A quick chat: why spontaneous discussion is not trauma informed management practice

“Can I grab you for a quick chat for a second?”

If you’ve ever done this - or been on the receiving end of this - it’s time to talk about why this practice needs to stop.

Imagine you’re in the middle of a hectic morning getting your kid to an appointment. As you’re going about your morning, you see the council manager you’ve been talking to about the god-awful construction noise opposite your house that you want to stop.

She sees you, approaches, and asks “how are you going? Mind if we have a quick chat?”

You do mind. You mind a lot - your stomach churns, your hands begin to slightly shake and your heart rate increases. Why couldn’t you just email me? You think. You have the “chat” and then they move on, and you attempt to recover from this sudden, unexpected intrusion in what was already a really stressful part of your day.

For some, this recovery will take hours. For others, minutes. Everyone is different. Some people may not be bothered at all.

There is a profound aversion in many management teams to doing things in writing. Any decent lawyer will tell you that if you don’t have evidence something happened, it effectively didn’t happen.

This is a generalisation, and of course there are exceptions, but having things in writing scares the pants off risk averse management staff in all systems I’ve encountered. Avoiding legal suits and complaints is a high priority.

Plausible deniability

Verballing is a management tool. It involves seeking out in person conversations, preferably without any notice given to one person. Very often, that person is the more vulnerable person in the exchange. Afterwards, there is plausible deniability of anything said in the conversation, because there is no record of it, and only two people were party to it.

The believability of the narrative of the conversation can them become a contest of privilege - women are believed less than men, disabled people are believed less than abled people, etc.

In recounting recalled details of verbal exchanges, the person with the most power always has more credibility due to bias. I can think of no exceptions in my experience to this rule.

I remember once reviewing a rather charged report in which some fairly horrendous allegations had been made about a client, and my client protesting that she “had not said any of that”. The legal practitioner consulting on the materials sighed and said to me “it doesn’t matter - he (the reporter) will just verbal her.”

She was right. He did.

Verballing is both consciously and unconsciously used by managers, and people in conflict oriented situations where something is at stake. Usually that something is money, and avoiding investigations.

Why is verballing a problem for vulnerable demographics?

My main issue with this practice, aside from it being sneaky as hell and morally dishonest, is that it is not trauma informed in any sense.

We know that people in vulnerable populations - and here I am thinking of women with disabilities - have high rates of trauma. We have often been in situations - sometimes for long periods - where we have had little choice and control over what happens to us, physically, emotionally, psychologically, financially.

We have often repeated experiences of violence and abuse across our lifetimes. The impacts of that are lasting, of course, and can look like many things. All of them involve disruption of our nervous system - our ‘fight, flight, freeze, fawn’ responses.

I want to be honest here and say that I’ve been guilty of doing this to people, and I regret it. For the most part, it was due to times of not being very regulated, and it was with people who had more power than me. Regardless, I still regret it. Doing this to people is unsafe.

Approaching people without warning can trigger that “fight or flight” response, and this response is painful and overwhelming.

Doing this when people are trying to care for children can impact their ability to do so; doing this when people are trying to carry out a task that involves executive function can impact their ability to do so.

Doing this at any time, can cause distress, and that alone matters.

I know many women who have said to me that during ‘casual chats’ they have felt a sense of being trapped in the conversation with no choice to leave. This mirrors experiences of abuse, and can leave women feeling teary, or numb, or wondering why they feel so awful afterwards.

How to stop ‘verballers’ from approaching you

The Disability Discrimination Act protects your right to reasonable adjustments. It protects diagnosed and undiagnosed disabilities - past, present, and future disabilities.

Complex trauma is a disability. It greatly impacts function in a range of ways.

You do not need to have a diagnosis to ask that someone do things with you in writing, and it is your right to ask that they do.

Here is an example script you can send to someone who repeatedly ‘verbals’ you:

Hi x,

In the future, I will need all conversations about important matters to be done via email.

I find spontaneous chats difficult and disruptive. When we discuss things via email, I have time to think, plan and then respond.

Thank you for respecting this request.

Your name

If this is ignored, you can repeat the request, but this time, ensure you add this is an access adjustment request.

These words tend to trigger the understanding that you are referring to the DDA. Access requests must be honoured unless there is some reason the request would cause unreasonable hardship to the organisation or person you’ve requested it of.

But I mean no harm!

One of the reasons I have heard well meaning people in management cite for ‘quick chats’ is that they feel they are friendlier and less rife with potential misunderstandings.

This is just not the case for Neurodivergent people in particular. Autistic people often really struggle with in person conversations.

During in person exchanges, an Autistic person may be trying to filter noise, light, manage tasks mentally, and process information input and output. Slow processing is associated with Autism for many of us - and being put on the spot does not support this, often.

We also tend to like to plan things, prepare our thoughts, and then approach an issue.

While ‘in person discussions’ may feel more doable for those in management with even the best of intentions, the idea that this way of doing things is inherently friendlier, privileges allistic (non-Autistic) processing and social interaction.

Proactively asking us what we prefer, is the best approach, if you’re a practitioner or manager who actively wants to include Neurodivergent people. Respect our wishes, and adhere to them.

Make a record

If someone does ‘verbal you’, a good remedy against plausible deniability is to email them within 24 hours of the conversation with a written record of what was said. This can look like:

Hi x,

I just wanted to make a note of our conversation this morning.

You said “….” and I said “….”

Thanks so much,

Your name.

This is helpful for two reasons: firstly, it ensures you have documentation of what was said, and secondly, it serves as a warning to the person using this strategy (whether knowingly or not) that you are keeping a record of conversations.

This alone may be enough to stop it from happening again.