I am doing a training tomorrow for McDonald’s national security team.
By the way, I’ve been working with McDonald’s for about a year, and I have been REALLY impressed with how committed they are to a compassionate approach to homelessness.
In preparation for training their team, I was reviewing our old training on “How to Safely Break up a Fight.”
I noticed something this time that I completely missed when we built that training.
I’ll do my best to explain my insight…
Fights
There are 4 stages to physical fights.
All fights start with an initial “issue.”
The issue can be minor: an accidental bump, a misunderstanding, etc.
Stage 1 is when this initial issue “jumps” over to reputation and respect.
This stage is subtle and easy to miss. Here’s an example:
Imagine that you and I are walking, and I accidentally bump into you.
If I immediately say, “I’m sorry” and you reply, “Don’t worry about it” then the only issue was the bump.
Now imagine that situation again, but this time I aggressively say, “Watch where you are going, idiot!” You reply, “What is your problem?!?!!”
The issue has “jumped” from the bump over to my aggressive language and your aggressive response.
My reputation and self-respect are at stake. So is yours.
The initial bump is no longer relevant.
Here is what researchers say about this:
“Fights always involve conflict, but not just any conflict.
What matters is not the substantive topic, but a particular turning point in the course of the dispute.
However they began, conflicts leading to fights came to pose a provocative challenge to each disputant’s right to control one’s own self—one’s body and identity—that is the sovereignty of the self.”
Jackson-Jacobs, Curtis, Constructing Physical Fights: An Interactionist Analysis of Violence among Affluent Suburban Youth, Qualitative Sociology. 36(1), March 2013.
My New Insight
This concept doesn’t just apply to physical fights.
It also applies to enforcing the rules.
As a general rule, people don’t scream at the employee enforcing the rules because we tell them they have to follow the rules.
People get really upset when they believe that their reputation or self-respect has been challenged.
So, the key to enforcing the rules is to keep it from “jumping” from the rule-violation to their reputation and self-respect.
How do you do that?
This is hard to explain in an email because 99.9% of the time the problem is in body language and tone of voice.
For example:
You: “It is closing time.” (Frustrated and annoyed tone of voice.)
Them: “I’m almost done.” (Dismissive tone of voice.)
You: “We are already closed. You need to leave now.” (Sharp tone of voice)
Them: “Don’t talk to me like that!” (Screaming in complete “overreaction”)
This confrontation was initially about closing time.
It quickly “jumped” to the other person feeling disrespected by your tone of voice.
The issue of closing time is NOT the problem.
If you can keep the issue about the rules and not the other person’s reputation or self-respect, you can enforce the rules with very few problems.
Have a fantastic week!
Ryan
