Episode 35: A self-regulation tip – slow things down and neutralize them

Hello, everyone!  Welcome to episode 35 of the Teaching and Raising Problem Solvers podcast. 

I don’t always put the number at the start of the podcast, but whenever I hit the 5s or the 0s (like 25, 30), I feel more inclined to mention the podcast number.  It’s a nice frame of reference for me as I’m moving through podcast recording.  

But I have a really unique conversation this morning around customer service, and I wanted to share it because I think it has really important implications for self-regulation.  

So, one of my big areas around my own self-regulation journey right now, and just understanding self-regulation as a whole, is working on difficult conversations and accepting feedback.  Because I feel in my personal experience those two areas tend to be the areas where I’ve seen people get really dysregulated and where I’ve experienced dysregulation.  

And so I read, Think Again, by Adam Grant.  I’m listening right now to Thanks for the Feedback, which is a really great lesson, and just really working on neutralizing feedback.  Working on neutralizing information and getting to the objectivity of information when it’s shared with us.

I won’t share exactly what company this interaction happened from, but I had a really unpleasant customer service experience this morning.

We have our trash removed every 2 weeks, and our last pick-up they never showed up.  We called them and they were like, “oh yeah, no, we’ll come next Thurday.”  So back up to last Thursday, our road was slippery so they slid off not even down our driveway but close to the top of our road, so they didn’t pick up our trash then.  We called them and they said they were going to come yesterday, which was Tuesday, but they never showed up.  And we’re supposed to get pick-up again tomorrow back on track, meaning it’s been a full month since we’ve had our trash picked up.

So I called them and I was talking to the person in the front, and they were like, “Oh, we’ll pick up all your trash tomorrow, but we don’t do refunds.”  I said, “Okay, who could I talk to about that?  Who could I talk to about the refunds, since pick-up was missed and it’s been a month”–you know, really calmly and neutrally.  It went to the next person in line, and when they picked up, I explained the scenario briefly and this person kind of (for lack of better terms) went off on me and said something like, “Well, we picked up your trash three times in December.  Should we charge you extra for that?  This is Vermont, you should expect you’re going to miss pick-ups.”  And just kind of came at me in attack mode.  

I had this really powerful revelation, because I could feel my heart rate increase because it was this really unnecessary, kind of dramatic engagement around this conversation and I did something really powerful, which is the title of this episode.  I kind of slowed things down.  So I could feel myself getting heated because the response to my inquiry about a refund was received in a really threatening way to this person.  

I said, “It seems like there’s a lot of frustration about my question about a refund.  I’m just wondering what’s happening.  It seems like we’re having a hard time engaging.”  So by slowing things down and by calling out what was happening and raising it to the surface level, it helped me objectively in that situation.

And actually, nothing wound up transpiring.  It’s not like a “happily ever after” scenario.  There wasn’t a magical interaction that came at the end.  I actually ended up losing service and I tried to call her back because I wanted to end the conversation.  But this person was insistent that I had already received this information before and I was just “hassling” them.  I was calmly explaining to them that I haven’t actually ever called.  I’ve called to check on the pick-ups but I’ve never called to check on a refund.

So there was kind of a mismatch in the information we both were sharing, and by slowing things down and by pointing out that those points, it helped me stay calm because I was neutralizing it.  I was kind of objectively calling to the table what I was noticing, and I was calling out what I was noticing about our interaction. 

I just shared, as a business person, this is a really surprising interaction–how you’re responding to my concerns.  I’m wondering if there’s a different way we could go about this.  Again, it didn’t lead to happily ever after.  There was no positive exchange; there was no solution.  But it helped me.

And I always think about these tips and tricks when we think about going into the world.  Our self-regulation is our own.  We cannot control other people in our interactions.  But we do have the autonomy, we do have the ability to work on our management, our modulation of ourself.  And in the end, that’s what really matters.

We oftentimes think of control and controlling the situation to be the desired outcome.  But controlling ourselves and maintaining our autonomy, preserving our sense of belonging or preserving our sense of safety – that is our top priority.  And so whenever you can call things neutrally, you can put on the table what you notice is happening in a non-threatening, non-judgmental way, it can really help your own regulation.  It can really help your own regulation.  And that falls under the social communication branch of my self-regulation profile, when we’re in an interaction.

But anyways, I hope this was a helpful quick little listen about slowing things down and calling things to the table.  I will talk to you in the next episode.