Guest Article – Page 23 – Conflict Manager

Navigating Negotiations – Lawrene Kane

“Let us never negotiate out of fear but let us never fear to negotiate.” – John F. Kennedy

When we think of conflict communication oftentimes the focus is on managing violence. Sometimes, however, it’s not physical harm you are trying to avoid but rather that your career is on the line. A common instance of this is in negotiations. For a sales teams it’s a competition, who can land the best deal, them or the other guys. The company that wins not only obtains desired revenue but the salesmen and women get to keep their jobs, feed their families, and have a little piece of mind. Maybe they’ll even make a bonus. On the buy-side it’s a matter of meeting targets, say savings, speed to market, or quality objectives. The job might not be as immediately on the line as it is for the sales team, but the negotiator’s career oftentimes is. A track record of solid performance is table-stakes for promotions, raises, and job security.

Negotiations in the business world can easily be as high stakes as physical confrontations on the streets. Your livelihood is on the line. Your reputation. Your job… Consequently it’s important to not only take such things seriously but also to get them “right.” There are a ton of tricks and tactics that can help assure the outcome you need, such as playbooks, communication plans, escalation paths, and the like, but there simply isn’t enough space to cover such things here. I’ll keep things higher level, addressing some strategies for four common types of negotiations that everybody should know about: negotiating a contract, a job offer, a raise, and resolution to a conflict at work.

Contracts:

Negotiating a contract is not only something that many folks do for a living, it’s also something that everyone should understand at least a little. After all, someday you will very likely want a new car, house, or other major purchase where a bad deal will not only lead to buyer’s remorse but also heartache and unexpected expenses or hassles. A lot of folks think that contract negotiations are all about compromise, finding the right balance of give and take, but that’s usually a recipe for a losing outcome. With proper planning, however, it doesn’t have to be.

Start with whether or not the other guy(s) is someone you can work with. Even at the corporate-level decisions are made by individuals, so the account team matters. Lack of character, integrity, or cultural compatibility are but three of many reasons why deals fail to provide expected value in the long run. A bad fit at a low price is a recipe for disaster that will cost you time, money, and very likely your job down the road. Once you believe you’re dealing with the right folks, you need to identify the “non-negotiables” on both sides. For example, if you’re the buyer you likely cannot go over your budget whereas the seller wants to be price-competitive but still needs make a profit. You are likely not willing to let the supplier violate the law or your ethical standards to get the desired outcome under contract, so certain behaviors are off the table too. This is why, for example, Nike has child labor rules baked into their deals and Starbucks has inviolate ethical sourcing rules. Only suppliers who are willing to comply make it into their infrastructure.

If both sides can clearly articulate what’s off the table up front you will know immediately whether it’s even worth pursuing a negotiation, saving a lot of time and money. And, you’re less likely to get bogged down or derailed by details when you can go back to the original, well-thought-out list of deal-killers, discover whatever challenge isn’t on that list, and then look for a path to resolution that’s acceptable to both parties. You can be far more accommodating and creative when you realize that the disagreement is over money or risk-sharing, for example, than if the dispute is over something one side or the other is unwilling to budge on. Cover the Terms (which adjusts risk amongst the parties), statement of work (what the parties will do), the service levels (how successful outcomes are measured), and then price in that order. In this fashion it’s far easier to negotiate an outcome you can not only live with but will find is low maintenance throughout the life of the resulting contract.

Job Offers:

Virtually everyone negotiates a job offer multiple times throughout their career. And, most people are really bad at it. Never forget that the initial offer is the point at which you have the highest leverage. And, it’s the time where you can set yourself up to succeed or fail. Begin by understanding what the company or agency’s reasons are for wanting to hire you in the first place. What’s their unmet business need that you are intended to fulfill and, most importantly, what’s your success worth to them? While value is vital, salary matters too. Companies and agencies often post salary ranges online so it’s not all that tough to know where their initial offer fits within the range and how much higher they are likely to be willing to go. If you cannot find that information, search for similar companies to find comparable positions.

Just like the contract example, your next step is to determine where your boundaries lie. Is there anything that’s non-negotiable in terms of salary, benefits, working conditions, travel, success measurements, career path, or the like? It probably goes without saying, but if you are just wanting to get your foot in the door for a first job you should have lower expectations than if you are a seasoned executive, though I mention it as many Millennials have inflated expectations of their worth. It’s a business deal, a cost/benefit equation, so keep emotion out of it. Your prospective employer certainly will.

Be willing to walk away, you’ll have a lot more leverage that way, but also be reasonable in what you ask for, especially if you’re negotiating with your future boss rather than with an HR department. These initial steps will set his or her impression of you, a notion that will last for a long time to come. It’s very challenging to overcome a negative first impression. Conversely, how they negotiate from the other side of the table will provide great insight into what it truly will be like to work there. Interviews work both ways—you convince them that they want you on the team while they convince you that you will be able to succeed there.

I once turned down a job offer that would have been a significant promotion and commensurate raise over a parking spot. It wasn’t that the parking spot itself was a deal-killer, though it would have been a great convenience that shortened my commute and made downtown traffic more palatable, but rather the way in which they handled my request. Their intransigence made it clear that a culture of bureaucracy and blind adherence to policy would have made implementing innovative solutions virtually impossible. Knowing that I couldn’t be successful after taking the job in such an environment I turned them down and moved on to other opportunities.

Raises:

Once you’ve been working for a while, typically a year or more, a raise may be in order. Negotiating a raise is very different for union-represented employees (whose progression is set by contract) than for everyone else, but either way reminding employers of the value you bring is important. Most companies and agencies use routine performance appraisals where your boss goes over what you have done, what goals you have struggled with, met, or exceeded, and discusses how well you are doing. Continuously plan for that so that you’ll be ready when the moment arises. Invisible accomplishments don’t count, so without undue bragging or bravado, keep your boss appraised of the things you do that go over and above throughout the year. And, document them as you go along to bring with you for the performance review.

Shortly after a good review is a great time to make overtures about a raise if your boss hasn’t already opened the conversation without your prompting. The discussion should be about facts and data, not feelings. Nobody cares if you believe that you deserve higher pay, bonus, or benefits, they only care about your contribution to the team. Talk about what you have done to make your boss and/or your team look good—important company goals you have exceeded, revenue you’ve raised, costs you’ve cut, or other accomplishments that set you apart from the rest of the pack. If you operate on a team, gracefully acknowledge the group’s successes then explain your individual role in getting things done.

Additionally, be armed with information to help you succeed in the negotiation. For example, you should know the salary range for your job or skill code, both inside and outside your company. Oftentimes internal pay scales fail to keep up with the marketplace. Don’t worry about what other folks in your workgroup make, focus on how you add value and how you believe that translates into what you are worth.

Be polite and persuasive, but don’t take things personally if you cannot achieve the desired outcome. The boss may face constraints or politics you know nothing about. If you can discover what those are so much the better, but rather than getting upset about how the conversation goes consider the alternatives instead. Is it time to update your resume or redouble your performance? If you do end up leaving never burn your bridges. It’s often a smaller world than you might think. Telling a current employer to piss-off and die, no matter how badly you want to, will likely hurt you on your next job. Folks have a way of finding out.

Conflict:

The challenge with conflict negotiations is that more often than not you’re emotionally involved, which is why many companies and agencies employ professionally-trained facilitators to help navigate the process and resolve disputes. Successfully negotiating resolution to conflict depends on the underlying causes. If it is a clash of personalities that requires a different approach than an intentional ethical violation, for example. Consequently the first thing you’ll need to do if you are the independent party brought in to resolve things is to interview stakeholders and try to ascertain what truly happened. If you find yourself in a situation where you may be the cause or the aggrieved party and have to take care of things yourself you will still want to do as much fact finding as feasible before working toward resolution.

Keep in mind that perception is reality so just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter to the other party. But, misperceptions can be cleared up. For example, I used to start work at 6:00 AM on the West Coast when I’d have several meetings with folks on the East Coast. Two or three hours later, whenever my schedule opened up, I would go out, say good morning to my team, making sure I was visible for a while so that folks could tell me if they had something urgent on their minds or ask for help. They called that “management by walking around” in business school. I saw it as being there for the team (as opposed to hiding in my office which was around the corner from where they sat). One of my employees, however, saw it differently. She thought I was checking to see if everyone was at their desk working, a thought which never even crossed my mind. If I didn’t trust the team I never would have hired (or retained) them. That misperception wasn’t particularly hard to correct, but it did cause morale issues for a short while until I realized what was going on.

Armed with whatever background information you are able uncover, you can formulate a strategy for dealing with the disagreement in a way that will keep it from reoccurring. When you speak to the parties, especially when you have a vested interest in the outcome, it is vital to keep your cool and focus on behaviors rather than making things personal. Folks who feel threatened or insulted stop listening, often becoming defensive or aggressive and poised for (verbal or physical) battle. In fact, when someone is losing an argument they virtually always take things personal. At that point the disagreement is no longer about the action or error, often turning to animus that is not easily resolved.

You can feign anger on the job, but it’s a tactic that should rarely (as in no more than once every couple years) be used and then only for special purposes. If folks think you’re bound to blow up at them it will undermine their trust and your career. If you’re actually angry, walk away and re-approach the subject when you’re in a better mood. Saying something along the lines of “I’m having an emotional reaction to this” can both help you calm down as well as have a good reason for tabling the conversation. The only time that feigned anger is appropriate is when you’re dealing with an ethical breach or similarly serious event. It takes years build up an emotional bank account with those around you, yet in seconds you can withdraw all the credit you have gained if you act out inappropriately.

Conflict negotiation can be tough, but it’s also a time to pull out your bag of “dirty tricks,” so to speak. There are a variety of tactics that are often used by conmen and criminals for nefarious purposes that, when turned to a more positive intent, are appropriate in a professional setting. This includes things like forced teaming, coopting, and loansharking. Forced teaming is tactical use of the word “we.” Instead of “I have a problem,” say “We have a problem.” It shows that you’re in it together, both vested in the problem as well as the outcome. It feels inclusive too. Coopting is designed to get other people on your side before they’ve determined what they really think about you. If you can turn critics into advocates, which takes a bit of social and communication skills, you strengthen your position, gather allies, and get help in resolving the issue. If helps if you focus on the superordinate goal of helping the business so that it doesn’t come across as self-aggrandizing. Loansharking is typically done by offering small favors designed to evoke feelings of indebtedness in others. Yeah, it’s cheesy, but even simple stuff like getting coffee for the other person every so often, can make a difference in their feelings toward you. Those may appear to be shallow tactics, but they are highly effective psychologically, especially when you are well-intentioned.

Some final thoughts:

No matter what you’re negotiating begin by keeping the endgame in mind. Know your goal, know your boundaries (non-negotiables), and stay on track. The better you know the other party, what’s urgent and imperative to them, what they need, and how they are compensated or measured, the better. Know yourself and your objectives so that you can stay on track too. Creativity is good. There’s more than one appropriate way to solve most anything, but guard against an agreement that unduly alters what you were originally aiming at. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment, especially if the other party is a very experienced negotiator and more than a little manipulative. If in doubt, sleep on it before agreeing to any final resolution.

Make sure you’re talking with someone empowered to make a decision before you get started. There’s no point in wasting your time otherwise, so if you discover you’re dealing with the wrong people escalate. Or play them off against each other, though that’s tough if you’re not a professional and not a game that most folks ought to play save in special circumstances.

Negotiation is more about communication than anything else, so you will need to exercise active listening skills throughout the process. Silence can be your friend, as the other party will often feel compelled to fill it, oftentimes giving away more than intended. Ask before you assert, aim for clarity and cooperation, pay attention to non-verbals to see if it’s working, and don’t hesitate to course-correct as needed (so long as you don’t stray from your goals, of course) The best deals are those in which both parties find a win. Be courteous, patient, and respectful, but always stay within the parameters you decided before you got started.

About the author:

Lawrence Kane is a senior leader at a Fortune 50 corporation where he is responsible for IT infrastructure strategy and sourcing management. He saved the company well over $2.1B by hiring, training, and developing a high-performance team that creates sourcing strategies, improves processes, negotiates contracts, and benchmarks internal and external supplier performance. A bestselling author of more than a dozen books, he has also worked as a business technology instructor, martial arts teacher, and security supervisor.

The Fear Factor, Part I: Adrenaline and the Arts – Paul McRedmond

You’re not you when you’re scared. And if you ARE scared – under the influence of the survival brain where the fear factor lives, then the martial techniques and tactics you spent SO much time learning will fly out your butt (literally) and leave you inefficient, floundering, flailing, bleeding, unconscious, or worse. Granted, that moment of survival will probably never happen to you (person-to-person crimes are rare in the ‘western’ world), but shouldn’t you, at least, train up to that level of focus and intensity?

True, many training modalities are very hard physically and mentally (multi-man!), but they occur in a (relatively) safe venue – known instructors and training partners, protective surfaces and gear, guided techniques with start and stop times.

Not so in the mean shtreets. The ‘martial arts’ of the thug is to take you out from ambush as suddenly, overwhelmingly and brutally as possible (paraphrased from Rory Miller’s, Facing Violence). Absent a pure ambush scenario (where you never see it coming), you are seriously behind the curve not because your training hasn’t been thorough but because of the effects of the fear factor.

The fear factor is what happens when adrenaline floods the system after a ‘startle’ event. This is the most intense of the three adrenaline events, the other two being anticipatory (like performance anxiety) and emotional (fight with your significant other). All three have the same basic chemistry but it’s the suddenness of the adrenaline reaction that causes the initial freeze that precedes fight or flight.

The freeze is caused by adrenaline and other hormones flooding the body, slamming the heartbeat upward and creating the perception-action gap. Muscles clamp down (thus the term “scared shitless”), you duck, compressing inward, making you a smaller target and ‘winding the spring’ – readying the muscles for rapid decompression – fight or flight. Tachypsychia (from the Greek takhus – swift and psuche – mind) occurs (this term is used in a wider sense): tunnel vision – fine focus with greater clarity at longer distances in exchange for peripheral vision and a sense of space and position, auditory exclusion – background sounds are damped while those that stand out from that background, like the racking of the slide on a pistol or rapid footfalls, are isolated and amplified, loss of fine motor skills (drawing your pepper spray from your purse), dry mouth (saliva is not needed) and sweaty palms (wetter palms grips better).

This freeze can last from a fraction of a second to a minute depending on your training, mental preparation, and experience.

In part two of this three part series, I will examine the seven training categories and how they do, or don’t, develop the mental preparation and mind-set for dealing with those rare situations of life or death and how ‘training-up’ to this level, using the fear factor instead of it using you, can be achieved. Part 3 will cover experience – situations that put you in the fear zone and test your training.

Rage Control – Wim Demeere

The earliest incident I remember of my temper getting out of hand was over something trivial. My older cousin had been needling me until I snapped: I grabbed a scythe and swung it down at him as hard as I could. He jumped back and I missed, burying it deep into the ground, unable to pull it back out. He took me to the ground and into a judo choke hold until I calmed down. I was eight or nine when that happened, I’m not sure anymore.

This wasn’t the last time my bad temper got the best of me, nor the worst. Throughout my youth and early twenties, I flew off the handle many times. I’m immensely lucky that I didn’t seriously injure or kill somebody and end up in jail or dead. I’m even luckier in that I realized early on in life that I needed to control my temper or I would eventually mess up my own life. The pivotal moment came after I kicked somebody in the ribs and he was hospitalized. He didn’t deserve that, there was no reason for me to kick so hard, other than that I was angry. So I went looking for solutions to my anger issue.

I learned that there are many different types of therapy or approaches to fix this problem. I tried several and found behaviour therapy, reframing my thought process, progressive relaxation, meditation and humour to work well for me. These might or might not work for you, we’re all different.

After years of hard work, I progressively got better at staying in control and rarely if ever lose my cool anymore. I’ve come to the point that people who’ve known me for years have never seen me angry and say I am the calmest, most patient person they know. But here’s the uncomfortable truth self-help gurus don’t tell you: my temper never went away. It’s still there. I have simply learned to not let it rule me.

Every day, I get up and tell myself to not be an asshole and hurt people just because I am pissed off. No matter how easy it would be to do so.

Every day, my temper gives me opportunities to beat people up and ruin my life with the consequences:

The idiot who cuts me off in traffic, I’d ram him off the road if I acted on my temper.
The arrogant bastard who gives a snarky comment in a meeting, I’d gladly slap him in the face until he starts crying.
The wannabe tough guy who eyeballs me at the gas station, I wouldn’t mind taking him on to see the look on his face when he finds out he can’t win and I won’t stop.

After all these years, my first reaction still tends to be the same: my temper wants to flare and take over. Then I tell it not to.

As I got older I got better at this, to the point where it has become automatic and I don’t end up with a big adrenaline dump anymore. I expect to always have to work, at it, until I die.

Why do I bring all this up?

Letting anger control you is a sure-fire way to get into trouble and attract violence.

We all know we’re supposed to avoid violence and de-escalate problems. Yet we continue to see CCTV or cell phone footage of people ignoring this advice and letting their anger get the better of them until fists start flying. If you take an honest look at your own violent encounters (or near misses), you’ll likely discover your anger and other emotions were a determining factor.

Violence takes at least two parties: you and the other guy. You are half the equation. The decisions you make during conflicts, regardless of what your monkey brain is screaming for you to do, are ultimately yours. Avoiding violence is easy in theory, but once a strong emotion like anger is thrown into the mix, it becomes much harder to stop from engaging the other guy when you should de-escalate. The consequences of that violence can leave your life in ruins or end with you bleeding out on a pavement.

If you are quick to anger, here’s an empowering truth for you:

Your temper is not a force of nature. You can learn to control it.

It isn’t easy. You have to question yourself, your motives, your emotions, your mind-set, your decisions, everything. You have to find a balance between doing that while at the same time avoiding “paralysis of analysis.” What’s more, you only get the benefits of self-control after you do all the work. But once you do, your odds of successfully avoiding violence increase and you can live your life more safely.

Thugs and Chess – Peter Consterdine

Every instructor at some time has said that the worst person to spar against is a beginner. They will always do something totally unexpected, punch incorrectly (sic), but hit you on the nose, block your shin with the point of their elbow, close down your kicks without ever planning to and generally cause chaos. The problem is they don’t know the rules. They don’t know we are supposed to be better at the game we’re playing and they don’t yet know enough to be impressed and let us score on them. They make the same mistake all beginners do – they aren’t yet conditioned by combative rules!

Also we find it difficult to read what they are going to do because, as yet, we haven’t programmed them to move in such a way that we can detect early on what they are about to strike with. That will come with time when we’ve moulded them into the rules. And rules we have – complex, complicated and sophisticated rules about combative engagement and how it should happen within the art we practice. This all may have a facetious ring about it but, unfortunately, there are also some unfortunate truths.

Fine so far until we extend the analogy of the beginner to the street, where the person who, having had umpteen pints of best ale or whatever, decides you’re a suitable case for treatment is also somebody who hasn’t gone through the tedious procedure of learning all the rules. He doesn’t wait for a signal to start, in fact, he probably won’t even convey to you anything is about to start, rather simply knock you out. He won’t exchange complex blows, blocks and counters, he’ll simply plow into you and before he does that he may have destroyed your resolve to fight with such violent language and display of aggression that you’re out of the game before you start. He’ll come in swinging so as not to present a target, be hard to hurt because, unlike your students in the Dojo, his pain threshold and fear threshold are both enhanced with alcohol and adrenalin

You see the problem is that ‘high level martial arts only works best against high level martial artists’ – it’s thugs and chess – you can’t play chess with someone to whom draughts is mentally taxing and who doesn’t know the rules. It’s this point that both Geoff Thompson (my partner in the BCA) and I try to get over time and again to people that, unless you are prepared to rethink the problem of how you adapt to the reality of violent street confrontations, simply relying on Dojo skills won’t work. Remember one thing, that the less a person knows the more dangerous they are, because the better they are at what it is they do. Also the less trained a person is in, say, a martial arts system, the more underhand they will be in trying to get close to strike. They will also be more violent and are prepared to cause you more damage than you would have done to them.

Try and put most martial arts systems into context and that is they come from cultures where display is paramount, the exchange of high level skills is required by the watching public and that everyone feels cheated if the fight ends on the first blow. Taken to extremes one can look at Mongolian Wrestling, part of the yearly National Games, or Naadam, in Ulaanbattar. People have waited a whole year, traveled maybe hundreds of miles, cooked food for the day and will not be cheated by means of short fights – one fight can last hours! Most Eastern martial arts have the same constraints, particularly the display of complexity and competence, whereas, by contrast a fight in a bar is never pretty, never takes time and never shows great martial skills which is counter to how martial artists believe it should happen. Do not take your Dojo model of combat into the bar – this simply becomes a case of martial arts in jeans and will get you seriously hurt.

They practice the two skills of ‘sucking you in’ or ‘psyching you out’. I used to do this to people when working on the door where, and if the distance was wrong I would feign fear or worry (usually not difficult) which made my opponent overly confident and would cause him to close the distance and come into my range. The other alternative was to ‘psych them out’ with either a display of aggression or a display of massive confidence (not actually felt, but well disguised). Both can work, but don’t try the ‘psyching out’ option if you look more like a concert pianist, or art school teacher, as the bluff can’t be carried off.

Be assured of one thing, though, and that is that the person who practices the low-key, suck you in deception is by far the most dangerous. The one who tries to psyche you out with the massive display of aggression, swearing, posturing and threats is simply practicing theatre. It doesn’t make him less dangerous but it does make him predictable and, providing you’ve armour-plated yourself against such displays, when he realises that it isn’t working he’ll have a big confidence dip. Also, he doesn’t expect to get a pre-emptive slap or strike when he’s halfway through his performance.

Both tactics can work for you and both can be used against you. I mentioned a display of confidence and this is probably the one most people should work on. It demands you display no emotion, display no physical capabilities and are able to talk without giving away how you actually feel. Watch doormen – this latter option is the one they cultivate the best. They have become skilled at not betraying emotions and this has been helped in no small way with the advent of CCTV which may monitor their every move and expression, particularly aggression.

What we can use and what people use against us are two sides of the same coin. In nearly all cases the person who is facing you down with a display of aggression and threats is no less nervous or frightened than you it’s just that he’s now working to his rules. You see the problem is that in the Dojo we don’t practice ‘verbal violence’! In fact, we do just the opposite, practicing politeness and control, with little if any displays of true aggression. However, when you face it for the first time, it may be enough to freeze you into immobility and make you the loser even before a blow is thrown.

All my teaching, either for the police or others is centered around not what techniques will work for us in the street, but what psychological, physiological and cognitive barriers will stop us handling and controlling the violent encounter as we would expect and hope to and are trained to. Very simply, this is to do with the body’s response to stress as it impacts the sympathetic nervous system and also the endocrine system. To this can be added a host of other very strange psychological and physiological symptoms that overwhelm us, and which all serve to negate any physical skills we have accumulated over the years. In a separate article I’ll detail the process of what happens and why, but for the moment believe me it doesn’t happen as you may think it does from the comfort of the Dojo.

In a separate concept I’ve developed called the ‘One Yard Rule and the Egg Timer’ I mention how we burden ourselves with too many techniques, whereas your attacker actually has the benefit of knowing very little and so can’t confuse himself about what he is going to do. Most critically, though, he will not be caught between the two stools of attack or defence – unlike you. He has one simple plan and that’s to strike and at a point he knows he can make it work. He wants the first strike to finish you so that he and probably his mates can then go to town on you. As trained martial artists we have choice, to pre-empt or wait and defend, but it doesn’t work to our advantage. Like our attacker we should have only one consideration and that’s to be first, whereas having the choice actually weakens our resolve and decision making powers.

There is a metaphor for life which I have always thought very apt for this particular issue and it’s the story of the Fiddler on The Roof, which is essentially to do with the lifelong battle for all of us to achieve the best we can in life making the most of our innate talents, set against our innate fear of the unknown and risk of failure which usually inhibit us. This is the fiddler who goes through life trying to fiddle the best tune he can whilst at the same time trying to keep a grip of the roof so as not to fall off. If he could be brave enough to be less concerned about his concern over keeping his balance on the roof his playing would be tremendous and he would reach his potential, but all the time this is set against the fear of falling off.

When we are faced with a violent aggressor we are just like the fiddler on the roof, caught between what we have been told we should do, which, probably, is to wait and defend, or pre-empt and strike before he attacks. At such times our real, deep seated confidence in our ability to hit hard is also brought into question – ‘will he go down or will I just annoy him and make matters worse, in other words, should I cling onto the chimney a bit longer and try and talk him out of it’? I’ve been there myself and the price to be paid for an inappropriate mindset is too high, so believe me you need to let go of the chimney!

This is why such concepts as creating a ‘reactionary gap’ are inherently dangerous. A violent aggressor will always fill any gap you create if you try and step back. You’ve also created more confidence in him, less in yourself and, from a purely objective, tactical aspect you’ve stepped back into the unknown. As a concept it fails when you have nowhere to step back to i.e. if you have a wall, busy road or vehicle behind you, but more critically it develops a negative mindset. To upset an offender’s plan of action (POA) you need to do the opposite of what he expects and that’s to go in and to him.

You have to drastically reduce your options, so keep it simple, be first, be impactive, predetermine your ‘POA’ before you engage with the person by means of a structured assessment and forget you’re a 6^th Dan or whatever. Let go of the roof and remember you can’t play chess with someone for whom draughts (Checkers in the U.S.) is the most complex game they are ever likely to tackle.

Street vs. Mat Russian Style – Mikhail Didenko

Here is a brief introduction to the differences between street and mat conditions from a Russian perspective. This will translate for most of you too I guess as violence is an international language. So I will highlight 5 main differences that are important if conflict management goes physical and your previous training has all been on the mat.

1st difference of street self-defense from a sport fight

First of all this is the quantity of opponents. You have only one opponent in a sport fight, and usually there are multiple attackers in a street. And the quantity of opponents is the root problem and difference from a sport fight: different techniques, different tactics, different vision, different mental setting (let alone the street extreme situation which is different as well). Try to analyze your style or school – would its tactics and techniques help you to fight the multiple attackers? If not, I’ve got some bad news.

2nd difference of street self-defense from a sport fight

Then we should pay attention to a surface – can you fall on a concrete with no harm to your health? What if you fall down? What if your opponent is a wrestler? Street pavement is usually made of bitumen which is really hard. Try it if you don’t trust. There are no comfortable mats or tatami. Please be honest – could you harmlessly fall down on a hard pavement? Let alone possible glass fragments or rusty cans which are possible even in a wealthy countries. Could you feel comfortable in a ground fight? Could you easily stand up?

Besides if you fall down you would lose direction for a second at least. At that moment you would be a helpless victim. But if you trained you are OK even in the very moment of falling.

The Russian Martial Arts start from this point – at first we learn to fall (frontwards, backwards, leftwards, rightwards and other directions). Then we learn to do rolls, etc.

3rd difference of street self-defense from a sport fight

Do you think that the biggest guy is the most dangerous one? Sorry to disappoint you, but that is not true. Folks pump iron trying to look cool, but a big biceps doesn’t make you to be a great street fighter. Yes, weight matters in a sport fight – that is why they made weight categories, and a big boxer most likely will do a smaller one. But big muscles can be your disadvantage in a street fight. Why? Because they use weapon in a street, dude! And then everything changes – a smaller, but dexterous person has a chance to evade from a knife, while a heavy, bulky person most likely will be cut. Yes, you can punch or even knock-out your opponent, but he will recover, and you might not.

Some martial arts practice taking strikes or kicks – they harden their bodies to stand the pain. This habit, this reflex can be good in a sport fight, but then such a fighter can reflectively do the same block against a steel bar or a knife…

The legendary Cossacks were dexterous, they didn’t use armor. Instead they evaded from enemies swords and spears and could get anybody at the same time. The Cossacks were the warriors nation. Unlike the Russian peasants they didn’t like to take strikes even in a fist fighting, because as we said before it can make a reflex to take anything from your opponent. If a peasant could afford it as he would never go to war in his lifetime (even if he would, he would go as a simple minuteman), then a Cossack warrior couldn’t afford it.

There is a traditional Russian competition when two persons stand close to each other, and they strike each other in turn. They cannot move their position, they should stand at the same place. They should take all the strikes. The winner is the person who lasts longer. Usually they do it with a naked torso, so everyone can see a damage on their bodies. Well, Cossacks would never play this game. Guess, why.

See the difference between a fist fighter and a warrior.

4th difference of street self-defense from a sport fight

Fighting with multiple attackers demands different vision. In sport combats you can concentrate on one opponent only, but in a street fight you need to check several opponents simultaneously. Central vision doesn’t work here. You need to use peripheral vision and the method of defocusing which was described in the previous chapters. That would help you to see the 180° of 360°, but what about other half? Unlike movies enemies try to attack you at once, preferably from the back.

These are not all possible variants of visual checking of a situation, but we cannot talk about it in this book.

5th difference of street self-defense from a sport fight

In a sport fight you use ‘linear’ techniques, tactics, vision again… You have only one opponent and there is an imaginary line between you. But in a street geometry changes. In a street you are in a circle of multiple attackers. And the sport fight techniques and tactics supposed for a single combat doesn’t work here. In a street you better use hooks, backfists, while constantly moving and rotating at the same time. (Yes – movements are also different.) It’s like you make a protective sphere with your arms. You don’t let to grab you, you block punches, you punch yourself.

Sport techniques and tactics are the best for a sport fight. It wouldn’t be reasonable to rotate in a sport fight, though they use backfists even in MMA sometimes. But why do some folks think that sport techniques and tactics would be good for a real street fight?

Any exercise, any technique is good for a particular situation and for a particular person. Medicine for me can be a poison for you. The Russian Martial Arts make a person to think. Guess you already understand that we better think not only about exercises or techniques, but about life situations and clichés as well.

The Russian Style techniques depend on the following parameters: targets and condition. That is why the Russian Style techniques are difficult to define – it is different all the time.