When faced with an aggressive person presenting combative behaviour — shaking fists, pacing, posturing to intimidate — you need communication strategies that achieve two objectives at once: dissuade the subject from violence, and position yourself for safety.
Broadcasting body language that enhances safety
The survival brain doesn’t care for constructs of safety or fact. As a primal animal, it only cares about what it sees in front of it right at that moment — the clenched fist, the pacing, the tension, the puffed-out chest.
During Lone Working De-Escalation, you have two core goals:
- Dissuade the subject from violence through your words and behaviour.
- Position yourself in a way which enhances your safety.
Let’s start with the first objective. What message do you want to send to an aggressive, posturing person? Through our unique behavioural approach to conflict management, we’ve conducted thousands of short, informal experiments with training groups over the years. Here’s how one works.
A volunteer and I find a space in the training room. The room is busy — desks, projectors, laptops, chairs, coats, bags — much like any front room, bedroom, or hallway out in the community. The volunteer knows the nature of the exercise: she’ll observe physical signs of aggression and tell me what she sees, hears, and feels. For safety, neither of us may touch the other. I stand about eight to ten feet away.
We begin. I break eye contact and think of something that makes me angry. I look down, pace back and forth, raise a hand to cover my eyes, rub my head. A facial colour change follows. I huff and puff. My posture tenses as the chimpanzee inside tries to make me look bigger. Then I slam my hand into a wall or table, fix my eyes on the volunteer’s, and step decisively toward her with a fixed stare.
At this point, one of several things usually happens. The volunteer either breaks eye contact and leans away giggling, holds steady and assertive, or steps backward while scanning her environment and denying me proximity.
The moment the experiment completes, I take a big step back and present the biggest smile I can conjure, telling her the exercise is over. This is vital — the stress in those ten seconds is palpable every time, and not just for the volunteer.
Immediately, I begin the debrief: how does she feel? What physical sensations? The answers are consistent — heartbeat feels rapid, hands sweaty, tension in the body, rapid heating-up. Even though she’s in a training room with colleagues and an instructor she’s spent hours with — and fairly sure he won’t hurt her — none of that matters.
Fact versus opinion during de-escalation
The survival brain — the chimpanzee inside — doesn’t care for the constructs of safety or the facts. It essentially says: “To hell with your ideas of safety — there is an angry predator out there, and I am getting us ready to run or fight.” You can’t fool your survival system. It will act for you based on its assessment of risk, rooted in what it can see, hear, or smell.
Back to the experiment. I ask the volunteer: “What did you see?” About four times out of five, the answer is something like: “You were upset and agitated, you were going to do something, I could see you were escalating.” I then ask: “But what did you actually see?”
After a moment of consideration, we get the factual observations: “You were pacing. Holding your hand to your face. Your colour changed. Your body went tense, your movement was jerky and stiff. You had a fixed gaze and looked straight through me. Your fist clenched and you walked right at me. You stepped into my space, very close. I felt uncomfortable.”
When we write an expert opinion for a court, it is always important that we separate fact from opinion.
If a worker in a real incident faced these same behaviours and decided to kick the aggressive person in the shin before running for the door, she would later have to explain her reasoning to her boss, the police, or another authority. Her opinion will matter — but it will be far clearer if she can articulate the factual observations that caused her to form that opinion.
Reading the pre-cues of violence
Given the right knowledge, training, and experience, a worker may be able to articulate specific pre-cues that presage a physical assault. Examples include the “pectoral twitch” — the micro-movement of the chest before a punch — or a sideways stance favouring the right side, like a tennis player preparing to serve, signalling preparation for large swinging blows. The “witness glance,” also known as the look-away-and-punch, is another: the aggressor breaks eye contact in the last second before striking.
Being aware of pre-cues is a vital part of the escalation phase. Research into elite athletes’ reaction times has found that the difference between novices and veterans lies specifically in their tacit awareness of the micro-adjustments their opponents make before completing even very sudden movements. The body gives tells — even at critical speeds — and those tells can make a difference in response time.
Managing proximity
After the experiment, I ask the volunteer: “Did you want to move? Which direction?” The answer is almost always the same: “Yes. I wanted to step backwards.” This is good practice — follow your intuition. Any time your instinct tells you to step away from an angry or aggressive person, you should follow it immediately.
Occasionally, we meet a very experienced volunteer who works with a client group that thrives on manipulation and confrontation. Sometimes they tell us they won’t step backwards, as it would signal weakness or “losing.” We acknowledge that, in very rare cases, an assertive strategy may be the best approach — a specific strategy for a specific person or situation. But for a generic approach to proximity management and body language, stepping back is the sound default.
One variation of this experiment involves the instructor stepping nose-to-nose with the volunteer and asking: “How does this feel?” Invariably, hyper-proximity is uncomfortable, unpleasant, weird, unnerving, and noxious. We try to keep noxious substances at a distance — and in the case of a noxious human being, we do this carefully, by stepping backwards while maintaining the ability to watch their behaviour.
The barrier signal — your universal de-escalation tool
As we practice de-escalation, I see a huge variation in hand positions across the room: fully-extended arms pushed to their limit, compressed hands held just in front of the chest, “surrender” positions with hands back and away, “karate hands,” crossed forearms, single-arm extensions. But one commonality unites all effective gestures: the open palm.
“Stop.” The chorus rings out in every training room. The upraised open hand, fingers splayed, palm pointing forward — one of the most universal devices of non-verbal communication available to us.
But where does this stop signal need to be placed, and how? Should your “Stop” signal tell the person that you’re afraid they’ll hurt you, that you’re willing and able to hurt them, that you’re submitting, or that you’re disengaging? Signalling a fully-extended arm is dismissive. The surrender position cedes control. The shallow, hands-next-to-chest position doesn’t protect your personal space. And signalling that you have one hand “ready” to strike predisposes the negotiation to include the threat of violence.
So what’s our recommendation? A compromise between communicating professional engagement and maintaining a safe perimeter.
KEY TAKEAWAY: The Barrier Signal
Your standard-model barrier signal has four criteria:
- Hands open, at chest height
- Fingers open and splayed
- Palms forward, pointing toward the person
- Elbows bent so your arm is about two-thirds extended
Your arms should move in a relaxed, conversational way — not stiff or static. You’re talking with your hands.
Once you’re happy with this posture — and yes, you should step in front of a mirror and try it on — add in a “slow down” gesture. Move your hands slowly and smoothly in an up-and-down space in front of your body, modelling the pace you want them to match. The movement is smaller and more subtle than it sounds — you’re not putting out a fire. With practice, this motion can suggest calm without a single word.
In my own practice, I’ll also ever so slightly cock my head to one side — a listening signal — to show that I’m trying hard to hear what the person is saying. The combination of proximity management, open palms, the slow-down gesture, and the listening signal should lend your high-stakes conversation a quality of safety and professionalism that a tense, unguarded stance cannot.
I want you to be able to flick an internal switch labelled “Body Language for Conflict” so that your body will begin this level of communication without further conscious thought.
The reason I’ve gone into such detail about the barrier signal is that I want you to have this intelligent tool at your disposal in any conflict scenario. Once you grasp the essential elements — proximity, open palms, slow-down gesture, listening signal — practice and apply them in varying degrees depending on the scenario you’re in. Each element has an inflection and a tone that can change according to circumstances.
Gerard O’Dea is a professional violence-management trainer and consultant active in personal safety training since 2006. He regularly delivers training to local authority, housing organisation, and community-based staff teams who work with sometimes difficult, distressed, or dangerous members of the public. His approach to lone-worker training is pragmatic, functional, and based on a keen analysis of real-world community working. Gerard published Lone Worker Personal Safety: A Guidebook for Health and Social Care Staff (Amazon, 2014). For more information, visit dynamis.training/lone-worker-personal-safety.