verbal judo

Verbal Judo is a means of using language to get someone to comply voluntarily with your original request. Unpleasant confrontations are more likely to occur if an officer talks, without conscious thought, to someone on the street. "Stop doing what you are doing!" Get over here now! Stay calm and be reasonable!" These are all natural ways to speak in a tense and difficult situation. However, by using a demanding voice or loaded words, you may only further escalate the tension, which could result in violence.

It's no wonder, then, that an individual who has been yelled at by a police officer would turn around and start cursing at the officer, even making derogatory remarks about the officer's mother. Once riled up, they may start moving around in unpredictable and threatening ways. Once someone starts acting or speaking abnormally or becomes threatening, we've been instructed on how to use an appropriate level of force when justified, even up to nonlethal weapons like pepper spray or a baton if the circumstances move to that level. I've been pepper sprayed at the police academy, and it's simply not pleasant. Anything we can do to avoid this or the use of any weapon is certainly preferable. 

So we learned how to avoid this unconscious kind of speaking by relying on Verbal Judo, which seeks voluntary compliance through a deliberate way of speaking that's actually quite unnatural to most of us. For example, we were instructed to say, "For your safety and mine, you need to stop doing what you are doing." Depending on the situation, we may say, "Is there anything else I can say or do to get you to do A, B, or C?" or, "I would like to help you here, so let's talk through what just happened." We were also taught to give people options. "You can stop doing what you're doing, or here is another option: I will put you in this police car, take you to the station, and book you. You will probably miss work tomorrow. Or remember the other option - you can stop doing what you are doing." These are more engaging, less threatening methods of interacting, but they definitely take practice and deliberate, conscious thought.

Laura A. Liswood

The Loudest Duck: Moving Beyond Diversity While Embracing Differences to Achieve Success at Work by Laura A. Liswood. Wiley. 2010. p.115, 116

the stockdale paradox

Admiral James Stockdale, a pilot whose plane was shot down over Vietnam in 1965… observed that the POWs who broke the fastest were those who deluded themselves about the severity of their ordeal. They imagined that they would be freed next week, or next month, or by Christmas. But he lasted unbroken for seven and a half years because, in part, he refused to lie to himself.

Here’s how he explained the Stockdale Paradox: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.30

great calamity

What happens to us becomes part of us. Resilient people do not bounce back from hard experiences; they find healthy ways to integrate them into their lives.

In time, people find that great calamity met with great spirit can create great strength.

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.23

when we have a vision of what we can become

How do we develop desires? Few will have the kind of crisis that motivated Aron Ralston, but his experience provides a valuable lesson about developing desires. While Ralston was hiking in a remote canyon in southern Utah, an 800-pound (360 kg) rock shifted suddenly and trapped his right arm. For five lonely days he struggled to free himself. When he was about to give up and accept death, he had a vision of a three-year-old boy running toward him and being scooped up with his left arm. Understanding this as a vision of his future son and an assurance that he could still live, Ralston summoned the courage and took drastic action to save his life before his strength ran out. He broke the two bones in his trapped right arm and then used the knife in his multitool to cut off that arm. He then summoned the strength to hike five miles (8 km) for help. What an example of the power of an overwhelming desire! When we have a vision of what we can become, our desire and our power to act increase enormously.

Dallin Oaks

"Desire," General Conference. April 2011

let's learn to live with crisis

I want to tell you a story that was brought to me by one of my own Random House authors, Mr. James Michener, who wrote Hawaii, the most successful novel in America since Gone With the Wind. Jim Michener tells about a man who, in 1938, was a very successful Wall Street broker, had a beautiful duplex apartment on Park Avenue in New York, a wife and two handsome children. In 1938 this man said, "I smell another war in the offing. I went through World War I; I do not intend to go through anything like that again." Despite the protestations of his wife and family and his business associates, he sold his business, closed up his apartment, packed up all his belongings and his wife and children, and bought himself a plantation on an island nobody had ever heard of way out in the South Pacific; and he said, "They're never going to get me in World War II." The name of this island happened to be Guadalcanal. It is a true story. This was 1938. In 1964 it is even harder to get away from the world, so let's learn to live with it and realize that we are living in a time of perpetual crisis.

Bennett Cerf 

BYU Speeches, April 16, 1964, p. 3

walk the talk

Inspiring leaders walk the talk. They have character and conviction. They live by a different moral compass. They back up their words with action...

On October 2, 1994, the 49ers were losing to the Eagles 40-8. Head coach George Seifert pulled [Steve] Young from the game. Years of pent-up frustration boiled to the surface. Young was livid and visibly argued with the coach. While it was out of character for Young to show such anger publicly, the players began to perceive him in a different light. They saw a fiery leader committed to winning. The “Steve Young Rant” became a rallying cry for the rest of the season.

Five days later the team played in Detroit. Young got hit so hard an excruciating pain shot up his leg. “Writhing in pain” Young crawled on his elbows to the sideline. The doctors were worried he had injured a nerve and told him not to play. Young overruled them. As long as he could walk, he wanted back in. Two plays after crawling off the field he jogged back to the huddle and completed 17 of 20 passes, leading a come-from-behind victory. “Dude, you really are crazy. You did the death crawl,” one of his teammates said. Young had cemented his leadership role.

The 49ers played like a team with a new conviction. They won the next ten games and ended the season with the number one offense in the league. Young was named MVP, but didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment. In the locker room he gave the speech of his life:

“It’s 34 days to the Super Bowl. We need to make a commitment that every day we do everything we can to put the flag on top of Everest. Let’s go make some history!” Everyone roared. Young had become the leader everyone wanted to rally behind, but only after his actions during the season gave them a reason to follow him.

“Perception is reality. I had worked hard my entire career to establish myself as a leader. But I wasn’t a leader until I was perceived as one. You become a leader in times of trouble,” says Steve Young. “Leaders emerge when things don’t go well. When everyone else starts pointing fingers, a leader takes responsibility.”

Carmine Gallo 

"Hall Of Fame QB Steve Young On Leadership, Character And Conviction" Forbes. Nov. 2, 2016

a sense of urgency

Most successful change efforts begin when some individuals or some groups start to look hard at a company’s competitive situation, market position, technological trends, and financial performance. They focus on the potential revenue drop when an important patent expires, the five-year trend in declining margins in a core business, or an emerging market that everyone seems to be ignoring. They then find ways to communicate this information broadly and dramatically, especially with respect to crises, potential crises, or great opportunities that are very timely. This first step is essential because just getting a transformation program started requires the aggressive cooperation of many individuals. Without motivation, people won’t help and the effort goes nowhere....

A paralyzed senior management often comes from having too many managers and not enough leaders. Management’s mandate is to minimize risk and to keep the current system operating. Change, by definition, requires creating a new system, which in turn always demands leadership. Phase one in a renewal process typically goes nowhere until enough real leaders are promoted or hired into senior-level jobs....

In a few of the most successful cases, a group has manufactured a crisis. One CEO deliberately engineered the largest accounting loss in the company’s history, creating huge pressures from Wall Street in the process. One division president commissioned first-ever customer-satisfaction surveys, knowing full well that the results would be terrible. He then made these findings public. On the surface, such moves can look unduly risky. But there is also risk in playing it too safe: when the urgency rate is not pumped up enough, the transformation process cannot succeed and the long-term future of the organization is put in jeopardy.

When is the urgency rate high enough? From what I have seen, the answer is when about 75% of a company’s management is honestly convinced that business-as-usual is totally unacceptable. Anything less can produce very serious problems later on in the process.

John P. Kotter

"Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" Harvard Business Review. May-June 1995

all plans fall apart on the first round

[Y]ou need to establish clear lines of trust and communication between you and your subordinates.

The rationale is actually quite simple: The moment the shooting starts and everything goes to shit, it becomes critically important that you understand your mission and its end-state.

“There’s an old adage, which is very true: that all plans fall apart on the first round fired and things start going to hell in a handbasket,” explains Smith. “If everybody understands what the real intent is, what the real purpose, the larger purpose of a particular action is, when shit goes to pot, people can be guided by what we’re really trying to accomplish instead of just doing exactly what they were told in the plan....”

“I would say that the more nebulous the environment the more important that everybody down to the lowest ranking private understands the larger purpose of every action, so as to be guided when things go to hell,” explains Smith.

James Clark

"6 Combat Leadership Tips From A Badass Marine General" Task & Purpose. 4/5/2016

Note: Marine Maj. Gen. Ray L. Smith is a tested and proven combat leader and a highly decorated Marine veteran with more than 33 years of service under his belt. He is a recipient of the Navy Cross, two Silver Star Medals, a Bronze Star Medal with Valor, and three Purple Hearts for injuries sustained in combat. Smith served in Vietnam, Grenada, and Beirut and has led men under fire and commanded troops at every level.

his calm presence of mind

With the situation as grim as it could be, no one was more conspicuous in his calm presence of mind than [George] Washington, making his rounds on horseback in the rain. They must be “cool but determined,” he had told the men before the battle, when spirits were high. Now, in the face of catastrophe, he was demonstrating what he meant by his own example. Whatever anger or torment or despair he felt, he kept to himself.

David G. McCullough

1776. Simon & Schuster, 2005. p.185

tolerance of ambiguity

There are inherent personality traits in someone who will most likely be successful working in a complex crisis. They’re easy to describe, harder to realize and even harder to capture at the right time....

“It’s tolerance of ambiguity,” said [Michael] Bowers (senior director of strategic response and global emergencies for Mercy Corps.), who began his career in Kosovo. “We get a lot of people stewing in that for so long — in South Sudan, in Syria, surrounded by a bombardment of challenges. It’s not just thinking quickly, it’s something that’s protracted years … with no end in sight....”


Kelli Rogers

"Leadership in conflict defined by 'durability of solution thinking'" devex. 8/24/2015

great teams win

Leadership is all about team. It is easy and somewhat understandable to get self-absorbed when you are responsible for a project in crisis. During those Xbox trials, I certainly fixated on what I should do differently and why I was failing. I took a sabbatical shortly after the launch of the first Xbox, and with the help of some fabulous advisers, I realized that I was not the secret to success. Instead, the team around me held all the keys required to unlock our potential. My job was to give them the necessary strategy framework and direction and then allow them to apply their unique skills to improving our results. Great leaders find a way to attract the right people, and the right people form great teams, and great teams win.

Robbie Bach

"The Big Leadership Lessons I Learned Almost Failing To Create Xbox For Microsoft" Forbes. 11/5/2015

find your inner grist

Today, most assume that Xbox was somehow destined to be a winner, but having been Microsoft’s chief Xbox officer, I am here to report that its early years were much more like a ship on the rocks than a sloop cutting through the waves.... As I reflect on surviving the near-death Xbox experience, which we turned around using a strategy process called the 3P Framework to create Xbox 360... I would humbly suggest the following...

Find your inner grist. Being in the depths of a crisis strikes at the core of your being and challenges your very soul. As an individual, you have to believe that you can lead the team successfully and fix the issues you face. If you have this type of faith in yourself and in others, it will become a force-multiplier, making you and the team stronger. You also must consciously decide to persevere regardless of the obstacles, and in the process have the courage to make difficult make-or-break decisions. I’ve heard several people recently define this combination of faith, perseverance, and courage as grist, a wonderfully rough-hewn word that clearly communicates what it takes to transform crises into opportunities. There is no logical, rational reason why Xbox was successful, but the team absolutely had the grist required to do what others thought was improbable.

Robbie Bach

"The Big Leadership Lessons I Learned Almost Failing To Create Xbox For Microsoft" Forbes. 11/5/2015

step away

Today, most assume that Xbox was somehow destined to be a winner, but having been Microsoft’s chief Xbox officer, I am here to report that its early years were much more like a ship on the rocks than a sloop cutting through the waves.... As I reflect on surviving the near-death Xbox experience, which we turned around using a strategy process called the 3P Framework to create Xbox 360... I would humbly suggest the following:

Step away. Almost every leader’s first instinct is to dive into the engine room to fix problems he or she sees. At the depths of the Xbox process, I found myself up late at night doing manual DVD testing to identify flaws in the Xbox DVD drive. Although that level of engagement theoretically shows that you are part of the solution, it is almost always a mistake. Instead, take the time to step away from the keyboard and elevate your attention to the broader issues. How and why did we get here? What are the root causes of our dysfunction? How can I use strategy, team design, delegation, and other macro tools to guide us in a better direction? If you dive in, you encourage the team to cede responsibility to you. If you step back and provide guidance, you empower them to take ownership.

Robbie Bach

"The Big Leadership Lessons I Learned Almost Failing To Create Xbox For Microsoft" Forbes. 11/5/2015

don't throw me out of the boat!

When I think of crisis I think of the story of Louie Zamperini as told by Laura Hillenbrand in her book, Unbroken. While on a rescue mission, Louie’s B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The three survivors (Zamperini and his crewmates, pilot Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips and Francis "Mac" McNamara) end up in a life raft with minimal food, trying to make landfall. One night, in an act of panic, Mac ate all of the chocolate bars (approximately 6) as the other men slept. Mac’s actions put the other two at significant risk. Louie and Phil were discouraged by Mac’s actions, but they didn’t throw him overboard.

Later, the three men are spotted by an enemy fighter pilot, who strafes the small raft – puncturing the boat. Hillenbrand writes:

Phil’s raft had been slashed in two…. [T]he ruined raft… didn’t sink, but it was obviously far beyond repair…. Each time one of the men moved, air sighed out of the chambers and the… raft sat lower and lower in the water. The sharks whipped around it, surely excited by the bullets, and the sight and smell of men in the water, and the sinking raft,

As the men sat together, exhausted and in shock, a shark lunged up over a wall of the raft, mouth open, trying to drag a man into the ocean. Someone grabbed an oar and hit the shark, and it slid off. Then another shark jumped on, and, after it, another…. As they turned and swung and the sharks flopped up, air was forced out of the bullet holes, and the raft sank deeper. Soon, part of the raft was completely submerged.

If the men didn’t get air into the raft immediately, the sharks would take them…. The men hooked [a pump] up to one of the two valves and took turns pumping as hard as they could. Air flowed into the chamber and seeped out through the bullet holes, but the men found that if they pumped very quickly, just enough air passed through the raft to lift it up in the water and keep it mostly inflated. The sharks kept coming, and the men kept beating them away….

Louie began patching… As Louie worked, keeping his eyes on the patches, the sharks kept snapping at him…. Hour after hour, the men worked, rotating the duties, clumsy with fatigue. The pumping was an enormous exertion for the diminished men…. All three men were indispensable. Had there been only two, they couldn’t have pumped, patched, and repelled the sharks. For the first time on the raft, Mac was truly helpful. He was barely strong enough to pull the pump handle a few times in a row, but with the oar he kept every shark away.

I think of those three men, struggling to survive in the boat. Surely, if Louie and Phil had thrown Mac overboard for eating all of their food, they wouldn’t have survived the sinking raft and attacking sharks. Mac had the opportunity to act during this crisis, and his heroic efforts saved the lives of the men. Mac was necessary to avert disaster.

While we’re in crisis situations, stress levels rise and it’s easy to find fault with one another. Encouragement is more important than criticism when the team is truly up against it. Are you inspiring the troops, or busy trying to throw them overboard when the going gets tough?

Adam Dibble

"Don't throw me out of the boat!" leadershipYES 2/24/2016

and make sure to read:

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Random House. 2010.

cultivate resilience

According to experts, the following 11 activities help cultivate resilience:

1. Having a core set of beliefs that nothing can shake.
2. Finding meaning in whatever stressful or traumatic thing that has happened.
3. Maintaining a positive outlook.
4. Taking cues from someone else who is especially resilient.
5. Not running away from things that scare you: Face them.
6. Reaching out for support when things go haywire.
7. Learning new things as often as you can.
8. Having an exercise regimen you’ll stick to.
9. Not beating yourself up or dwelling on the past.
10. Recognizing what makes you uniquely strong—and owning it.
11. Practicing mindfulness.

Mindfulness deserves a special mention. In a study, Marines who underwent an eight-week course in mindfulness showed great gains in resilience. No only did their heart rate and breathing rate show less reactivity when faced with a stressful situation, their brains changed too: They showed lower activation in the region of the brain associated with emotional reactions. By the end of training, their brains looked more resilient.


Samantha Boardman M.D.
"Bounce Back: 11 Ways to be More Resilient: Data-driven insights to help deal with stress." Psychology Today. 8/14/2015

if you’re honest and authentic

According to [Dominic] Barton, the experience of the scandal [two senior McKinsey executives had been arrested for insider trading] taught him some important leadership lessons. One was to be “completely open” in such a situation. “I had [heard] advice that ‘you had better not say very much; wait until you find out more.’ But my view is that I’m just going to say how I feel…. If you’re honest and authentic, people pick it up and know that you’re serious about it.” He said he actually communicated much more about the event than he tried to hide it in situations such as recruiting, for example.

“I had splinters in my back from going over the bar so often … and I finally realized, you know what, I’m going to set my own bar. And I’m going to make it higher than theirs.”

The second lesson, said Barton, was to spend time understanding what really happened. “[McKinsey] has human beings; we have people that do bad things. And we have to help each other try not to do that.” He added that monitoring systems have been put in place: “If someone’s more than two standard deviations off with a peer group, they get audited. It’s automatic.”

"McKinsey’s Dominic Barton on Leadership — and His Three Tries to Make Partner." Knowledge@Wharton. 9/9/2015

demonstrated the resilience

Before Jimmy Carter sat in front of the microphones Thursday morning at the Carter Center in Atlanta to discuss his cancer diagnosis, some speculated the former president might use the moment to raise public awareness about the disease.

As a man who has a family history of cancer and has devoted his post-presidency to championing a vast array of complex causes, it made sense. The health-related news conference, itself an unusual move for a former president, could be the start of yet another area of advocacy for Carter.

But while such efforts may be yet to come, Carter's news conference did not launch research initiatives or public platforms for cancer advocacy. When asked what message he had for others, there was no public-health speech for the masses.

Instead, there was simply Carter: gracious, smiling, honest, at ease. The 90-year-old former president spoke openly about his diagnosis—doctors have found four small spots of melanoma on his brain—and how he was feeling. He shared details about the medications his doctors were using and said his first radiation treatment would be Thursday afternoon.

He also shared the story of telling Rosalynn, how he plans to still teach Sunday School this weekend in Plains, Ga., and what he felt when he heard the news. "I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t go into an attitude of despair or anger," he told reporters. "I was just completely at ease. ... I've been very grateful for that part of that. I'm ready for anything."

In doing so, Carter gave us yet another model for responding to a setback. A man who will be best remembered not for his presidency but for what he accomplished after he lost it, Carter has again demonstrated the resilience that has been a driving factor in his life and career.

Jena McGregor

"Even in cancer diagnosis, Jimmy Carter shows leadership." The Washington Post. 8/20/2015