The Conflict Resolution Training Blog » News

Get out of that. Wrist releases….

Darren Good — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:20:22 +0000

A friend of mine was telling me about an article he’d read on a solicitor’s website about a care-worker who had won damages as a result of her claim for personal injury when a patient she was dealing with grabbed her by the wrist . The prosecutors position was that the employer was negligent for not making sufficient assessment of the risks to health and safety of their employee. A settlement to the tune of £220,00 compensation was agreed.

My friend brought this to my attention not because he’s a health and safety fanatic and knows of my work and personal interest in this area but to ask advice. He too had been grabbed by the wrist by a patient (he’s a care-worker) and while there was nothing serious to report about it, the patient being very frail he wondered what was the best way to release a grip such as this and ensure no harm to either himself or the patient.

So this week I thought I’d share with you my top tips for releasing yourself safely from a grip such as this.

Single Handed Parallel Grip.

If the agressor grabs you with the thumb on the inside of the wrist. Thumb – Inside- Turn In. Pull your hand back towards your own body to break contact with their palm. Push your elbow forwards towards the aggressor’s forearm. Step back to re-create the personal safety buffer zone.

I can’t go without a least a comment on the health and safety side of things that this example highlights. Employers put themselves, their employees and their clients/patients at risk if they do not ensure appropriate and regular physical intervention, personal safety skills and conflict management training . When deciding on a course please ensure it covers the legal side of things such as Health and Safety legislation and that your supplier has the appropriate accreditation such as edexcel the UKs largest awarding body for qualifications and The Institute of conflict management.

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Restraint techniques that could kill

Darren Good — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:12:33 +0000

It’s likely that many of the readers of my blog will know the dangers of using restraint techniques already. Most experts in the field would argue that used properly the restraint of an individual is safe for both the detainee and the person applying the restraint. That is the point after all. I have always been of the view that physical restraint whenever it is used always carries dangers for all parties and recent published research suggest the same. A study published in Medicine, Science and the Law (a forensic medicine publication) concluded that forcing a detainee to bend over while seated can lead to death because the hold reduces lung capacity significantly.

There is a picture of the hold if you click here. This is a hold you find being used potentially in mental health situations or private security organisations. So for example it may be used on an aircraft.

The BBC ran a story last week connecting this research the death of Jimmy Mubenga, 46, who died not long after being restrained on his deportation flight out of Heathrow last year. Post-mortem examinations were inconclusive and three security guards employed by the escorting security organisation have been arrested and put on bail.

As I understand it the research involved forty volunteers who were put in a seated position and lent forward so their faces were close to their lap. They were then held in that position. The research suggested that it was the position rather than any force applied that was the main problem as the position restricted lung capacity and air flow. This would be worsened if your detainee was over-weight. The researchers expressed concerns that detainees in this hold may struggle to breathe but that their struggling could be misinterpreted by the enforcer who may push them lower into the forward position, making breathing even more difficult. I’m sure you get the picture. It’s a terrible image and highlights the challenges of security personnel ever more.

If you are in the security profession either as a security officer or as the CEO please take note. There are many good courses out there which will keep you and the general public safe and well. Invest your time and money wisely…you should look for a course that will cover these key elements:

ü Differentiates between holding, escorting and restraining and non-harmful seated restraint techniques and how to apply them.

ü Demonstrates and explains how to gradually de-escalate and relax a restraint to allow the subject being restrained to regain self-control.

ü Explores the risks associated with alcohol and drugs, knives and other forms of edged weapons in relation to the use of physical restraint.

ü Investigates the difference between non-harmful methods of control and more restrictive methods of control and when the use of such methods would be considered appropriate.

ü Explores all legal aspects of physical restraint and particularly that as it relates to Reasonable Force and Health and Safety.

ü Provides you with the physical skills required to handle potentially violent situations.

ü Provides you with the physical skills to safely control others whilst being compliant with legislation.

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Company Directors charged under Corporate Manslaughter Act

Darren Good — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:24:25 +0000

I’ve been reading a few blogs recently about Lion Steel Ltd.who are the second company to be charged under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 since its implementation. This is a real wake up call for Company Directors to sit up and take notice of staff safety as they will be held to account.

The Greater Manchester Police have charged the storage manufacturing company with corporate manslaughter as a result of the death of an employee when he fell through a fragile plastic roof panel on an industrial estate. I have also read that the company is charged under section 2 and 33 of the Health and Safety Work Acts 1974 (HSWA) for failing to ensure the safety at work of its employees.

So it is that the three directors are each accused of manslaughter by gross negligence under section 37 of the HSWA for failing to ensure the safety at work of their employees.

Notwithstanding the terrible tragedy of the dealth of a man I am pleased to see that the Corporate Manslaughter Act is being used and has not just been a paper exercise. I believe employers should look upon this act as an opportunity to really look at the personal safety of their employees. Equally employees should use this Act as a way to ensure they are getting everything they are entitled to receive to enable them to their jobs safely and effectively. This will include the environment they work in, the equipment used and the quality and frequency of the training they receive.

This applies to all types of workplace, not just where there are obvious risks such as in manufacturing or building services but also where personal safety could be an issue due to staff members interactions with the general public. The NHS for example, often reports violence from patients towards their staff, and this not always from the mentally unstable. So here we have a caring profession….not somewhere you would automatically think of as an environment in need of personal safety for its staff…that in reality needs to and in many cases does, provide personal safety training for it’s staff.

The first hearing for Lion Steel Ltd. Will take place on 2^nd August.

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Doorstaff arrested on suspicion of murder

Darren Good — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:37:46 +0000

I want to share with you a tragic and ongoing situation that raises a number of interesting points for me around physical intervention strategies when dealing with conflict. The situation concerns four door security men from a nightspot in Southend who have recently been arrested on supicion of the murder of Reece Lamude. Mr Lamude, 37, was rushed to hospital following an altercation with the four door supervisors but hospital staff were uable to save him and he died early that morning. The post-mortum examination revealed that Mr Lamude had sustained neck injuries, possibly as a result of the incident.

This case is of interest to me because it raises…and not for the first time…the issue of the use of reasonable force when dealing with conflict situations. It is as ever a highly sensitive area and without acurate eye witness accounts or cctv footage it may be impossible to unpick what happened on that night. The four securaity guards in question are not the only ones who should be called to question here as their employers also have a part to play. Did their employers ensure that they had recieved all the required and appropriate training?

For those of you that don’t know all door supervisors should hold an SIA licence.That gives them a basic knowledge to permit them to be legally employed as a security guard. But it’s a bit like getting your drivers licence. You don’t get your licence and then start racing formula one cars and so it is the case with security guards of busy nightspots.

Employers of such venues should know that additonal physical intervention and conflict management training is more than likely necessary if their venue is likely to attract situations of violence and aggression. Failure on their part to supply this is a breach, by them, of the Health and Safety Act. So they too have a part to play.

Now none of this helps the tragedy of Reece Lamude’s situation and the courts will decide the outcome of that later in the year. But I would like to hope that cases like this raise the importance to employers to provide appropriate training to their staff and also for employees to demand appropriate training if they believe they are at risk. It will all go along way to making it safer for us all whether we are an employee or a member of the public like Reece.

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Practical approaches to protecting yourself

Darren Good — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:36:35 +0000

The News of the World scandal has dominated the press this week and served to warn us just how difficult personal privacy is and yet it’s something we all take as a personal right. We all do as much as we can to protect ourselves and our children from unwanted interventions ….we set up spam filters and firewalls on our PCs for example. Those of you with kids will no doubt have set limitations on what they can and can’t do on their computers/iphones but I wonder how many of us remember to also remind them of the basics of personal safety?

This thought struck me as I was sat in a parents meeting at school this week. The Head spoke at length about the dangers of the internet, reminded us about the legal age of Facebook (13 by the way) and shared with us the school rules on internet usage. All great stuff don’t get me wrong but what about the..dare I say it..old fashioned stuff…they used to call it ‘stanger danger’ but I call it protecting youself…in otherwords self-defence.

So your average 13 year old knows how to detect a suspicious Facebook friend request but can they defend themselves from a variety of grabs? Navigating their way around youtube, twitter and myspace is second nature but how quickly can they work out the quickest possible escape route if confronted?

Can you see my point? Here are my quick personal safety tips that are equally applicable to children and adults.

Be aware. Particulary when you are close to home. Research suggests that we ‘let our guard down’ when we are in familiar territory.
Look for incongruencies. E.g someone asking for the time if they have a watch on. Someone asking directions but not looking at you when you tell them. Trust your instincts…if something doesn’t seem quite right walk away.
Look for escape routes. If a car is following you and you are on foot then turn around forcing it to do a difficult (and conspicious) u-turn.
Be careful of short-cuts. Are they obscured from view? Can someone easily hide along the route? Never go alone or better still take the longer route home.
Carry a personal alarm. Just pop one in your pocket. It’s worth spending a little extra to get one that’s at least 136db.

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Novak Djokovic Positive Emotional State

Darren Good — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:45:50 +0000

This week I have been working on a revision to one of my training modules to reflect a client’s need and having enjoyed a spectacular start to the weekend with the men’s final at Wimbledon…I have been prompted to think about positive emotional control in the most extreme situations of stress and tension.

Now drawing sporting analogies to business or work scenarios is, in my book, a dangerous thing. At best you end up sounding pompous and at worst you just end up dragging up a load of old clichés. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had the privilege of hearing several sportsmen and women talk about their profession and draw links to positive thinking in the everyday and business world around us. Done well you can see where they’re coming from and yes, draw relevant parallels to your own life. Done badly you’re left thinking well…is preparing for my next important client meeting really the same as the training programme for an Olympic athlete?

But back to Wimbledon and what prompted my thoughts….I’ve been focusing on Emotional State Control this week for a client this is how being in control of your emotions is essential to manage conflict situations effectively. So understanding your triggers for fear and/or loss of emotional control are part of the process of learning how to control them so that no matter what situation you are in, whether you feel threatened or angered yourself, you always retain control of your emotions. This then supports you in being a really good communicator (see my P.O.L.I.T.E model on my website for more information). So I was watching Novak Djokovic and waiting to see if he would lose his temper like he did in the semi’s against Baghdatis where he smashed his racket three times in a rage. I was thinking surely it must be obvious to see it coming…here he is centre stage, immense pressure, everything riding on the match….could I see it either coming or him trying to control it? There are clues….facial expressions, where the eyes focus, breathing techniques…but put yourself in an everyday situation without the benefits of a camera close up and an obviously extreme situation and can you read the clues as easily?

It’s difficult which is why being in control of your own emotional state is so important so that if you suddenly find yourself in a situation with conflict or violence you are in control of your emotions and are ready to react effectively. You can anchor an emotional state by using one of your visual, auditory or kinesthetic cues. This is line with the NLP way of thinking. For instance, playing a certain type of music that makes you feel a certain way is an example of an auditory anchor but. This may be more difficult if a situation unexpectedly confronts you, but with practice you can become quicker at gaining control. If you are clever you can stack anchors to make it a really powerful exercise. All you need to do is think about a time when you felt good, the emotional state you were in, the confidence, control and calmness you felt and then pull on that memory to anchor control of your emotions.
All easier said than done of course which is why practice makes perfect or as I like to think..practice makes permanent – if you practice something wrong you can get good at doing it wrong. Which is one unarguable lesson every business practice can learn from the sporting world.

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Everyday conflict management

Darren Good — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:41:40 +0000

I was doing a fun run with my 14 year old son at the weekend and it reminded me how ever present the potential for conflict is. It started with the usual heated debate with my wife as we were rushing out the door of ‘where are the car keys’ …quickly diffused by son number two reminding us that we were walking.
Potential conflict removed I was soon rewarding myself for making the effort to leave early in order to walk to as I saw the massive queue to get parked. My , dare I admit it, slightly smug mood was quickly distracted by the sound of a car horn being furious beeping and a man jumping out of his car to hurl abuse at the car behind him. I say car, not person because I don’t actually think he was seeking to get into a one-on-one argument he just responded to the ‘trigger’ of the car horn and it clearly was the last straw for him that morning. There were two adults in the front of the car…a ..shall we say quite large gentleman driving and I’m guessing his mum or Grandmother to the two red-faced kids in the back seats who, as you can imagine, just wanted the ground to swallow them up with embarrassment. Whether she knew what she was doing or not I’ll never know but as the man got out of his car to face his aggressor this senior lady nimbly positioned herself between the two and smiling at the abuse hurling man said “lovely day for it” clearly not expecting this response the abuse man was left to agree it was.
What a fantastic open question, completely at odds with the situation and friendly in intention.
I don’t know what happened after that because, as my wife reminded me, it’s rude to stare but as I heard no more shouting and the cars moved slowly on I can assume all was resolved.
So…..as I was saying I was reminded of the ever present potential for conflict. Intentionally or otherwise the woman in question diffused an aggressive situation by positive body language and an open and unexpected question that by its very nature united them. It was a lovely day for “it” and “it” was the fun run with the kids. She established common ground and a shared purpose. She positioned herself alongside the ‘aggressor’ and showed she was willing to listen. Essentially she demonstrated a number of key communication skills to manage conflict situations that I summarise in my acronym P.O.L.I.T.E. where ‘P’ is for position, ‘O’ observation, ‘L’ listen, ‘I’ intuition, ‘T’ talk and ‘E’ emotional state. I’d even go as far as to say it was almost text book perfect.

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Why I believe the G20 officer got away with it!

Darren Good — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:45:23 +0000

I heard this story on the news the other day and to be honest it’s not that surprising this police officer was cleared of the charges. Even if it may be viewed by an outsider as being over zealous or aggressive. When you examine the law closely you then begin to understand why he was acquitted.

G20 Police Assault on Woman

If you watch the video clip which I have included in this post, you can see the background to the event. In other words what was going on before this particular event actually took place. In the video you can see members of the public being aggressive and surging towards the police. They are moving towards the police aggressively and the police are clearly vastly outnumbered, which could cause them to fear for their lives.

Then Miss Fisher approaches Sgt Smellie in an aggressive manor and he uses what we call clearance strike to push her back and out of his way. You can see he uses the back of his hand – he didn’t use his fist or his baton.

After the strike, she then moves towards him again, in possible retaliation and she seems to have items in both hands. From the video you can’t tell what she has in her hands. They could be anything.

So Sgt Smellie honestly believed he was under attack and consequently under Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act was fully entitled to use reasonable force to protect himself. You can see on the video he drops his body level so he can strike Miss Fisher’s legs, rather than a strike at head height, which could have caused severe head injuries. Because he takes this approach he is demonstrating a measured response which shows he is trying to use reasonable force.

He only uses two strikes, he bends his knees and strikes twice. They are not life threatening blows but you have to remember he also didn’t know if she had a weapon or not. She had already been warned both verbally and with the clearance strike. It is my understanding that the CPS weren’t even interested in the clearance strike, they were only interested in the use of the baton, but the judge decided it was reasonable force and threw it out.

The IPCC still might sanction the police officer in some way. However, the police officer could theoretically sue the police for removing his human rights, Article Two is the human’s right to life. He could say you have taken away my right to defend myself.

The circumstances of the case were extremely public and I believe the Government had to be seen to be doing something but the judge just threw it out. It shouldn’t have gone to court in the first place. The problem is many people simply don’t know how these laws work and they cause confusion.

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The top ten mistakes in conflict resolution

Darren Good — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:33:22 +0000

Not listening effectively and butting in whilst the other person is speaking – I think this is one of the most underestimated things in conflict resolution. You must listen to the other person’s point of view.
Not apologising – 50% of complaints in the NHS are caused by people not getting an apology. Say sorry it’s pretty simple.
Not having a polite meet and greet type person on the door. One key reason why the NHS gets so much trouble in it’s Accident and Emergency Wards is because it doesn’t understand the official meet and greet approach. It doesn’t take long to meet and greet your customers and make them feel welcome.
A lack of building rapport – A lack of communicating the way people actually want to be communicated to. This is the same reason why people get bitten by dogs because a lack of communication and trust.
Getting too close to people – If you get too close, people can feel that you are invading their personal space and you could get a startle response with many lashing out. This happens a lot with elderly people who are confused, it’s often simply a reflex.
Not facing the other person properly – your feet point in the direction you want your body to go in. If my feet are pointing towards the door I obviously want to be somewhere else.
Not talking in their language or tonality – The way you talk to 90 year-old Mrs Miggins would and should be very different to how you talk to a drunk teenager. You have to try and get on the same wavelength and speak their language.
Jumping in and flaring up too quickly – In these situations you have to do your best to control your temper and try to take their opinion into consideration.
Not giving people options – “It’s my way or the highway”. “It’s tough – we haven’t got any appointments”. If you give people options if forces people to use their reasoning part of their brain (Frontal lobe intelligence part) and often makes them more reasonable
Not keeping promises - If someone says: “I will get back to you” the customer is expecting that person to follow that action up. You must always make sure you do get back to people and follow up on your promises or solutions.

I cover all of these areas much more extensively in our POLITE Model.

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Understanding legislation is now a must for conflict resolution trainers

Darren Good — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:16:08 +0000

I have been pretty busy during the last few weeks carefully up skilling myself and trying to become a better trainer. You might remember I wrote about my growing desire to improve my personal development on the blog way back in December.

Well, the new training I have been doing has meant I have a much better grasp on British legislation and how it all fits together. I think this is important because now I can give much more accurate answers to my course delegate’s questions and it’s always better to learn new things.

The first course I did was coaching and teaching in conflict management. It was reasonably helpful but this was more about integrating my current knowledge. I have coached people on various subjects over the years from presenting skills right through to physical intervention training.

I actually coach on an evening in my martial arts classes but it’s very different coaching people in the public sector as often they are forced to be attending the course rather than attending because they want too. This means as a trainer we often have to build rapport to get them to engage properly with the training.

PTTLS

The second course I did was BTEC Level 4 PTLLS Preparing to teach in the Life Long Learning Sector and I found this a fantastic opportunity to practice physical interventions with like-minded people. The minimum standard in the UK for a trainer is BTEC level 3, so I went that little bit further to better myself. All the teachers who don’t have PTLLS unfortunately won’t stand much of a chance of winning any official public sector tenders as they will need to get higher qualifications.

Tendering for conflict resolution training

Tendering to deliver conflict resolution training in the public sector can be a complex business, if the budget is under £100,000 it goes through here or if it is more than that it must go through the OJEC – the Official Journal of the European Community.

To be successful and professional in this business you must now have a certain level of qualifications.

How does the law help when resolving conflicts?

There are many laws which you need to be aware of such as the Children’s Act 2004, self defence, common law procedure act, criminal law act 1967 and of course the Health & Safety Law. Because of my recent training I now fully understand how these all integrate with each other whether its one of them or the mental health law and human rights law.

The problem you often find with people in the public sector is they usually understand some element of one of these laws, but certainly not all of them, and then they don’t know how they fit together and which has the highest importance. So I suppose this training has helped to give me a better understanding of the hierarchy of the most important laws.

Any guidance given out by a body, is simply that guidance it isn’t necessarily the law.

In schools teachers are often given guidance by their unions which unfortunately in some cases can be unlawful. This is because these people often haven’t understood the actual legislation itself. Albert Einstein famously said:

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

So what he was saying was to solve a problem you often have to go to a higher level to see the problem itself. For instance, if I go to a doctors I usually go with the symptoms and then he goes to a higher level by converting those symptoms to the actual cause of the problem. Similarly, to answer a question on the law you often have to go to a higher level of law with the Human Rights law being the highest in the land.

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