I am late to the party, but I also wanted to suggest learning to develop techniques for dealing with “this kind of attack.”
This may not be the last time you have this energy directed your way.
Your options are:
1. Make excuses or argue or “explain”
Looks really weak and doesn’t garner respect. Especially from asshole managers. Arguing will inflame them, they will take it as disrespect.
If they are in a mood to send a message, then explaining won’t get you anywhere. They want to yell at you to feel powerful. Explaining won’t help.
2. Take the beating
Just listen and don’t say anything. Neutral strategy, you don’t win or lose anything. But you also don’t prevent situation in the future.
If this is a one time thing, maybe it never happens again and you are better avoiding any escalation.
You turn into a doormat eventually, you are giving them a “free move.”
3. Restate their complaint before they complain (take their weapons away)
This is an extreme pro maneuver. If you have a truly aggressive boss, and I have had a few, you can anticipate their attacks in advance and state them up front.
This kind of managers attacks are often predictable.
This technique leaves your attacker with absolutely nothing to say. I use this on my own Manager to diffuse them.
This is a very powerful method, because you have to be willing to understand the situation from their view in advance.
Open the meeting with “so I know you are angry about how slowly this project has been going and probably think I suck at coding is that right? … “
This technique comes from the book “never split the difference.” You try to trigger them to agree with you up front. Once you do that; they are out of ammunition.
Lean into the punches takes the power away from them. But this requires extreme skill.
4. Blame on others by taking responsibility for their actions
This is a technique from the book “Stealing The Corner Office.”
You make your manager look weak by taking responsibility for misinterpreting them.
“I think I must be responsible because I misinterpreted Manager X when he said Y. I will work with X to clarify my understanding.”
This is kind of a passive aggressive strategy which indirectly blames your manager and makes it sound like he is actually the problem.
Anyways, I recommend reading both the books I mentioned earlier.
With aggressive managers I prefer to lean into the punches and take their attacks away.