10 Powerful Strategies for Conflict De-Escalation
How To Achieve Conflict Resolution Through Effective Communication
By Simon Osamoh
160 pages, Kindle edition $9.99, paperback $14.99
ISBN-13: 979-8359479073
Reviewed by Gila Hayes
Shooting skills are fun to learn and practice so it’s easy to forget the “soft skills” like breaking contact from a budding conflict and de-escalation before contact turns hostile. Ironically, we interact with other humans far more often than we fight, for which we should all be profoundly grateful, so a few times a year, I dig into books, lectures, and other instructional resources about verbal de-escalation. In April, confined to an airplane for hours, I read about strategies for de-escalation through communication, as spelled out in Simon Osamoh’s book, 10 Powerful Strategies For Conflict De-Escalation.
Osamoh is big on structure. He outlines four stages of anger, which he identifies as event triggers, escalation of emotions, breaking point, and recovery. Recognizing the stages, he writes later is, “pivotal to your success in conflict de-escalation,” so what you say is pertinent to progression through the cycle. He compares defusing tensions to releasing air from an over-full balloon before it pops. The color of the balloon or even how it came to be overinflated is inconsequential. “You just need to get air out of the balloon, just enough so that it doesn’t burst,” he writes. This echoed training I’ve taken previously in which instructors advised resolving the threat without undue worry over why an attack happened.
Anger comes in several types, Osamoh continues. He dubs these avoidance, forceful, collaborative, indirect control, and radical reaching out, concepts he applies throughout the book. The book also differentiates responses of the two main personality types to various de-escalation approaches. Logic-dominant personalities are distressed when details are glossed over, but value-dominant people need more urgently to share their feelings about injustices they believe they suffer. He gives a real-life example of building rapport with an angry subject and diverting an instable, emotional response by asking “logical questions” to elicit a reasoned response to overrule the man’s feelings and anger.
Give angry, upset people positive choices to make it easier for them to accept and move on to better options. Osamoh describes a security officer convincing a loiterer to move on. Approached wrong, a fight may ensue. Give alternatives that include positive options to defuse a simmering conflict. He quotes George Thompson’s Five Universal Truths, which apply to nearly every situation where people come into conflict.
- All people want to be treated with dignity and respect.
- All people want to be asked rather than told to do something.
- All people want to be informed as to why they are being asked or ordered to do something.
- All people want to be given options rather than threats.
- All people want a second chance when they make a mistake.
Successful de-escalation puts the focus on the other person. It relies on intervention appropriate to the individual’s stage of anger, ascertaining his or her personality type and kind of anger, because calming and resolving conflict cannot be about the de-escalator: it has to be about the other person. It requires active listening, realizing it is not personal, using empathy, not sympathy which denotes pity, initiating “we” conversations, not “you” or “I” sentences. It asks us to know and work outside of our own confirmation biases, support the commitment to listen and then listen some more.
So much self-defense training focuses on reacting decisively, and not letting a predator get an opportunity to harm us, that we tend to forget that the great, vast majority of our human interactions involve communication. Much can be avoided by skills to defuse angry or disturbed people before they resort to violence. 10 Powerful Strategies gave me more tools on the communication side of the problem.
A Solution for Church Volunteer Safety Teams
Several years ago, attorney and Network advisory board member Emanuel Kapelsohn gave the Network journal a detailed, two-part interview about the legal concerns for armed security teams volunteering in houses of worship. The knowledge he shared reflected over four decades of the practice of law, expert witness work on use of force and firearms, teaching firearms use and working in law enforcement and executive protection. Now, several years later, he has compiled his work in the law and church security into a Use of Force Policy bundle for churches, houses of worship and synagogues served by volunteer safety teams. Sold for $424.50, it guides churches to establish a solid legal foundation for their safety team. Kapelsohn offers a $25 off discount for Network members. Because this journal is publicly available, members should log in to https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/coupons where we can limit access to Network members only.
The sample policy and educational commentary bundle fills a need because many smaller congregations don’t have a formal relationship with a law firm, and if they do, the church attorney is likely more concerned with property disputes, church employee matters, tax status, and even freedom of speech. Kapelsohn’s sample policies address a specialized, yet very important area of legal concern and can be customized to fill the needs specific to an individual congregation. It offers a framework of standards for volunteer security teams, drawn from his practice dealing with liability for injuries or loss of life, with an addendum of comments that focuses on preventing problems in the first place. Laypersons working in fields not related to the law or law enforcement often don’t recognize legal pitfalls.
In addition to a brief “How to Start” guide, the bundle includes a user-editable Use of Force Policy to customize the document details for the individual church, where it is located and the names its leaders. In addition, Kapelsohn explains, the size and finances of a church affect the work it is practical for a volunteer safety team to undertake. Some team leaders will prefer an all-inclusive policy document that teaches volunteers how to perform their services in compliance with local law; others will want a shorter document that only cites titles of more verbose statutory law, for example, which govern use of force in their state. An evolving document is important if for no other reason than changes needed due to newly enacted laws, he observes. Churches and volunteers must know the laws, and while the sample Use of Force Policy and Comments can guide questions and spotlight risks, it is not intended to replace legal advice from an attorney in your state.
Longtime students of self defense will recognize references to and outlines of self-defense doctrine ranging from use of deadly force to de-escalation to limits on warning shots and much more. Less familiar to many will be administrative concerns like documented training, qualifications and testing, and concerns affecting ammunition and firearms carried. Kapelsohn spotlights these and more in an intensive 22-page, single spaced compendium of explanatory comments for the various policy paragraphs. These expand elements from the policy into plain language drawn from his experience as an attorney, law enforcement officer, classes taken and classes taught, and wide-ranging court-recognized expertise that spans liability issues attached to guns, holsters, police use of force and more.
I find the Comments document of particular value. For example, one section highlights the volunteer nature of church safety teams, observing that the Use of Force Policy places no obligation on a volunteer to risk life and limb in defense of the congregation. Instead, a decision to do so is entirely left to the team member, drawing on his or her own values and acting accordingly. A later comment adds that policies aren’t all-inclusive, acknowledging that unexpected or unique situations may come up. The sample policy is worded to allow for policy deviations and exceptions so safety team members can decide and act in line with the demands of an unfolding situation.
If worded incorrectly, policies could be used to claim safety volunteers were obligated to perform or act in one way. The comments for several elements of the policy that addresses providing first aid to an attacker, or retreating, give good examples of identifying those issues and how to give the volunteer freedom to follow his or her conscience. Another comment clarifies the oft-misinterpreted term “force continuum,” a teaching tool which imposes no requirement to step progressively through various low-level force options before resorting to levels likely to stop an attack.
Kapelsohn’s long discussion of verbal challenges illustrates the value of the educational commentary he documented separately from the policy. While the formal house of worship use of force policy suggests that a safety team member “should” use a verbal challenge, “Security officer–don’t move or I’ll shoot,” his in depth comment explains why we drill verbal challenges concurrent with range practice. Provided with appropriate verbiage, team members are less likely to parrot phrases they’ve picked up from movies or television. He notes, “For example, the author has served as an expert witness in cases in which obscenities and racial slurs have been used in challenges, with considerable negative impact on pre-trial publicity, and on the trials that followed. Repetitive drills that train team members to call out, ‘Security! Don’t move or I’ll shoot!’ not only reduce the chance that an inappropriate, unprofessional, or obscene challenge will be used, but increase the chance that the challenge may also be heard by witnesses, who can later testify that the team member warned the suspect not to move, and only fired when the suspect disobeyed the challenge in a life-threatening manner.” A perceptive firearms instructor, tasked with bringing security volunteers up to higher standards, can present that rationale during training. Knowing the vigor with which many hobbyists defend their opinions, I think team members who are taught authoritative information from the Comments should readily recognize the expertise and experience Kapelsohn brings to the subject.
This professionally-prepared policy bundle is sold at https://www.peregrinecorporation.com/product-page/house-of-worship-firearms-use-of-force-policy-bundle . Additionally, Kapelsohn generously donated a wealth of information to earlier Network online journals on this subject at https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/house-of-worship-armed-security-1 and https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/house-of-worship-armed-security-2 and that two-part interview, in both written and video format, is freely available to church leaders, security teams and volunteers to increase understanding of the legal issues they may face.