Personal Safety Training

It’ no surprise that with the current economic climate that people are becoming more and more angry.

Let’s face it we all have a right to be angry at the moment.

Who is not angry with the banks for bringing the world economy to its knees? with our Local Authorities cutting services, and of course we have the expenses scandal and the newspapers taping our phones and invading our privacy.

People have every right to be angry but what they don’t have is a right to be hostile and abusive towards others.

Anger in the workplace:

With the current government cut backs many employees are experiencing increased workloads, are having extra duties placed upon them, their pay frozen or cut all of which can lead to increased stress levels.

Psychologists have identified three different types of personality

Type A: These individuals are aggressive, impatient, competitive, hit the roof if they have to stand in a queue or some-one has the audacity to be a few minutes late for a meeting with them.

These individuals appear to be completely stressed out and rushing around but not really getting very far.

Who remembers the actor John Cleese’s in Fawlty Towers demonstrating a perfect example of the above

Type B: These individuals are the total opposite to the above as they always appear to be calm and relaxed even in a crisis they are able to rationalise the situation and make those around them feel completely at ease.

Again going back to the TV Bobby Ewan in the famous sit com Dallas typified the type 2

constantly staying calm and rational whist battling with his type A brother JR always, Bobby always trying to do what is right and fair for every-one and rarely getting emotional.

Type C: Tend to bottle up their emotions and if challenged will usually total deny that there is anything wrong.

This type is often the most difficult to deal with as they can explode on you without warning.

In conflict resolution training we talk about the pre-attack triggers, Warning & Danger signs and the importance of identifying and responding appropriately to these signals to diffuse and prevent escalation.

Type C’s are often experts at hiding their emotions and don’t need to be triggered as they are already there waiting to move onto the next stage of the assault cycle escalation in many cases this is compounded by the fact that the person they eventually explode on is not the person they are angry with but some innocent bystander who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How many times have you watched the news on the television about some tragedy involving some-one going on a killing spree shooting neighbours, relatives, colleagues, or total strangers and you hear people who knew them being interviewed saying things like they were perfect neighbours, friends or colleagues very quiet, kept themselves to themselves etc.

Examples of the above include the Hungerford disaster (Michael Ryan), Dunblane Massacre: (Thomas Hamilton), Kimbra Taxi driver (Derrick Bird) and Raoul Moat who taunted Northumberland police prior to taking his own life.

The perfect solution for the workplace is to only employ type B’s if you want to have a safe and enjoyable place to work, but reality is not like that.

I suspect most people reading this like myself have worked with both type A’s & type C’s

These individuals if not checked are a burden to both others and themselves.

Attending a good Conflict Resolution training course will help staff identify types A & C.

Conflict resolution training will also give staff the necessary tool kit they need to identify the triggers, the Warning & Danger signs enabling them to apply the appropriate diffusion strategies.

Types A & C could also benefit from conflict resolution training and benefit further by attending a Stress Management training course

Brooks Jordan Training Services training provide training on both Conflict Resolution, Stress Management and a host of Corporate Management training programmes.

For more information please visit our web site http://www.brooksjordan.co.uk

What is Conflict Resolution?

Conflict resolution is a general term often used to describe personal safety & managing violence/aggression training courses.

Do teenagers need conflict resolution/conflict management skills?

The answer is most definitely Yes

The facts: The most vulnerable members of society in the UK and many other countries are young men between the ages of 15 and 24.

Anger and aggression is a part of our every day life.  While as individuals our anger may be justifiable – who does not feel anger when they hear about the big payouts made to bankers, or cuts to public spending which will affect their quality of life..  But what people don’t have a right to be is hostile and abusive towards others.  Understanding what is acceptable and what is not is the key to managing anger successfully and avoiding aggression.

Brooks Jordan has been providing Personal Safety & Conflict Management training courses to both independent and state sector schools for over 15 years and the fact that we are called back year after year to repeat this training is testimony to the effectiveness of our personal safety programme for schools.

Do teenage girls need Conflict Management skills?  Again definitely – Yes.  Although young women are less disposed to physical aggression than young men the risk for women is always greater in a male to female confrontation, due to the imbalance in strength between men and women.  Hence for young women the risks are in relation to their personal safety, rather than girl on girl physical aggression.  Here avoidance and remaining alert to potential dangers are of greater importance than the risk of conflict or confrontation between women.   Nevertheless young women will be going out with young men and in groups so could easily be drawn into a conflict situation where conflict resolution skills could prevent a hostile encounter from escalating.

For these reasons Brooks Jordan’s Personal Safety Awareness for Students programme is specifically tailored to meet the needs of teenagers, men or women, heading off to college, university or further education in cities they will be unfamiliar with.  For the majority of young people this will the first time they have left the safety of their own home and family to experience the excitement and freedom of independent living.  Few will truly appreciate the risks they may face nor the realise how potentially more hostile their new environment in some of the big cities such as London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham or Nottingham may be.  This is often quite a culture shock for students bought up in rural or less confrontational parts of the UK.

Have a look at our short videos on our training by following this link: http://vimeo.com/8153966

Just ring us on (01623) 407793 and ask to speak to Julie for more information about this essential training for students.

Having run thousands of personal safety courses throughout the UK I have met many individuals who have experienced extreme fear and yet others who claim they have never actually had a Fight or Flight reaction.

Fear is normal it can significantly enhance your chances of survival in a potentially dangerous situation.

The amigdala has developed over millions of years to aid our survival and once triggered it produces powerful performance enhancing chemicals to flood the bloodstream enabling us to become , Faster, Stronger, and in many cases we can become totally desensitised to pain.

The amigdala can be triggered by any of our senses e.g, smell, sound, vison, touch, etc. but for us humans most of the information we receive is through our eye sight.

Think about the example I gave in the previous issue about walking into a public house and just getting an uncomfortable feeling.

Through your eyes alone the brain is feed a vast amount of information most of which is filtered out but even the smallest micro pieces  of information that threatens your personal safety are high jacked by amigular before the logical brain gets an opportunity to analyse the situation.

So we walk into a bar, we scan our environment, read body bold language both verbally &  non verbally we are all experts at this, but some people excel at this by training in NLP for instance and we will look at this in later articles.

You may also notice there seems to be an  unpleasant atmosphere which you would have difficulty explaining to some-one but you just know something is not right.

Scientists have now established that this is why most of us do not become victims of violence we trust our instinct and remove ourselves from potential threats and that the small number of  individuals who become victims are just not tuned into their instincts or go into denial.

Two things to remember about instinct:

Firstly it is always a response to something.

Secondly: It only has your best interest at heart.

In the next issue we will be looking at awareness and the research that has been carried out into this.

You will learn how to increase your awareness significantly so that you can become your own personal bodyguard.