Hi there. Gary Klugiewicz here.
I just got back from teaching a Verbal Defense & Influence Instructor Class at the Winter Garden, FL Police Department. The class was made up of police, correctional, probation & parole, and healthcare professionals from all over the county.
We had a very productive time training together while enjoying the wonderful Florida weather.
One of the main takeaways from the course was a better understanding of how your verbal skills enhance your overall safety on the job, in the community, and even at home.
We came up with an acronym that explains the four kinds of safety that verbal skills can improve.
P.O.L.E. stands for your physical, organizational, legal, and emotional safety. If you think about it, as a professional your safety needs are expanded.
1. Physical Safety: Yes, you need to keep yourself physically safe – everyone needs to safe guard their personal physical well-being. Good verbal skills can reduce the conflicts that lead to violence.
2. Organizational Safety: As a professional, working within an organization, your lack of good verbal skills can lead to organizational conflict that can negatively impact your quality of life at work. A good communicator can reduce the conflict at work that lead to problems on the job.
3. Legal Safety: Keeping yourself safe legally, impacts all of us in this litigious world but as a professional, often operating “under the color of law,” this safety becomes even more important to you long term well-being.
The right verbal skills can help you look good (professional) where ever an incident may end up. Although we can’t guarantee good results, we can show that we did everything reasonable to resolve the situation appropriately.
4. Emotional Safety: This type of safety is extremely important to your long term wellness. Here we are talking about the negative “psychological” impact of long term conflict at work or at home that takes a mental and physical toll on your quality of life.
Good verbal skills help you to develop the conflict management skills that lead to reducing conflict and how it impacts you. I hope that you find the P.O.L.E. acronym helpful. Our class did.
It is designed to provide guidance in keeping you safe from all the dangers that conflict can present.
Gary,
Thank you for this post. It was a thoroughly enjoyable week of training. Every moment was packed full of lessons.
Your knowledge and enthusiasm for VDI, managing conflict, and promoting better relations for everyone was (is) so very evident.
I find this P.O.L.E. acronym very useful. I’m already sharing it in meetings with leaders in my organization.
robert
Thanks to Gary for a great course! It will help in my daily encounters as a hospital chaplain, and will be passed on to my volunteer chaplains. This can also be applied in any social (church) situation where conflicts arise. There are many possibilities here! Thanks again.
Hello Gary,
Once again, I would like to thank you for such a great class and allowing me to be part of that class. My classmates are some of the best professional I have met in their fields and you were a great teacher. I learned l lot that will help me in my professional life and personnel life as well. Everyday we interact with people and knowing how to communicate is more and more important each day. I hope to be able to pass this information on to others, including my family. Thanks again for a great class.
[…] the Verbal Defense & Influence program, we speak of P.O.L.E. This is an acronym which addresses the full spectrum of safety: Physical, Organizational, Legal, […]