I am temporarily the Executive Director of a large homeless shelter near Chicago (again!).
Last week I had a private meeting with a (former) resident who wanted to know what he had to do to be able to stay in the shelter again.
A little background: the man had a history of anger management issues that sometimes resulted in violence.
The conversation went about as well as I expected.
In fact, he called me and my colleague “godless trash.”
Note: I did appreciate his originality. Being called the same boring cusswords for two decades has gotten a bit dull.
In the end, he stormed off, promising to get us all fired and the shelter shut down.
For those of you that have never worked in a shelter, you should know we have a name for these incidents: “a normal Tuesday.”
The creativity of his profanity is not what I want to talk about.
How to do Backup During Conflict
Since I knew that this resident had a history of violence, I took a “backup” coworker with me.
I chose Karen as my backup because we had just come from another resident meeting. I was also cussed out in that meeting (but with more commonplace slurs).
Here is how the incident went:
- I brought the resident into a staff office where Karen was already sitting. We did not sit immediately next to each other. The chairs were arranged in a triangle.
- Karen said “hello” to the resident and never spoke to him again.
- When another staff member tried to enter the office, Karen told her “not right now.”
- When the man was screaming so loud that other staff came to the door to check on us, Karen indicated through the glass that we were ok.
Karen hardly did anything!!!!
How should you and your coworkers do backup during conflict situations?
Each staff member has a distinct role:
LEAD STAFF – This is the person that does ALL the talking and makes ALL the decisions.
Note: You can switch roles, but that is beyond the scope of this newsletter.
BACKUP STAFF – This person has three jobs to do:
- Provide emotional support for their colleague through their mere presence (and to serve as a witness).
- Keep other people from “interfering” in the incident. Other people accidentally wandering in to the conflict or trying to insert themselves can cause problems.
- Call the police or security if the lead staff member asks.
The key to being an effective backup staff is where you stand. The backup staff member should be 8-10 feet away where both individuals can see them (if the room allows).
Note: In this situation we were in a small office so we had to sit. We did separate the chairs so Karen and I were not shoulder-to-shoulder “against” him.
Above I said that “Karen hardly did anything!!!”
That is exactly what good backup looks like.
Next steps
To learn more about how to do backup, you have two options:
- Read last week’s newsletter: https://homelesstraining.com/it-is-hard-to-de-escalate-standing-next-to-your-coworkers/
- If your organization is a member, join us on Thursday for my live training on the topic. You can watch a short video about the training here: https://vimeo.com/1214368410/e464c3262d
Have a great week, everybody!
Peace,
Ryan