DE-ESCALATE DRAMA

From the desk of Klark Brown (no AI used in the creation of this content) 

You can seldom get anything done in dramatic emotional situations.

When your emotions are high, when you are hurt, scared or angry, your decisions will seldom be rational and often create regret later. 

Drama is one of the biggest energy sucks. No one wants to be around highly dramatic behavior. 

It is often a sign of someone feeling like and acting like a victim. 

We are not opposed to it. A staff member makes a costly mistake. An adjuster or a TPA startles us with their level of incompetence. 

Your competition does something that gets your blood pressure up to National Debt levels. 

A part of the brain switches. Logic and the ability to shut your mouth is replaced by an odd need to make sure you are heard and that everyone else shares your misery. 

Police officers and negotiations specialists take years of training to help with de-escalation. Imagine trying to save someone from hurting themselves and others, while all they can see is red and think of their own drama or pain.  

Some people deal with this better than others. 

In restoration companies, a few ways you can see a need for de-escalation of drama are: 

• An employee is angry about a situation at home or they just found out about a huge expense: the FEAR creates hightened adrenaline which causes an outburst.

• You yourself just find out that we lost $37,000 of equipment when you had your logistics manager do an audit. That's ALOT of money. For sure. But without knowing why or who, any urge to go to DEFCON 5 would be ridiculous and not productive. 

• A client that just experienced a major fire is seeming unreasonable. They are worried, hurt and angry (someone else caused the fire). Plus Garfield passed in the fire. The last thing that this client wants to discuss is a contract, your HEPA scrubber, asbestos testing or how much this is going to be. 

Spend some time this month sitting quietly on adding drama de-escalation to some training. The soft skills like these are huge for the growth of your staff, especially those that are in any leadership position. 

This skill can create such a tight bond between teams. Make sure you have your drama throttle in the safe zone as well. You cannot use the “do as I say, not as I do”.  

Every room in your building should have a NO DRAMA SIGN. 

There is help

One thing we know helps founders and CEO’s better manage this art is having a calm and structured business. Wild and crazy businesses breed drama. Foster it even. But when the default is calm and easy, the stress goes down a few notches and helps manage these. 

Two solutions we have for these are our 60 day course and for the real go getters, our R[OS]™️ coaching program.  Both provide value, but the one one depends on how much drama you have to deal with. 

Cheers, 

Klark