[Opinion] Fear and Power

In a conflict there are two primary movers: Fear and Power.

Fear moves a conflict forward, or backward, or to the side, through resistance, panic, aggressiveness, and avoidance.

Power moves a conflict forward, or backward, or to the side, through domination, aggressiveness, passive-aggressiveness, and outright confrontation.

In many organizations, departments, teams, committees and even individuals, make decisions about changes and innovations as a result of their perceptions about both fear and power. This leads to a lack of genuine leadership, work being done badly (or not at all) and innovation being stymied.

Unfortunately, as long as people are around to create hierarchical chains of command, fear and power will be the two prime movers of conflict. The key thing to understand is that the party who uses fear and power as a primary mover in a conflict, is looking for a preprogrammed, evolutionary response from the other party. When a different response is provided, then the balance of fear and power shifts, from the instigator to the respondent.

This is the dance of conflict, driven by fear and power, and when the balance is successfully tipped—or shifted—the game changes.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Your Organization is not What it Seems

The main conflict situations in many organizations revolve around multiple, differing narratives about the value of work, the importance of compensation, the legitimacy of management and the possibility of leadership. But, outside of the organizations, many of the root causes of these conflicts used to never be seen by external candidates.

Many things get mixed in that brew of narratives, which leads to many organizations evolving to the point of the highest level of competency for individual performers, and then evolving no higher. But the strange thing is that, even in organizations where the narrative is broken, there is still hiring going on of external candidates for internal positions. This is because, the narrative that an external candidate tells themselves about the advertised role for which they are applying, doesn’t always match up with the internal organizational reality. But it takes a while for that mismatch to be discovered.

And this space—the space between getting hired and finding the mismatch—could take months, years or even decades to cross. Meanwhile, the organization benefits from the employees’ labor, time, talent and expertise, in exchange for a paycheck and providing a brief sense of security.

However, with more access to more information by more people about what is actually going on inside of an organization –it’s internal politics, it’s lack of leadership opportunities, it’s conflicting messages and methods of accomplishing goals and tasks—the chances of a candidate staying, or even initially applying for a position, grow narrower and narrower.

And this is the bind that many organizations find themselves in today. Even with economic uncertainty, political strife, cultural changes, and everything else, many individuals are finally waking up to the idea that they have options, they have choices, and they don’t have to settle for what’s available. Organizations have to realize that the quarterly numbers to the shareholders and great media coverage won’t continue to translate to hiring new productive employees and lowered internal conflict.

Particularly if the numbers continue to mismatch to lived reality, leaking out through media channels, in-person conversations, and passed on observations.

Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 08.04.2015 – The Prevent Defense

The prevent defense, used as a response to an opponent, has always been around, from the start of human conflict all the way to today’s social media fueled fires.

The prevent defense is a tactic that relies on being a little ahead—winning either realistically, rhetorically, or in any other way you can think of that human beings think of “being ahead”—and then doing the bare minimum to stay ahead of your erstwhile opponent.

There are two main flaws in the prevent defense, and we see them both play out in sports situations, where the tactic is the most obvious to everybody in the crowd, or politics, where the tactic is the most muddied:

Your erstwhile opponent has the option to not go along with your way of looking at the field of battle, and to be aggressive in pursuing their own outcome, their own “win” if you will.
You have the opportunity to become lazy and apathetic; to coast on your past victory and dominance in a particular space, which breeds hubris, vanity, and ultimately, a loss at the hands of a more aggressive opponent with less to lose.

Why am I talking about the prevent defense?

One of the trends I have noticed increasingly, is the idea out there, that all of the major innovations, discoveries and progressions that would benefit humanity, spirituality and our material world, have already been discovered, plumbed and exploited. And all that’s left is for humanity to wallow in the detritus of exploitation that has been left behind.

The other trend that I’ve noticed is a nostalgia (even I have experienced it, heck, I was watching Firing Line videos on YouTube last night) for a past that seemed more monolithic, more streamlined, and less complicated. This is, of course, a misnomer. The past was as complicated to the people living in it then, as the present is complicated to people living in it now.

The final trend that I’ve noticed is the growing acceptance of mob justice solutions, intimidation tactics, “doxing” of opponents, and other negative “resolutions” that seem easy, but in reality create more complications. With allof these approaches, simplification is honored over understanding, and context is lost in favor of the crowd.

The inundation of noise, information, and knowledge, but not real wisdom, has served only to stratify and create false division, fake outrage, shortened attention spans, a lack of patience and an inability to balance current orthodoxy with long held principles.

Many people, unable to articulate these feelings in words are playing prevent defense, hoping that the inundation won’t come to their door, visit their family, or impact them too much.

But the prevent defense has never really worked, and I for one, am not going to rely on it.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Reframing for Dummies

In a world full of noise, one of the most valuable talents, is the ability to actively listen to another person.

We often take listening for granted, confusing it with hearing, responding, ignoring, or “taking care of the problem”—without really stopping to examine what the problem is, or even if there’s a problem in the first place.

We also straight up don’t listen to the other party, or parties, at all. We dismiss their concerns as merely “opinions” and don’t stop to examine the deeper reasons behind what the other party is actually saying. Typically, revealing their deep concerns, closely held values, and sometimes prejudices, that if taken into consideration and addressed, would make for a stronger communication scenario, with less conflict.

We dismiss concerns, ignore reasons, defy truths, because we believe deeply that, once we have stated a position, the other party’s responsibility is to give us the response that we “know” is the right one. This is particularly endemic when the party who is listening is a large organization, or a party with access to the resource of a megaphone. In these cases, we do not seek to respond, we merely look to get our next position across to the other party.

The solution to all of this is three fold, and it lies in the process of reframing.

Reframing is the act of repeating the other party’s words and statements back to them. It seems like an obvious rhetorical tactic, but in many cases, conflicts are rooted in a lack of reframing, and many parties never do it at all, even while claiming understanding and appreciation for a viewpoint that may differ from theirs.

Here are the three steps to reframing:

Actively listen—Not just for the content that you hear on the surface from the other party—the content that generates a reaction from you because you’ve stopped listening and are now forming arguments about how and why they are wrong—but the content that isn’t stated. This, the unstated content, is the content that needs to be addressed.

Avoid reacting—When we hear something we don’t like, we tend to lash out, lambast the other party, strafe the room with the gunfire of our rhetorical position, and then move on, justified in the feeling that we “won” they “lost” and “all is right with the world.” This is the pattern of the mob. Reacting is not the way to reframing, but it is the way to escalating.

Actually think—To reframe successfully, the party who is listening must absorb—and think about—what the other party says, stop (or pause) to absorb the information, and then respond by restating what has already been said in the form of a question. Many people—in the race to the bottom of escalation—miss the pausing before speaking part of reframing.

If reframing were easy, everyone would do it. And the core of the art of reframing is the pause, the dip in the conversation, between the two parties.

Your conversational dip will vary, but without one, you are well on your way to escalation, defensiveness, reaction and conflict.

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-Peace Be With You All-