Mike Domitrz teaches the three-D framework—Delegate, Distract, Direct—for safely intervening when someone is in danger at a party. Bring friends as backup, calmly ask the person causing trouble to step away, and make sure the at-risk person gets home safe.
And the question is, all right, Mike, how do you actually intervene? What do you do to intervene? So let's go there. Let's go back to that scene and talk about how to intervene. So here we are now. We're back at that bar and party scene, and the bar's over there. We got Jesse here, and we're gonna intervene. Now, in the military, you're taught 3 forms of bystander intervention. They all start with the letter D, right? So there's delegate, distract, and direct intervention. And you're all taught that. You learn that in your annual training. So the version I'm gonna give you here is a team-up situation, 'cause a lot of people fear intervening one-on-one, but when you team up, they feel safer. Now, you're normally at a bar or at a party because you're with friends, so all you do is walk up to 3 or 4 friends and be like, hey, can you back me up? Instantly, your friends are like, let's go, right? So now there's 3, 4, or 5 of you. You calmly walk up to Jesse and simply say, hey Jesse, clearly Aaron's had a lot to drink. Hope you don't mind, we just want to make sure Aaron has a safe ride home.
