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Defusing Difficult Encounters
Common-sense pointers, tools and verbal tips
to help you hose-down hostile moments
As you probably know from experience, not every situation turns out the way you’d like. Things quite unexpectedly turn ugly in seconds. Even if you can’t settle them, resolve the issue constructively or fend off abuse, you can at least work at staying emotionally balanced and calm, try not lose it yourself, and avoid saying or doing anything to escalate their emotions or inflame the situation further.
About this Program...
Whether it’s a hostile parent, irate customer, worrisome workmate, disruptive students, agitated teacher or the like, navigating touchy situations where conversations get combative, and where one or both of us get defensive, argumentative, hostile or aggressive, are often a part of everyday life we have to face up to, no matter how much we wish they weren’t.
- Handled badly or left unresolved to fester, difficult encounters tend to grow and create more chaos around us.
- Instead of avoiding them, which is what most of us do, we all need to learn how to deal with them better.
We all know what a difficult encounter feels like. They come in a variety of shapes, but it’s any touchy topic or sticky situation where either of us gets heated, hostile, belligerent or abusive.
- They can keep us awake at night in dread of anticipated conflict, going over what we should say or do, what we should have said or done, or regretting what we did say or do!
- They make us feel anxious, upset, hurt, terrified, stressed, resentful, silly, awkward, guilty or emotionally vulnerable, intimidated or disrespected.
- They can lead us to bubble over with anger and outrage or simmer silently in frustration.
We agonise over them, weighing up what we might have said differently to get a better result. And sometimes, they can land us in hot water because our encounter got complained about – whether we think we handled it well enough, or poorly, is often beside the point.
Purpose and Profile:
Belligerent or combative encounters, where one (or both of us) get defensive, argumentative, hostile or aggressive – arise in many different contexts and they affect different people in different ways.
Our 1-day program on Defusing Difficult Encounters is a bit like first-aid for difficult situations. It aims to help you and your colleagues:
- Understand the dynamics behind what goes on in hostile or touchy encounters
- Handle difficult moments arising with agitated, upset, hostile, aggressive people
- Look at handling mistakes we make that may escalate and make things worse
- Learn pointers, tools, verbal formulas and tips to help defuse difficult moments
- Maintain emotional balance and stay in quiet control
- Raise your confidence to handle difficult moments, maintain emotional balance and stay in quiet control
Whether it’s you, a work colleague or a parent, the reasons behind hostile or aggressive behaviour are numerous, and can often be very deep and complex.
Regardless of the reasons for the behaviour of the person you now face, your role is to find out what they want and see what you can do to defuse this difficult situation, restore safety, settle escalated emotions and reset the conversation on a more constructive course so the person you turn the conversation over to, can make rational headway on whatever it is that needs resolving (which will not be up to you).
Defusing Difficult Encounters - what we cover
Difficult encounters are by nature unpredictable. While there are no set formulas or quick fixes guaranteed to work every time, this course covers some common-sense tools and techniques that we hope can help you defuse and handle them, more calmly, confidently and constructively.
This program doesn’t try to be the last word on this, and you no doubt know other strategies than what we cover, but some of the topics we touch on include…
Defusing Difficult Encounters
- Dynamics of difficult encounters
- Defensiveness – it’s fight or flight, right?
- Mistakes we make that escalate things
- ANCHARS to defuse difficult encounters
- Understanding their need – stay helpful
- A 5-step formula for handling hostility
- Power of acknowledging and connecting
- The ARC formula – 3 simple steps
- Maintaining emotional balance and empathy
- Dealing with different types of difficulties
- Even Mind: staying calm, cool and collected
- Post course: Cool Encounters Scorecard
A note to keep in mind...
While we will be looking at situations that are confronting, offensive, provocative, threatening or hostile, we won’t be dealing with encounters that go from difficult to dangerous. If things get ugly, violence is threatened, dangerous acts occur or are imminent, or you feel personally at risk, get straight out of harm’s way and seek assistance. Most organisations have procedures to follow in these extreme circumstances and we recommend that you be aware of what these are and how they apply in your workplace.
What People Say...
More Themes for Learning
Is this course for you?
This program deals specifically with difficult encounters where conversations with particular people turn hostile. If you’re looking to develop difficult conversations skills to apply in a broader range of contexts, take a look at our long-running Dealing with Difficult Discussions program for leaders and Tackling Tough Talks clinic for teams. For handling conversations about performance, our Positive Performance Conversations clinic is ideal. To become more conversationally aware in general, we recommend our Constructive Conversations Clinic.
Defusing Difficult Encounters Pocket Guide
COMPLIMENTARY WHEN ATTENDING OUR CLINIC
Take-away handy-sized pocket guide full of tools and actions you can tap into to build on what we cover in this session…
More about Conversations...
The Change Forum offers a number of learning programs to help leaders and teams improve their Conversational Mastery, including handling difficult conversations better. Follow the category link above. We also provide a number of free FactFiles, Articles, Newsletters and other resources to subscribers to our membership site. Subscribe Today to enjoy the full range of resources we offer.
Upcoming Courses & Events
See our online Course Calendar for where and when this program is next available publicly; as well as other Change Forum programs on offer in your area. If you’d like to arrange an In-House event tailored to suit your needs, get in touch below.