Would't it be wonderful if....

• staff were more aware of conflict triggers which start disagreements and conflict?
• staff used a pre-planned and practiced approach to NOT escalating situations
• more time was spent on NOT escalating situations than on DE-escalating them?

The Non-Escalation skills we teach your staff in our conflict management course are designed to reduce the incidence of high-stakes conflict encounters in your workplace. By focussing attention on how to NOT trip over the common ways in which people 'fall' into conflict, we help your team to become fully professional in how they plan for successful encounters with your clients, customers and service users.

The types of topics we focus on in this part of Conflict Management are:

- converging on a values statement that "We treat every person we meet with dignity and show them respect, even though we may disagree"

- a tried-and -tested approach to making initial contact with people which creates a supportive atmosphere

- a focus on listening and empathising in order to discover the best way to support people when they are upset, angry or frustrated.

Despite your team's best efforts, there will be times when people become abusive to them, refuse to cooperate with reasonable requests or become resistant to taking steps towards everyone's safety

In these scenarios wouldn't it be wonderful if your team were able to deploy a responsive plan to deal with these behaviours which allowed them to be structured, professional and fair?

This is the focus of our De-Escalation portion of the training - working with people who are being difficult, abusive or resistant in a way which is persuasive and professional, taking a well-worn pathway towards peaceful resolution of the incident - verbally if we can, and physically protecting everyone if we must.

Some of the topics we cover are:

- doing what we must, to maintain emotional equilibrium in high-stakes encounters

- how to redirect abusive, intimidating or insulting language so that we stay on task

- deploying persuasive language  which breaks down resistance and refusals

- being consistent and persistent in applying the social rules (social contract) of our workplace

Our staff may well encounter:

• People who are not neuro-typical (such as those with Autism or Learning Disabilities)
• People with intermittent mental health problems which sometimes result in crisis
• People who are temporarily not in our reality (i.e. through intoxication or brain injury)

In all of these circumstances it may be necessary for teams to significantly alter the way they 'see' and respond to these situations - we often refer to it as 'dealing with a vulnerable person who is emotionally distressed', for example.

To respond appropriately in these situations, staff will need to:

- deploy communication strategies which are more likely to be effective 

- listen in a different way to how the person is reacting to their efforts at communication

- think creatively about the causes of any distress and the ways to help the person

We enable your staff with a set of Crisis Management strategies, for example:

• The Crisis Management Approach (5-parts)
• The Special Needs Strategies for dealing with emotional/distressed persons (5 tactics)

Great Customer Service will result when your team are sensitive to the needs and values of those interacting with your organisation and consistently meet their demands and expectations.

However, it is an increasingly demanding environment out there, with expectations rising and tempers shortening almost before our eyes!

It has been said that our Conflict Management course, with its focus on Empathy, Listening and a Respond-don't-React ethos based on pre-planning and practicing responses to forseeable events, is a very effective customer-service programme. 

With this Respond/Pre-Planning emphasis, your team can provide sensitive, compassionate service to delighted clients and customers.  When things don't go as planned, your team have a full suite of complaint-handling tools at their fingertips and can professionally, expertly deal with small fires which start, rather than pouring petrol on the fire and then running to your management with demands for a fire-extinguisher!