Chapter Six
A Touch of Genius and a Lot of Courage: How to Unplug From Resentment, Stress, and Mistrust
One kind word can
Warm three winter months
—Japanese proverb
 
If you experience feelings of smoldering anger, self-righteous indignation, and contempt, then your effectiveness, health, relationships, and mood—the quality of your life—depend on your ability to replace the energy of hostility with the energy of appreciation. This is not an overstatement.
Fortunately, it’s not difficult. It can be one of the most rewarding and validating projects you will undertake. I too had to make the transition. When I reflect on the information and insights that preceded my commitment to change, I feel profound gratitude.
You’re halfway there if you’ve read this far. You know about flooding, heart disease, depression, the hidden costs of blame, inflammatory thinking, cynicism, low self-esteem, and “babies in the backseat.” You know there are three nearly invisible thinking patterns that determine your mood and behavior.
In this chapter we’ll cover specific techniques that will help you replace negative energy with habits that are more rewarding.
First, let’s address changes in your personal life that will support a change from unhealthy to healthy patterns. Again, you can’t just stop flooding. That strategy leaves you with no energy, and that’s the condition we hate the most. To maintain your gain you must replace hostility with hearty appreciation.
First we’ll look at how you can replace negative energy with warmth, achievement, and activities that give you energy and sustain you—activities that aren’t associated with hostility. Then we’ll look at the phases most people go through as they rewire their brains to stop flooding.

Switch channels and activities

1. Eat real food. If breakfast consists of a doughnut and super-sized Mountain Dew, and dinner is four beers, a greasy hamburger, and a bag of chips, your body doesn’t have access to the nutrients it needs to sustain calming energy. Junk food, just like cheap gas, doesn’t work for the long haul.
2. Change channels. If you tune in to music, radio, or TV programs that use inflammatory thinking to draw an audience, stop listening. In a study by HeartMath, just 15 minutes of listening to grunge rock resulted in increased feelings of hostility, fatigue, sadness, tension, and led to significant reductions in mental clarity. Why allow toxic, negative energy into your life? Are you in a better mood, more effective, or more fun to be around after listening to an hour of hate-radio? Inflammatory programs tap reflexive responses. Hate radio isn’t interested in your health or well-being, your ability to parent, or your career. Shock-jock radio programs are on a mission to increase ratings and revenues, and they are willing to do it at your expense.
If you listen to inflammatory radio on your way to work, when you walk in the door you will already be irritated; your hormones, adrenaline, and blood pressure will be elevated; and you’ll be less able to handle your day’s allotment of frustrations.
If you tune in to the same station on your way home, you’ll add more negative energy to your overtaxed system and when you face the demands of children, partners, and home—boom! You’ll flood. Instead, find something during your commute that soothes you and doesn’t tap the energy of aggression and increase your agitation. Find another radio station, bring your own CDs, or get audio books from the library. Five minutes before you arrive home, pull over and practice gratitude. It’s a very effective way to stop toxic thoughts and elevate your mood.
3. Exercise! It’s one of the most effective antidotes for elevating your mood. (Watching television is one of the least effective, but most frequently used, activities for combating a negative mood). Join sports teams that aren’t so much into cutthroat winning, as they look forward to goofing off, having fun, and building friendships. Get a pet, hike, hunt, knit, camp in the woods, start a yard project, garden, tinker in the garage and create something to give away, bike, or take your kids for a walk around a lake and watch the moon rise.
4. Avoid harsh self-criticism. Make a commitment to identify and eliminate self-blame, as it leads to depression, lack of energy, and the desire to blame others as a means of escaping feelings of hopelessness. In Chapter Eight we’ll look at a technique that helps eliminate negative feelings about yourself.
5. Take advantage of the helper’s high. You deserve the feelings of bliss that are associated with compassion and offering a helping hand. Find volunteer work that fits your schedule, interests, and talents. Go out of your way to befriend someone at work. Remember, even small acts of kindness release endorphins.
In a study of more than 2,000 Presbyterians published in 2004 in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, behavioral scientist Carolyn Schwartz and her colleagues reported that improved mental health seemed to be more closely linked to giving help than to receiving it.
Don’t stop yourself because you think you have nothing to offer. It takes very little to make a difference in another person’s life. Dr. Jennifer Crocker at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in a study of high-risk youth from impoverished neighborhoods and barren families, found that the minority of adolescents who did not end up in the juvenile correction system, who resisted crime and drugs, and finished high school, had one consistent environmental trait in common: they answered the following question in the affirmative: “Do you have someone to talk to about the things that trouble you?” One link to a caring human being allowed them to thrive in an environment that overwhelmed their peers.
6. Surround yourself with positive people who know how to build and maintain positive relationships. Every human aches for positive companionship, laughter, and vitality. It’s what nature intended. Do what it takes to replace sources of negative energy in your life with warmth and affection.
You will find positive people who are worthy of your investment at work, in clubs, in faith communities; in your neighborhood; and volunteering at hospitals, food shelves, and youth programs.
People with strong support systems are more able to avoid disease and maintain higher levels of health. Social support is a natural antidote to tension and stress.
Be discerning about the people you associate with in your personal life. Start observing people’s energy and language. Watch how different people approach problem-solving. Do they blame people or do they look for problems or pressures in the situation? On the road are they patient or hostile? Stay away from those drivers who think anyone who goes slower than they do is an idiot, and anyone who goes faster is a lunatic!
Pay attention to how people approach political problems. Do they label people who are different? Are they curious or indignant? Do they see most people as reasonable, and view desperate behavior as a result of desperate conditions, or are they quick to call other people derogatory names?
Find and associate with people who laugh, invest in others, are effective at solving problems, enjoy long-term intimate relationships, and don’t overreact to life’s inevitable hassles. These people aren’t naive. As Einstein noted in the quote that opens Chapter One, a harmonious, positive life requires skill. Any intelligent fool can move in the other direction.
7. Start rituals of appreciation. Say a prayer of thanks before meals; make a mental list of all the things for which you are grateful before you fall asleep; write notes, e-mails, and letters to loved ones. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of Positive Psychology, found that people who wrote and delivered a letter of appreciation to someone who had changed their lives had long-lasting increases in happiness. Expressions of appreciation can be simple, everyday things.
Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our
lives, as parallel realities. It is always a conscious choice
which secret garden we tend.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach,
The Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude
8. Develop a spiritual practice or join a faith community. Find a community that increases your sense of compassion and positive energy. People who had open-heart surgery were 10 times more likely to survive if they had a network of support and spiritual faith.
9. Find mentors. Like the parable at the end of Chapter One, find the people in your “village” who sustain and support your growth. Spend time with them and watch how they handle tough situations and events. Through observation and conversation they can teach you about their approaches, philosophy, and skills. They don’t have fewer challenges and frustrations than the rest of the world; however, they think about life differently than people who are consistently cynical and hostile, and therefore their lives are dramatically more positive and satisfying.
When my son was small I was mentored by his day-care provider. She was a pro. She taught me very effective techniques for putting him to sleep without a hassle, avoid power struggles (parents have power struggles with toddlers all the time), and manage temper tantrums in stores. I didn’t have these skills beforehand, but I learned from people who did.
10. Crisis becomes an opportunity for solidarity without blame. Once you remove blame from your emotional repertoire, problems become opportunities for teams, leaders, and organizations to bond. Situations that once seemed insurmountable become occasions to build new relationships and deepen existing ones. Self-oriented interests are often suspended in order to achieve overarching goals.
Without blame, a crisis becomes an occasion to develop new skills and discover previously hidden facets of other people’s experiences, training, and capacities. When no one is looking for a scapegoat, a challenge or problem can draw people closer together, rather than moving them further apart. The resulting feelings of achievement and camaraderie reinforce the belief that your colleagues are good people, committed to a worthy cause.
The opportunity and ability to accomplish a task that no one could achieve alone is an ancient, powerful motivator. It’s an intrinsic high that makes work meaningful and motivates people to invest more of themselves in their colleagues, supervisors, and organizations.
Once blame is banished, errors and snafus create opportunities to experience the endorphins associated with the helper’s high. Positive team effort, minus blame and fear, creates genuine pride in work. Instead of using another person’s mistakes for personal gain, individuals pitch in to help others recover and learn. These behaviors create positive reciprocity, a strategy that has been a reliable survival tactic since the first days of human existence.
The most natural human response to
catastrophe is to pull together.
—Thomas Glass,
John Hopkins School of Public Health
Despite our fears about human nature, studies of natural disasters reveal that unless a population is already troubled (for example, the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, or Iraqi citizens at the time of the U.S. invasion) crime rates actually drop during catastrophes. The British called this innate reaction “the blitz spirit,” which they defined as a self-organized movement of cooperation that developed during the severe and prolonged bombing of England during WW II.
When I visited St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, I was moved to tears looking at the photographs of very young and very old men, women, grandfathers, and mothers forming bucket brigades and rescue crews to assist the wounded and save London’s most treasured buildings from burning. Imagine: this scenario occurred at a time when the municipal government and police departments were barely functioning! Dr. Thomas Glass believes a “deeply embedded script to react collectively in groups” helps the human race pull together, adapt, and survive.
11. Look for ways to build positive energy in groups and teams. This concept is so important that Chapter Eleven is devoted to it. In my work I’ve learned that those skilled in conflict resolution don’t just resolve negative situations and walk away. They replace negativity with positive attitudes, behavior, and energy that bond and sustain people. Skilled resolution renews the source of energy that creates feelings of safety, warmth, respect, positive reciprocity, and the excitement of limitless possibilities. This glue is so powerful that people guard it diligently once they experience it.

Train your brain to stop flooding

If you flood regularly in response to frustration, you’ll be sorely disappointed if you expect to never again lose your temper. Like most habits, you can’t “flip a switch” and make flooding go away. It takes time and effort to learn new behavior. Facing this issue also takes great courage. Most blaming responses are on automatic pilot, and they are harder to identify and eradicate than you might anticipate.
If you look at the sequence we’ve been using—thinking triggers emotions, and then emotions shape behaviors—it’s likely you’ll start from the bottom and work your way up. You might first become more aware of negative behaviors you’d like to eliminate; then, begin to identify how you feel when you’re starting to flood; and finally, monitor and choose your thinking, or what you say to yourself, when you hit one of your 30 heart-hassles each day.
1. Use aggressive behavior as a signal. Your first attempts to stop flooding may come too late to avoid a cascade of adrenaline, hormones, cortisol, and the aggressive behaviors that result. Initially, your insights will occur after your body has calmed down enough to start analyzing your behavior. This may not happen until several hours after the incident. Flooding is such a physiological hit that the rational, analytical part of the brain won’t be active until later. Don’t be discouraged—even noticing your response, and calling it by its medical term is progress! At this juncture, be careful not to get caught in blame’s other stinky twin: harsh criticism of yourself. If you beat yourself up for “losing control,” you will feel hopeless and give up. Flooding is a habit. Reprogramming your mind takes multiple repetitions.
There is no finer sensation in life than that which
comes with victory over one’s self.
—Vash Young
Think about being a compassionate witness to your behavior. Identify typical reactions when you flood. How do you attempt to alleviate the emotional and physical stress that accompanies flooding? Do you yell, slam doors, throw things, brood, walk away, take long showers, exercise, overeat, withdraw, kick the cat, or pay an extended visit to the local bar? Dr. Richard Shekelle at Northwestern University in Chicago found men (the gender he studied) with higher hostility scores indeed smoke more and consume more alcohol.
We all take actions to alleviate the extreme emotional stress associated with flooding. When individuals aren’t informed about flooding or the extreme emotional stress it causes, they engage in unconscious, and relatively ineffective, behaviors to eliminate the powerfully negative feelings.
Blame isn’t always accompanied with a red face, bulging veins, and outbursts. The “avoid” forms of blame take on insidious variations, such as exclusion, gossip, undermining, withholding questions, second-guessing motives, rolling eyes, sighing, or silence, rather than speaking on someone’s behalf. On which of these behaviors do you rely?
Remember, venting doesn’t help. Venting makes it more likely that you will flood the next time you face a frustration. The solution is to get your arms around your thinking patterns, and train your brain to think differently. If you flood and lash out against a colleague, direct report, or family member, then use your regret as motivation to reset your responses.
2. Recognize the feelings associated with flooding. Your second set of insights may come as you start to tune in to how you feel when you flood. Identify your earliest cues that you’re headed toward losing control. Is it shallow breathing, a tight gut, tension in your neck and shoulders? How does your body manifest the severe emotional stress that is the hallmark of flooding? Do you feel it in your neck, head, arms, or your entire body? Is it pulsing, pounding, tense, anxious, irritable, or frantic? One of my early signals is nausea. Learn to identify the early physiological signals of flooding so you can short circuit the reflexive response.
3. Identify your inflammatory thinking. As you become aware of the physiology of flooding you can start identifying the trigger: What are you saying to yourself? Is your thinking inflammatory? What’s the message of your inner dialogue? When you become aware of your thinking you will be able to eliminate the number of times you are at the mercy of blame, flooding, and negative energy.
4. Realize you have a choice. The next step in breaking the blame game is realizing that when you’re facing a delay, disappointment, or disagreement you can consciously choose how to react. In your mind’s eye you may even see the diagram of the three responses to frustration we’ve been using. As the incident is occurring you will realize you have choices. Which choice is most useful in achieving your goal?
5. Enjoy your hard-earned control. After you’ve gained control of thinking, and faced down many frustrations without blame, your automatic responses will take less conscious effort.
Mastering these thinking patterns enhances relationships, and promotes fiscal strength, pleasant emotions, and resilient health.

Identify your targets and triggers

Identifying the people and groups you target is a useful step in ending habits of blame. You might start by becoming conscious of the times you “take the bait” and join others in ridiculing individuals or groups. Be brutally honest about who you blame when your life, work, or project hits a barrier.
If you can’t think of anyone you blame, look at your emotional reactions: with whom do you overreact? Who pushes your buttons? Which groups or people make you steamy? Who is the butt of your jokes and put-downs?
Do you feel antagonistic toward men, women, different occupations, different ethnicities, immigrants, southerners, rich, poor, tree huggers, bad drivers, people from the East Coast, young people, seniors?

Who do you target at work?

At work, who do you consistently avoid or enjoy ridiculing? Common workplace targets include new hires, senior employees, colleagues, bosses, upper management, unions, temps, human resources, IT, other departments, other plants, and so on.
If you work in a corporation, you or your colleagues might scapegoat engineering, purchasing, operations, sales, the executive team, the stock-holders, your president, CFO, the board, suppliers, customer services, shipping, service, operators, technicians, administration, OSHA, quality control, your parent company, or another plant or shift.
Targeted groups in government or social services include politicians, clients, citizens, families, youth, Republicans, Democrats, corporations, commissioners, legislators, the mayor, PACs, lobbyists, city council, or the governor.
If you work in a college or university, targets are often deans, commissioners, students, faculty, tenured professors, teaching assistants, or other schools, disciplines, or departments.
The list is endless. When do you find yourself getting energy from self-righteous indignation and contempt? Is the majority of your humor based on put-downs of another group or person? When do you talk about others in denigrating ways? What groups or departments are on the receiving end of your blame? When do you and your colleagues use attacks on others as a form of entertainment?
Be honest. This thinking is almost universal. Use the space below to list the groups or people that come to mind. You’ll use these lists in Chapter Seven.
Again, if no person or group comes to mind, think about your emotions. When you flood, who’s on the receiving end? Who do you resent? Who makes you mad? What people or groups are on your list of pet peeves?
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Who do you target in your personal life?

Many of my clients report that they manage their anger and irritability quite well at work; however, their behavior at home is an entirely different story. This isn’t unusual. Many people are more polite and tolerant at work than at home.
For many, emotional meltdowns occur at the end of the working day, when they face the second wave of daily demands—the drain of maintaining a home and attending to the needs and idiosyncrasies of partners, pets, children, meals, laundry, bills, errands, and neighbors—at a time when their physical and emotional stamina has been depleted.
Although flooding at home may seem less costly than flooding at work, the residue is just as damaging, if not more so. The medical data we covered in Chapter Two is clear—relationships at home have the power to either make us sick or help us heal.
If you’re flooding with your children, you’re damaging ties to loved ones who can either be a source of pride and intimacy, or bring your life (and perhaps your career) to its knees. There are unlimited variations of both passive and aggressive responses to adult flooding that children engage in. Cutting, depression, truancy, running away, eating disorders, sexual promiscuity, and chemical dependency are only a few of the ways children create paybacks for emotional attacks and outbursts from their parents. I’ve worked with more than one CEO who was struggling with variations of this scenario.
In your personal life, do you blame your children, brothers, a spouse, an ex-spouse, parents, a boyfriend, neighbors, sisters, the government, teachers, a girlfriend, coaches, referees, players, racial or ethnic groups, liberals or conservatives, car mechanic, plumber, gays or straights? Who do you make fun of?
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Situational stress

Some people don’t target specific individuals or groups. They are more vulnerable to flooding and negativity when they face specific, stressful situations. Do you flood when flights are late, when other drivers cut you off, while preparing your taxes or paying bills, at sport events, waiting in lines, facing the mini-rebellions of children, when you read the stock market report or watch the news? Do you have a particular weakness for flooding when technology fails in the forms of computers losing data, cars stalling, batteries going dead, or software that won’t integrate with other systems?
 
The maelstrom of fatherhood is a chance to show grace
under real pressure, to be cool despite the chaos of your
son’s room.
That’s something that’s worth a fellow’s time.
—Hugh O’Neill
Author of A Man Called Daddy
 
Jot down the situations or places where you feel intense irritability, or feel yourself beginning to flood. Again, you’ll use this list in Chapter Seven.
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Six ways to extinguish inflammatory thinking

Many people have contributed to the research on cognitive therapy and negative self-talk. Among the most well-known are psychologists Kenneth Burns and Martin Seligman. Their books helped me develop my early insights into the power of thinking to shape moods and behavior.
As you begin to get conscious of your patterns you can short-circuit the flooding response by paying attention to how you think. When you feel yourself starting to flood, use any of the following techniques. For now, choose one or two that you find the most appealing. Practice it for a few weeks and then return to these pages and adopt additional strategies.
1. When you start feeling tense ask, “What am I saying to myself? Is it helping me?” If your thinking is making you anxious or upset, ask yourself one following questions.
2. Ask, “What are the facts? Is there a “baby in the back seat?” Why might this problem exist?” Give yourself the assignment of generating multiple scenarios of why reasonable people might be behaving in this manner. This technique keeps you in the cortex, the problem-solving center of the brain.
For instance, if someone is late for a business meeting, generate all the possible reasons for his or her delay. It’s an interesting way to entertain yourself and you can check the accuracy of your speculations when they arrive. You won’t have to do this for long—again, it’s a technique to replace reflexive aggression with new habits of curiosity and concern.
3. Ask yourself, “What’s reasonable and realistic?” It’s not necessary to adopt a habit of forced optimism—in some studies optimism was found to be a less useful coping mechanism than pessimism. But what about realism? What’s reasonable? This question will counter our tendency to catastrophize or inflame a crisis or stressor. Catastrophizing is defined as the mental rehearsal of the all the things that can go wrong following a particular event. It’s a surefire way to crank up anxiety and dread. Instead, ask yourself, “What’s reasonable?”
4. Finishing the following phrase three times is another anti-inflammatory trick: “At least it’s not…” This exercise can become a source of black humor and a nutty coping mechanism for yourself and your group. “Well, my new workspace is in the middle of the route to the bathroom, but at least I’m not in the stairwell!” “My computer crashed but at least I wasn’t injured!” “The coffee pot is empty again but at least my coffee mug is now full.” Focus on what’s there, not what’s lacking. These are ridiculous responses. However, that’s precisely why they short-circuit flooding and indignation.
I heard a psychologist explain that he and his family (his wife and two teenager children) travel across the state of Iowa—on bicycles—in July. They join a fundraising event that requires they sleep in tents and, on occasion, use cornfields for bathrooms.
He explained that this was a great bonding experience for his family, but it also had another, unanticipated, benefit. It lowered the bar of what his family considered essential.
A few months after his last trip he was traveling for business and his flight was delayed by a mechanical problem that developed after the plane had taxied away from the gate. When the captain announced that the passengers would not be allowed to disembark until the problem was resolved, everyone but the psychologist flooded.
He sank back into his seat and said, “Well, at least we have ice water. At least there are multiple toilets. At least I’m sitting in a comfortable, air-conditioned environment in a padded chair with something to read. “At least it’s not,” is the opposite of inflammatory thinking.
5. Whatever you focus on expands in your mind. During rush-hour traffic people are often tailgating and abruptly changing lanes. Many times, when I’m in this situation I can feel myself starting to get tense. Shifting my attention to the people who aren’t driving that way is an effective antidote. There are lots of people who still drive “the old-fashioned way.” I don’t lose track of what the hotheads are doing, but I reduce my stress by not obsessing about their behavior.
During a presentation of this material to a group of CEOs one of them blurted out, “How am I supposed to stop flooding?! The other day I was the driver for my carpool. I was in the fast lane and the person in front of me was going below the speed limit! What am I supposed to say to myself about that?”
I imagined his poor passengers, trying to catch a few more minutes of shuteye or finish paperwork, and their driver is blowing his cool at the pace of the preceding driver. What a waste of a pleasant mood and tranquility. I suggested he shift his attention to anything else: classical music, the book his colleague was reading, a pressing issue at work.
In a sense, the nature of our thinking is determined by our intentions. If I want to search for stupidity, my brain will comply. If I realize the price I’m paying for this nearly invisible decision, I can shift my thinking and other realities will dominate my thoughts.
For a detailed example of how our intentions shape data see “Transforming the Enemy” in the appendix. It highlights the reality that when we want to see someone as deserving of our contempt, we selectively filter data to support our intention, even as we review the “facts.”
6. There is one sentence that I find particularly effective when I’m trying not to flood. I say to myself, “You can be effective or self-righteous; pick one.” Before I changed phone services, I used this phrase frequently while waiting an endless amount of time for someone to answer a service call. Although I knew the wait was unreasonable I also knew that if I became irritable and indignant while I waited, when customer service finally answered my call, I would not be able to do the complex thinking that was necessary to solve my problem.
It’s especially hard not to flood when we feel we’ve earned a good outburst. Last year I struggled with holding my anger at bay during my third trip to Kinko’s to pick up material I needed for a Monday morning meeting. Kinko’s was printing off a disk and, on my first and second trips to pick up the order, which occurred over the weekend, I discovered that the computer had dropped data off the copies. At first I was able to retain my calm with relative ease. However, when I found the error again, on my third trip—the morning of the meeting—while dealing with yet another store manager, I had to struggle to hold back my anger. By then I deserved a good outburst! Yet at a rational level I knew the costs I would incur by taking my frustrations out on the hapless manager. It was more important to fix the problem and have the materials I needed.
Working with their computer expert, the third store manager identified the reason for the recurring errors, and the manager agreed to my request to give me the materials at no cost. As I got into my car I patted myself on the back for my self-control, drove 10 minutes toward the site of the meeting, and realized I had left my calendar with the directions, contact information, and phone numbers for the meeting—at Kinko’s!
I felt like an idiot. However, when I called the manager on my cell phone and asked him to find my calendar and read me the directions I was incredibly grateful that I had treated him with respect. He responded to my request immediately and sounded relieved that he could return a favor.
Kinko’s employees, working with a computer with which they were unfamiliar, had made a series of mistakes. I held them accountable but I did it with warmth. Fifteen minutes later, I made a significant error. However, this is where positive reciprocity works its magic. Because I hadn’t used Kinko’s errors to make a scene, the manager kindly went out of his way to help me out of a bind. Reciprocity is a valuable, reliable principle, and we’ll explore it in detail in the next chapter.
In order to stay in positive energy, you don’t have to walk around thinking, “Isn’t everyone wonderful?!” In fact, the opposite is a more effective approach. We’re all flawed. So what’s the advantage of flooding?
Unless you are in imminent physical danger, the reason you are flooding is not because of the event, but because of your thinking. Drag yourself back to neutral and ask yourself again, “What could be rational reasons for the other person’s behavior?” This assignment forces your brain to use the cortex.

EASE: Calming a flooded employee or customer

In the beginning of your transition to blame-free thinking, your cronies and friends will still invite you to join them in denigrating another person or group. If you’ve been susceptible to blaming others in the past, there will be moments when others will expect you to ridicule a well-worn scapegoat, and they will be surprised if you no longer join in. Over time, people will learn that you no longer “take the bait” when they try to gain your support for attributing the cause of frustration to other people’s personalities.
You can tell people directly that you’ve made a decision to stop blaming. Or, if you prefer, you can make the transition so seamless and effortless that others won’t even notice that you no longer join in to ridicule a target. Your supervisor, colleagues, and direct reports may be puzzled that you seem more laid back, fun, and warm, but they won’t be able to pinpoint the exact nature of your change.

Revisiting the case of the angry police officer

We can quickly see the advantages of sidestepping an invitation to blame someone by returning to the situation of the police officer in Chapter Five. That scenario is a perfect example of a direct report setting up his supervisor to blame his bosses’ boss. Very tempting.
A quick review of the facts: While I was working in Wisconsin with police departments, three officers were paged out of the room to respond to a citizen who had barricaded himself in an apartment with a small arsenal of guns and was threatening to kill himself or anyone who came close. With great skill and courage, the officers were able to convince the gunman to surrender and he was taken to jail.
Imagine that one of the three officers later returns to his desk and finds a memo from the mayor denying his department’s request for bulletproof vests. The officer, who is already flooded from the high-risk assignment, reacts to the memo and storms into his chief’s office to blast the mayor.
In Chapter Five, the chief surrendered to the temptation of attributing the department’s problems by targeting an absent person. The chief doesn’t realize the price he’ll pay for his lack of integrity.
Instead of this negative scenario, let’s see how the chief can calm his officer, bond with him, preserve his pride in the organization, and move toward solving the problem. This is the reflective, problem-solving orientation at its best.
The technique is called “EASE.” and it is very effective. It utilizes the same principles that Michael and Julie Weisser used intuitively when they defused the anger and hatred of the KKK’s Grand Dragon, Larry Trapp. A hard-headed search for solutions combined with warmth and appreciation is an irresistible response to someone who is bent on blaming another person or group for his or her frustration.
You’ll find that when you use this technique with someone who is flooded, he or she will drop the energy of negativity in a heartbeat for a chance to feel the calming energy of genuine appreciation.
There are four steps to EASE: Empathy, Appreciation, Search for Solutions, and Explore. First you’ll have an opportunity to apply EASE to the chief’s situation. Following that exercise, you can script out a response to a familiar pattern of blame from your work.

1. Be empathic to the frustration.

First, the chief should react to the reality of the officer’s situation. He can acknowledge that returning from a dangerous run and finding a memo that denies crucial safety equipment is demoralizing. The chief can understand that the officer’s reaction makes sense. The chief’s direct report is having strong, negative reactions because he’s concluded that his safety is not important to administration.
Empathy is identifying and understanding another person’s feelings. It does not mean you have to agree with them, although you may. Genuine empathy requires feeling another person’s expressed and unexpressed emotions, which are almost always reasonable, given their worldview. You may have a different perspective, but you will be more effective if you acknowledge his or hers first.
Acknowledging another person’s frustration is the first step toward helping them regain control of their emotions. In my experience, most people become more agitated and aggressive when they feel their concerns have been dismissed or minimized. Listening and empathizing produces the opposite result.
Imagine you are the chief of police, and Mike, the officer, has returned from a dangerous assignment and is justifiably frustrated about finding a memo denying needed equipment. Acknowledge his frustration. How would you agree with the officer that his frustration is understandable given his world view?
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2. State your appreciation for his or her commitment, expertise, and efforts.

Many times employees go to a supervisor or colleague and say, “I have to vent.” A detailed narrative of how they overcame a series of unpreventable barriers to complete a task almost always follows this statement.
However, as we’ve already established, venting isn’t an effective antidote for flooding or negative emotions. Therapists no longer give their clients pillows and plastic bats to beat out their anger and frustrations. Venting and aggression actually reinforce the circuitry associated with flooding and predisposes people to future expressions of anger—making it more likely a flooding response will occur.
It’s more effective to change your thinking patterns and eliminate the problem, rather than to manage it after it’s occurred. Once we’ve flooded, the chemicals have already entered the circulatory system.
Helping a colleague or customer change their physiology into the energy of appreciation is one of the most effective ways to alleviate the discomfort that accompanies flooding. Remember the heart rhythm of appreciation from Chapter One? By shifting the emotional tone of the conversation from hostility to appreciation, you can help your colleague or customer regain their feelings of well-being by acknowledging the strength of their commitment to solving the problem.
The chief has a perfect opportunity to help his officer make this shift. He could ask for details about how they disarmed the resident. The chief could acknowledge and commend his officers’ expertise in handling the incident. The three officers convinced the citizen to surrender—an act that took tremendous skill.
I’ve used this technique multiple times, and I get the same results that the Weissers received from the Grand Dragon, Larry Trapp. Like Larry, my clients drop their hostility for a chance to bask in the positive feelings of having someone recognize and respect their intentions and contributions.
Again, put yourself in the shoes of the chief. What could he say that might motivate the officer to drop his anger in exchange for the opportunity to hear someone pay tribute to his commitment, service, and professionalism?
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3. Speculate about reasons.

The shift to reflective thinking will be automatic if the chief speculates about the mayor or city council’s rationale. What “baby” might they have in the back seat of their car?
The chief can take this step even if he doesn’t know the reason or agree with the city council’s conclusion. At this juncture, it’s just important he takes the focus off the decision-maker and put it solidly on the situation. Speculate—the options are limitless. Perhaps the city council is facing a budget shortfall. Maybe they need information about the cost savings associated with vests. Perhaps they are misinformed about the efficacy of the vests. Maybe they are waiting for a substantial uniform expenditure in the next fiscal cycle. How would you segue the officer towards more reflective thinking?
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4. Explore next steps.

By addressing the situation in this manner, the chief has acknowledged that there is a problem, and he has bonded with his direct report without incriminating the mayor. He has taken steps to ensure his officer is thinking about the problem rationally. Now, the chief has to address the problem and, if possible, identify a specific, measurable next step.
The chief could make several suggestions: they could invite the mayor to their next staff meeting to discuss options and barriers, they could make an appointment to see her, or the chief could simply pick up the phone. Perhaps they need to collect data for the mayor to take to the city council on the effectiveness of the vests. Or maybe the chief already knows the situation is not worth pursing with administration. In that case, the next step might be looking for alternative sources of funding.
This last step is reassuring to a direct report. It’s clear the supervisor is more than talk. In most cases, direct reports have no choice but to rely on their supervisor’s willingness to elevate and act on problems that are important to staff.
Again, take a few minutes to imagine and record a reasonable next step for the chief and his officer.
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If you want to eliminate the hazards of blame from your life, your ability and willingness to open the dialogue—even in awkward situations—is critical. I think this was one of the reasons for the latter half of Einstein’s famous quote, “It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

In your words

Following is an opportunity to apply these insights to a situation in your life. Imagine an ongoing frustration for you, your direct reports, colleagues, or customers that often results in someone storming into your work area flooded and intent on “venting.” Identify a legitimate frustration, and a typical person or group who gets targeted. If nothing at work comes to mind, address a situation in your family.
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1. How could you bond through the use of empathy—a stated understanding of the frustrations the other person is feeling?

Again, listen for the hurt and wounded pride under the anger. Do this without agreeing that the cause of their frustration is a person, department, or group.
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2. Write two or three statements you could make in appreciation of the person or his or her efforts.

You might comment on level of expertise, desire to resolve the frustration, the investment they have in work, or more specifically, the actions they’ve already taken to resolve the problem before coming to you. If you let yourself feel the other person’s passion, you may notice that underneath anger often lays a deeply felt desire for things to run more smoothly, with fewer complications. What words would you use to comment on their commitment, talent, and investment in work?
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3. What “babies” (constraints, demands, pressures) might be in the back seat of the targeted party?

What legitimate pressures could cause the other parties’ behavior? Consider budget shortfalls; lack of time, resources, or staff; interruptions; illness; market pressures; safety constraints; shipping problems; lack of information; operation limitations; bottlenecks; misunderstandings, lost data, and so on.
At this step, I think of myself as the mythical Sherlock Holmes: dispassionate, analytical, and open to any possibility or surprise. The main goal in step three is to replace negative assumptions and judgments with curiosity and concern. Assume that the other party is reasonable and invested in doing a good job. Consider that the source of your problem might be in the situation or in your systems. We’ll cover this possibility in more detail in Chapter Eight.
Workplace problems are often the result
of incompatible performance measures.
If I’m in sales and my quarterly bonus is based on the number of orders I generate, then I’ll have little concern for the impact on operations and I’ll dismiss their frustrations as lack of imagination, or an unwillingness to go the extra mile for a customer. However, if I understand their performance measures, I’ll see that their behavior is reasonable, given the evaluation criteria that will be used to evaluate their performance, and perhaps base their compensation, at year-end. If the problem seems serious, I might even raise the issue that performance measures are causing tension between departments. This is actually quite common, but it is rarely diagnosed because employees and leaders are often focused on personalities, rather than policies, as the source of the problem.
Brainstorm the known or possible constraints and pressures of the other party in the situation you’ve identified.
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4. What actions might your direct report, colleague, or family member take to open the dialogue or problem-solve?

What would make a reasonable first step? Data collection, a conversation, arranging a cross-functional meeting? Identify three or four.
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The alternatives to blame take skill and courage, but they are simple and effective, they are easily within reach, and they can become just as automatic as blame and contempt. Bonding and bridging to other people and departments through empathy and appreciation has multiple advantages to your body, profitability, retention, morale, pride, productivity, and effectiveness. Once the energy of appreciation takes hold of an organization, the possibilities for growth and resilience are almost limitless. When many minds combine for the common good their accomplishments are breathtaking.

Saving your time and sanity

Think back to the examples in Chapter Four, the “The shut-out employee,” or “The defiant power plant operators,” where either party could have broken a stalemate with innocent questions and saved themselves frustration and embarrassment.
People don’t reach out to clarify their perceptions because they fear they will make a moderately troubled situation worse. In Chapter Nine you’ll learn a way to open the dialogue that is both safe and powerful.
Never again will you have to wonder what someone’s behavior means. Rather than resorting to silent and inaccurate speculations, you will ask for his or her help in understanding his or her actions, and you will do it in a way that entices him or her to join you on a hardheaded search for solutions.
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