The Frustration Factor

Chapter 8 – Communication Content

Once we understand the color in crisis and that our mood or affect is an important dimension of crisis communication, we can begin to consider crisis content. People not trained in crisis intervention generally focus more or less exclusively on the content when talking with an individual in crisis. As our understanding of crisis color suggests, the mood or tone of the individual in crisis is at least as critical as, and perhaps even more critical than, the specifics of what happened and what is happening. If we look at any of the examples of crisis in the text, we can see that a calm, rational, planning person would be able to understand and deal with the situation. The critical aspect of the situation comes primarily in terms of the individual’s mood or color. It is his anger, fear, anxiety, apprehension, extreme depression, and so on that elevates the now potential and works against his dealing with the situation himself. It is the blue of crisis communication that directly responds to the most critical part of the crisis, that is, the individual’s being so upset or agitated that he is unable to calm down, slow down, and plan ahead. …

At first glance, it may seem naïve to suggest that most crises can successfully be reduced by the simple technique of controlling your mood, or affect, as you respond to the individual in crisis. If you can consistently respond in purposeful shades of blue, assuming that your verbal comments are relatively neutral and innocuous, you will usually need to do nothing more than filter the individual’s communication through your blue screen. If you continue this process patiently, caringly, and persistently, the crisis will pass. With further thought and experience with people in crisis, though, you will see that the intensity of the individual’s emotional state, his crisis color, is what is really keeping him from dealing with the situation himself. Filtering and modifying those emotions, then, is the main thing we have to do to reduce the crisis. If you can stay calm, “keep your cool,” and avoid verbally or emotionally attacking the individual or pushing him away, he will respond positively.

It is important to see that this communication model places primary emphasis on the quality of the interaction between you and the individual. The mood or tone of that interaction is the part of helping that helps the most. Along with the stress on the quality of interaction this communication model also implicitly and explicitly assumes that the individual in crisis is capable of being a rational, planning, thinking person. We do not see the individual as sick or disturbed. He is a healthy, responsible person just as you and I. His problem is that the conflict in his interaction with his situation is extremely stressful to him. It is this stress he is under that is causing him to be anxious, upset, afraid, extremely angry, and so forth. If we can help him deal with these intense emotions and gradually get him to look more critically at his situation, he has the strength, capacity, and integrity necessary to deal with it.

It can hardly be overemphasized that the present approach to crisis intervention assumes that we are dealing with healthy people who are capable of dealing with their life situations. Our mood and tone and the color of our communication help them to use their own reasoning and planning capacities.

A FAITH IN PEOPLE

In human services, there is an adage that directs us to work with the individual in an effort to “maximize his strengths and minimize his weaknesses.” In crisis situations, anger, fear, confusion, apprehension, depression, despair, and so forth are interpreted as temporary weaknesses. They have welled up in the individual, temporarily overpowering his reasoning, thinking, and planning strengths.

Keohane, Nannerl O. Thinking about Leadership. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

This is a large part of what leadership is all about: providing solutions to common problems or offering ideas about how to accomplish collective purposes, and mobilizing the energies of others to follow these courses of action.

Putting forward ideas for accomplishing group goals is one aspect of leadership; bringing together members of the group to act on these suggestions is the second.

Leaders determine or clarify goals for a group of individuals and bring together the energies of members of that group to accomplish those goals.

Leaders make decisions. Decisions can involve singling out issues from a relevant set; choosing among potential measures to address those issues; determining who else to enlist in the work; and figuring out how to use resources to implement policy.

For each new decision sets a precedent, begetting new decisions, foreclosing others, and causing reactions which require counteractions. …

Leaders devise and implement strategies to achieve their goals. This means thinking ahead, assessing what is likely to happen, weighing the importance of multiple factors. Leaders set priorities among issues that confront the group, so that the course ahead is more manageable and they are not trying to do everything at once.

…they [examples] involve shifting combinations of persuasion, strategic calculation, example, incentives, threats, sanctions, and rewards.

But leaders must be able to make decisions and move on.

Good decision makers improve their skills through practice but do not perpetually second guess themselves.

Leaders routinely face stubborn obstacles, unclear alternatives, stiff opposition, and resistant materials; they often need tenacity and perseverance to stay the course.

Most women leaders display a mixed style of leadership, with some apparently feminine features and others that are more like those of a typical male leader.

Some women in some contexts do lead differently from most men; but insofar as there is a pattern here it stems from socialization and cultural expectations, rather than hormones or genes.

…a few of the personal qualities often useful in leadership are "innate"--more like having perfect pitch than something you can pick up over time. These include the basic intuitions or sensitivities that ground good judgment, personal integrity, and the kind of intelligence that works strategically.

Kennedy, Debbe, foreword by Joel A. Barker. Putting Our Differences to Work: The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership, and High Performance. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2008.

… "Putting our differences to work means creating an environment where people, naturally unique and different--diverse by nature and experience--can work more effectively in ways that drive new levels of creativity, innovation, problem solving, leadership, and performance in the marketplaces, workplaces, and communities of the world."

Putting our differences to work at every level within an organization requires a new kind of intention from everybody. It means consciously recognizing one undeniable fact: that people are the number one source of new thinking and new ideas needed for change and the betterment of business and society.

It is the heartbeat, commitment, and hard work of every individual that fulfills a business strategy and brings about innovation, leadership, and high performance for any organization or endeavor.

We don't trust one another as much as we should, and, consequently, we tend to isolate ourselves, staying with those most like us.

Future leaders must know their particular strengths and how to dra...

What’s your notion of a bad day? I’m not thinking here about big events that foretell major or lasting consequences. Rather I am thinking about those little annoyances and inconveniences that disrupt our otherwise comfortable and more or less predictable days.

You know the kinds of things I am talking about: not being able to find your car keys, dropping your iPhone and cracking the screen, dripping coffee on your clean shirt, getting a phone call that you have to take just as you are leaving the house when you’re already running ten minutes late, remembering as you head out for lunch that you were supposed to be at the dentist two hours ago, realizing that you still haven’t started that report your boss needs this afternoon and you had planned to finish yesterday. …

It just so happens that I am having one of those bad days. My first discovery is that a bad day for me is always personal. By that I mean that like beauty, bad days are in the eyes of the beholder. I think the key is that a bad day gets us off our game. What gets me off my game might not bother you one way or the other. Conversely, what gets you off your game may be something I would just take in stride. As I said, bad days are always personal.

The next thing I have realized is that no one cares about my bad day. Sure, I can tell someone about it and he or she might even have a little sympathy but not much. It’s not his or her bad day and after a small dose of sympathy, I will quickly figure out that I’ll just have to suck it up and move on.

My particular bad day started this morning. It was time to work on my podcast and I realized that I didn’t have anything to say. Normally not having anything to say is no reason for a bad day unless you are supposed to be podcasting, unless your significant other says, “We need to talk,” unless you are ten-years-old and your teacher asks you why you didn’t do your homework, or perhaps unless your boss wants to know why the report you intended to write yesterday isn’t on her desk this afternoon.

Back to my podcast and not having anything to say. I admit it. I am hoping for an inspiration. I know that’s a little like hoping that the coffee stain on my shirt will suddenly disappear or or that the crack in my iPhone screen will magically repair itself. Maybe Teacher will just smile and tell you that you are really smart so for you, homework is optional or perhaps your boss will just chuckle and say, “No problem. When I asked for the report, I was only making a suggestion.”

As for that inspiration I am hoping for, Frank Tibolt said, “We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.” This kind of sounds like that getting the cart before the horse thing.

I guess my personal bad day is likely to stay inspiration free so action is my only viable course. The situation calls for action, for doing something instead of just staring at the microphone, waiting for that inspiration. Alfred Adler said, “Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words.” If the point is not sinking in as I sit and stare, I need to remember what Arnold Glasow had to say about this inspiration thing. “An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.”

I may be experiencing a small flicker of motivation, especially given how small a single brain cell probably is. The key now is to see if I can convert that bit of motivation into a modicum of action. I do have a tendency to think that only the great and glorious are worth doing so must latch onto Peter Marshall’s perspective. He said, “Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.”

I can feel myself moving off the dime. My podcasting paralysis seems to be passing. Yes, I do recall that Ernest Hemingway said,

Chapter 7 – Crisis Color

Crisis always has a mood or color. The psychiatric literature frequently refers to this dimension of people in crisis as “affect.” In crisis communication, color refers to the mood or disposition of the individual in crisis. Does he seem depressed, angry, agitated, anxious, fearful; how would you describe the individual’s mood? Using colors is a convenient way for us to communicate information about an individual’s mood or affect and to describe and understand the three major or most observable moods or affective states.

It may be helpful to think about several people in different situations. As an exercise, think about these individuals. What kind of mood are they in? Using a word or short phrase to describe each person’s mood, think about whether they seem happy or sad, angry or loving, tired or energetic, optimistic or pessimistic, and so on. Crisis communication is unlike most other forms of communication. Developing a knack for describing an individual’s mood or tone in a word or short phrase will help in recognizing and understanding this dimension of crisis situations.

Mrs. J is sitting in her backyard in a lounge chair. She reading a book, and her children are playing quietly in the sandbox near by. It is a sunny spring day, and Mrs. J occasionally chuckles as she reads.

Mrs. K bites her lip as she slams the cupboard door in her kitchen. Her children know better than to bother her right now, and her husband is staying out in the garage. She moves in a very deliberate and methodical way and the pans bang as she sets them on the stove.

Chuck, age six, squirms in his seat and is fiddling with his pencil. He keeps glancing around the room. He is tapping one foot against the leg of his chair and has not turned a page in his picture book for five minutes.

Denise, age nineteen, is talking on the telephone, “Why won’t you be there?” There is a long pause. Her voice is a little shaky. “I don’t understand. Everything seemed okay last night.” Another long pause. “But will you be there later?”

Don is talking quite loudly: “Will you shut up and listen to me. I have told you that a thousand times. If you don’t believe me, there is nothing I can do about it. Call him and ask him yourself. I’m getting sick and tired of this damn routine every time I’m twenty minutes late.”

Ellen is talking very slowly. It is difficult to hear her, for she seems to be swallowing her words. “I just don’t have any energy left anymore. I can’t fight it anymore. I tried and tried and don’t feel like trying anymore. It wouldn’t do any good anyway.”

Ed seems like he is about to cry and keeps clearing his throat. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. The doctor said it may not be serious, but they have to check on it, anyway. She’s so little. It’s all my fault. If I had been paying more attention, this wouldn’t have happened, and she wouldn’t be paying for my stupidity now.”

Frank shakes your hand as he sits down in the chair beside your desk. “We have to get this straightened out. We spend all of our time hassling and arguing about it and seem to get nowhere. It’s the kids. We simply cannot agree on how to deal with them. She is more of an open person and thinks it’s okay for them to run in the house and make a lot of noise and do pretty much whatever they want to. I wasn’t brought up that way. We were taught to respect our parents and to conduct ourselves like ladies and gentlemen. One of us has to be wrong, and somebody has got to tell us which one. She would have come with me, but one of the kids is sick today. She’ll come next time if you want her to.”

In addition to thinking about the mood of the individuals described here, you can make a game out of figuring out the mood of people you come in contact with over the next...

The Aliens have returned and have resumed their broadcast activity on www.AliensAmongstUs.com. I have snagged their latest episode and have included it for you here so you don't miss it. Please go to www.AliensAmongstUs.com for all future transmissions from the Aliens Amongst Us. Be sure to subscribe on www.AliensAmongstUs.com to make sure you don't miss their future broadcasts.

Alien 1: Greetings Earth Humans.

The news of our permanent departure from the Earth planet was not fake but simply insuficiently predictive. Based on our past Earth directed transmissions you Earth humans may have gotten the impression that the wise ones who sit on the Council back on our home planet are truly wise and would never find it advisable to reverse one of their directives. You would be wrong, again.

Alien 2: I think you just insulted the Earth humans who are listening to this transmission. It sounded like you are saying that they are frequently wrong. Whether it’s true or not that’s not a very nice way to talk to them, especially since we are just returning. You should be more careful about what you say and how you say it, at least until they get used to our being back.

Alien 1: You may have a point but what they don’t know is that even though we personally departed, the goal of the leaders in the home council to fully infiltrate the Earth planet has remained steadfast. We only gave the impression of departing to avoid further detection and to reinforce the notion that reports of potential infiltration by aliens were nothing but fake news. The wise ones in the home council are particularly keen on protecting the real identity of our leader in the capital city and others of our key infiltrators who have locked into important and influential positions. It is essential that the Earth humans don’t catch onto our strategy. …

This may be your best chance today to tap into your inner philosopher, if you find that an attractive option.

Jaworski, Joseph, Introduction by Peter Senge. Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2011.

seventh-century ascetic, John of the Ladder: If some are still dominated by their former bad habits, and yet can teach by mere words, let them teach. ... For perhaps, by being put to shame by their own words, they will eventually begin to practice what they teach.

Peter Senge: What are we, collectively, able to create?

The overarching principle … would be one of servant leadership, serving with compassion and heart, and recognizing that the only true authority for this new era is that which enriches participants, and empowers rather than dimishes them. It would encourage "transformational leadership": leadership of strong commitment and broad visionary ideas.

Leadership is all about the release of human possibilities. One of the central requirements for good leadership is the capacity to inspire the people in the group: to move them and encourage them and pull them into the activity, and to help them get centered and focused and operating at peak capacity. A key element of this capacity to inspire is communicating to people that you believe they matter, that you know they have something important to give.

When people join together and go beyond their habitual way of being as a group, even more possibilities open up. But somehow a kind of block prevents these extraordinary experiences from happening.

People and groups think of themselves as separate. But if we could learn how to dialogue with one another at a deep level, … we would find ways to relate to one another that would dissolve the perception of separateness. …

One of the most important lessons I learned about the traps was how simple it can be to regain balance when we've lost the flow. Consider the act of walking--a wonderful and powerful metaphor for thinking about this issue. When we're walking or running, we're always in the process of literally falling down. When we move our body forward, we are actually "falling." But we have learned to move quickly and deftly, and so we are "falling" into our next step. If we don't move instantly and with great dexterity, we will fall on our face. As children, we learned our lesson well about the phenomenon of walking and running so that when we're off balance, we can almost effortlessly correct ourselves, regain our balance, and continue on our way. In ordinary life it's the same way. We lose our balance, as I did for months on end, because we don't understand enough--we don't see we have simple ways to regain it.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one ... the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. --George Bernard Shaw

We are more certain of the direction than the goal, and each day we ask for guidance to take the next step. … We never see the whole landscape, so we take the next tiny step and improvise on what we've learned.

All matter and the universe are continually in motion. At a level we cannot see, there is an unbroken wholeness, an "implicate order" out of which seemingly discrete events arise. All human beings are part of that unbroken whole, which is continually unfolding. Two of our responsibilities in life are to be open and to learn, thereby becoming more capable of sensing and actualizing emerging new realities.

…the domain of generative leadership--how we can operate day by day to participate in creating new circumstances, new realities.

In this episode of Audio Tidbits Podcast I have included three short clips for your enjoyment and consideration. I suspect at least one of them will resonate and it's for sure that you will enjoy the musical clip that follows the three think clips.

Do you know about lollygagging? I learned about when I was about six-years-old. It was a well-established term in my mother's walking around vocabulary but never quite made into mine. Even so, I was clear about what to do when Mom used the term. Please listen and learn all you will ever need to know about lollygagging.

Part II Crisis Communication

Chapter 6 The Communication Loop

The crisis intervention process proceeds on multiple levels. For those with little understanding of crisis and crisis intervention, the process appears to be relatively easy and sounds a lot like common sense. It has been said, though, that common sense represents the accumulated wisdom of the ages, and skillful intervention is not nearly so easy and casual as it might appear. When someone asks my kids what their daddy does, they usually reply that “he just talks to people.” Their daddy has more fancy names for it: counseling, psychotherapy, play therapy, and even crisis intervention. Nonetheless, the kids are right. In crisis intervention, most of what we do is “just talking to people.” At least, that is what it looks like to an observer. As we shall see, though, our talking to people is but one level of what is really going on in the process. We are helping the individual develop and maintain crisis focus. We are coming to an understanding of the precipitating event while developing judgment about the now potential and the self-resolution factor. We are developing a crisis definition and formulating intervention hypotheses. Throughout the process, we are evaluating our intervention and are being alert to potential cumulative effects and other unseen effects. We are actively involved with the individual in the process. Activities at this level tend to have a thinking/doing quality. At another level, we are carefully and caringly listening to the individual’s communication to us. We hear him, we are trying to understand, and we want him to know we care. The understanding that comes through listening is, however, not passive. We are actively involved with the individual, affecting and being affected by him, and intentionally and intently working toward his being able to deal with his difficulties. As we talk about crisis communication, then, we will see that our talk is really not just talk. It is a special kind of communication that requires sensitivity, self-awareness, compassion, and concern for the individual and honest empathy with his crisis involvement. …

MESSAGES AND RESPONSES

Figure 5 finds the individual in another crisis, but this time he has the good fortune to be in the communication loop with you. You are skilled at crisis communication and are focusing your intervention hypothesis on the need to help the individual slow down, and plan ahead.

In crisis communication, there is a communication loop in which messages, ideas, feelings, and so on, are sent out by the individual in crisis, picked up by you, and returned to the individual in a slightly modified and clarified form. Understanding this communication loop and the techniques involved in modifying and clarifying these messages, ideas, and feelings represents an important and valuable skill when working with people in crisis.

First, we need to consider the interactive nature of communication and of helping relationships. At an abstract level, a person in crisis is internally experiencing various and sometimes conflicting feelings, emotions, impulses, urges, and so on. Within the individual, then, is a confusing and possibly disturbing mix of things that contributes to his feelings of uneasiness and crisis.

Second, we want to help him feel better and become better able to deal with his situation. Within us are a variety of skills and ideas, including a knowledge of the crisis intervention process. Somehow, the individual needs to communicate what is going on within him. At the same time, and this must be emphasized, we need to make our knowledge and skills available to him.

Somehow, the individual in crisis needs to translate his feelings, emotions, ideas, and so on into messages and convey those messages to us. We will, in turn,