The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How Project Managers Can Apply Three Critical Lessons From Gavin De Becker’s Book "The Gift Of Fear" | KEV Talks Podcast #35

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

In this episode "How Project Managers Can Apply Three Critical Lessons From Gavin De Becker’s Book 'The Gift Of Fear'," I discuss three lessons that I believe are relevant to the daily work of Program and Project Managers.The Lessons:Trusting our instincts (Chapter 2)Prediction using JACA (Chapter 6)Paying attention to alarming behaviors (Chapter 9)*Bonus: Know the survival signsRemember hope is NOT a plan, and there should be no egos nor silos in our planning processes.Godspeed y'all,Kevin

Men of all ages, in all parts of the world, are more violent than women. For this reason, the language in this book is mostly gender-specific to men. When it comes to violence, women can proudly relinquish recognition in that language, because here at least, politically correct would be statistically incorrect. Every story in this book is true, and 90% of the names used are the actual names of the people involved. The remainder have been changed to protect their privacy or safety. Gavin DeBecker. That was the author's note from the number one national bestseller by Gavin DeBecker, The Gift of Fear. Very insightful book, particularly for women listening, but if you're a man listening, get this, read it, and give it to a woman you

know. Great survival signs. Just like the quote said, men are more violent than women. It originally came out in 1997, but Gavin DeBecker has kept it kind of evergreen and re-released it. I got the paperback version from 2021. So I highly recommend this. I looked through this and thought, well, how can I apply this to project management, to leading teams? I'm only going through three. This could be a whole series. So I'm going to share three ways, three key areas from the book that project managers can apply when they're leaving their teams. And at the end, when you stay for that bonus, I'm going to go over some survival signs that Gavin talks about that are just good for everyday life for each of

us, whether you're leading programs, projects, public safety teams or not. So let's get into this episode after a brief intro about what this show is all about. Welcome to the KevTalks podcast hosted by me, Kevin Pinnell. In addition to sharing my leadership and process facilitation lessons learned from my combined US military, public safety, program, and project management experience, I'll feature industry-leading guests whose inspirational and insightful guidance will help program, project, and public safety teams function more efficiently and safely. Now, let's get logged in and get locked on to this episode of the KevTalks podcast in three, two, one. Hey, everybody. Thanks for coming back to the show. This is KevTalks episode 35,

how project managers can apply three critical lessons from Gavin DeBecker's book, The Gift of Fear, plus a bonus at the end on survival signs. So let's jump right into it. So the book, The Gift of Fear, really highlights just decades of work that Gavin DeBecker and his company, Gavin DeBecker Associates, has put in in talking to victims of violent crime, helping prevent violence in the workplace, stalkers, just a whole mix of things. It's an amazing book. It is, let me see, go here, a little over 300 something, about 360 pages, plus the appendix and things. Very good read. I read it while I was on vacation. Very insightful. Kind of scary, but also some obvious points, right? When we trust our intuition, which we'll get into when we look at behaviors and then talks about

kind of the creepy thing of he talks to some criminals that have killed people or stalked people and what do they look for? So it's very insightful from an overall survival instinct. Again, for women who are the target of violence much more than men, it is a very useful tool. And as a husband, it's something that I'm going to share with my wife and I've shared with other folks that I know as well. So the first point that I want to talk about, I'm going to talk about Gavin DeBecker's point from The Gift of Fear and then how I feel like project managers or team leaders could apply that themselves. And the first is from chapter two about intuition. It's trusting your intuition, right. He talks about in the book,

this woman who was unfortunately the victim of a sexual assault. And she knew when she met the person, it just didn't feel right. The person seemed off and you've probably had that feeling before. And it's just kind of an eerie feeling. It's that sixth sense. And we shouldn't ignore it. And he talks about that. We have instincts for a reason, our intuitions. Sometimes though, we don't want to be the quote mean person. So maybe we're not as gruff in our feedback. So for project management, project managers, I think we need to trust our intuition and we're leading teams as well. The first thing I thought of is, you know, is what does good look like for this project, right? What's our gut feeling on what's the best we can do, you know,

with our resources, with our time, with our money. And, you know, I'm not going to get into methodologies and all that good stuff. Cause this is an intuition thing, right? Does, do we, are we on the right track? Are we feeling good about this? And the other intuition, I'm going to talk about escalation a couple of times here, but is this something, this is kind of a gut instinct for project managers. Like should I escalate this before leadership finds out about it and is surprised? And then like, hey, what's going on? Why is your project red? Meaning it's not going well or critical or something like that.

Should we do that? And so you always want to gut check yourself if you're leading teams, whether it's a public safety team, and you're like, hey, we just got a lot of risks based on, you know, criminal intelligence, or the weather or something. And then of course, projects, if you're going to lose money and you're moving the schedule, I think it's always better to let folks know and escalate ahead of time. So for project managers, use that intuition just like you do when someone feels off on the street to think about, are we doing the best that we can? And should we escalate this stuff to leadership? The second point is from chapter six, which talks about predictions. And he does a lot of predictions for companies on violence.

Could someone be violent? Is this person based on their words and their actions? So Gavin and Becker talks about predictions. But in particular, what I want to talk about is this J-A-C-A or JACA that he uses to see if someone is going to be violent. Do they have a perceived justification for violence? Do they think, hey, it's justified that I go into a workplace or do something, or that I punch you because of what you said,

or something like that? Do they have perceived alternatives to violence? So could they go down a nonviolent road, or are all those lanes blocked and they feel like the only way I can go is just to be violent to you? Do they perceive any consequences? Like, do they think I could do this and just get away with it? Or they know, hey, if I do this, I'm going to jail and I'm going to get caught, which lessens the threat, so to speak. And then they have the ability. So that's JACA. So can they do it? Are they smart enough? Do they have weapons?

All these different things. Have they shown a propensity for planning or capability to violence or something like that? And so that's the JAC applicability. So how can we use that same acronym, these perceived actions or thoughts or these perceptions as team leaders and project managers? One, to me, the justification for us is, you know, does this effort, it really has to do with when someone says, I want this thing or this product or the service or this workflow change. The first question is what justifies the project, right? Do we have enough information to justify it, to pull resources together, to do a level of effort, to, you know, put our time and effort and money into it and all that good stuff. That's the first to

me justification thing related to projects or leading teams. The second is, are there alternatives to making this a project, right? Making efforts official projects means we're going to have people that are on a temporary assignment, right, and focusing some percentage of their time to get a service complete, a new product out, or something like that. So what else could we do? Is there an alternative to having to do that? Can you outsource it? Just all these kinds of things. The third, and this is the kind of consequences, what are the consequences if we don't do this project? If we don't do this project someone asked for, is there any safety hit? Is there a regulatory or compliance? Or we don't do this work so that our folks working in the field won't be as safe, or will it make them a lot safer?

So think about the consequences, which don't have to be negative consequences. They can be positive consequences. And then the ability piece, do we have the ability to do this work now? Do we have enough people? Do we have the money? Do we have the time? Can we do this with high quality versus we could knock it out, but it's not going to be very good? So that's the JACA or JACA that I think applies from the

fear piece, where it's really you're looking at could someone, you know, do they have justification in their mind to be violent? Or they have a perceived alternative to violence consequences ability? Instead, for us as projects, we're going to see is the project justified? Are there alternatives to this being a project? What are the consequences, good or bad, if we do or don't do this? And then what's the ability we have to do this work now is an equivalent kind of use of the same acronym. The third is from Chapter 9, and this is to take note of alarming behaviors and tell the boss. This talks about workplace violence, right? And many times and many lessons learned, people ignored the signs,

right? Someone talks about weapons all the time, or I could just burn this place down. Or if you've seen office space, I could put strychnine in the water, right? Someone's making threats. Someone is comfortable with talking about violence, or they're perceived as a bully to their teammates or their coworkers. And you can tell, right, someone has kind of that propensity toward a more violent action, which is different than just, man, this place sucks. If someone's having a bad day, it's like, man, what I could do to this building. I could take this. It wouldn't take much, right? That's a problem to hear from people in the workplace. Now, a lot of us are remote or hybrid, so it's different, but let's say you heard the language like,

well, I know where they are, right? You start to hear those. So Gavin DeBecker talks about kind of what I talked about as well. And his point that I'm gonna share with project managers and team leads is, Gavin DeBecker says, managers are only wrong, leaders are only wrong if they don't consider safety first,

if they're not asking the right questions, kind of diving into that. Well, why would you say that? Is there anything that I could do to kind of help you feel better? Those kind of things, the right questions, getting into it. And that if you're not communicating those concerns clearly, and what he's talking about is you're not wrong if you feel like, well, would I escalate this too quickly? Am I going to ruin my relationship with this person? I don't want to get him in trouble. But what if you prevented a shooting or an attack or something else in the workplace,

right? And the point that he makes in this chapter, which is with real examples, is people didn't, right? They felt bad. They didn't want to be the bad guy. And so people got killed after that. And that's not good. And so people got killed after that. And that's not good. And so for us, if you're leading teams, even if you're remote or hybrid, you know, are we keeping safety? And particularly if you're in public safety, right? But for us, maybe they're remote and hybrid wellness first, right? Is that our first priority, the wellness of our team? And that should be the first indication, the first things. If we start seeing somebody and they're declining, they're not participating in the meetings, they're not

talking to us, they always have negative comments, they've just changed or they're like that, then we have an obligation as leading the team to at least kind of reach out to them. Hey, I've noticed you haven't spoken as much. Is there anything I can do to help? And you don't have to become their counselor. That's a whole different thing. But it's good to do a pulse check and kind of check or note it and then talk to them and then even talk to their team leader manager and just say, hey, I just noticed this. I'm not sure if something's happening because maybe they trusted their manager and their manager can let you know without telling you exactly what's going on. but you did your check to keep your persons and your team's wellness and safety, number one. The second is, are we asking helpful questions, right? When someone's having a hard time, and I can speak to this last year, really

bad news from a couple close family members. I didn't take it well. I got stressed out, got panicky. I've talked about it before, and I'm not that guy. I'm like the trauma guy that does that. But I let the stress build up and it's not helpful. It wasn't when people are like, oh, you just got to look on the bright side and you just got to be positive. Well, similarly, just saying, well, I think you should just do this. That's not even asking a question, right? You need to listen to the person and accept too, right? Don't push. And we'll get into that at this point in a second. I want to talk about the survival signs here in a few minutes, actually. But are we asking helpful questions? Is there anything I can do to help? Is there any work or help or sorry, is there work that I can try and get help for you with from your manager? Something like that, right? There's

things that could alleviate pressure that maybe the person doesn't want to talk and say, okay, and then ask the helpful questions to their manager if they're just shut down. And then again, back to escalation, are we escalating early, right? If we notice problems and the wellness of our team members or the safety of our team, if we're in the office or, you know, someone's really acting kind of squirrely and scary, we need to let someone know. We need to let the managers know. We need to let, if you are the manager, write security know and HR know and start to address it.

And I've had to do this sometimes and it's not comfortable and it's certainly not fun. But when someone is clenching their fists and their teeth and looks super angry and is just really not happy, maybe from a bad review or a change in job status or something, which is understandable, we need to let folks know. And so, you know, keep wellness and safety first. Ask helpful questions up to the point that you're comfortable with.

And then escalate, you know, and let somebody else know so you're not the only one that has the information and we can prevent someone quitting, let alone someone doing something bad to other people. So that was very helpful from the workplace violence kind of prevention side of the house that applies really directly, I think. So one, thank you for staying this far for these three points. Again, there's so much more in that book, but it's hard to encapsulate it all in a short podcast episode. But I'm going to share these bonus survival signs that are applicable outside. I'm not going to translate them to project management. This is for all of us that are out in the world that get out there. And in this world, we hear about violence and this and that. And being aware and following these signs

can make a difference. And unfortunately, the example that Gavin Becker uses was a woman who was tricked by all these signs to go into her apartment and then in there she was sexually assaulted and then she was almost killed but she listened to her intuition like talked about in the first point and was able to get out of there before her attacker killed her. And so here's the survival signs. One, forced teaming. And the example that he gave, this woman had a cat, she had a can of cat food, it fell down the steps, she said, and she heard a voice that she didn't expect to be there that said, oh, I'll get it, right? So automatically, we're on a team, I've got it. Hey, we've got a hungry cat up there, he said in DeBecker's book.

So automatically that person places you on their team, right? So think about you're taking the trash out or you're carrying your grocery bags and someone you don't know, which so me as a man, I'm 5'11", 205 pounds. I shouldn't just walk up to any woman on the street unannounced and just go, let me get that and just jump right in there. I should say, excuse me, ma'am, from a distance, can I help you with that? And then if she says no, like we talked about in the last point, that's a full sentence, right? This person did not, right? They had ill intent. So she said, oh, I've got it. And he goes, oh, let me get it. We've got a hungry cat up there, so automatically we're on the team, forced teaming. The second thing is charm and niceness, right? So you got to figure if you're going to try and trick somebody into them letting you into their apartment because you have ill

intent, you've got to be nice about it if you're not, you know, being direct and violent. And this person was more of a charming person to get in there. So they said, Oh, I see, you know, and give her a compliment. I forget the exact thing. And then they used a lot of details. And the point of using those details was to make a story seem more legitimate. The fourth thing is typecasting, right? And so that is like critical labeling. So what this person did was when the woman said, you know, she didn't need help and I've got it. Well, you don't want to think that, you know, you're too strong, you're too stubborn to accept help, right? So automatically someone's going to go, no, I don't want to be perceived as that in my head. Okay, go ahead and help. Whereas really

what you should do is say, no, I've got it. And that's it, full stop, right? And not let that person help you if you don't want them to help you. Or you're worried about it or your intuition's kicking in, which hers did at the beginning. The fifth thing is loan sharking, right? So placing someone in your debt, right? So saying, oh, well, I've carried this all the way up here now. Do you mind if I come get a glass of water? Right? So basically you're saying, I did some work for you. Now you kind of owe me, which is, again, super sketchy. This whole thing is sketchy. The next one is unresolved promises.

Oh, I'll leave just as soon as. And unfortunately, the attacker made a couple promises. One, oh, I'll just help you up there and then I'll go, I promise. And then after he had assaulted her in her apartment, he made another promise that, oh, I'll leave. I promise I won't help you up there and then I'll go, I promise. And then after he had assaulted her in her apartment, he made another promise that, oh, I'll leave. I promise I won't hurt you. I'm just going to get some water from the kitchen. As it turns out, he had killed somebody before, same mode.

He'd assaulted him, tricked him. And fortunately, this woman trusted that intuition, followed him as he was going to the kitchen, but he didn't hear her and she went out her door and she lived and she had talked to Gavin DeBecker. That's how he got her story. But the unresolved promises just to get in, oh, I promise I'll just do this, right? So pay attention to that, right? There's no bond with a stranger. What does your promise mean to me? It shouldn't mean a lot. And the last thing is discounting no. And this is not just for these situations, but particularly for men and women. So I mentioned the, you know,

I've seen women that have a bag of mulch and it looks heavy for them or bags of groceries. I shouldn't just go up to someone, you know, it's a nice thing to do, but it doesn't make everybody feel comfortable. And if that person says, no, no, thank you. No, I don't need help. Then my answer is, okay, have a great day. It's an, oh, come on, let me do this or that, right? And the reluctance there, and particularly Gavin Becker talks about for women, is that you don't want to be perceived as edgy or not nice or bitchy, if you will. But no is a complete sentence sometimes, and that should be okay in your mind.

So these survival signs, pay attention to someone that tries to force team you. Oh, we got it. Let's do this. Using charm and nices has too many details in their backstory. For someone you don't even know, right? They typecast or they start labeling you. They loan shark and kind of try and put you in their debt. They make unresolved promises.

Oh, I promise I'll just do this or that. And they discount when you've told them no. And this woman, unfortunately, had told him no multiple times and ended up, unfortunately, being assaulted and fortunately trusted her instinct and got out of there. So these survival signs are key.

There's so much more in this Gavin DeBecker book, The Gift of Fear. Go get it, read it, give it to women in your life, men, you read it too, to know these, they're good, good signs for all of us. Thank you so much for being here on the KevTalks podcast. Please go to KevTalksPod.com. Got a Linktree link. If you click on that, it goes to all the socials and everything, but I'm at KevTalksPod on Instagram and Twitter.

I appreciate you being here. I am going to do my best to share my experience and those of my guests so that we can help you and your teams be as efficient, effective, and safe as possible. Thank you so much. Remember, everybody, hope is not a plan. There should be no egos and no silos as we work together.

Godspeed.