Knowing When To Stop: Avoiding the Escalation Trap

Hello everyone and welcome to the Human Behavior Podcast. Today, Greg and I are talking about one of the most important skills in any tense interaction: knowing when to stop. We explore why people keep pressing after a situation has begun to de-escalate, how the need to be right can become counterproductive, and how to recognize the off-ramps that keep accountability from turning into escalation. This conversation offers practical insight for leaders, professionals, families, and anyone operating in high-stakes environments where the ability to stop at the right moment can protect relationships, preserve influence, and produce better outcomes. Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you enjoy the episode. Don't forget to check out our Patreon channel for additional content, please consider leaving us a review, and more importantly, share it with a friend. Thank you for your time. And remember, training changes behavior. All right, we got a great show, Greg. I'm super excited to get into avoiding the escalation trap and knowing when to stop. But first, I want to shout out to all our listeners, both longtime and new. We've been a little behind on getting episodes out — we've just been slammed this whole first half of the year with projects. We've got that corralled now, and we're excited to get back on a more consistent path. We've been adding more to the Patreon, so you can always find more there, and we've got a lot more coming up: guests, different show ideas we're sketching out, and some interesting stories we want to cover with some inside knowledge. Thank you for hanging in there, and for those of you who've been reaching out — especially folks who have some personal relationship with a case or something in the news — you've got some great episodes coming up where we're going to talk about things you've asked us about. We appreciate that. Today's topic actually stems from something on our Patreon called "And Another Thing." The basis of it is: the conversation is over, or the argument is over, things are de-escalating, and someone wants to throw in one last point. The idea is that some of the worst outcomes in a situation do not begin when things first become tense — they begin when it's actually starting to settle and someone decides to add one more thing, one more sentence, one more point. So I want to start there, Greg: why does that happen? Why do we do that as people?

First and foremost, it happens with everybody. It doesn't matter if you're a teacher, a cop, or a parent. These things happen every day. What we're going to do is show you how they develop and give you the idea of: when I sense this is happening, how do I stop it from turning into a mess? Remember that the initial problems could be legitimate — there was an incident of disrespect, unnecessary risk, or resistance, and you need accountability. The mistake doesn't happen then. The mistake happens when someone in that incident fails to recognize that the interaction has changed. They continue pressing because they're still responding emotionally to that first version of the dysfunction. And then, as things are winding down, that last unnecessary comment thrown out in a glib manner turns that stabilizing interaction right back into a contest. Our advice to anyone listening is: don't let the behavior that started the event blind you to the behavior that is ending the event. You've got to read the room. Those unnecessary comments matter more than all of the initial work that you did.

And we would call that updating your baseline, right? The baseline has changed from where this initially started, so you need to update it in order to get a clear picture of the situation.

Right, and at that point you've inadvertently become a contributing factor. Instead of promoting problem solving, you're actually creating the dysfunction or adding to the turbidity that's creating it.

So let's define what we mean by knowing when to stop. Because you can fall into the escalation trap — you're locked in, you can't get out, and literally the only way out is to keep escalating. But when we say knowing when to stop, we don't just mean ignore the situation, avoid accountability, or roll over and go passive. So what do we actually mean by it, Greg?

Point number one in your mind needs to be that stopping isn't surrender. Stopping is a demonstration of your self-control. We understand the way the brain works — we mimic behaviors, so you being under control is a strong motivator for the other person to gain control. That's a scientific fact. It demonstrates that you've recognized your continued pressure is not producing any additional safety, clarity, or compliance, and you're not getting any closer to a resolution. There's no warning sign that you're about to cross the line where your further actions or statements are serving anything but your ego. Those points that act as an emotional release for you actually punish the other person. What we're identifying is the difference between needing to be right versus needing to be heard. "I need you to understand that I'm right" is very different from "I want you to understand how I'm feeling and how this made me react." And the ultimate goal is to maintain your professional decorum no matter what the interaction is, because once you fall below that standard, you fall into the trap.

And that's kind of why we say most people want their say, not their way. There's a psychological and sociological imperative where if I feel wronged, at a minimum I need my feelings validated — someone saying, "Yeah, that was messed up, what happened to you was wrong." That alone can be enough. But in those situations, when there's emotional content to it, how do we distinguish appropriate pressure from piling on? How do I know: okay, I still need to hold the line here, but I don't want it to look like I'm piling on?

Yellow-pad everything first, and rehearse it when you don't have dysfunction in front of you — when it's just you with 15 minutes and some music. Tabletop it. How would I approach this? It's always okay to outline your concerns, but the right amount of intensity needs to be balanced to the current unresolved need, right now, in this moment. Needing to win, needing to be right, means you might bring a hammer to a conversation that only calls for a fly swatter. That's a huge distinction.

I've actually seen you do that before. You were trying to de-escalate and move the conversation along because it was circling the drain, and you actually said, "I don't want you to feel like I'm piling on, because I'm not" — you identified it explicitly, and then you offered a constructive next point.

Piling on has a direct correlation to the original incident, but the problem is it's emotional baggage — emotional residue you're carrying from that earlier moment. It's always harmful rather than helpful, because it's hard for a human to avoid the "and another thing" impulse. And then the week before that, and the week before that — now you're drifting out of the lane. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself: what good does saying this word or this sentence do in this context? If your answer is nothing — it doesn't solve anything or move the conversation forward in a constructive direction — then your response is much more likely to distract or add friction than to answer the matter at hand.

This is all very easy to talk about on a podcast when we're not in the middle of an argument. We fall to our lowest state of order — the primitive brain is constantly kicking. You're talking a lot about self-control, but it's meta-control, meaning control what you can control. So why do capable, experienced people still keep going after they've already achieved the outcome they needed? Is it emotional baggage? Did they not recognize that they'd achieved the outcome? Why do we keep going?

Understand one historical perspective when it comes to your biological makeup. Humans are always ready for an attack, always ready to defend — that's our makeup. Stress narrows our perception, so we see any difference of opinion as a disrespectful challenge, a threat. We don't deal with anger or defiance or danger very well, so we meet those challenges when it might be best to avoid them. If you see things ramping up that way, take a look and go: this isn't my exit, but I'm going to take it, because avoidance here might be the best way out. We also assign importance to friction. The very first time we deal with somebody and we know they're bringing us a problem, absolutely everything that comes out of that person's mouth from that point forward is viewed as the behavior of a problem child. We're on the defensive from the moment they walk down the hallway — they're making a turn and we're already mentally going, here we go. That predisposition means we're likely to miss evidence that they are calming down, that they are complying, that they're probing you for an exit, and you're not offering it because you're still just waiting to talk. What exacerbates that is being in front of others. If you have an audience, we feel pressured to demonstrate our power and avoid appearing weak. Whether it's your kids, a cafeteria, or a work environment, that's hardwired into humans. We only have a few choices — if we don't flee, we're going to fawn, meaning we cower and put up with the humiliation, or we stand up and fight. At that point, the situation becomes more about winning and much less about solving the problem. So anytime you look at what you're doing and it serves no purpose, back off. This is where that rehearsal can come in — this is where you plan before you go into the conference room.

The plan is always important because this can happen easily in any workplace, even where nothing is physical. Once I see someone as the problem child, I start making that fundamental attribution error — attributing everything to them personally. But it's not about the person; it's about the specific things that continue to happen, a pattern of behavior. Those can be tough conversations, but they shouldn't be, because you're not making it about the individual.

Let's go to the least objectionable place — say it's on the playground, everybody's having a good time, and then an argument breaks out. At the very moment you find yourself playing to the audience, trying to get the audience to see that you were right, you've left that problem and entered performance. These people see you in the arena all the time, and the problem is that getting into the arena, wearing your armor, grabbing your spear and net, means you're ready for a fight. That's not the projection you should be giving. The projection should be: I'm ready to resolve the issue at hand. That's the win.

I like framing that as: is this about the problem or is this about performance? We've all seen it — someone gets upset about something, a crowd forms, and they keep going because they've created a role for themselves that they have to fulfill in that moment. They can't walk it back. Being able to see that and recognize where you're at in the situation is really valuable.

You have to see yourself performing from the outside, like a fly on the wall. If you don't, you won't be able to recreate it and fix the bad behavior. For example, we recently saw a supervisor raise a legitimate issue — hey, you seem very distracted at that staff meeting. The person acknowledged it and started to explain the context. The supervisor immediately cut them off and said, you do that all the time and you're making us look bad. What happened there is a shift from accountability to humiliation. Everyone on that team who watched it said there's no commitment to corrective action, this doesn't lead to resolution, and it damages trust. You took a person who willfully acknowledged a mistake and made them account for all past mistakes. You're trying to win rather than trying to fix something.

The first instinct should always be corrective action, and we don't always create the culture where it's okay to make mistakes as long as you acknowledge and admit them. There's actually a good example from an aircraft carrier where a mechanic on the flight deck couldn't account for one of their tools and immediately called it out — all stop, I can't find this tool. In that situation, a tool getting sucked into an engine can mean catastrophic failure. So they shut down flight ops, got everyone out there, walked the entire deck, got it accounted for. The next day they held a formation to praise that sailor for standing up and doing the right thing. Yes, it interrupted the mission, but they corrected it — and that's the point. That's why those procedures are there. If you'd admonished that person instead, what message does that send?

That's the right time to use an audience — to modify a group's behavior and show them that if you come forward with an issue, this is about saving lives and completing the mission. That's how you do it. And again, sketch it out before you print it out.

In these escalatory situations — whether you're watching something back on video or sitting as a fly on the wall — you can see it escalating while the people involved aren't recognizing it at all. So what are people missing when they fail to recognize that a situation is beginning to spiral out of control?

You said it very well early on — the idea is behavior and context. If you're focusing too heavily on the words, on the verbal content, and you're not watching their behavior with those words in context, then you could be led astray. Maybe they are opening behaviors and I didn't update my assessment to that behavioral shift. All of a sudden instead of rolling their eyes, they lean their head back and they're nodding. I take that response as an attempt to manipulate me or to save face, rather than saying, hey, wait a minute, this is a nexus — I'm seeing an off-ramp develop, and I could really exploit that. So the advice to anybody listening: if the situation is de-escalating, you've got to let it. It's easy to fall into the trap where you go, I don't yet trust this person, so I'm going to keep applying pressure until I win. If you're there, you're going to pass every one of those exit ramps without seeing them. That's why you've got to take that pregnant pause. That's why you've got to take that breath. And then what happens is the information creeps out. If you're doing that, you're likely to see the open door or the open window or a way ahead. If you're not, you'll just be berating the person, and that leads to nothing good.

We talk about time and distance all the time, and with things like rage and anger, you can't maintain that forever. Sometimes when people say give them some time to cool off — yeah, that's true. Those emotions, those catecholamines, they subside after a while. Your body can't keep pumping out adrenaline and cortisol. It has to recycle, it has to go, hey, I'm spent now. So there is that time component working to your advantage. They can't stay mad forever unless they're doing the Popeye thing, just going around and around.

He's self-regulating, although it's kind of destructive. Look at his arms.

So how does HBPRNA add to the conversation here? Let's frame it in the stuff we talk about on other episodes and in class. How do we use it, and what value does it have in these types of situations?

HBPRNA is not mind reading. It's not a collection of isolated tells like a poker match, and it's not a parlor trick. What it does is help you assess patterns that become visible, or look for patterns when you're not aware they exist, and then measure that against the context to determine what fidelity that has on a baseline — what behavioral direction you can determine from a changing baseline. We were here, now we're here, now we're here. We're above, now we're below. So the key question isn't, is this person upset? Clearly they're upset or you wouldn't be there. The key question is, what's their behavior like now at this point along our baseline, and which direction is it moving? I always take the yellow pad and turn it on its side — panoramic. On the left-hand side, put what you could ask, and list the questions you think you're going to ask. On the right-hand side, go, wouldn't it be better to ask them this? — and formulate and rehearse it before you're in the scrum, because if you're in the scrum it's never going to come to you. You can ask yourself, are they angry? But a better question would be, is their behavior becoming more or less organized? Are they exhibiting behavior that is more intense or less intense, more confrontational or less? What that gives you is a chart you can refer to as it goes on. Did they just disrespect me? Back that up and ask, are they presenting a safety, performance, or relationship issue rather than a personal attack? Because if it is a personal attack, you can rebound by saying, let's not make this personal, let's stick to the issue at hand. Now you're creating a spiral follow-up. The question you should constantly be asking yourself is, are they complying? Does the overall behavior support an actual stabilization of events, or are they just concealing another concern? More evidence doesn't mean pure evidence. I want to go along that baseline and go, we were here and now we're here — they were agitated and closing distance, and now they're contemplative and giving distance. Those are the implements you want to be looking for on your chart. And if you don't have a chart, how are you going to find it? If you say you're good at baseline — where is your baseline? Show it to me. Because if you don't have one, you don't have it. I've yellow-padded it five times before I get there.

These are the clarifying questions that matter, that allow you to see it. Because everyone wants to make it simple — are they a threat? That's a completely subjective question based on the person asking it. One person might consider something a threat that another person would never even see. So when you said, are they currently right now presenting a safety, performance, or relationship problem — you're putting a timestamp on it, like a hypothesis test. Because labeling it right is important. In a workplace situation: hey, this isn't about you, this is about performance of you and the team. But then they keep going back to something personal. Now I know — okay, I tried to make it about this, but you keep making it about that. It clarifies it for me and gives them the off-ramp. And then they go, okay, yeah, I see how it's affecting performance. So now we're already starting to take steps in the right direction. Those clarifying questions — are they making the situation more or less chaotic?

It's binary, but it's a simple, emotion-based binary for human behavior. Is this getting better or worse? Medics ask that. When they come to a scene and you've been shot, they're saying, is the pain worse now, or was it worse when I first got here? Are you feeling any relief? That's what they want to know.

And that's when those clarifying questions come in — what does it mean in this moment right now, based on this updated baseline? We've been in this argument for five minutes. What else has changed? I have to update from here, not from what happened twenty minutes ago or a day ago. And that's where you can start reading the direction and get ahead of it — okay, I see this is de-escalating, we're good. Or, I'm making all these genuine, substantial attempts and I'm still not seeing the off-ramp, not seeing the sign saying exit quarter mile. One of the things is you don't want to fall into the trap of assuming everything's okay. A person can appear calm and still be dangerous. In workplace violence situations you'll see someone get up, leave the room, sometimes without saying anything, and you think okay, what the heck — and that's when they go out to the parking lot, pull the shotgun out of the trunk, and come back in. So how do we avoid treating de-escalation as a guarantee?

So let's go back to every podcast you and I've ever done, every in-class training session that we've ever done. Reduced intensity is information. It's not proof. Information isn't intelligence — it has to be processed. So it's one more factor to consider. Your assessment has to include all the basics of reading the room: their movement, their distance, their attention, their access, their fixation, positioning — and all of that has to be measured against the environment and the baseline. These are baseline white belt elementals. And once you've measured the weight of those observations and perceptions, now you consider the presence of others in the crowd. An audience might be changing their behavior positive or negative. So it's easy to mistake somebody getting quieter as them calming down. It might mean they're digging in, it might mean they're becoming more deliberate and tuning you out. The goal is to not assume good intent. The goal is to read the tea leaves and adjust your intervention to exploit or accept the current behavior as long as it's going in a positive manner. Never accept negative behavior. Never. You have to set boundaries and you have to reinforce those boundaries. But it's real easy to go, hey, we're getting somewhere — I like that, let's follow up with that. Because now what you're doing is you're conducting a test. Was it real? Did this person really just have that epiphany, or are they covering up for something they don't want me to see?

What you're talking about is it's not just about setting boundaries or calling out something inappropriate. It's also praising the direction that you do want. So it's okay, not over here — I'm putting the boundary on — but oh, you're going over here, hey, I like that, I'll go over there with you. I'm going to ask you a question that I know is really hard to answer, but this is the stuff that most people want. Everyone goes, what are some of the indicators, what are some things to look for? And we're always like, well, it's not the thing to look for, it's how to look. You're looking for incongruent signals — is this incongruent or is this congruent? But what are some indicators that might show someone is moving towards de-escalation? They're not signaling yet, but they're slowly drifting towards that exit lane. They haven't put on the blinker, but you can see they're starting to move over and take an off-ramp.

The key is that you want to create a degree of fluency in this. You don't necessarily need to be a subject matter expert, but you need to be good at it. One of the things you have to get good at is feeling a person's willingness to at least see a least-objectionable path out of the interaction. If they're saying it'll never work, we're all gonna die — that's real hard to come back from. So if I see and feel and perceive these types of events, they're giving fewer interruptions. They've reduced their verbal intensity. They're using less space for direct confrontation — instead of walking up on me and being very demonstrative, they're allowing more physical space for the conversation to continue. I see or hear or feel a shift from them being accusatory to them forming an explanation, working it out in their own mind while we're right there together. And you sense they're accepting the reasonable request you gave them. Look, I need you to take a step back for a minute. Let's lower our voices and see if we can get at it. They're at least seeing the boundaries — that's a step ahead. So when you start sensing there's less fixation on that original dysfunction, the original grievance, you're creating that time-distance gap. You're observing a more organized speech pattern, a lot less frenetic movement, fewer posturing behaviors. Posturing is an important one, Brian, because those are electrochemical neurotransmitters causing me to pump out my chest and show you my jugular. When I see less of those, it's clear that I'm getting through, and we can together work on the solution. It can't all be me. You have to give part of the solution for it to become a contract, something we can enforce later.

You've got to take it in the context of the situation, especially if you don't know the person. If you know the person, you'll have a better baseline for what's typical. I remember when me and my wife were first dating — one time we got into an argument about something, it wasn't anything big at all. I thought it was just a discussion. She framed it as an argument, but I didn't get that. She said, well, I try to talk to you about something and you get this Chicago attitude. That was her term. And I was like, what? But then once she spent Christmas at the Marren household, she was like, oh, I get it — this is just how you guys talk to each other. Like, you're not actually upset, you're just passionate about whatever. Then she got to see what an actual fight at the Marren household looked like, and she was like, oh wow, that's much more aggressive than what you do normally.

Comparison points.

What it means is that when you're developing that baseline, that knowledge of the individual is also helpful. But how would you be able to tell that, all right, maybe I've got to stay on this a little bit longer — maybe this isn't de-escalating yet, maybe this isn't taking that off-ramp?

So let's talk about that at home, around the holidays. You notice the language seems to be relaxing, calming down — yet the posture and positioning is either more concerning or increases in aggression. Clear sign something's not working. You don't have the normal give and take of a conversation. Their comments keep circling back over and over to a single point — well, you said this, well, when I heard you say that. They're following you, monitoring your actions very closely, looking for that point to re-engage. That's combative — we would put that in the combatives manual. Their continued attempt to bring others into the argument on your side — you know he does this, you guys have seen that. We call that the recruiting phase, especially for coppers. If you see that, you're in trouble. They're still at odds with accepting the situation at hand, still ready to fight. Gaining space can be a very good thing, but if you see them gaining space to give themselves an edge — moving behind the island in the kitchen, moving behind the kitchen table — or saying they've got something to show you, need to head out to their car — that could be a weapon. Whatever it is, that misdirection is an attempt to gain access or reposition to a position of advantage, and that should be concerning to you. Anytime somebody does something for no other reason than to gain an advantage, you have to take a step back. Give the gift of time and distance. Now their behavior becomes less expressive but much more deliberate. Have you ever seen two boxers get together before an upcoming bout? It's all trash talk until they get to the stare down. And that stare down is the most disturbing part, because that's likely the touch-off point for physical activity.

That's a great example because you just said the behavior becomes less expressive but more deliberate and purposeful. Those pre-fight press conferences are designed to create that buzz — everyone's talking crap, they've got their entourage, doing all this stuff. But then like you said, they bring them face to face for the photos, and fights have started right there before. Someone does something, sometimes triggered by an accidental bump, and then that guy goes, oh, here it is. It's the absolute crescendo — right there — and you can see it and feel it.

Perfect analogy for de-escalation. Put yourself mentally in that situation — this is a great on-duty roll call exercise. What could you do to lessen the severity, to add to the de-escalation likelihood? First of all, turn off the lights and the cameras. Second, get a little bit of distance between the participants. Next, lose the entourage. De-escalation is a function of the baseline elements in that environment and the context you find yourself in. Some people won't ever be de-escalated, but that doesn't mean you have to start escalation when you arrive. De-escalation has got to be an ongoing process — not just for this call, for every call you're on. How can I ease the anxiety? How can I see the dysfunction more clearly so we can get right after the solution?

Humans act differently in front of a camera, in front of an audience, when there are other people there. So if we can remove the audience — if you took the cameras away — none of that would happen.

Turn down those lights, right?

If there was no one in the audience, none of that would happen. If it was literally just, hey, you're going to go on that scale, you're going to go on that scale, meet in the middle for a photo — that would be it. But that's not entertaining. The environment is what increases the pressure. The situation, the context, all adds to that. So you've got to stop for a second and take account of what's happening. That's something I wanted to run past you. It's not something we explicitly talk about in class, but we're covering a couple of things here. One is reading and recognizing the situation — establishing the baseline, determining intent, seeing where it's going. But we're also talking about self-awareness, self-regulation, the internal baseline. You can't control everything externally, but you can control some things internally. Breathing is one way to influence your autonomic nervous system. What I've seen is something called the STOP test — a way to think through the moment. The S stands for separate the present from the past. What is happening right now, distinct from what happened five minutes ago? I saw a video on social media — a police pursuit out in California. Multiple agencies had the helicopter up, and at one point the watch commander called off the pursuit. The pilot came back and said, just so I'm clear, I observed what appeared to be muzzle flashes coming from his vehicle. And the watch commander just said, we're calling it off, back off. What happened at the beginning of that pursuit was very different from what was happening right now. That's a great way to frame it — separate the present from the past.

That's the hardest thing to do, and that's a great one, Brian. The hardest thing is to say knowingly that this is about now and moving forward, not about all of those injustices I witnessed in the past.

That's what I've got to do with my wife — okay, what does this have to do with what we need to get done right now? Can we just focus on what I did wrong right now, not three weeks ago? Then the T is test your purpose. Think: what am I actually doing here? Am I trying to create safety, get some clarity, establish a boundary, solve a problem — or am I just trying to make a point? You'll feel that too. You start to go off the rails and realize, that's not going to help the situation. I'm not going to fire off that text message or email because that just pours gas on the fire.

No matter how good it seems right now, give it a little time.

No matter how good it might feel — what am I actually doing here? Am I just trying to make a point or am I trying to solve the situation? Then the O is observe the direction of behavior. Is this escalating, stabilizing, or de-escalating? Every situation eventually comes to an end, so based on the direction it's going right now, where is it likely to end — good or bad? If you frame it that way, you can start to see the pre-event indicators of what's coming next. And then P in STOP is pick the proportionate next move. What's my next move? Do I continue on the path we're going? Do I fall back and gain some ground? Do I reduce pressure, create distance, offer an exit? Is this the one where I need to put a hard boundary in, or do I hand it off — hey, can you try this? Or do I literally just put it in reverse and back out of the situation entirely? These are choices. If we get mentally and emotionally hijacked, we fall into that escalation trap and our limbic system is making those choices for us — we're not consciously making them. So I wanted to hear from you: tell me why that's hard to do, or tell me why it's more difficult than it sounds.

I'll give you an experience. I was expelled from high school three times before I decided they didn't want me, so I stopped going. All three were self-inflicted. I remember the first one — they were ready to talk about the punishment phase, and I kept wanting to revisit the original incident. I had every right to be disagreeable, my actions were justified — the problem was I couldn't separate the present from the past. Then when you look at the O, observing the direction of behavior, that's hypothesis testing: are we better now, are we better now? First, I like the framework. It's easy to follow. But testing the purpose has got to be the hardest, because all humans are ego-driven and defensive by nature. The key is to observe your own actions like a fly on the wall. We can justify nearly any action as necessary when we're emotional. Given the right amount of emotional context and perceived pressure, humans are capable of amazingly bad things. The most disciplined question is: what outcome, what effect am I trying to create with this sentence, with these words? That implies you're already using the gift of time and distance — measuring your response, not just waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can speak. Active listening is huge here. What am I seeing? An attempt to escalate? An attempt to hold steady? Am I looking for an exit, probing to see what options are available? Once you've sized up the argument in full, review the words about to come out of your mouth before you hit send. And understand that if your response is rooted in revenge, punishment, dominance, or control — don't say it. You can say it to yourself in the shower. But you're about to do more harm than good, and you might not be able to unring that bell. That, to me, is the absolute hardest part.

And this is why we try to keep things simple — tactical takeaways you can actually try out. This is a framework. These are thinking points, not tactics, techniques, or procedures.

And they don't need to be. They need to be discussion points I can use to frame what I'm about to say or do.

That's what a lot of people are looking for. They want a four-step process, and that's great to analyze and go back to, but it's not how it works. It's why we always talk about it's not here's what to look for, it's here's how to look, because it's not always going to be the same thing or that easy. You don't have to have a very specific process. You have to find what works for you, given the person you're dealing with and the context of the situation. Like when we say baseline plus anomaly equals decision, everyone goes, okay, I'm seeing this anomaly, I'm seeing this anomaly. No — don't spend your time looking for anomalies. Spend your time figuring out what the baseline is, because the more fidelity you build in there, the more the incongruent signals are going to pop out to you. It's the same thing in these cases. Those questions are things you can do in the moment, though.

Let me throw something at you. I get highly frustrated when I see stuff online where so-called subject matter experts break down a video and the very first thing they say is, I would have done this, or I wouldn't have done that, or you can never do this. You weren't there. The framework should be: how can we look at what happened and move forward? Is it a leadership intervention? Is it a training intervention? Did the officer understand the situation? Now you're coming with an actionable list of outcomes that modify behavior. That's a way forward.

Everyone's jumping right to the solution, and you haven't even clearly defined all the elements of the problem. You haven't figured out how big it is.

Is it culture-wide? Is it agency-wide? And I'd say ask yourself that whether you're in HR or you're a parent. Is your role at home so destructive that you're creating this without even noticing it? So instead of spending all that time looking for punishment or revenge, ask yourself: what's the true problem here? What's the nature and depth of it? And then go try to solve it.

The parenting one is a good example. If I see my wife starting to get frustrated with the kids, I immediately slow things down — hey, let me get that, I'll handle it — because you can't have bad cop and worse cop.

No, you can't. All stick, Brian.

It kind of is in our nature, though. It's because of how we grew up.

We're defensive by nature.

Hey, don't do that. Hey, don't do that either. Hey, don't do that. Well, what am I supposed to do? It's a MacGruber line — I'll tell you what you're supposed to think.

I know.

Let me give a little example to talk through some of this. I'm deliberately keeping the scenario vanilla so people can map it to things they've experienced or seen online. There's a big thing now where people video interactions trying to get a reaction for social media — and what's interesting is people still fall for it even when it's obvious that's what's happening. So the scenario: a person is repeatedly told, hey, I need you to step back. They start arguing, but then they create distance and begin to comply. Now I'm the one dealing with them, and I keep moving toward them, repeating the instructions — I need you to get back, stay over here — while they're backpedaling. And then that person becomes confrontational again. Where does the situation begin to change? How do I recognize that, and where can we step in and see it?

An accidental demonstration of intent is intent nonetheless. You read their initial behavior, and when they moved back, they justified their understanding of the boundary — they accepted it. But then the behavior shifted direction, because as they were creating appropriate distance and beginning to comply, the officer, teacher, or parent didn't update their assessment of the situation. They kept executing the initial plan: move them back, move them back. They couldn't see that there was an exit lane. Your continued insistence on close proximity and additional verbal pressure took away any chance the person had to engage in further de-escalation, and now you're starting to rob them of their dignity. The situation shifted from solving the problem to exerting ego and control — I have the badge, I'm the teacher, you need to back up. Let's acknowledge all of that, take it off the table, and just say: you need to move back. And when they ask why, you say, well, you're scaring me. Oh, I'm scaring you? Yeah, so please move back and then we can have this discussion. Boom — disarmed. Now if after that the person chooses to keep advancing, after you've already said you're frightening me, that sets a very clear record for later when you have to explain why you continued to move forward. But that subversive move where you say back up and then take a step toward them? You've got to release that. You've got to relax that role.

There's a great example of this on social media — two bouncers at a bar with an outdoor patio. They're telling this guy, dude, you're done, get out. He's arguing, they're putting pressure on him. He finally says fine, walks to the edge where there's a waist-high swing gate, goes through it, and stands on the public sidewalk. He left. Right there was the moment — they could have just said thank you, sir, and walked away. The guy would have had no one to yell at. But no, they stayed locked in. Get back, get your hands off the gate — even after he was already out. He actually complied, but they still needed to have the last word.

All wounds are self-inflicted, buddy.

He did exactly what they asked. He left. Yeah, he's still being a smart-ass standing on the public sidewalk saying he can be there — and you know what, he can. Call the police if you need to. It's so hard for people to disengage once that limbic system is running and you're locked in a groove, because you stop constantly looking for other options, you stop updating your baseline, and you lose sight of what success looks like. It becomes about yourself. So how do you catch that in the moment? How do you gauge — okay, this isn't ideal, but it is successful, we've crossed a threshold here?

Did it move your agenda forward in a positive manner? That's success. And success can also be translated as a win. If you need a win, that was a win. You did it with the most minimal verbal and physical violence possible, so there's nothing better than that.

I only have limited social media, but I like reading stuff by Dwayne Wolf. I certainly like Pappy Pap and Foos. Pap and Foos makes a large, complicated argument and breaks down specific factoids that tend to show you something happened.

You can use every one of those at on-duty roll call. Turn Brian's example into an on-duty roll call. Ask a probing question: we saw what happened — what would have been a better next move? How could we have changed this likely outcome? Now you're getting people to demonstrate their proficiency, but more importantly you're helping them with their fluency.

Somebody comes up and says, well, let's maintain clear, consistent boundaries, and if I have to adjust that boundary I have to account for it and say why. That's good. Jim says, reduce unnecessary verbal pressure, stick to what you need to accomplish. Laura says, let's give directions and an opportunity for a clear, concise exit from the encounter — hey, I didn't call me here, I'm clearly here to help resolve this issue. You see how that language all of a sudden shifts it.

The final point on this mock on-duty roll call: when we go out there today, let's never engage in any language or commentary that turns compliance into humiliation. We work at the behest of the community. To use your dad's phrase — God rest his soul — we're all in this at the same time. That's a de-escalation tool. He got right to the issue with that.

Defining and measuring what success looks like — even something as small as it is — like Shelly always says, celebrate the small wins. Going back to the bouncer example: did he leave and is he stopping? He didn't go home and walk away like you wanted, but the guy walked out of the establishment. He actually did what he was supposed to do.

What should we do when a person complies? The very first thing those bouncers should have said was, thanks for creating the space I asked for — we can address any of those other issues later — and then go to your neutral corners.

I'm not looking at a video and saying look what these guys did. I'm saying let's discuss how we can fix what happened and end it on a positive note for both parties. That person can come back later when they're not drunk, or it's not a birthday, or they didn't feel insulted. Now it's a win-win.

I need you to remain here with me while we sort this out together. What are you doing? You're enlisting the aid of others — it just happens to be the person you were called on. A cop says, well, that lessens my authority. No, it doesn't lessen shit. It shows that you're a human. So you tell the person, look, you have a choice here — we can get through this working together. What did I just do, Brian? I set very clear boundaries without being a dick.

You gave them an option, and so they then get to react to that.

Right, we establish that. That's what I'm saying.

So you're saying, hey, we can do this together. And if that person says we aren't doing shit together, okay, now I know what element can be added to that baseline.

The baseline increased. And reporting does this: I said this, they said that, and the crowd goes, yeah, he's right. Now I have a leg to stand on — and it's not the pirate leg.

I'm giving you this opportunity, and you not only didn't take it, you actually put a boundary down and said no. You dropped the gauntlet. Now you've made this go a different direction. That's when the situation changed — that's when I knew it was unlikely this person was going to comply, based on these factors. It's those small things that you're trying to measure.

Your STOP model illustrated that perfectly. There's a lot of good stuff on the market, but to evaluate it: what process led to actual de-escalation and what allowed for escalation criteria? Your bravado, your badge, your uniform, the number of responders — all of those things add to the equation. Which one of those can I reduce without reducing force protection, without reducing safety and security, and still get to the desired outcome? How many times have we taken a knee and done that? But should we do that for an event, a parade, a hiring, a firing?

Staying focused on what outcome am I trying to achieve, what effect am I trying to have — not just what's actually going on right now. Where do I want this to go, and will this get it in that direction, or is this person not allowing me to? If you've given every option and you just understand the effect or outcome you're trying to achieve, that alone allows you to frame it within the situation you're in.

I wanted to jump to something we touched on at the beginning: how can bystanders interrupt that pylon? If I'm not involved in the incident but I'm off to the side observing, and I want to make sure this ends well — I'm out to dinner with my family and I know where this thing is going — what can a bystander do when they see one person continuing to press after the interaction has begun to stabilize? When you're not involved but you're there observing, you have really good perspective because you don't have a dog in the fight. You can see both sides and what's happening. What can someone do to interrupt that escalation trap?

I would ask you a perfunctory question: is it easier standing in line with your ticket, choosing your horse and getting on, or trying to get on when the merry-go-round is already moving? What I'm trying to get at there is only intervene if you have a duty or an obligation to intervene. Intervention can sidetrack all of the progress that's going on in that encounter, and you may not see it clearly. You may see it from a perspective where you're going, oh man, that looks like it's getting heated quick, I'll step in and solve the problem. You have to make sure that you're reading it clearly before you jump in.

When would you have a duty or an obligation? Excessive force. You see a parent dragging a kid around by the arm and the kid's becoming injured, or someone kicking a dog. You have to come up with your own moral compass, but it's very clear in society what behaviors are accepted and what aren't.

Now let's say you do step in. Publicly undermining either the person controlling the situation or the encounter is just going to create another contest with authority. You come in and go, hey, there's no reason for doing this here — and you don't know what you're talking about because you weren't there three minutes ago. So frame, frame, frame. This is where rehearsal comes in. Your job as a cop is to read the tea leaves, solve for X, and figure out the best, least intrusive intervention to get everybody what they need. If escalation is called for, then by all means escalate. But if somebody else is standing in front of you already handling it, don't move them out of the way without tagging them in — that's a bad thing.

If you can, redirect the conversation toward a shared objective. That can be with the person who's leading it — I can look at Brian and go, hey Brian, let me take it from here, I know what he's talking about more clearly. Or you can say, hey, this is a great conversation, but let's move it to the break room. Or someone like Dan comes in and says, look, we've discussed a lot, we have what we need right now, so let's take a break and revisit this in an hour. He's always the voice of reason because we're all alphas and we all get into the same room with our objectives clearly visible on our sleeves, and then we get angry because we think everybody's using accusatory language when all they're doing is fact-finding.

Your ultimate goal is always to create off-ramps, not to win the argument or decide what's the right approach. Even dealing with a violent suspect in the lobby — what actions or statements can you use now to make this go another way? You have to think those out in the patrol ready room, not on the street, because that's the worst possible time to run an experiment.

We have the information we need now — let's take the logical next step and work together to resolve this. I like using the word together. I can see that you're compliant, so let me give you some room to do that, and I back off. That's designed to build trust. And if you've got to arrest him, you've got a bigger gang than he does — you'll be fine. You don't have to rush and videotape your own death.

I would also add something like, look, I understand you have additional concerns — let's get past this one and then we'll discuss those. That means there's a future after this encounter, and I like building that into things. That's a big de-escalation point for me.

You're providing other options. You're getting them out of this initial heated, overstimulated moment — the right now — to go, well, okay, there's right now, but then there's after, and after that, and after that. So let's table this conversation for now.

And you talked a little bit about the teamwork aspect too. When you say, hey Brian, let me take it from here — that means wave off, like you're seeing something I'm not. Or if I go, hey Greg, that's a great point.

It's not a personality issue. It's intended to say you're not seeing a point clearly that I'm seeing, and that's a trust issue. And that's why, for the law enforcement example, you cover this in the on-duty roll call.

That type of language — those pro-words of communication — when someone says this to you, that means you're done. Let them take over, sit back, take a breath, and observe. You have to have someone overwatch looking in, because they're going to have a better perspective and go, all right, I'm going to pass the ball to you.

I need everybody hearing my voice to understand you need that in the boardroom and in the classroom too. You need those safe words you can use — where you're a C-suite executive and you look at your chief of staff and go, these are great points, perhaps we should move that to a follow-on discussion or the next meeting. And that person immediately catches on: there's something I'm missing here, we have to stop this, we have to table this and move on. Operating at the speed of trust means we've rehearsed that enough that I get it — I see that Brian's saying hey, we're out of time for this. And what is it? It's all about time and distance, making sure that we have the best advantage to get where we need to go together. And that matters in the boardroom, the classroom, the home, the kitchen.

Maybe not use the term safe word, because that has a different connotation.

And we're right back to — Brian's been trapped many times.

We went over this a lot because these are complex situations that deal with the environment, the people involved, and you being in the situation — there are all these dynamics. What would you tell listeners to remember the next time they feel the urge to add one more sentence? You're not doing it intentionally — you're going, well, I just want to make sure this — and it's like, okay, you're doing the and-another-thing. It was solved, it was gone. Hit and move. So what can we do the next time we feel that urge to add one more sentence or one more text?

You used "stop" earlier, and it was a great acronym. It's something I could jot down, keep a little index card on my desk or on the wall next to my mirror before I go out to make sure I've framed everything correctly. Or just come take a course with us and you don't need to write anything down. The ability to stop is a form of strength, not weakness. If you understand that from the get — that being able to stop is a sign of strength, not weakness — that helps our cops, our uniform people, our C-suite executives, our supervisors understand that it's all right to do. The second part of that is: you're not abandoning your principles, standards, policies, or procedures to avoid unnecessary escalation. You can't trade those things. A hostage negotiator in a tense confrontation — I can think of one scenario in a quadrillion where that might apply, and it almost never happens. But right here in this moment, you're thinking, "I'm the cop, I don't need to step back." Keep thinking that way — how important is your career to you? Your responsibility doesn't have to be to win every moment. It can be: I want to make the best choices and decisions regarding the situations I confront today. What a noble thing to tell yourself before you go out on the street. You have to leave room for the other person to move in a direction. If you're jiu-jitsu-ing every conversation, pinning them to the mat, and then asking why they won't move, that's counterproductive. Always update — constant assessment and updating of your assumptions based on the reality and context of the situation you're observing. Anytime you find yourself continuing to pressure or punish, you know it's going to lead to an undesirable outcome. Create a mnemonic, create the shit sandwich in your mind — the dumpster fire, the explosion — and that'll back you off when you go, "Hey, I'm rapidly approaching that." The person who can stop at the right moment isn't losing control of the interaction. They're demonstrating that they have full control of the interaction. And that's a huge point.

And the STOP acronym is great because you've got: Separate the present from the past, Test your purpose, Observe the direction of behavior, Pick the proportionate next move. But regardless of whether you remember all that, you just remember "stop." That's what they meant.

That's why that's it. That's what puts it together.

It's the ultimate goal of the acronym. That's why I liked it — that "stop" line coming up.

The wreck of the Hesperus.

We covered a lot in here. We've got more on the Patreon, like we discussed, and we've got all kinds of other stuff on there and more episodes coming up. For those who keep reaching out — please keep doing that. If you've got other cases, topics, or interesting things you think we'd like to cover, we'll absolutely do that. If you enjoy the podcast, please remember to share it with a friend and give it a like or a thumbs up. Greg, any final words?

We work hard to bring you the knowledge you're requesting from us, and we love doing this. So something as simple as a thumbs up or a repost — you don't even have to spend time commenting, just hit a thumbs up. It means a lot to us, and it might bring in somebody who needs to hear this information. You might already be a SME — help somebody out, help a brother out in this manner.

There you go. I appreciate everyone, and thanks so much for tuning in. And don't forget: training changes behavior.