My latest podcast guest, Joe Smarro —  featured in the Emmy award winning HBO documentary, Ernie and Joe: Crisis Cops — taught me something about navigating difficult conversations: It helps to be trained in crisis intervention.

For 15 years Joe was an officer with the San Antonio, Texas police department. The last 11 of those years was with the mental health and crisis intervention unit. His job: de-escalate dangerous confrontations with those suffering from mental health traumas. It’s the kind of confrontation officers face frequently, and that accounts for one in five people killed by the police. Yet in 11 years, Joe never once had to resort to force. His only weapon, he says, was his ability to communicate.

After gaining national attention for his approach to crisis intervention training, Joe left the police force and founded, together with his business partner, Jesse Trevino, Solution Point Plus, where he now delivers his training to law enforcement officers and other first responders around the country.

What got me interested in Joe's work was discovering that the principles underlying his training are exactly what I talk about in my Difficult Conversations book and workshop. I figured he’d have a lot to say about how these principles work in real life, and the positive impact they can have in even the most highly charged situations. But there was something else, too, that got my interest. Embedded in Joe’s approach is an essential ingredient crucial to his success. I’ll talk more about that ingredient in a moment. First, though, I’d like to walk you through the principles that underlie Joe’s training. 

Principle #1: It starts with you. ”The first step of effective de-escalation is self awareness.” says Joe. In other words, his training isn’t just for you, it’s about you — it’s training to help you gain the self-knowledge you need to not get caught up in the other person’s problem. That means having an intimate relationship with your own emotional landscape — the past hurts and traumas that, left unconscious or unresolved, can become landmines for other people to step on. It’s when we get emotionally triggered that conflicts escalate, and have the highest potential for turning violent — verbally or physically.

Joe came to this first principle through personal experience. After joining the police department’s crisis intervention unit, he realized he wasn’t following his own advice, and that his own life “was a mess.” In his words:

The first two years I was on that unit, I was a total hypocrite...I would show up every day telling people, "If you would just take your medications, if you would just make your doctor appointments, if you would just do the right thing, you wouldn't have to deal with law enforcement like this. It's not that hard.’"

But then I would go home, and I'm on my second divorce at the time, and I'm drinking way more than I should, and I'm sitting in my apartment, by myself, staring at my gun belt, thinking, ‘I don't want to do this anymore...I'm tired of sucking at life. I'm a mess.’

And as my second wife was leaving me, she said, “Hey, there’s something seriously wrong with you. You should get help.” And that's when I went to the VA. And I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Persistent Depressive Disorder. And I've been in treatment ever since. That was probably 10 years ago, and I've never left. 

But what I realized, that was so profound for me, was that as I really dove in and became super curious about me, myself, who I am, why I do the things I do, and how I got to where I am, the more willing I was to help myself, and the better able I became to help other people.

Principle #2: Focus on the person, not the problem; focus on connection, not correction. As I’ve mentioned, in 11 years with the crisis intervention unit Joe never had to use force to get voluntary compliance from the distraught and potentially violent person he was trying to help. How did he do it?

“The goal has to be connection before correction,” said Joe. “You're not going to get someone to comply with you if you don't have a connection established. And this is a very foreign concept for people to understand, especially in policing, where we’re trained to come in from the position of authority: You will do what I say just because I'm in charge.” 

Instead of forcing compliance through authority, Joe teaches people to gain compliance through curiosity and listening. It’s another principle rooted in his own experience:

I was always a very curious person, I always knew that my eyes were deceiving me, that what I'm looking at isn’t the whole story. Something happened to get this person to be in this state. So I want to be curious about what happened. Like, let's not just react to what we're looking at, but rather respond to what we know. And we're only going to know things by asking questions, and being patient. And it was really by developing this approach within myself that I now teach it to others. And we've had incredible results.

Another key to getting compliance is understanding people’s need for control. No one likes being told what to do or what to think, or being made to feel diminished in any way. A far more effective approach, says Joe, is to model the behavior you’d like to see. To make the point, he has a twist on the old adage, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” Making it drink, says Joe, isn’t our job. It’s to make the horse thirsty, because a thirsty horse will find its own water. 

So how do you make someone thirsty? “You inspire them,” said Joe. “You educate them, you advocate for them, and you demonstrate for them. Nowhere in there do I tell people what to do. It's simply about showing them the way.”

Principle #3: It's all about love. Yes, Joe uses the “L” word, even with police officers. For Joe, love is the antidote to what ails us, the fundamental corrective for a society wedded to punishment rather than mercy, condemnation rather than compassion. As he told me:

I believe everything can be solved with love. And are we capable of loving strangers? I believe yes. It's not a romantic, passionate love, but a genuine love for humanity. A genuine love based on the understanding that we all want the same thing. Before I die, I want joy, I want some level of ease, I would like to have comfort, I want my basic needs met. I want to minimize suffering. We all want that, everybody wants that. And so for me it’s about removing as many of the barriers to those things as possible. 

In America, we're very quick to sanction people, from babyhood onward. We slap their hand, put them in a timeout, and say ‘no.’ In school, they get their name on the board or sent to the principal's office. As an adult if they speed, they get a ticket. If they break the law, they go to jail. 

In Africa, in this certain area, when someone does something wrong, instead of punishing them, they bring them into the village, and everyone surrounds them and tells them how worthy they are. They remind them of how lovable they are. And it persuades them to not go down that path….”yes, you made this choice. That's not a great choice. But remember when you did this for so and so?  Remember, when you did this good thing?” And it's like they're giving them an overdose of dopamine and oxytocin, and oh, my God, it feels so good. 

And we don't do that here. We're very quick to throw people away because of their choices.

Now, back to that one essential ingredient I mentioned. What does Joe’s training have that others might lack? It seems to me it’s this: The people he trains, by virtue of their jobs, have to some extent already taken on the role, the identity, of crisis interventionists. And that identity can be a powerful motivator to fully embrace Joe’s teachings. 

I notice this dynamic in my own life. Having assumed the role of someone with an expertise in the art and science of difficult conversations, I’m more aware of when there’s a gap between what I say and what I do, and I’m more motivated to close it.

I bring this up because the power of assuming the identity of a crisis interventionist isn’t limited to those who specifically work in that field. It’s available to all of us, and one we might want to seriously consider as we navigate the many difficult conversations facing our communities, our nation and our world. For if we’ve ever lived in a time of crisis, surely that time is now. 

I highly recommend listening to the rest of my conversation with Joe on my podcast . You'll find it here.