OK, so Andrew’s official topic was “Situation Awareness and De-escalation of violence in the workplace”, and as Australia’s best known survivor of the 2002 Bali bombing attack, Situation Awareness would be – literally – burned into his retina. 202 people were killed, 88 of them Australian, and hundreds more were wounded. Over 20 years later, Andrew still gets quite emotional, even when just mentioning the horrors in passing. His left leg was amputated above the knee, and he lost part of his right foot.These days, Andrew runs his own Security Company, AGC Pro-Tec. One of his company’s specialisations is the teaching of – well, just that: How to avoid a confrontation, how to avoid a brawl, how to perhaps even avoid walking into a serious accident. It’s not easy to compress a 4 hour course into less than half an hour, yet we still received some invaluable advice. Let me just recount some major points:
“Situational Awareness is picking up cues from the environment... ... and using that understanding to predict what may happen next” he stated. A lot of the avoidance strategy is non-verbal. “Our natural reaction, when we are in normal conversations with people, is to move closer to them. When dealing with conflict, we need to do the opposite”. For example, if somebody approaches you with an aggressive stance, walk away from it if you can. If you can’t, put a barrier between you to create time and distance. Concealment. Check where your Exit Points are. Do all you can to de-escalate the situation.
‘Should I study Martial Arts?’ was one of the questions. “Not unless you take it very seriously” was his advice. “Those moves have to be trained, repetitively, hundreds of times, before you can be effective.” Instead, practice avoidance: walk away, try to maintain distance, put up a barrier, take a non-aggressive stance. And yes, be conscious, watch out and start avoidance early.
(Photo: Andrew Csabi (right) with our Meeting Chairman of the day, Mitch Brown)