The Importance Of Putty In Football

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We cannot always control our client’s emotions; but we can contain them long enough to be successful at verbal de-escalation and chosen compliance. I want you to act like you just placed some “silly putty” in your hand and make a fist. The putty comes oozing out of your fingers. Now I want you to put your hand in the form of a cup around the putty, without squeezing it. In the first scenario you tried to control and/or force the situation/putty. In the second scenario you were trying to contain the situation/putty. Let me give you another example. In football when a defense is preparing for a team with an elite level running back, the defense does not practice trying to control the running back on every play. The defense spends more time on trying to find ways to “contain” the running back. They know the running back will get his yards either way. However, a really elite level running back will break a run for the big play at some point if the defense tries to control or stop him on every play. This is the “bend but not break” type of defense against a really good …show more content…

Let us assume for a minute the client’s actions are “reasonable” to them; what can we do to offer a solution/alternative for a successful de-escalation. Remember you are not the one that needs to be de-escalated, the client is. One concept to keep in mind here is that whether we are talking about managing employees and/or communications, when someone is using all their energy to disagree with us just for the sake of disagreeing, it can be a waste of energy trying to get them to agree. We do not them to agree with us to be successful at de-escalation. Also, telling someone to “calm” down usually makes them escalate more. First, we must try to empathize with the client and build some type of rapport/trust. Here are a few more phrases to avoid in your verbal de-escalation