Quick Tip: Control the Situation

Someone is going to get emotional during a home inspection. It might be a client who is stressed, an agent who is defensive, a contractor who disagrees, or a family member who wants to argue about a minor detail. When that moment hits, raw logic is not always the best tool. Control is.

We start a Quick Tips mini-series with a simple, practical conflict resolution technique: deliberate breathing before you answer. I walk through the exact pattern I use and why it works in the real world, not just in theory. The short pause sets expectations for your pace, the long exhale helps lower your heart rate, and the calm tempo can actually slow the other person down too. It is a way to de-escalate without giving ground on your report.

We also talk about the hidden costs of “winning” arguments in the home inspection business: bad reviews, damaged vendor relationships, and the slow drain of stress you carry home. Money matters, but peace is currency too. When you remember you work for yourself and you answer on your time, you stop getting pulled into someone else’s arena.

If you want better client communication, fewer escalations, and a steadier presence on site, hit play. Subscribe, share this with another inspector, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.

Transcript

Ian Robertson 
Hey, there IT crowd. Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Today is going to be the first in a little mini sub series, and I'm going to call it Quick Tips, because there's a lot of quick tips that can help us get through our day as a home inspector, improve our business as a home inspector, and a lot of different other things. But I just started to notice that in my own business, I started to apply little tips that I would pick up along the way that have solid backing to how they work, and it improved my life and my business significantly, like we had a podcast a little while ago. It's 1000 little things, right?

So here's one of those 1000 little things—conflict resolution. So there's always going to be a lot of conflict in our industry. We're on site, and the father-in-law is there, is making a big deal about a dishwasher setting, or an agent is on site that doesn't like us. Or some contractor is making a big deal about something, or recently, we failed a septic system, and the septic company comes back and says it's fine. It's like, of course, they say it's fine, you know, they don't want to get in trouble. And it's just people getting very emotional. Now, maybe I'm getting old, I'm in my mid 40s, but being able to resolve a conflict or de-escalate a conflict, more appropriately, used to be a very valuable skill set. Nowadays, if you watch social media, even just a little bit, my wife and I watch this show called Customer Wars, and it just makes us feel better about ourselves as human beings. But it's just people get into conflicts, and then they get into conflicts with each other, and instead of resolving it or de-escalating it, they escalate each other. And a lot of times, people just weigh in, well, the one person was right or the other person was right, and I'm like, I'd rather just avoid, not conflict avoidance, but I'd rather play chess than a boxing match. I have been able to win over situations with calmness and logic. And my team's probably laughing listening to this, because I'm an intense kind of guy, but when I'm actually dealing with a client, there's some things that I've done to help de-escalate things.

The latest trick that I have been using, and this is our quick tip for today, is breathing. I'm not talking about the whole sitting cross legged and some weird music playing in the background, breathing. I'm talking about deliberate breathing for a deliberate purpose. And I learned this from a very successful attorney that I follow, and he's always talking about tips and tricks on how to deal with people, to play chess while they're boxing, which is a huge skill. So he controls situations without the other side knowing that he's controlling it. And he does it in a very humane way, we'll call it. He doesn't manipulate people. He just controls the situation. And my favorite thing he does is breathing. So I'm going to do it for you, and it's going to sound weird, and again, this is not usually my gig, but he goes breathe in, then a little higher breath at the top, and then out. So in, out. I just creepily breathed into the microphone for everyone. So there you go. At first I thought this was the weirdest thing possible, but I'll give most things a try. And holy cow, it works. And so I watched his video a bunch of times. I experimented with it, I looked it up, I asked AI, I read a bunch of psychology papers, and I think I figured out why it works so well. And he does it in multi-million dollar court cases. So he trains his clients when they go on a stand before a trained attorney, and he goes before he answer any question, I don't care if it's your name, do that. And here's basically why, combined with how he explained why, and the reasons that I found why.

Number one, it sets expectations. When we pause before we answer, then that's expected for the rest of our answers. So that way, if we have to think about something later on when somebody's really pushing us hard, like why isn't that attic access cut out, and we pause to think for a second, it's already expected, and he's not going to usually say things like, why are you hesitating? Just because you don't know? It tends to eradicate some of that. So it sets expectation.

Number two, it actually lowers our heart rate. Now this is real science. The long exhale actually is known to lower our heart rate. So it's what they call box breathing is a variation of that, and it's kind of like you ever hear, boy, that argument got my blood pumping. It's literally happening. We can lower our heart rate and calm ourselves down. Calmness is very important. Now, before I say the other reasons, one thing I forgot to mention is not everybody's like this. A lot of people are like, I like to get into the argument and win. And that's fine, if that's you. I'm not saying this is the end all be all. I'd rather play chess than box, but I live by the old expression, never wrestle with a pig. You both end up dirty, but the pig likes it. I'd rather not be brought to somebody else's arena. I'd rather bring them to mine and control the situation better. And controlling the situation means controlling myself first. And if there is a physiological thing that I can quickly do to help control myself, such as lowering my heart rate, I'm going to do it, and that's the breathing. It's deep, short breath in, a higher breath at the top, and a long exhale.

The third thing that breathing technique does, according to what this attorney said, and my research backs it up, not that I needed to, he's a highly intelligent guy, and he's extremely successful, is it manages the other person. When we talk slow and we pause and we think deeply and pause, it literally slows the other person down. They've done experiments with people that spoke quickly and people who are upset, and their heart rates were raised, and they would speak to them calmly, slowly, long pauses, and that would literally, measurably slow down their speech, slow down their heart rate, slow down their role, basically, you got to slow your roll, and it brings people closer to your level, instead of bringing our speed up to theirs.

So I've actually done this with people recently that got upset about things. And one in particular, I won't get into the details, we were very clearly right. But here's the thing, being right is not always that important. We have to remove our emotion from it. We were very, very right, and we could have proved ourselves right, but, you know, it would have gotten him angrier. It would have gotten us a bad review. We would have had to gone through a bunch of processes, he would have called 30 more times, he would have ruined a relationship with another vendor that we work with, or at least hurt it a little bit because he was just on a rampage. So two things when it comes to that. There's a lot of currency that we work with, money being one of them. That relationship would have cost us money because it would have hurt our reputation. You don't know how much a bad review cost you. It doesn't matter if you're right, and you can prove it in your reply to it, that comment's already there. That review is already there. Would it hurt something with another vendor?

There's also the currency of peace, like man, I think we underestimate how much peace is worth. How much would you pay to feel good at the end of the day, to go to bed and not have anything keep you awake, wake up feeling good and having your first cup of coffee, and man, you're just slamming it that day. That piece is worth more than money. But oftentimes we'll give up money and peace and every other variation of currency that we have, our well being, whatever it happens to be, to be right. I don't care about being right. As a home inspector, yes, okay, my report doesn't change. So 50 people can come and tell me I'm wrong. Is fighting with them going to change my report? No. So my report doesn't change. My job is done and over with. So breathing slowly, talking calmly and pausing. I was able to de-escalate this guy, and I knew I was doing it right when a couple of times before I said any answer, he would yell something, and I would breathe, and sometimes he'd even start getting upset during my breathing, and I would let him go, and then I would start back at the beginning of my sentence, if I was in the middle of a sentence, or I just breathe again before I answered. And then he started to pick up. Okay, let the guy breathe. Let him finish his words, or I'm gonna have to hear this all over again. So every time he would interrupt or get upset, I go, *breathing deeply.* And you know what? I honestly couldn't believe it. It de-escalated him so hard. I knew I was doing it right, when a couple of times he asked me, did you hear me? And I'd breathe, and I go, yes, and then I'd breathe, and then I'd give him the answer.

Oh, my goodness. I wished I had done more of that 20 years ago. I've used it to de-escalate multiple situations. I mean, it's business, right? There's going to be somebody upset about something, you know, you left the upstairs bedroom light on, you know, or you moved their carpet, their welcome mat in front of their door on accident. Always going to be something. But de-escalating, and this only works in person, obviously can't breathe in an email, but on the phone, in person, control the situation. Remember, I like to tell myself, I work on my time. I work for myself. I used to tell myself I have hundreds or 1000s of bosses every year, depending on how many inspections we did. Now I say, I work for myself. The reason being is, we work 80 hours a week so that we don't have to work a 40 hour job, but then we easily give up the advantages of working for ourselves because we're worried, oh, that agent's going to hate me, or this client's going to think this or that, or, you know, I'm going to lose work. Get over it. Stop for a moment and say, I work for myself. No one can make me say anything until I want to, or until I'm ready. So stopping and breathing before we say anything shows that we're in control. It's a baller move. I'll be honest with you, once you do it a couple times, and you master it, especially like you're on an inspection or something, you're in person with a person who's getting angry. The angry person sometimes will even get angrier, but they'll start doing crazy things. When you're in complete control, holy cow, that's a baller move. Play chess, don't box.

Now I'm saying this again, going back to the world that we live in, customer wars, that kind of thing, it's a little bit different. Maybe my thinking is old school. I don't know. It has worked very well for me, and this latest tip has worked very well for me as of late. So our quick tip for this podcast, stop, breathe, and answer slowly. That will help de-escalate situations, help you win over clients and agents. And I'll tell you from using different tricks from de-escalating years ago, we have clients that'll still hire us, because they're like, you guys know how to de-escalate tough situations, and so that's why I refer you to my clients. So add that to your skill set. Add it to your tool belt. Let me know how it works, and thank you for listening in to Inspector Toolbelt Talk.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at info@inspectortoolbelt.com.

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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.