Keep your cool without being cruel

In this day and age, there are quite a bit of ego flying around, very much so in the IT world.
This can lead to conflicts that spiral out of control and leads to less than constructive situations where personal attacks or competency becomes a point of contention.
Of course, this is something that should not happen, but comes naturally with the way that teams and silos work.
It fosters a bit of a toxic environment when you end up crossing over boundaries, where teams and silos become adversarial.

I am both a victim and a perpetrator of this behaviour.

It's not always easy to keep cool and lean on the side of logic and reason if your view is refuted and overlooked.
Frustration is what this leads to, and when you get too frustrated with a situation, team, or silo it will churn and grind within you until it bobbles over.
This is when hostility can become a problem and be cause for very toxic work environments and talent will leave, often over small things that could have been avoided.

Retaining talent is not always easy, and it becomes even harder if there are unresolved issues or small annoyances roaming around.

Part of the problem is undersized teams and oversized responsibilities which leads to a feeling of never being able to get your head over water and you keep drowning.
Pairing this with large projects and tight deadlines only exasperates the problem and can often bring out the cruel and evil part in people.
It can lead to rather heated discussions and adversarial battles and it becomes a shouting match.

Within all of this, it is important to make every effort to keep it constructive and not devolve into personal attacks.
Which often is the MO in situations where it gets heated at the workplace.
It is the biggest cliche, but at times it does help to step back and take a deep breath before you continue your route of talking.

Not being able to bite your tongue will only land you in trouble, not necessarily with your coworkers or management, but with yourself.
Guilt and shame can be overpowering and cause quite a deal of problems with yourself and how you view the environment around you.

In the end, it's all down to what you want your image to be, and what you can live with.
Myself, I find that letting things fester for long will grind you down and cause problems.