I have no idea what they want me to do, how they want me to do it, when they want me to do it by or what resources I might be given to do the work that was vaguely suggested needs to be done. 

To me - this lack of clarity feels like lack of professionalism. If you ask me to participate in a meeting, but won't tell me when the meeting is, where it is, what the meeting is about, why we are having the meeting and what you hope comes out of the meeting, then, I can't participate in the meeting. This is basic stuff.

Which is why I have been thinking about the need for clarity as it relates to VUCA. We can't control everything, but we can at least provide clarity on what we want to have happen. To me, this is what it means to be a professional.

A professional works to make sure everyone is at least clear on what the objectives are, what the plan is, when we plan to do whatever it is and what resources we are going to use and who is responsible for what.

If I have a professional relationship with someone – the thing that gets us through the difficulties caused by volatility and ambiguity and what gives us the confidence to work together through the complexity – is having clarity on what it is we are trying to accomplish. Who is responsible for what etc.

To me – clarity is what helps makes getting through VUCA doable. It’s what reduces my stress. 

When I strive to be professional - this is what I am trying to do. Whether I think of other people as professional or not - has to do entirely with how well they create clarity and therefore confidence in myself and others.

I'm curious whether anyone else feels the same way I do about what it means to be a professional.