The Debrief Deescalation

Four tools for lowering the temperature of a tense moment before it turns into something worse: why tone matters more than the exact words, how open hands and a non-threatening stance change how you're read, the broken-record technique for holding a line without escalating, and how to recognize the exact moment a conversation is over and it's time to leave. De-escalation treated as a trainable skill, not luck.