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Solve Employee Problems Before They Start: Resolving Conflict in the Real World
With compassion, clarity, and conviction (and a dash of comedy for good measure) popular speaker and employment law attorney Scott Warrick distills conflict resolution to just three simple moves: Empathic Listening, Parroting, and Rewards (EPR). Because no one can use their EPR skills unless they can control themselves, he also shows you how to become an Emotionally Intelligent communicator, as mental toughness is a critical component in resolving conflict.
The formula is simple: if you can control yourself, you can learn and master EPR skills to resolve any conflict in any situation -- and build durable trust with others, in your personal life and throughout your organizations, along the way.
The formula is simple: if you can control yourself, you can learn and master EPR skills to resolve any conflict in any situation -- and build durable trust with others, in your personal life and throughout your organizations, along the way.
- GenresLeadership
226 pages, Paperback
Published June 21, 2019
9 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 18, 2020
I found this on the SHRM website or in my HR magazine - not sure which but thought it looked like it could be a good one and bonus - 3 hours of recertification credits!
There are a lot of books on conflict resolution. This one seemed to have it's selling point that it was 3 steps instead of 7 or 9 steps...too many to remember in the heat of a conflict.
The first half of the book or so talked about the brain and how it functions - fight or flight - we know all of this. There was a fair amount about emotional intelligence. At long last we start to learn Warrick's model that he named "Verbal Jeet" I must admit that the use of that word really bugged me. First it bugged me because he was using it for quite a while before he defined what it meant. In Chinese, "Jeet" means "the way". So the name for his method is the verbal way. Perhaps using the word Jeet made a plain name sound more interesting? I mean, if he like it, that's fine.
Warrick has strong opinions based on how I was reading the book. He talked about how communication includes pitchers and catchers and how we want to be good pitchers - meaning if we do a good job sending our message, the catcher will have a better chance of receiving the message. Going back to the fight or flight concept, he talked about how the flight communicators are "retreaters" and living in MN, we are quite familiar with this passive and/or passive aggressive style of communicating. He clearly HATES this style of communication using strong language such as how retreaters are the "worst kinds of communicators on the planet" and referred to retreaters as liars, people who ruin relationships and that retreaters are the "worst kind of evil in the world". I found this opinion quite extreme.
He then went on to talk about "attackers" yet not with the same amount of venom. Whereas retreaters are pitchers who throw foul balls or don't throw the ball at all, attackers throw the ball straight....into your head. Simon Cowell is an example of an attacker that he referenced MANY times throughout the book.
Obviously the third type of pitcher is the honest and respectful communicator and it is then that he moves on to explain his method of EPR.
E = empathetic listening
P = parroting (but not really - I think this would have been better called paraphrasing because he said repeating something back word for word would not be good - but that is what parroting is)
R = Reward - which essentially is giving the person validation that their point of view is understood and understandable.
There were a lot of examples of phrases you can use; many I already use and there were some new tools for my toolbox, which is good. In the reward/validation phase he gave examples I probably would have tweaked just a little. "I can see what Tom is saying, but I also think" ...he used "but" in most of his examples instead of "and". I think "and" is more effective as "but" sometimes sends the message "forget everything I just said".
Another interesting choice for a book about resolving conflict is that he referred to E,P, and R as the three "kill strikes". Then later he referred to a phrase being a "magic bullet". It's fine, yet it made me chuckle thinking that there might be better words that are less violent.
Lastly, Warrick walked through his coaching process which begins with the EPR and then once the person feels heard, you need to make sure the person you are coaching understands that a problem exists. Then and only then do you move on to the problem resolution phrase. This was an eye opening section and part of why I feel like I have been hitting my head against the wall in a certain relationship. If the person is not accountable and accepting that what they are doing is a problem, the book talks about how that relationship may not be one that can be saved. If the person does accept that there is a problem, however, you move on to problem resolution which includes discussing solutions, agreeing on a course of action, following up, monitoring progress and then recognizing and rewarding achievement.
11 pages of notes if anyone wants my "book report"!
There are a lot of books on conflict resolution. This one seemed to have it's selling point that it was 3 steps instead of 7 or 9 steps...too many to remember in the heat of a conflict.
The first half of the book or so talked about the brain and how it functions - fight or flight - we know all of this. There was a fair amount about emotional intelligence. At long last we start to learn Warrick's model that he named "Verbal Jeet" I must admit that the use of that word really bugged me. First it bugged me because he was using it for quite a while before he defined what it meant. In Chinese, "Jeet" means "the way". So the name for his method is the verbal way. Perhaps using the word Jeet made a plain name sound more interesting? I mean, if he like it, that's fine.
Warrick has strong opinions based on how I was reading the book. He talked about how communication includes pitchers and catchers and how we want to be good pitchers - meaning if we do a good job sending our message, the catcher will have a better chance of receiving the message. Going back to the fight or flight concept, he talked about how the flight communicators are "retreaters" and living in MN, we are quite familiar with this passive and/or passive aggressive style of communicating. He clearly HATES this style of communication using strong language such as how retreaters are the "worst kinds of communicators on the planet" and referred to retreaters as liars, people who ruin relationships and that retreaters are the "worst kind of evil in the world". I found this opinion quite extreme.
He then went on to talk about "attackers" yet not with the same amount of venom. Whereas retreaters are pitchers who throw foul balls or don't throw the ball at all, attackers throw the ball straight....into your head. Simon Cowell is an example of an attacker that he referenced MANY times throughout the book.
Obviously the third type of pitcher is the honest and respectful communicator and it is then that he moves on to explain his method of EPR.
E = empathetic listening
P = parroting (but not really - I think this would have been better called paraphrasing because he said repeating something back word for word would not be good - but that is what parroting is)
R = Reward - which essentially is giving the person validation that their point of view is understood and understandable.
There were a lot of examples of phrases you can use; many I already use and there were some new tools for my toolbox, which is good. In the reward/validation phase he gave examples I probably would have tweaked just a little. "I can see what Tom is saying, but I also think" ...he used "but" in most of his examples instead of "and". I think "and" is more effective as "but" sometimes sends the message "forget everything I just said".
Another interesting choice for a book about resolving conflict is that he referred to E,P, and R as the three "kill strikes". Then later he referred to a phrase being a "magic bullet". It's fine, yet it made me chuckle thinking that there might be better words that are less violent.
Lastly, Warrick walked through his coaching process which begins with the EPR and then once the person feels heard, you need to make sure the person you are coaching understands that a problem exists. Then and only then do you move on to the problem resolution phrase. This was an eye opening section and part of why I feel like I have been hitting my head against the wall in a certain relationship. If the person is not accountable and accepting that what they are doing is a problem, the book talks about how that relationship may not be one that can be saved. If the person does accept that there is a problem, however, you move on to problem resolution which includes discussing solutions, agreeing on a course of action, following up, monitoring progress and then recognizing and rewarding achievement.
11 pages of notes if anyone wants my "book report"!
April 22, 2021
List of Insane Takes in This Book:
1. Rage making you "temporarily autistic"
2. Lack of blood flow to the brain MAKES you be racist
3. Customer service phone reps should let people "talk out" their problems for as long as they need (reviewer's note: clearly there is no such thing as mandatory KPIs reps must hit like number of calls resolved, or length of call time at play here)
ANYWAY all that aside, there is just nothing of note in this book beyond the Verbal JEET skill sheet that takes up one page at the very end. You can probably find it online.
P.S. It's malicious COMPLIANCE not malicious obediance. As someone who's extremely pedantic, you'd think they'd know that.
1. Rage making you "temporarily autistic"
2. Lack of blood flow to the brain MAKES you be racist
3. Customer service phone reps should let people "talk out" their problems for as long as they need (reviewer's note: clearly there is no such thing as mandatory KPIs reps must hit like number of calls resolved, or length of call time at play here)
ANYWAY all that aside, there is just nothing of note in this book beyond the Verbal JEET skill sheet that takes up one page at the very end. You can probably find it online.
P.S. It's malicious COMPLIANCE not malicious obediance. As someone who's extremely pedantic, you'd think they'd know that.
July 7, 2025
It is finally, blessedly finished.
Short review: I was assigned this monstrosity for one of my classes when I was getting my MBA and was originally excited because employee management is such a key piece of business acumen that doesn't always get taught well. Oh, how my hopes were dashed; Warrick is everything that is wrong with the business world and is an arrogant fool to boot. I know the "ugh old white men" bit can be a little worn to some, but Warrick embodies it like a textbook illustration--he's mildly racist, moderately sexist, and absolutely out of touch with how businesses in the Gen X/Millennial age work, which is weird considering this was published in 2019. It feels like some of the stuff I've read from the late 80s. The handful of good points he makes are cribbed from other things and stitched together into a banner of "I am the absolute best at this job" which, spoiler alert, he ain't. Pass this noise by, and make my professor change the syllabus that had this on it.
Long review: Warrick's main point is that most employee problems are kicked off by emotional reactions because we're all "cavemen" who are barely leashed into rationality, and the fact that he uses that image and that gendered version tell you the foundation here. (There are several places where he uses examples of conflicts that have a man doing a thing and a woman reacting and he never once acknowledges that male privilege and power in the workplace is a thing and, instead, talks about the women's emotional reactions and how they need to rein that in. I want to punch things.)
The way he makes this point is with the system called "Verbal Jeet," a name he doesn't explain until PAGE 92. "Jeet," he tells us, is Chinese, and he's really into Bruce Lee and so he took a Chinese name for it despite a) the system having nothing to do with Chinese, b) him clearly not knowing Chinese beyond this Bruce Lee-perfected technique, and c) him being foolish enough to NOT UNDERSTAND A THING ABOUT CHINESE. He waxes about how Bruce Lee changed his name and gets the name itself wrong because Warrick has apparently never learned that the Chinese, culturally speaking, put the surname first. "Jun-fan was his real last name," Warrick writes, and no, it wasn't. Lee was his last name, and Lee remained his last name, because "Lee Jun-fan" doesn't mean the same thing as "John Smith" YOU COLONIZING RACIST MORON. I know it's bad form to call an author stupid but holy shit, if you're going to use something as the literal core of your example, do four seconds of research about it.
Warrick continues with a garbled amalgamation of sports and war metaphors (seriously, his diagram of this martial-arts-inspired concept is a baseball diamond) to basically say "emotional intelligence is a thing people should have" and that open-ended questions help you build relationships more than commands. Wowwwwwwwww, groundbreaking. Along the way, he tells stories of successful rich men in history while ignoring how wealth feeds into power and also how gender brings respect. Also color. And ableism. Really, Warrick ticks every box of "why upcoming generations hate capitalism" and then some. (Page 121, he likens the Penn State sexual abuse scandal to a thing of office bullying he had to deal with like they're just the same thing of people who didn't speak out. While it is important not to hold to neutrality in the face of incorrect behavior, HE LIKENED PENN STATE TO A SINGLE ADMINISTRATOR AT A RETIREMENT HOME WHO WAS A BULLY. PENN. STATE.)
He also says "humans are genetically predisposed to violence" (123) and doesn't cite that and WTAF about that statement, as well as the gem that we shouldn't "flat-out" disagree with someone and "risk hurting their ego" (158) like it's the manager's job to protect their employee's ego. Not be a jerk to them, sure, but manage their self-image for them? What?
The sheer amount of all-caps yelling I have written in the margins of this includes things like, "cishet white dude says what" and "James Baldwin would eat you for breakfast and not in a fun way," as well as "do you think disabilities are like chicken pox" (he talks about how someone has "contracted" a disability on p. 173).
And then his bio ends with him talking about how he was valedictorian in his law class. Oooooh, sweetheart, so proud of you?
Skip this shit. It's awful, it's ableist, it's sexist, it's racist, it's out of touch with modern office patterns and employee goals, it's clunky, and it's just boring. Read up on Emotional Intelligence, Family Systems Theory, and empathic listening instead. It will be a much better use of your time, and will make you a better boss to boot.
The useful things, so you can take them and not have to read the book:
-"employee relations is nothing more than customer service turned inward" (4)
-"Articulate what bothers you by actually saying it out loud." (69)
-"Being caring does not directly correlate to being a good manager. It can help, to be sure, but if you cannot address or resolve conflict, game over." (117)
Short review: I was assigned this monstrosity for one of my classes when I was getting my MBA and was originally excited because employee management is such a key piece of business acumen that doesn't always get taught well. Oh, how my hopes were dashed; Warrick is everything that is wrong with the business world and is an arrogant fool to boot. I know the "ugh old white men" bit can be a little worn to some, but Warrick embodies it like a textbook illustration--he's mildly racist, moderately sexist, and absolutely out of touch with how businesses in the Gen X/Millennial age work, which is weird considering this was published in 2019. It feels like some of the stuff I've read from the late 80s. The handful of good points he makes are cribbed from other things and stitched together into a banner of "I am the absolute best at this job" which, spoiler alert, he ain't. Pass this noise by, and make my professor change the syllabus that had this on it.
Long review: Warrick's main point is that most employee problems are kicked off by emotional reactions because we're all "cavemen" who are barely leashed into rationality, and the fact that he uses that image and that gendered version tell you the foundation here. (There are several places where he uses examples of conflicts that have a man doing a thing and a woman reacting and he never once acknowledges that male privilege and power in the workplace is a thing and, instead, talks about the women's emotional reactions and how they need to rein that in. I want to punch things.)
The way he makes this point is with the system called "Verbal Jeet," a name he doesn't explain until PAGE 92. "Jeet," he tells us, is Chinese, and he's really into Bruce Lee and so he took a Chinese name for it despite a) the system having nothing to do with Chinese, b) him clearly not knowing Chinese beyond this Bruce Lee-perfected technique, and c) him being foolish enough to NOT UNDERSTAND A THING ABOUT CHINESE. He waxes about how Bruce Lee changed his name and gets the name itself wrong because Warrick has apparently never learned that the Chinese, culturally speaking, put the surname first. "Jun-fan was his real last name," Warrick writes, and no, it wasn't. Lee was his last name, and Lee remained his last name, because "Lee Jun-fan" doesn't mean the same thing as "John Smith" YOU COLONIZING RACIST MORON. I know it's bad form to call an author stupid but holy shit, if you're going to use something as the literal core of your example, do four seconds of research about it.
Warrick continues with a garbled amalgamation of sports and war metaphors (seriously, his diagram of this martial-arts-inspired concept is a baseball diamond) to basically say "emotional intelligence is a thing people should have" and that open-ended questions help you build relationships more than commands. Wowwwwwwwww, groundbreaking. Along the way, he tells stories of successful rich men in history while ignoring how wealth feeds into power and also how gender brings respect. Also color. And ableism. Really, Warrick ticks every box of "why upcoming generations hate capitalism" and then some. (Page 121, he likens the Penn State sexual abuse scandal to a thing of office bullying he had to deal with like they're just the same thing of people who didn't speak out. While it is important not to hold to neutrality in the face of incorrect behavior, HE LIKENED PENN STATE TO A SINGLE ADMINISTRATOR AT A RETIREMENT HOME WHO WAS A BULLY. PENN. STATE.)
He also says "humans are genetically predisposed to violence" (123) and doesn't cite that and WTAF about that statement, as well as the gem that we shouldn't "flat-out" disagree with someone and "risk hurting their ego" (158) like it's the manager's job to protect their employee's ego. Not be a jerk to them, sure, but manage their self-image for them? What?
The sheer amount of all-caps yelling I have written in the margins of this includes things like, "cishet white dude says what" and "James Baldwin would eat you for breakfast and not in a fun way," as well as "do you think disabilities are like chicken pox" (he talks about how someone has "contracted" a disability on p. 173).
And then his bio ends with him talking about how he was valedictorian in his law class. Oooooh, sweetheart, so proud of you?
Skip this shit. It's awful, it's ableist, it's sexist, it's racist, it's out of touch with modern office patterns and employee goals, it's clunky, and it's just boring. Read up on Emotional Intelligence, Family Systems Theory, and empathic listening instead. It will be a much better use of your time, and will make you a better boss to boot.
The useful things, so you can take them and not have to read the book:
-"employee relations is nothing more than customer service turned inward" (4)
-"Articulate what bothers you by actually saying it out loud." (69)
-"Being caring does not directly correlate to being a good manager. It can help, to be sure, but if you cannot address or resolve conflict, game over." (117)
March 12, 2020
Oversells his point, but there's a lot of truth to it. Not necessarily a different approach in the leadership world, but a good reminder of some key points.
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October 14, 2019Every once in a great while, you get to experience serendipity – a happy accident. In this case, we had asked Scott Warrick to review our book, and in the follow up we got to see his latest book, Solve Employee Problems Before They Start: Resolving Conflict in the Real World. Terri and I have taught conflict resolution for several years, and the opportunity to look at it from another point of view was welcomed. When you’ve got a chance to look at how another expert looks at the challenges, the smart person jumps at it. That’s what I did. Despite the backlog of books coming out of the SHRM annual conference, I read it quickly and found, while there were definite differences in our points of view, the similarities dramatically outweighed the differences.
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