Hanspeter (in the Conflict management forum) it seems has stumbled on a great way to diffuse angry people (Editor's note: and we are talking anything from the mild mad man to the extremely violent):
[I]f the person directs some actually undirected anger against you, try to re-direct his anger to someone famous but not present, or even better to some anonymous organisation, take his side on this, and then you suddenly have enough time and leverage to really defuse the anger by talking and giving him the feeling that he is heard.
We once were doing orienteering in a forest when a very angry forrester came and accused us of cutting down young trees (why would we do this? but we were present and attackable). There we managed to put other un-loved visitors of the forest like mountain bikers int the focus of his anger and then had a very good discussion at the end of which he agreed that most people are nice to the forest but there are "black sheep" everywhere. (sic)
Perhaps this is good advice for anyone working in a high stress arena (police officer, teacher, high paced corporate job, etc.). But what does one do if the angry man directs his rage at you?
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