De-Escalation Tools That Work from a Professional Mediator

In this episode, Simon Goode explores practical de-escalation skills for managing conflict and strong emotions in both professional and everyday situations. He emphasizes techniques like using a calm tone, mindful body language, and strategies to reinforce status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Through personal anecdotes and actionable advice, Simon Goode highlights the importance of self-regulation and understanding in defusing tense conversations.

TIMESTAMPS: 

00:00 Using de-escalation in leadership

04:15 Introducing Shelley the Dog

09:52 Reflecting on de-escalation strategies

12:53 Managing Uncertainty and De-Escalation

13:50 How to calm difficult conversations

17:46 Using calming body language

24:25 Managing conflict with communication skills

27:23 Encouraging collaboration and fairness

30:43 Handling customer complaints professionally

33:39 Managing tasks until next meeting

35:28 Balancing autonomy and input

41:23 Discussing de-escalation strategies

42:19 Conflict resolution resources

Transcript

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Speaker 0:22

Well, hello, welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful to you, please consider pressing subscribe. Well, in the episode today, I've got my iPad out again, and today we're focusing on de-escalation skills. I'm going to be talking about some of the very practical approaches that we can use to calm down situations that we're in, to take the heat out of the difficult conversations that we might need to manage. Now, I am a professional mediator in my work, and so I'm often using de-escalation skills in a very direct kind of way, and to be frank, more or less constantly when I'm meeting with clients, at least, sometimes even when I'm dealing with my own level of distress from the case that I've just been involved in or something similar. And I need some de-escalation or I'm managing self-regulation. I think though, de-escalation is something that's incredibly useful if you're in a leadership role. We can apply similar kind of principles to management conversations that we have with the staff member, especially if there's a performance management issue or you're delivering bad news as part of your role. De-escalation skills can be incredibly useful there just to manage some of those strong emotions that can sometimes erupt. It could also be used though in client kind of conversations where sometimes clients, regardless of how unreasonable they are, they still manage to hold on the perspective that everything is somehow your fault. But other times we do just want to calm things down before we can offer some support. Now, when I'm talking about de-escalation, I'm thinking about the escalation process as somewhat generic. It's the parasympathetic nervous, sorry, the sympathetic nervous system. It revs us up, it's sometimes called this fight-for-flight kind of response. And the way that the escalation manifests in our body is very similar, regardless of whether we're escalated in terms of anger and frustration, or we might be escalated in terms of anxiety, fear, and distress, those other kind of areas. Now, how much time and energy and effort you put into de-escalation is really going to depend on the situation that you're in, in a similar kind of way to empathy, I suppose. It depends on your context. If you're in a professional context, then is there any policy or procedures or that kind of thing that need to be applied? Sometimes what is actually more helpful is a firm approach, like being assertive, telling somebody that they're going to n they're going to need to leave the building if they don't lower the volume in which they're speaking. So I'm not always saying that you should endlessly try and placate people and calm them down. Sometimes it's better just to be either direct, to be firm, to hold on to boundaries, onto some other kind of response. And that might be because that's what's needed to fix the situation that you're dealing with. But in some situations, we have an impulse to de-escalate, even when actually it's not our job to fix it. We can let these people have a little bit of a heated argument in our team meeting, for example, as long as that's a norm and a culture that everybody's okay with and people are treated fairly, then you might not necessarily rush in to take the heat out of a tense dispute that's going on. Whereas in other situations, if you know that the people are a bit more fragile or there's some other particular duty of care or something that you've got, maybe de-escalation is your first port of call. As I mentioned, as a professional mediator, I often come in employing a lot of these de-escalation skills myself. My job first and foremost, I suppose, is to assess the conflict to figure out whether mediation is appropriate or not. But I know that in order for me to elicit the most accurate and useful information from the people that I'm dealing with, so in an assessment kind of lens, but even in terms of building connection and I want them to establish a level of trust with me if I do come in and do the mediation ultimately after that, I think the de-escalation is also incredibly useful for those kind of different goals as well. Now, before we get into that topic though, I just wanted to talk about an example of a situation where we don't actually know the other person that's involved. So therefore our goal shouldn't necessarily be to de-escalate. But even as I use that word shouldn't, I'm thinking, well, whose idea of shouldn't are we actually referring to here? So I'm going to flick back to a different note that I've set up for this, and I wanted to introduce you to exhibit A. This is my dog Shelly. If you're watching on the video, you can see on the screen. And um, if you're just listening in the audio, I'll try and remember to put a link so that you can download the slides for this little example, including Shelly, as well as the actual de-escalation slides that we'll focus on in a moment. So my dog Shelly was walking along here, kind of bouncing between the left and right side of the path, sniffing, etc. This is a place down near my house, so we just walk down there with our dog. My wife and I were kind of walking along this way, and Shelly was kind of over here in the grass, kind of sniffing and rolling around on her back in a really joyful kind of way. It was a really lovely moment. This is yesterday afternoon after work. Um, and so there were these other people that were coming up from the there's like a beach lagoon kind of area down there. So these people were coming up here. Shelly made her way across to these trees and did a ginormous poo where I've just drawn the X there. So the people were right here, and Shelly, my dog, has gone and done a poo there. My wife and I by this stage were kind of here. So we walked over to where she'd done the poo. I dutifully pulled out the poo bag to get ready to clean it up. But my dog Shelly has a bit of a digestion problem, and so she must have eaten something that disagreed with her because all of this poo was completely runny. I literally didn't have anything to pick up. I kind of made eye contact with the guy. It was a guy and two older ladies that were walking together, and you know, I sort of did a slight shrug of my shoulders, like, what do you expect me to do kind of thing? And I said to my wife, I don't know if there's much point to this, I don't think we're going to be able to get it with a bag. So we stayed there for another few seconds and then decided just to head down to the beach. If you continue on down this this path, kind of here is where you get to the beach. I'll flick back to the slides so you can see what I'm drawing there. So this lady, one of the two older ladies that was with this guy, stopped just after they'd walked past us, and the lady said, Excuse me. And we both turned around, we didn't say anything, and she said, You need to pick that up. And my wife immediately went into de-escalation mode. She was like, I'm sorry, it's too runny. And then she said, Somebody might slip in it, you know, some other kind of antagonistic little comment to me. And I don't like that. I have to say that I have a value that you should just generally be kind to the people around you. Like you don't have to be a douchebag just for the sake of it. And so I got angry at this lady for butting her nose in effectively. Like, can't you just think that there's probably a reason why these people didn't stop and clean up or whatever? So I turned around and angrily said to her, What do you expect us to do? In the old days, I probably would have said, What the F do you expect us to do or something else? I really like that question. That what do you expect us to do here? But I wish that I'd said it in hindsight in a much more calm kind of way. But my goal wasn't really to de-escalate. I didn't particularly care if this lady was upset with me or if I insulted her or whatever. So I didn't necessarily consider that my goal. But then for the rest of the walk, while we were kind of cruising around the rest of the beach area, this is the section where I was at this morning, actually, just less than an hour ago, I took Shelley down there again. It's such a beautiful spot. But we were ruminating and mulling about this argument that we just had with this lady. Both of us brought it up a couple of times on the walk back. And I have to say that although my goal wasn't necessarily to look after her, like I do think that's probably okay in hindsight not to manage her emotions in too much of a proactive kind of way. But I wish that I just paused and considered the environment that we were in. Like, look at these photos, it's just such a beautiful place. You go down this little path, and that's where the beach leads to. And this morning I was down there by myself when my wife and I were down there as well. That was um also just a really beautiful time to be there. And I wish that we just, you know, paused and hugged each other or said I love you, or spent a few moments being grateful for the stuff that was going on, or even just grateful for this setting that we get to kind of connect with at this unique moment in time, etc. Now I've just put a little meme on the screen here before we get into the actual information. Oh, it's too big there, you probably can't see the the full glory of this meme. It's meant to be s didn't write it down because it's obvious, and then me a week later, and then all of a sudden you've forgotten everything that you thought that you would remember. So if you've tuned into this episode hoping to learn something in particular in terms of de-escalation, I suppose this is your chance to go and grab a notepad. I'm just gonna flick back to the notes if I can manage to get the right one that I was looking at a moment ago. Okay, here we are. Okay, cool. So my goal there wasn't necessarily to calm that lady down in the example of walking with Shelly, but in hindsight it probably would have been quite good for me, or in terms of my goal for my relationship with my wife. Like I wanted us both to enjoy this time in a chilled-out kind of way. And getting in an argument, me yelling something insulting at a lady to tell her to pull her head in, it's literally probably going to achieve nothing. In fact, it probably upset them for the rest of their walk as well. So when I'm thinking about de-escalation, there's really a connection between what's going on in my brain and its interpretation of the environment that I'm in, and then the way that that affects my body, the physiological responses. In terms of why our brain triggers this escalation, it's really getting us ready for action. It's getting ready to do something. Fight or flight have been two pretty helpful options in terms of looking after yourself and your own safety. Historically, throughout human evolution, we've developed very strong mechanisms to get ready to defend ourselves if there's an animal that's attacking us or a stranger or something, or to escape flight, to get out of this dangerous situation. So our heart races, our palms get sweaty, we shake a little bit, we might notice that we've got butterflies in our stomach, we might all of a sudden feel like we need to go to the toilet, or we can't go to the toilet, or you can't catch your breath, or you can feel your heart beating so strongly in your chest that you worry that the other person that you're talking to might be able to hear it as well. We all get a slightly different mix of these physical symptoms, but they're all oriented towards preparing for action. The reason that our brain is activating this sort of threat response, the amygdala, etc., is because of a perceived threat. And that might be something like a physical safety thing, like someone's really in your face, standing over the top of you, trying to physically intimidate you. Your heart will be racing in that kind of a setting. Uh, it could be a predator walking back to your car after having dinner at a restaurant at night and worrying that someone's following you and they're going to mug you or something. We get ready to defend ourselves in those kind of situations. But there's also things like everybody in a crowd looking at you that activates a very similar process of escalation. And if we think historically, that makes sense to some extent as well. If we lived in a tribe and we relied on the people around us for survival, then it probably was a threat that everybody around was staring at you. You might have been accused of something, there might be something that's about to happen, like you're getting kicked out of the group or whatever. So probably just blending in with the crowd was a much safer way to be a lot of the time. So we've developed this neurobiological mechanism to respond to everybody staring at us and how uncomfortable that feels. It could also be things like uncertainty, unexpected changes, or a lack of control. These days we might tell ourselves, oh, I'm overreacting, I'm making too much of it. But it's certainly not the case if we think historically about what uncertainty might have meant. It might have been your food supply that you were talking about, or your ability to find a mate, or like who knows what was going on. But there was a pretty significant potential impact on your survival. So these days, a job interview, a performance management conversation with your staff, talking to a client and them all of a sudden getting very angry, that causes us to escalate. And the same thing will be true for the client or for the staff member or for the person that we're talking to as well. When we think about de-escalation overall, the perspective that we need to take is to remove the sense of perceived threat and to remove the sense of perceived pressure. So we need to start with the tone of voice that we use. I often do workshops where we're talking about communication skills, conflict resolution skills, managing difficult conversations is a common topic that I cover. And we often talk about how should you speak? If your goal is to calm somebody down, what would be the most helpful way of speaking? Now, very commonly these days, people say, like you, Simon, we should do it like you. And I'm saying, okay, what is this? Just Simon says then. And then sometimes people will say, You should speak in a calm kind of way. And I'll always say, What do you mean by calm? You know, it's a bit of a cheeky thing because they do know what they mean, but I'm forcing them to describe it. I'm forcing them to consider when have they managed this well and when haven't they, and what the actual difference might be. I like sort of these three main points: the lower tone, slower speed, and lower volume. With what Chris Foss talks about is the late night FM DJ listening, whatever. Okay, that last track was from Simon called The Pooh is Diarrhea. Next up, butting your head in's greatest hits, something like that. So lower tone, slower speed, lower volume. If you're speaking with your children and you wanted to be less of an angry dad or an angry mum, then lower tone, lower speed, lower volume. So low, steady tone. When we raise our voice and talk like this, and we speed up like this, and when we increase our volume like this, obviously that injects in much a higher a much higher level of energy into the conversation, whereas the opposite does the opposite. It helps to calm things down. I often find even when I'm calling uh like when I've been an operations manager in an organization and I've had to call somebody back that's made a complaint, for example, I usually find that even if they're very upset initially, they often calm down within the space of about five minutes or so. And that's what I'm doing. I'm really employing that lower steady tone, calm, relaxed, confident. We can get through this. I'm not flustered, I'm not flapped, it'll be okay. Lower volume, like loud enough, obviously, that they can hear you speaking, but not so loud that they feel like you're raising your voice. And then that I suppose another point that we could add there, I don't know if it necessarily goes in the voice or not, is the paraverbal cues that we could use as well. So pauses and silences would fit into there, or the little, uh-huh. Okay, right. I see. I I get where you're coming from there. Like there's these little moments where I get where you're coming from is more of a using words to reflect. But sometimes it's just, ah, so then that was okay. Like it's these little moments where we're also establishing connection. I think they can also be quite helpful, but we want to use them sparingly. Like you don't want to be constantly jumping in as soon as the person's finished speaking, they might interpret that as a sense of perceived pressure, and probably also using the low tone, lower volume, right? Okay. Now, when I'm talking about empathy or assertiveness or some of the other aspects of managing difficult conversations, I think in many of those different contexts it often isn't helpful to display your emotions. Like if I'm angry at you and we're in a conflict and I care about you and I don't want this to get really nasty and gross, I don't think me displaying anger usually helps. Like furrowing my brow is one that I often do and I've gradually learnt over the years to try and manage it, but I'm still not always fantastic at it. I'm like the demonstrating that anger, or if I'm really worried or upset and I start pacing back and forth or twitching or whatever, and I'm worried. Well, obviously that's the kind of stuff that the other person is going to pick up on as well. This is where we also need to consider aspects like body language. We effectively co-regulate one another's nervous systems, which means that the way that the person perceives you to be feeling influences the way that they are feeling. So sometimes we could like um demonstrate calm, and what we're hoping to do is almost infect the other person with a sense of calmness. And they do, they almost absorb it by osmosis. So what we want to think about in terms of body language, facial expression, gestures, if you're the kind of person that talks with your hands, is how to also establish that this is not a pressured situation here, you're not on the spot, you're not under the pump, and there's no criticism, there's no judgment, whatever the thing might be going on that's this perceived threat, like we can talk it through, help me understand what's going on here, type of thing, as opposed to I've reached this conclusion about you, this is an assumption that I'm making. So, what should we do? I like to just think about a relatively relaxed posture. So an open torso often works quite well. Limiting movement, um, if you are the kind of person that talks with your hands a lot normally, maybe just keeping them relaxed by your side would be more helpful here when your goal is to calm the conversation down. Keeping your hands visible is an interesting one. People tend to trust you more when they can see your hands. There's a reason why politicians all talk like Trump always puts his hands up like this constantly when he's on the camera and he knows that if this is the section that's on the screen, that his hands are going to be visible. I also like to, when I'm meeting a client for the first time, or maybe even meeting a different kind of colleague, I walk up to them with my hands relaxed at my side. I don't have my hands in my pockets. And if I'm sitting down at a desk having a performance conversation with a staff member, I would usually put that kind of just relaxed on the desk as opposed to having it under. Approximately one and a half meters apart, two arm's lengths, roughly speaking, is what most people tend to recommend and what the research suggests. That one though is a little bit culturally dependent. In some like national cultures, people tend to be more close and more okay with close personal space. Even there might be a difference between regional and metro areas. I grew up in a regional area myself, and I have to say, like, we don't really hug, we don't really like stand really close to one another. Whereas my relatives and my friends that grew up in more of a city context, they are just naturally used to being crammed in on the train or whatever the different kind of setting might be. So one and a half meters roughly, but that's a little bit dependent on what's normal in your situation. And I think sometimes if our focus is de-escalation, we want to avoid approaching the person, especially doing it quickly, or even backing up and kind of what we don't want to do is give them the sense that we're dismissing them, that they're not being taken seriously, or that we're not listening to them. So about one and a half meters apart, so to speak, turn towards them, engaged and attentive, like nod, make eye contact. A neutral kind of facial expression, I think, tends to work. Um, so not smiling and overly happy, especially if they're distressed or upset, and not overly like looking like you don't believe them, looking skeptical or rolling your eyes when they're speaking, or it's just like, okay, that's your perspective. From your point of view, that's how you see things. Probably at the same level, if there's an option to sit down, that's better than standing up, I think. Although sometimes going for a walk can be really nice for de-escalation. I used to use that a lot when I worked in youth crisis centers many years ago. A relaxed, upright kind of posture, like I don't want to seem like I'm on the edge of my seat, I don't want to seem like I'm really worked up and stressed out here. Obviously, you're going to pick up on that and you will be affected by that as well. So we're calm, we're relaxed, we're confident, not flustered, I'm not flapped, we can get through this. As we can do our best anyway, to display those. Kind of emotions, those will be the kind of things that the other person then picks up on. So what are some mistakes? What are some common things that I see when I'm managing a dispute or an argument directly? Well, to be perfectly frank, there's many, and they're not always just ones that I see. Sometimes I'm doing them as well, I guess. But what you don't want to do is talk too quickly, especially if you disagree with them. You want to not let them say something because they're lying or they're that's not true. Okay, we're gonna have to keep interrupting me, but I can't-that's not true. Okay, you can let them say something that's that's not true. You can, you can let them finish speaking before you interrupt them. There might be some issue that you're worried that you'll forget about it or it'll be lost in the mix of a million other things. Sure, fair enough, you can make the decision as to whether or not you're assertive. But if your goal is to calm them down, interrupting is probably not going to be helpful. So don't talk too quickly, don't jump in too quickly, don't jump in when they're still talking. I even like to say, um, did you want to say anything else? Gosh, I'm just processing all of that. Like do a little bit of narration before I even respond. I'm just kind of saying, let me just think about that. Fire out. I wasn't aware of so much of that that you've been through. Gosh, that does really sound full-on or whatever. Um, don't point or gesture a lot. Some of these ones are kind of obvious, I suppose. Don't move towards or away the person, like I said. Don't sit or stand over them confrontationally, like suddenly standing up, that obviously causes some people to have a reaction of whatever kind. Don't cover your mouth with your hands. That's another one of the markers that contributes to trust. We don't like we don't like it when people cover their mouth when they're talking to us. It makes us trust them less. Don't check your phone, don't be looking at your computer. Probably don't be typing notes if your goal is to de-escalate. Maybe just don't take a break from that for a moment or ask them. Like, I'm I'm I just want to capture some of this so I don't lose track of it. Would it be alright if I keep take some notes while you're speaking? We don't want to stand over the top of them and we don't want to display criticism or I think it's also the other kind of negative emotions as well, like anger or fear or worry or whatever. It's a red ragtuable. So we should initially, I think, focus on our tone of voice, that low slower speed, lower volume, then think about body language, gestures, facial expressions, distance, eye contact, whether we can sit down or stand up, those areas. There are also particular things that people tend to crave when they're in an escalated state: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. These are five factors that are identified by, I think it's David Rock, is the guy's name, Dr. David Rock. He talks about these much more generally in terms of factors that people sort of move towards in their life, broadly speaking. But I also like to think of them very much in terms of conflict because people want status. They want to feel like they're important, that you understand what they've said, that you're paying attention to them and that you're taking it seriously. They want certainty. People want to know what to expect. They want to know how you're going to treat them or what they should expect to experience next. They want to know what's going on. They want autonomy. People want to feel like they're in the driver's seat. The more upset that they get, the more that they want to feel like they're in control of things. If not, then it can feel like they're on a roller coaster and here they go over the scariest bit of the track. For me, when I begin a mediation, I always start by saying, Do either of you need a minute to grab a drink of water or grab a notepad or anything? And I'm kind of saying, Are you ready to go? But it feels very different to them because I say, Do you need a moment before we get started? No, no, okay. That is, I think, going to feel very different than me walking in, walking in and saying, Righto, Mike, Jane, thanks very much for coming. Let's get started. You've both talked to me about hating each other, so let's put hatred up on the first item on the agenda or something. Like, here we go, it's over the scariest bit of the track. So I like giving people autonomy in terms of the process itself. Like if it's a mediation, are you ready to start? I know this is a lot to take in. Do you want to take a minute to maybe duck to the bathroom or grab a tissue or anything? Um, I know that it can be quite confronting hearing some of this negative feedback, especially when you weren't aware of these issues previously. Do you need a few moments to go for a walk or something and clear your head? Like I'm kind of giving you the option in terms of the conversation, the process itself, but also potentially in terms of the issue as well. Like I've had this complaint from a client. Would you prefer to meet with me and talk it through? Otherwise, I could organize a different time. You can bring a support person, and you'd also have the option of having a HR representative there as well, if that's something that you feel would be helpful. So I'm kind of giving you also autonomy about the issue itself where possible. Relatedness is where we want to help the other person to feel understood, to demonstrate empathy, to give them the sense that you get where they're coming from. And then finally, there's this layer of fairness. If somebody has been um hard done by in a decision that was made, maybe there's some kind of compensation that you could offer them. Or if they're the main staff member that's been affected, maybe you give them more time to provide input and do work a bit more collaboratively with them. Whereas some of the other staff that are part-timers and they're not in the office very frequently, they might not get as much say over the desk arrangement for an open plan office or something. So, how can we reinforce status? What are some of the things that can be helpful for letting somebody else know that they're important, that we matter that we care about the thing that matters to them? Well, first we should take a deferential kind of approach. Oops, don't know what button I hit there and that made some applause go off. Sorry about that. We should take a deferential kind of approach. Like give them the give them the right to have their say first before you correct them. Talk to them about what you had in mind to fix the problem that they've been discussing with you, but saying to them, look, is this what you had in mind, or do you think something else might work better given that you're in a bit of a different situation than some of the other clients that we've dealt with previously? There might be some ways that you can make them feel important. If you've cancelled on them because one of your staff is sick or something, maybe you could let them know that they're at the top of the cancellation list, and if any appointments become available, you'll do everything that you can to make sure that they get the first right of option just in case that happens to suit them. Or you've put them on this unique program that gives them some of the services that you do at a cheaper rate, or you've formally um lodged a complaint on their behalf, and what this means is that one of the senior managers within the organization will call them back sometime next week. So I'm kind of saying to them, like, you matter, I'm taking it seriously, this is something that we're actually paying attention to. In some situations, somebody has tried hard, even though the problem still continues. Sometimes with my son, he might get really upset because he can't do something. He might have been, I mean, just a simple example, he'll sit there tying his shoe. Sometimes the shoelace is broken or something, so there's not enough thread to come through. And so he'll try after about five minutes, usually spits the dummy and has a bit of a tantrum, complains and cries or throws the shoe across the room or something, and then usually comes and says, Dad, can you help? Poor old Louis, he's got a coach of a dad, so I usually say, Well, let's think about what might be needed here, Louis. Where did it go wrong? How far did you get when you were trying back then? So I'm naturally jumping in as the coaching role of trying to support him, and he just went, Dad, just try tie the bloody shoe. Like, what's the matter with you? We gotta go. Um, but what I don't do, and what I would do if my focus was more on de-escalation, is acknowledge the effort that he's made. Okay, that can be frustrating. And I I watched you, you actually sat there and tried to do it a number of times. It's not like you just tried once and gave up. Like, that's the kind of thing that people really do appreciate some acknowledgement of. When I do mediations with divorce and separated families, I might say, look, it seems like you really have made significant step effort. You've put a lot of time into thinking about the options that might work here. Or it sounds like even when you're feeling quite triggered and they're pushing your buttons, you really do do your best to respond in a way that's a bit more civil, which isn't necessarily something that you can say about the messages that you're getting back. Like I'm kind of saying, I can see that you're really trying. I can see that this is something that's a priority for you. I can see that it's important. And especially if they haven't solved it yet or they're still sitting there distressed about the problem that they're dealing with, they they often really do resonate with that in my experience at least. Taking the issue seriously, like actually organizing a senior manager to call them, actually calling the supplier and seeing if there's an alternate type of material that you can come to avoid the delay that they've got or something similar. Like actually take steps to do this. And then we want to use neutral, non-blaming language where possible. Like we don't want to say it's your fault, you should have done this. We could say something like the challenge is we didn't receive this form. And when we don't receive that, we're not able to initiate the next step in the process, which is this and this. So I'm not saying it's your fault. You were the one that had the form and you should have brought it back. It did say it on when we wrote it. Like it's more along the lines of, okay, look, the challenge is that this step in the process didn't happen. The next one is certainty. How can we provide certainty? This is where we want to give people a sense that they're standing on solid ground here and that they know what to expect. So we could do things including providing details, like if we say to someone, thanks very much for flagging that issue with me, I'll get back to that as soon as I can, or I'll get back to that when I have a chance. Well, they're probably not very confident that I'm actually going to do anything to solve the problem at all, let alone how long it's going to take or whether it's going to work. Whereas if I talk to them about the steps, all right, look, I'm going to talk to this person, they're available at this time, and I'm going to ask them for this kind of help or whatever. Do you know what I mean? Like these are the tasks or these are the requests or these are the steps that I'm going to be following, or something similar to that. There's times when it can be helpful to outline those kind of next steps, including the things that you don't necessarily know. Like, all right, so we're going to do this up until this point. At that stage, I'll give you a call. So just looking at my diary, that's probably about 9.30 tomorrow morning. By that stage, hopefully we've narrowed down the list to a couple of potential options, and then we can get your input as to which way you think that we should go at the end of the day. So I'm kind of saying, like, including the autonomy, including the certainty, which is the next factor that not certainty, I should say, including the relatedness, which is the next factor that we're going to be talking about as well. So autonomy. What they can do right now, maybe there is something that a staff member can do until they have this meeting that's coming up. Maybe there's something that my son can do until I have a chance to tie his shoe for him. Like, why don't you go and pack your lunchbox? And if you can get that organized, I'll have time to maybe tie the shoe just before we hop in the car. And then we want to un outline any uncertainty factors clearly. Like, mate, I'm happy to have a look in the cupboard if there's a different shoelace, but I don't know if there is one. Again, I'm kind of saying to him, this is what to expect. And therefore, when I check in the cupboard and I say, I'm sorry, we don't have any other shoelaces. We're gonna have to try and figure out a way to use this one until we have a chance to buy one. But I've let him know that this is something that might be coming, and therefore it's not like I'm dumping a whole bunch of bad news on him unexpectedly and triggering and setting him off in that respect. So that next factor is autonomy, actually, and then we'll get to the relatedness. We want to give them control over the conversation early on. Let them have input, let them have a say, don't interrupt, let them make decisions where possible. There might be some aspects of either the issue itself that they could make decisions on, or something to do with the process. Would you prefer to submit that by email? I can send you a link, or if you'd like, I can have one of our customer services staff give you a call, they can go through it with you and take some notes over the phone. So give them as much choice as possible. Even when I'm dealing with client with complaints, I often say, look, you know, I've got a few times available next week. I can do Friday morning or Thursday afternoon or even potentially Tuesday. Do any of those happen to suit you? So we're outlining options, we're giving the choice, we're letting them make the decisions. And we want to reinforce the fact that, look, it's ultimately up to you. I suppose at the end of the day, it's your call. I suppose whichever decision you make, it's really going to be something that depends on what you think of the priorities right now. We can talk to you about options, but then you're the one that gets to make the call. If that's not available, I should say, like if there's any limits to the autonomy, I think what is often quite helpful there is at least allowing the input. Like sometimes I say to my son, ultimately that's something me and mum need to decide, mate, like how much when your bedtime is or how much screen time you get or something. But I do want you to have a say. So let's figure out some way that you can have some say. But mum and dad ultimately have the final say. How does that sit with you? Like to him, I think it it seems to make sense. I don't know if I'm kind of brainwashing him or tricking him or something else, but it's like there is some level of input that we're hoping to aim for. We want to manage in a collaborative way. Ultimately, though, we've only got a limited budget, or we've only got these many resources, or there's these constraints that we're working with. So that might mean that we need to make a decision, and some people ultimately might not be happy with it. Relatedness is the fourth aspect here that Rock talks about. So we want to empathize, demonstrate empathy. We want to allow time, like give them a chance to have their say, give them a chance to expand. Ask them questions like, could you tell me a bit more about that? Or that sounds really challenging. What do you think would help moving forward? Summaries, either from a small kind of way, like, gee, that sounds really distressing, or that sounds incredibly disappointing, the fact that you were treated like this after you really did go above and beyond trying to be generous until that point. And highlighting any of those good intentions, maybe there was something that they tried to do, maybe there was something they didn't do, like that showed real maturity that you didn't bite back when they were trying to get a reaction out of you, that kind of thing. And then the final aspect is fairness. We could do things like compensation if we have caused somebody a delay or a cost. Maybe there's something that we can do to make it up to them or to fix that a little bit. Like if you're working in a restaurant and one of the people don't get their food, there might be an option to give the table a round of free drinks or organize a garlic bread or something else to be shipped, bust over to the table as quickly as possible. And it's not like we're gonna like it's not really um taking away the pain of the original problem. Like the person's still sitting there hungry, but it is a bit of a sense of give and take. Like we messed up, let us help you out here to kind of make it better, at least to some extent. With my son, if he's really upset because his Nintendo is not working and he's at the time when he normally needs to turn off or something. Maybe I would say, okay, I get where you're coming from. You haven't had as much gaming this Avo as you agreed to. Let's figure out maybe you can have an extra 30 minutes or something. How does that sit with you? I think at times you also need to make sure that the process itself is fair. If you're selecting a single person to be promoted within your team, it's possible that a few of them are upset about it, but they're going to be less upset, or that upset will last for as not as long, as long as you've used a transparent process along the way. If they know that the mechanism was used that was used was fair, then often people can accept the outcome. And it's part of the challenges, I think, is that underlying that topic of fair is a whole bunch of values. Like we've all got a slightly different idea of what's fair and what's not. It can be quite helpful to give reasons why a decision was made. Like the the factor that was a challenge for us was the limited budget or something similar. Reasons should be general and firm. No, I'm not going to come in on the weekend and see you. I don't see clients on Saturdays. And if they say, Oh, please, I work really, you know, I don't need to give another reason, like, oh, I promised my son I'd be at soccer. And then the client might say, Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't mind that you miss one game. As soon as we add a second reason in, it gives the other person more ammunition to argue against. If we're trying to calm things down, it would probably better just to say, it's not something that I can do. I don't work on Saturdays. I'm sorry, it's just not an option. Like general reasons, either it's not within our policy, it's not within the budget, it's not something that we can get approvals for. And then if they say, Oh, but can't you make an exception? No, I'm sorry. Look, there's really no alternate approvals process that we can consider here. Keep the message consistent. I think sometimes just being a little bit of a broken record is fine. It gives somebody, it's it's like we don't want to add more oxygen onto the fire and cause things to all of a sudden become inflamed. And then there might be some formal pathways that you could consider as well. Like if the staff member's really unhappy about a decision that was made, you could say to them, look, I I get where you're coming from. I suppose one of the things that you could consider is whether or not it's made worth making a formal complaint. If you felt like that there was enough that has been done wrong to warrant that, then ultimately it's a decision that you'll need to make. But yeah, appreciate you filling me in at least on some of your perspective there, uh, even though, as I've said, it's not necessarily something that I can do a lot about, at least in the role that I'm in here. So I'm kind of saying, look, there are some other mechanisms here. You could make a complaint, you could ask to change the person that's working on your case. If you I'm a staff member and you're a client or something similar. Even saying to a staff member, if you're not happy with me, there are other roles available within the organization. Now we do need to do this in a genuine kind of way. Sometimes that comes across as a little bit sarcastic or a little bit dismissive. But yeah, for me, that those five factors are just so incredibly helpful. The status, the certainty, the autonomy, the relatedness, and the fairness. Whether I'm dealing with an infant, one of my kids, or uh my my own parents, my wife, my clients, my colleagues. Whatever we can do to reinforce those often goes a long way, especially when it comes to de-escalation. But I don't know how that all resonates with you. It's possible that you've got a very different perspective than me, and you would take a very different approach when it comes to de-escalation. That's probably perfectly fine and makes sense if we pause and consider it. But I'd love to hear from you. If you've got feedback, an idea for a topic for a future episode of the podcast, or a situation that you would like me to discuss in a case study, you can shoot it through by email. It's podcast at simongood.com. Um, if you're dealing with conflict and de-escalation is something as part of your day-to-day, I really hope that this has been helpful for you. And otherwise, thank you very much for listening. If you'd like more resources for dealing with conflict, consider pressing subscribe. But otherwise, all the best. Hopefully, see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast. Bye for now.