“We’re just one action away from dangerous escalation,” Dr. Suzanne Maloney told us Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations. The Brookings Institution scholar was referring to the tripwire potential of the horrifying Israel-Hamas conflict to devolve into a larger Middle East war.
Tripwires and trapdoors abound in our lives in war, peace, and all forms of human endeavor. Good military, diplomatic, and crisis planners understand how one incident, accident, misunderstanding, or erroneous assumption in a tense setting, however seemingly minor or innocuous, can lead to catastrophe.
Effective leaders understand the perils of the down escalator. It takes emotional intelligence and the ability and willingness to take stock of a deteriorating situation and hit the pause button to prevent bad from getting even worse.
Invitations to take the down escalator abound every day in difficult business and organizational scenarios. It’s up to us to observe, anticipate, and see them coming, ask good questions, keep lines of communication wide open, know how to reach the right people at the right time, manage emotions and expectations, and defuse and stabilize the situation. Then, compile and apply the lessons learned so as not to relive it all over again.
Image courtesy of VectorStock.