 I learned a new term tonight that I love, talk-foo, in order to have my business card. My name's John Morgan, and I'm from, I'm actually a business consultant here in town, so sort of a business consultant at a personal protection and counter-violence institute thing, but one of the things I help companies with is communication, and so Shepard asked me if I had any information that I could bring by about the talk-foo side of things, and how to use your most valuable tool, your most effective tool to de-escalate your voice and what you can do. Sorry, I want low-tech here, I didn't know that I could have sent slides and websites to Shepard, but hopefully everybody can see this here. I just wanna touch on a few sort of things that we've already covered, but then give you some tools to understand how you can help develop your own verbal abilities when it comes to confrontation. Confrontation in my view, especially when I'm speaking with clients from a business standpoint, is when opinions vary, when stakes are high, and most importantly, when emotions are strong. This has applications outside of business, obviously, in our personal lives, even in some of the scenarios that we've talked about tonight. I find it interesting that a lot of the scenarios that we've spoken about tonight have been very much that surprise attack, sort of mindset. Someone's in your home, someone comes up to you on the street, there's a dark alley. But oftentimes what people don't realize is that violent situations, violent confrontations escalate to that point. It's not always a surprise event. You're less likely to be walking on a sidewalk in cottonwood and be shot or have a gun pulled on you. Then you are to encounter a violent situation or a potential violent situation at your home, at your work, or in your social life. When I say social life, the things that we do around the community, you might be a rec sports fan here, be playing basketball over at the rec center, and get in a confrontation with somebody over a rule or a foul that could quickly escalate into an opportunity for violence to happen. And it's important for you to be able to have that mental control, that self control and verbal abilities to hopefully de-escalate that. And hopefully you're not a sealed weapon in your track names. Work certainly not just in your own work environment, but sometimes dealing with competitors or people who are customers of yours who are disgruntled. They feel that they've been mistreated by your business. And of course, home domestic violence is certainly something that's very prevalent and hopefully shouldn't be. So one of the things that I like to ask people to do when they think about different places that they could encounter confrontational situations is to think about your own style under stress. And what I mean by that is a little bit of the old concept of fight or flight. Most people here have heard that fight or flight or are you the type of person to retreat or respond with aggression. There are obviously many levels between the absolute fight and the absolute flight. We are human beings. We have the ability to reason unlike most of the rest of the animal kingdom. And we have that ability to identify what our style is. And if you know, if you can think back, when you go home tonight on your drive home, think of some of the situations in your life where maybe there was an opportunity for violence to have escalated to or maybe some time when it actually did, a fight that you were in or a time that you did have to pull your firearm. And think about what was your emotional reaction to that situation as it went in? Was your immediate reaction, get the hell out of there? Or was your immediate reaction, I'm in command and I'm going to show force to take over this situation. Knowing how you react as your sort of gut reaction in different situations and it's not always the same. Sometimes you may be fight and sometimes you may be flight is very important. A number of the speakers have talked about this, learn to look. You guys all just even by coming here tonight, I know are interested in understanding what you can do to protect yourselves. Learning to look out for the situations that might escalate into a violent confrontation is very important. So thinking about just having a different mindset when you enter different situations and during a room like this where there are firearms open on tables and on people's holsters might give you a different perspective than if you just walked into the grocery store. Assessing a situation. This is when a violent confrontation may, confrontation may, you start to sense, okay, something could possibly happen here. Start assessing the situation. Half of that is what am I going to do? What are my options? But also what can I understand about the person that I think might be involved with that? Do they appear to be an aggressive person? Do they have weapons visible? Being able to assess the situation so you know at what level you need to perhaps take protection for yourself. And most importantly, making it safe. If you have identified that there is possible danger, you've assessed your abilities against the abilities or dangers of the people in the room, how can you make it safe? We've talked a little bit tonight about retreat, the duty to retreat. Sometimes it's not so easy. Sometimes if someone's pointing a gun at you and you just decided to turn around and run, they could still shoot you, right? Maybe that's not always the best thing. Sometimes in fights where people, for instance a drunk in altercation, if someone turns tail and starts to run, that can aggravate the other person and actually incents them to want to fight even more. Kind of like that mindset of a bear's running at you, right, don't run away. They'll think it's fun. But here's some ways that you can think about making things safe in a confrontational situation. First and foremost, resist your initial urge to defend. Sometimes you might assess the situation as a potential to escalate violence, but it might not necessarily be that way. And if you start to get into the mode of whether it's physical or even verbal defense, you can escalate the situation when it didn't need to be escalated. So having self-control, being able to go into that assessment mode and think about what the consequences of your actions are is incredibly important. If you get into a situation where there is a verbal exchange, doesn't even have to be fists clenched or guns drawn, that sort of thing. But when you sense that a violent situation or anger is part of an environment, showing respect is one of your best ways to gain control and make a situation that could potentially escalate become safer. When I think of respect, these are a few of the keys that just about anybody can do. First of all, give your attention to the other person. If someone is angry at you and they're screaming at you or they're coming at you, pay attention. Listen to them. Gather as much information as you can so that you do not make a mistake in how you judge the danger of the situation or the attitude of that person. Be non-judgmental. Try your best to keep that defense mind out and think, okay, what's the situation here? It's not necessarily how I perceive it. I need to think from the other person's perspective if at all possible. So approaching things with a non-judgmental attitude will help you keep a clear mind. Allow for silence. I've heard a good term let silence do the heavy lifting. Don't immediately try to jump in and interrupt people in a verbal exchange that's escalating. Don't try to win an argument. The way people win arguments is with guns drawn and people having a violent situation. The goal isn't to win. The goal is to make it safe and walk away. There is no winner and no loser. And apologize when appropriate. So if you have for some reason disrespected somebody intentionally or most likely unintentionally, identifying that and by listening to them, being non-judgmental, figuring out if you identify, they seem as though I have disrespected them. Apologize when it's appropriate. You don't have to apologize for something you didn't do necessarily, but if someone senses that you have disrespected them, you should acknowledge that you understand that they feel disrespected. Sort of a passive aggressive way that people apologize which can incense people because if they say, oh, I'm sorry if I've offended you. That saying, I'm sorry that you are such an idiot that you're offended by me who's not. So get rid of that word if and say I'm sorry that I offended you. It doesn't have to mean that you did it on purpose. You can still be sorry and say, I'm sorry that I offended you. Let's talk about this situation and try to find a way other than clinging our fists to solve our problems. Oops, I can't spell, retongue. There's an R in there, look at that. I even belted myself. I was rushing a little on my way here. But these are some ways as well that you can make things safe. So once you have got to a point in an argument, in a confrontation where respect has been breached on one side or the other, how can you bring this conversation back, reel it back? These are three tools that can help you. They won't solve every situation. All three of them don't have to be done in this order. But these are tools that you have at your disposal. We all know how to do these things. Return to a point of agreement. If you are having an argument with somebody and it has escalated from passive to confrontational, chances are at that passive level there is something that you can go back to in a conversation to hope, to retrain people's mindset on, okay, this is where we started from. Let's start from scratch and talk this through. Restate what you've heard. Of course, this involves that whole idea of paying attention and listening to people. Restating what you've heard offers your perspective. If you say to somebody, I'm sorry that I disrespected you. It sounds like the clothes that I'm wearing are offensive to you and for some reason that has incensed this violent situation, ask for clarity. Is that what's the problem? You can really hope to get to a more definite reason that emotions have become high in a conversation by restating what you believe to be the issue and asking the person if that is true or not, giving them the opportunity to say no, you're wrong and stout off on you again and then hopefully you can again go through this exercise. And seeking mutual purpose. Again, this is all about the, you're not in a escalating violent situation to find out who's going to win. If you want to win, shoot the other person. Yay, you won, but now as your wonderful award, you get lawsuit after lawsuit and maybe jail time, et cetera. You want to seek mutual purpose, even if it's from a surprise attack situation. The concept of closing your door, creating a barrier and voicing, I'm armed, don't come in here. You're acknowledging mutual purpose. I want safety, he wants safety. He's out there robbing my house and he wants to do it as safely as possible in, out, box, see ya. I just want to be inside my house or in my room with my kids because I've got a great homo insurance policy and we have seeked mutual purpose from a safety level. It's not always as cut and dry as that and it does take your abilities to leave this room today and think about these concepts and to practice them. It really helps to practice the concepts of avoiding confrontation on a micro level rather than think, oh well, I don't need to worry about that stuff until guns or weapons or martial arts or anything violent are part of the equation. So you can practice these things each day and they will certainly help you and your personal life and your business life, too, if you think about the different types of confrontations that you can have at any point in your life. You guys have any questions? Brief guess. Can you ask the person, is there any way that we can agree upon a situation you have with me? Absolutely. And that would be a very good example of seeking mutual purpose, like hey, let's talk this out. Sometimes when people's emotions are high, they don't necessarily want to talk it out. They want to engage in a fight. So it does help to think of things from, if you can almost trick them into that side by saying let's just go back in time and talk about something that we agree upon as a way to bring somebody back into the situation where they can get back on task so that they don't reach that point where I no longer care even about the argument we were having. I am in fight mode of my fight or flight in that situation. So you're just basically assessing the person's emotional situation and trying to get it to it in order to avoid hate? Yes, yes. You are definitely trying to assess their emotional situation. It's not easy, of course. So, but possibly just letting them vent could be... Absolutely. In a business standpoint, I tell people that all the time, let them vent, let it go, have the self-control to resist the urge to defend and have the self-control not to cut them off or disrespect them while they're doing it. If you show respect while that happens, sometimes even in a violent situation that's a surprise, the person might just be trying to puff up their feathers a little bit and I wanna make sure that this person knows that I'm not one to be messed with. Absolutely, I hear you. You're not one to be messed with. I'm gonna walk over here now. It's a great way to get out of that situation. Very good question. Thank you. Just one small thing to add that we read and the other books that we read is that maintaining your baseline personality is the best way to prevent feeding and escalating triggers as they ramp up towards their peak in the crisis which results in acting out physically or if you're on a chair or something. So, if you can maintain baseline rather than feed escalating triggers by being a defensive person, you did this, but you did this. No, right, just, all right, I did, you know. Yeah. Maintain baseline and not feed escalating triggers, like you said, because even one thing that you say that might be meant the best way possible sets them off from 100 levels, so. I like that concept of your baseline because everybody's gonna be a little bit different, but focusing, that's a great concept for self control. Stay on your baseline, because you don't even know if sometimes things that you think wouldn't offend somebody does because of the way that they perceive it. You have no control over the perceptions of another person. You can only control yourself and by focusing on your baseline, that's a really good mindset to have to stay in control. I really like the, once you can, like if you see the mutual purpose, once you get the mutual purpose, you got it. Oh yeah? That's amazing, that's amazing. Yeah, and you're just hoping that a situation doesn't get to the point where mutual purpose is feeding the crap out of somebody else or shooting somebody else, you know, that sort of thing, but that's up to you. It was Glenn who brought up earlier, in a confrontation, the smartest person, the most skilled person, the most experienced person, they are the most responsible for the outcome in that event. Hopefully that's you and if you can keep that mindset of seeking mutual purpose from a good situation, not just from a violent situation, you're gonna be able to help structure how that violent situation becomes de-escalated. Did you have a question? Yeah, I was just gonna say, after working 30 years in a Washington DC emergency room, we learned the phrase that worked the best was, you know what, I think you're right. And we're over there. Just sometimes just listening to people. And if I didn't know he could do all that stuff, I never would have reached your fit in. Exactly. Thank you very much. That's the purpose. Cool, thanks everybody.