The Art of De-Escalating and building trust....

I have no doubt in my mind that 'The skill of de-escalating and building trust ' is an Art. It is an ART because de-escalating requires you to be creative, sometimes eccentric and the response is unique  every time you deal with an escalation.

The 'Art of De-Escalating' from my own experience is built on the foundations of 'Empathy' and 'Trust'.

With empathy you feel the pain of the one who is escalating and with trust you create a belief that you will do everything possible to ease the pain.

Escalations are always seen as negative because it tends to show people responsible to do the job as incapable of doing so and hence someone higher up called up to resolve the situation. There is an inherent lack of trust in every escalation to start with.

Some escalations are inevitable and some that could have been managed through better controls however every escalations is an opportunity for individuals to step up to de-escalate the situation by owning the issue. As a leader it is important to create a culture where an escalation does not lead to fear and panic but an opportunity for individuals and teams to step up, resolve and take control .

Over the years I have seen individuals grow through the ranks by their sheer ability to play a leadership role in dealing with the escalations and their ability to manage escalations through ownership as well as considering the various dimensions of the issue including the impact on the client, organization and his own teams.

Through handling many escalations over the years I have also realized that the ART of managing an escalation is to determine the intention and impact of an escalation before you put an action plan to start de-escalating. New leaders very often make the mistake of jumping into an escalation and controlling the event without giving an opportunity to the team to de-escalate on their own, while some leaders wait too long before they take over the control. 

This ability to time your involvement as a leader and to start controlling the escalation is therefore an 'ART' that needs to be learnt and developed.

The art of managing an escalation is a combination of all of the below:

1. Empathy: To understand the gravity of the situation for the one who is escalating.
2. Impact assessment: The intensity and the degree of Panic of the stakeholder does not always mean the impact is proportionate. To be able to respond with the right intensity the impact of the event has to be grasped thoroughly irrespective of the intensity of the stake holders panic.
3.  Long term impact: Consideration on the long term impact on the Clients as well as your own teams Morale and Confidence.
4. Bigger Picture: The leader managing the escalation is required to look at the bigger picture of meeting the client needs and building trust.

If you are a new leader the process I follow to deal with escalation is as follows:

• Take a deep Breath: No this is not silly. You never know what your mental state at the time of the escalation is. You may be closing on your performance review and this escalation could bring you in stress related to your Performance Review. So take a deep breath and calm yourself down. Don't make it about yourself because you need to think about the person escalating.
• Acknowledge the Escalation: A common mistake leaders do is to get into fire fighting / resolution mode without letting the client know that you are working on the escalation. Important thing is to send them an email that you are aware and are looking into the matter. Call them and discuss if possible.
• Understand the impact: The intensity and urgency of an escalation is to be determined based on factors like Time to impact: when is the client going to be impacted. Is it one hour from now or one month from now AND Nature of Impact: the impact on the client could be Financial Loss, Brand Value Loss, Regulatory, Non - compliance etc.
• Trust your teams: Give your teams sufficient time to resolve the matter without taking control at once. Be more of the communication channel with the client to help teams focus on resolution
• Ask for Help: A common mistake is to avoid embarrassment by asking for help. It is better to ask for help early as it gives teams more time to resolve and bring situation in Control.
• Split teams: into resolver groups to focus on one problem instead of every one working on everything.
• Look For Workarounds: while every one wants to resolve the root cause that has cause the issue there always look for workaround that can in the short term mitigate the impact to the client.
• Regular communication: Communicate regularly with the stakeholders on progress made, challenges faced and next steps to build trust. You may also schedule Check / Control point calls at fixed intervals.
• Final update: Hopefully by now you have resolved the issue. Send out a summary of the issue and the final status of the issue.
• Acknowledge all the effort: Many a times leaders forget to acknowledge all the hard work that has gone into de-escalating the issue as they focus on why the escalation happened in the first place. This can have a negative impact on the overall morale.
• RCA, Lessons Learnt and Trust: Now is the time to build the trust with the clients. You know the client was put through unnecessary stress and the fact that you have resolved the issue may not mean that their trust in you has been restored. Create a detailed RCA, walk them through the lessons learnt and the steps taken to avoid such events happening again.

At the end of the day escalations should be avoided. It not only stresses people but also slows down teams as they have to take a step a back to relook at their process and introspect instead of spending time on growth, expansion or upscaling.

But if you do hit an escalation look at it as an opportunity to be a leader who can restore the trust and sail through troubled waters with skill and confidence.