Mike Carruthers

So what are you trying to do about this?

To deescalate requires something escalate in the first place, and it would seem it would be better if that didn't happen in the first place.

And so the way that you're about to tell me how to do this, this is to de-escalate something that's already on its way to getting out of hand, or is this a way to prevent it from ever getting out of hand?

So this idea of how to de-escalate, you're going to tell me, where did it come from?

So can you give me a real life example of, you know, people in a room and having a problem and walk me through this?

But it seems, I mean, I get that that deescalates the situation, that calms people down, gets them to see each other as people, but how does it fix the problem that started the whole thing to begin with?

Okay, but so I get that it quiets it down and the yelling stops, but people are still ripping off the company and people are still not trusting people.

So how does this work with just say two people, like in a couple or people at work, you know, friends, how does it work there?

Sounds too easy.

So I understand how to use this in the moment.

But what about the long-term effects of this?

I would imagine if you do this multiple times whenever there's trouble, that it has a longer effect.

Because, I mean, this is kind of a first aid approach.

When somebody's really angry, we de-escalate it.

They've achieved It would seem a lot easier rather than say you feel and tell someone how they feel to say It seems like you feel or you know, I perceive I think what you're feeling is that kind of thing Good question

Well, this is certainly a very different approach to conflict resolution and calming people down than I've heard before.

And I think most people haven't heard this before.

It's an interesting approach and one that's worth trying.

I've been talking to Doug Knoll.

He's an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University's Strauss Institute for Dispute Resolution and author of the book De-Escalate, How to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less.