Are you being
held hostage without knowing it?? Last month I was doing research on ‘Authentic
Dialogue’ and ‘Conflict management’ and I came across this gem of a book.
Here is the
starting story from this book:
A nine-year-old girl was spending time with her grandparents
in Kansas. The grandfather was away, so she was sleeping with her grandmother.
Suddenly, she
woke in the middle of the night to see her elderly grandmother sitting up in
bed and a man standing over her, dripping with rain and with a wooden club in
his hand, ready to strike. The little girl felt a scream rising, and then her
grandmother touched her hand and she felt a flood of calm wash over her.
The grandmother
said to the man, “I am glad you found our house. You’ve come to the right
place. You are welcome here. It is a bad night to be out. You are cold, wet,
and hungry. Take the firewood you have there and go stir up the kitchen stove.
Let me put some clothes on, and I will find you some dry clothes, fix a good
hot meal, and make a place for you to sleep behind the stove where it is good
and warm.” She said no more but waited calmly.
After a long
pause, the man lowered the club and said, “I won’t hurt you.” She then met him
in the kitchen and cooked him a meal, gave him the dry clothes, and made a bed
up for him behind the stove. The grandmother then went back to her bed and she
and her granddaughter went back to sleep. They awoke in the morning to find the
man gone.
At about 10
A.M., the police arrived with a canine unit that had followed the man’s scent
to the house. They were shocked to find the grandmother and granddaughter still
alive. The man was a psychopathic murderer who had escaped from prison the
night before and brutally slaughtered the family who were the nearest
neighbours.
This story gave
me goose bumps. I was wondering how would I handle such a situation. How would
you? I learnt that there is a another way beyond fight / flight / freeze
response.
The author goes
on to say:
This amazing
grandmother had created so much emotional bonding with the intruder that he
could not kill her. She had treated him with a kindness and respect that had
disarmed him both literally and figuratively. The fact is people do not kill
people, they kill things or objects …
Fortunately, the
likelihood of physically being taken hostage is slim. However, all of us can be
taken hostage metaphorically – that is, made to feel threatened, manipulated,
and victimized – everyday by bosses, colleagues, customers, family members, or
virtually anyone with whom we interact. We can also become hostage to events or
circumstances happening in our lives. We can even become hostages to ourselves,
our own mind-sets, our emotions, and our habits.
The author is a
former hostage negotiator. He offers keys to managing conflict at work and in
our everyday lives.
This book
changed my relationship with conflict. I had a kind of ‘conflict phobia’
and a tendency to avoid confrontations. I learnt that it is only by openly
facing conflict that one can truly progress through the most difficult
challenges. I have started taking things head on instead of avoiding them or
hoping that they disappear by some magic.
With many true
and compelling stories, this book shows how to:
-
Put the ‘Fish on the Table’ to
resolve conflict
-
Learn to bond, even with your ‘enemy’
-
Never think like a hostage
-
Tap into the power of dialogue
and negotiation
-
Access the law of reciprocity
to build cooperation
-
Be a secure base to establish
trust
-
Understand that the person is
never the problem
-
Master the mind’s eye and
visualize success
This TEDx talk
by the author will also give you a good glimpse of this concept. Do take a
look:
Reading this book gave me a new level of freedom. I highly recommend this book to help solve the hostage situations in your life, if any.
