Restoring Reason and Civility in Public Spaces
Empowering Frontline Workers with The eSCAPe Protocol
Empowering Frontline Workers with The eSCAPe Protocol
The eSCAPe Protocol provides concrete strategies to manage people who are angry, unreasonable, panicked, insulting or just plain difficult.
Why eSCAPe Matters to Your Organization
Public trust for most organizations can be gained or lost by what happens at the reception desk, on the sales floor and over the phone.
Which means your organization depends on coolheaded frontline workers.
The Cost of Living in Unsettled Times
Yelling back doesn’t work
In today’s polarized society, maintaining civil discourse is an ever increasing challenge.
We are a people on edge. Insignificant interactions can explode into furious arguments or anxious avoidance of the very issues we need to resolve.
Too many people are “losing it” and the question has become how to stay calm ourselves and calm those too agitated to discuss and solve problems with common sense and mutual respect.
Few are more impacted by our national volatility than frontline workers, those who encounter and negotiate day to day with people requiring assistance, service or goods from public and private institutions.
We know that police, firefighters and EMTs routinely encounter enraged, panicked or irrational people.
Often overlooked are workers who, as a condition of employment, are expected to calm and placate individuals reacting with unreasonable anger or distress because of delay or denial of what they need.
Highly charged frontline encounters occur in countless settings: the complaint desk in big box stores, the sign-in desk in hospital emergency rooms and the waitng lines in motor vehicles offices. Working remotely is no protection. Telephone hotline and customer service workers also endure verbal abuse from angry callers.
It’s not just individual workers who suffer. So do coworkers, supervisors and bystanders.
Being nice may not work either.
Frontline workers never know when an interaction might become a confrontation.
When frontline workers fail to calm things down, they are often criticized for not handling things better. Rarely are frontline workers taught effective strategies which tell them how to navigate these volatile situations.
The stress of navigating these encounters is exhausting and demoralizing for frontline workers, dismaying for bystanders who witness such encounters, and confounding for supervisors.
The Answer is the eSCAPe Protocol
The eSCAPe protocol is a mindful interpersonal tool for restoring connection and reason between a distressed person and the person who wants to help.
The approach consists of a set of four, easily learned interventions that foster social connection, give agitated people a sense of choice and control, anticipate what will happen next and restore brain’s capacity to think and to plan.
Who Benefits From eSCAPe Protocol Training?
Everyone Benefits When People use eSCAPe.
eSCAPe training is a positive response to our deeply polarized society. It can help bring about a shift away from the attitude so prevalent today of “It’s us versus them.” “We’re right. You’re not just wrong; you are bad and stupid.” Instead, eSCAPe training fosters a sense of respect and compassion for our common humanity.
