No matter your line of work, you are pretty much assured of encountering someone who is difficult to deal with—an angry client or student, their family members, a disgruntled fellow employee or supervisor, a or simply someone off the street who is mentally ill, intoxicated, or otherwise unstable. You will find yourself in situations engaging with someone who is emotional or confused, who is struggling with terrible issues in their lives or within themselves, or has an agenda that clearly conflicts with yours or that of your agency. In these situations, can you prepare for the possibility of the interaction heading the wrong way, while still maintain a calm demeanor and a focus on shared goals and a successful outcome? What common skills do these scenarios—and many others like them—require?
In The Good Stranger, Ellis Amdur and Robert Hubal share their decades of experience working with social service agencies in training and developing social interaction skills, particularly in ‘intense, problematic’ situations with individuals who may view themselves as adversarial. The Good Stranger is someone who continually tries to reach accord with the other person, striving to establish rapport, manage crises, and de-escalate aggression. The Good Stranger maintains a focus on his or her goals, while simultaneously seeking to achieve a level of trust, engaging others with professionalism, integrity, and respect. The Good Stranger crafts the communication to form a working relationship with the other person to share in achieving the aims of his or her professional responsibilities. The Good Stranger is written in plain language and accessibly imagery, and will be valuable to anyone who works in a social service environment, from mental health agencies and clinics, various social services agencies, the medical profession (from storefront clinics to large hospitals and HMO’s or, in many cases, the educational environment.
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This book synthesizes Amdur and Hubal’s work into several broad themes:
- Ways of communicating that both research and experience have shown are most reliable in establishing respect and rapport, while maintaining a position of strength in regards to all involved parties, even those from very different cultures or environments.
- Core elements and concepts that are a necessity in any potentially adversarial environment.
- Maintaining an effective stance and self-control throughout the interaction, no matter how difficult it is.
- Key techniques for ensuring that the dialog goes smoothly, and ways to recover when it goes sideways.
- The Good Stranger maintains a focus on the goals of the organization that he or she represents, doing everything possible to enhance the safety of all people involved. Simultaneously, the he or she strives to achieve a level of trust, engaging others with professionalism and respect. The Good Stranger crafts the communication to form a working relationship to share in achieving the best outcome for all involved.
- This book is dedicated, in particular, to those at all stages and levels in social services who, unavoidably, must take charge in adversarial situations with clients, patients and their family members & friends,, co-workers and those outside their own organization to resolve conflict in the best interests of their agency. while maintaining the highest ethical standards.
Statement from Ellis Amdur
This book embodies the core principles that imbue all my work in crisis intervention. As with our companion volumes, The Coordinator and The Accord Agent, I have been fortunate to engage in a true collaboration with Robert Hubal, a cognitive scientist, who works on the leading edge of the study of communication in high-risk, high-consequence situations. We met through our participation in a project funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), entitled “The Good Stranger Project.” I was brought in as a kind of ‘outlier subject-matter expert’ (something for which DARPA is renowned, enabling them to include ‘outside the box’ ideas in their endeavors). What I offered was a combination of several decades front-line work in crisis intervention informed by core principles derived from classical Japanese combative arts. Within these archaic traditions lie profound teachings on applied psychology within dangerous situations—how do you influence someone who is either actively trying to kill you, bears that intention, or at minimum, regards you with hate, fear or mistrust? Robert has added his decades of research on communication in adversarial relationships. We have had the honor of engaging in a true collaboration, where our skills overlap and support each other, creating something together far more powerful than either of us could do on our own.
