Be the Last to Raise Your Voice
For me this is a really hard one. I do love to have a good
shout. I came from a big, robust family where shouting was a
way of life and the only way to get yourself heard, get any
attention, or make a point. Dysfunctional? Yes. Noisy? Yes.
Helpful? Probably not.
One of my sons has inherited the shouting gene, and he is
very good at it. The temptation is to join in. Luckily, this Rule
is be the last to raise your voice, so I do have a get-out clause.
If he shouts first, I’m allowed to shout back. But I do try really
hard not to. For me, shouting in any form is a bad thing, a
sign that I have lost control, lost the argument. The son of a
vicar once saw his father’s sermon notes and in the margin he
had pencilled, “Shout here, argument weak.” I think this just
about sums it all up.
But I have shouted at various times and, invariably, I regret
each and every occasion. I know I’ve regretted the time I was
very shouty in a well-known high street electrical chain over a
damaged video player. At that time I did get my own way, but
the reality is that it was a bad thing and deep down I’m quite
ashamed of myself.
So what do you do if you, too, have inherited the shouty gene
like I have? I find that I have to walk away to stop the
inevitable decline into shouting in a challenging situation.
That’s a tough one, especially if you know you’re right. There
are so many things that make us shout, so many situations
where we feel that a judicious loss of temper will get us our
own way. But we are dealing with real live human beings who
have their own feelings, and shouting is not justified—even if
they start it first.There are two situations where people lose their temper—justified
and manipulative. The first is where you run over their
foot with your car and refuse to apologize or acknowledge you
have done anything wrong. In this situation, they are allowed
to shout. The second situation is where people use anger to
get their own way—a sort of emotional blackmail. You are
allowed to ignore them or to be assertive to control the situation.
You are not allowed to shout back.
I know, I know, there are all sorts of situations where shouting
seems appropriate—the dog is stealing the Sunday dinner; the
kids won’t tidy their room; your computer has crashed again
and the repair department won’t fix it quickly enough; the
local deliquents are adorning your fence, again; after going
through the umpteen options over and over again, you fail to
get through to the receptionist after holding for 20 minutes;
the clerk put up the closed sign just as you get to the counter;
someone is clearly being stupid and deliberately choosing to
misunderstand you.
And on and on and on. But if you take this Rule as a simple “I
don’t do shouting,” it becomes an easy benchmark to stick to.
You become known as someone who is incredibly calm no
matter what is happening. Calm people are trusted. Calm
people are relied on. Calm people are looked up to and given
responsibility. Calm people last longer.
RULE 11
SHOUT HERE,
ARGUMENT WEAK