I got terrible customer service from someone in a membership role. Sixty seconds in, it felt personal. I was activated and I walked out the door. No escalation, no manager, no last word. Just flight. In this episode, I unpack what happened, why I'd do it the same way again, and what it taught me about the difference between defaulting and deciding.
I got terrible customer service from someone in a membership role. Sixty seconds in, it felt personal. I was activated and I walked out the door. No escalation, no manager, no last word. Just flight. In this episode, I unpack what happened, why I'd do it the same way again, and what it taught me about the difference between defaulting and deciding.
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The Newsletter: This week in the newsletter, I wrote about knowing your default stress response and why flight over fight might be the most strategic choice you make all week. Subscribe to the 5 Things Newsletter here.
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[INTRO]
In this week's 5 Things newsletter, the stories are about Adidas designing with a Down syndrome community, a sensory-friendly hijab built for comfort and faith, and more. But if you want to read those stories, you can get them at 5thingsdei.com — because this podcast is now Good Vibes Leadership.
[EPISODE]
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Good Vibes Leadership. I'm Bernadette Smith, CEO of the Equality Institute. I'm a keynote speaker and your weekly guide to playful inclusive leadership.
So, this week, I want to talk about something that just happened to me recently and I'm still thinking about it. It was a really short interaction. I went to a gym — I was visiting. I had a friend who was a member at this gym and gave me access to a free membership for a week. Anyway, long story short, I had this sixty-second interaction with someone in membership at this gym. It was a complete stranger, and it didn't go well. I was activated. The conversation felt personal, and it taught me something useful about how I'm wired.
At the end of this conversation, I was activated. I left. I was angry. I didn't get angry in front of this person, but I definitely felt angry. But without escalating, without asking for a manager, without saying fully what I really wanted to say — I left. I chose flight. Not fight, not fawn, not freeze. Flight.
Now, those are the four primal stress responses. The ancient responses of how we respond to fear, how we respond to a tiger attacking us. Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. You've probably heard of them. But have you thought about which one is your default response?
My default response is flight. Almost always, it's flight.
So here's the interesting part. I teach people to stay in hard conversations for a living. It's literally my job. And yet, when I'm the one activated, my nervous system defaults to flight. My nervous system moves before my brain does.
And actually, for a long time, I wondered if that made me a hypocrite. If it made me weak. I'm activated and I go into flight mode — which might mean I'm not staying in those hard conversations. But what I think now is that it doesn't make me weak. It just makes me human. It makes me normal.
In this particular context, it wasn't a colleague who activated me. It wasn't a client. It was a stranger in a sixty-second interaction. And over the years, I have learned to carefully pick my battles.
What I've learned after twenty-plus years of working with leaders and having many difficult conversations is that knowing your default stress response is the first step to actually making a choice. There's a difference between defaulting to flight — or fight, or whatever it happens to be — and actually deciding that this is what is going to make the most sense in this context.
So in that interaction at the gym, I didn't actually default to flight. I decided to flee. Flight actually made sense. Not every hard conversation is worth having. And I think there's a real skill — a real value — in knowing the difference. Actually being able to make that choice. Being empowered to decide: am I going to default, or am I going to decide?
Now, this might show up at work constantly. You might have a colleague who pushes back on everything. That's fight. You might have a leader who goes quiet and then sends a passive-aggressive email later. That might be freeze. You might have a manager who over-apologizes to keep the peace. That's fawn. We all have a default. Most of us have never actually been asked to name it.
Now, I've talked about this a lot, but I have a tool called the ARC Method. The ARC Method is so useful in so many different contexts. It stands for Ask, Respect, Connect.
It can be hard in the heat of the moment, in the heat of the conversation. But when you are deciding whether a conversation is worth having — whether you are going to continue to engage — start by asking yourself a better question. Not, am I angry? Am I going to flee? But: is this worth my energy?
That's the A — the Ask.
But you want to make sure that you then Respect your own answer. Asking the question is the A, but you have to respect what comes back.
And then Connect — that's the C. Connect that answer to action. Sometimes the action is staying. Sometimes that action is leaving. And both can be the right call. Context absolutely matters.
So here's the practice.
Think about the last time you got activated at work. Maybe there was a loaded comment in a meeting. Maybe someone dismissed your idea. Maybe a conversation went completely sideways and you didn't see that coming. What did you do? Did you push back? Did you go quiet? Did you over-apologize? Did you leave?
Ask yourself — was that your default response? Or was that a choice you made?
By the way, this can work in your personal life too. You might want to think about how this played out — or how it could have played out — outside of work as well.
You don't have to know the answer right away. But start by asking. Start by thinking about this stuff.
What is your default stress response? And when was the last time you chose a stress response intentionally?
That's your good vibe for the week.
[GOOD VIBES TO GO]
Now let's move into this week's Good Vibes to Go.
It's Autism Acceptance Month. So get smarter in seconds on autism, courtesy of Blair Amani and Dylan Caput. There is a link to that video in the show notes.
[OUTRO]
Alright, folks. Thank you for listening to Good Vibes Leadership. If this resonated, please share it with a leader in your life who needs to hear it. And if you want to bring this conversation to your own organization, I would love to talk. Find me at bernadettesmith.com.
I'm Bernadette Smith, and I'm cheering you on.
If you don't already get the Five Things newsletter, you can subscribe at 5thingsdei.com. Have a great week.