Can I Offer You Some Feedback? - Episode #52
Show Notes:
This week Sara talks about Rational Detachment, a clinical term, but one she uses often when talking about de-escalating situations or trying to stay calm. Using this skill helps to separate our emotions from an event. She talks about the ability to use this in a leadership context. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode!
Below we are offering a transcript of the podcast for accessibility and reference.
Episode #52: Business Bites: Rational detachment
Welcome to Business Bites. My name is Sara. This is the podcast for busy professionals who want the quick hits of business terminology, historical context, and strategies for integration. This week we're going to be talking about rational detachment. Rational detachment is a term from psychology and is used by counselors, therapists, and other mental health professionals to be able to talk about how we separate our emotions from the event that's taking place.
Rational detachment, again, is a term that is used by clinicians, therapists, social workers, counselors to be able to talk about a skill in separating our emotions from the event. Imagine for a moment, rationally detaching from whatever is going on in the moment. Now, I'm not a clinician, I'm not a counselor, but I do want to talk about how you can use it in a leadership context.
This is the ability to stay calm, in control, professional despite the situation that's happening in front of you. Perhaps the situation is where you have someone who's escalated, who might be yelling, screaming, or getting frustrated with the way you're handling a specific situation. Or perhaps you're in a field where you might see some things that are really difficult to either hear, understand, or that your client or customer might be going through.
Again, our choice to detach in the moment doesn't mean the situation isn't happening. It just means that we're separating our emotions from that moment. Perhaps it's choosing to not take things personally, even button-pushing comments that might be coming from the other person about potentially our appearance, our race, our gender, our values, our religion, our culture, our employer, or the work that we do.
Now, I always try to make it clear for folks when we are talking about rational detachment, there's a difference between choosing in the moment to separate what's going on and acknowledging that what happened was extremely challenging and potentially harmful, not just physically, but mentally. The skill of rational detachment is something that you can use throughout your day, regardless of the specific work that you're doing, but it's important to have skills before, during, and after, if you're going to use it as a long-term strategy.
Before, you may need to use this if you are in a field that you know that you may be confronted by escalated individuals or dealing with difficult encounters frequently. It's important to, especially at work, know what your policies and procedures are for handling escalated individuals. Visualize potential responses or situations, have opportunities to hear from colleagues, hear from supervisors or other folks who have done the work before to understand how they've handled those situations.
Of course, we can try and take care of ourselves with things like exercising, eating right, getting enough sleep, but having professional pathways, either through policy, through procedures, and or having avenues to do professional venting or have conversations about the challenges and realities of the work are equally important. Of course, while you're using techniques in the during phase of rational detachment, this is where we're trying to stay calm, using our visualization, assessing what our options might be.
Of course, understanding the policies and our processes that are in place, but also remembering we have a team behind us. How could we use them for support? How do we take the time to step back mentally as well as physically from the situation? Oftentimes, when we're dealing with someone who's escalated, it is not about us. They are frustrated with the situation and they're taking it out on us, which is different.
After you've gone through a situation where you've needed to utilize rational detachment, I always encourage folks to Strongly consider how can they take care of themselves. Of course, you want to document the incident, especially if it happened at work. Let your supervisor know. Let any other folks who need to be involved as a part of that process potentially get more training. What are other ways that I could have intervened safely? What are other things I could have tried or considered as a part of the process?
But the importance of doing a debrief, whether with colleagues or a supervisor is going to make the difference of you feeling confident to handle it the next time it comes up. Potentially, depending on how intense the situation was, you may need to take a break from work. Maybe for a couple of minutes, maybe for a couple of hours, and work on something else until you're able to go back into that environment.
I do encourage people that sometimes depending on the situation, what you've seen, heard, or experienced is so intense, it might be an appropriate response to cry, or to feel like you need to, or to step away from the situation. I always encourage folks to consider calling their employee assistance program, if they know that information, to be able to talk to someone who could assist them, who might be a counselor, or might be someone who has that greater skill.
Again, rational detachment is a technique for handling individuals who are clearly out of control with their behavior or out of control of the situation. We can't necessarily control others, but we can choose how we're going to respond and how we're going to keep ourselves safe and maintain a comfortable and most importantly safe work environment.
This has been Sara with Business Bites. You can reach me at podcast@mod.network. We would love to hear from you on what other terminology you would like bite-sized. And as always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice and share this podcast with a friend. We'll see you next time.
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