[Advice] The Gap Between Here and There

The decision is the thing.

It looks romantic from the outside, I’ll be honest. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, but you can’t take the first step without the decision to make the first step in the first place.

The gap between being there and getting here and the gap between being here and getting there are only covered by two actions:

Making a decision without much reassurance from others…

And

Doing the work without much appreciation from others about how difficult it is.

What covers the first gap (the one between being there and getting here) is making a decision. Making a decision to take action is scary and uncertain; and there’s usually very little reassurance from others. It typically begins when you are motivated enough to actually make the decision in the first place, and you’ll either be motivated by internal factors or external circumstances. And only one of these do you have control over.

What covers the second gap (the one between being here and getting there) is doing “the work.” Many people believe that “the work” or work ethic, is fading in American life. I prefer to believe that as the nature of “the work” shifts (from blue collar to white collar to “no” collar) the nature of the work ethic changes as well. Have I put in less “work” when I type up a 500-word blog post than a person has, who codes an algorithm all day in a language that looks like Mandarin to me?

It looks romantic from the outside, I’ll be honest. But on the inside, I can tell you, the work is what people observing you building your business, your project, your idea, or your processes from the outside aren’t going to see. And by “the work,” what these outside observers are really looking for are the tangible results of your efforts, your arguments, your research and your time.

Because, for better or worse, American culture is still built on getting results, rather than the nature and efficacy of developing, managing and experiencing, the process. For the peace builder, thinking about how to start building their project right now, I encourage you to cover the gap, first by making a decision, and then by doing the work.

For the peace builder (or anyone else who ever built anything) the decision is “the work.”

-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/

HIT Piece 12.15.2015

Two topic areas that have been popping up a lot for me lately in business conversations:

“People” lack follow-up
“People” lack initiative.

The first lament goes something like this: “I (the business person in question) reached out to “so and so” (another business person) and they didn’t get back to me. And I called them and called them and they didn’t show up or return my phone calls or emails.”

This first has happened to me more times than I can count with potential clients, clients I’ve actually had meetings with, and with clients I’m attempting to do a deal with.

The second lament goes something like this: “ ‘People’ [and then imagine someone sucking air through their teeth, squinting their eyes and sighing all at the same time] just don’t have the initiative or drive around here to do what you’re asking them to do. What you’re proposing won’t work…”

The second issue of initiative I chalk up to the fact that very few people have a motor driving them into business, and the difference between people who are “making it” and people who “aren’t” is the presence (or absence) of said motor.

These two laments I almost never hear from people in geographic areas that are cities, or even suburbs of cities. But in rural areas, small towns, or even villages consolidated across a major highway, you will sit down with the few people in town who are able to follow-up and have initiative and I will hear these two laments.

The future is coming and it’s not going to arrive everywhere all at the same time. The future is going to be driven by the people who have initiative first, and then second by the people who have the desire and the courage to follow-up. Without reassurance, without lack of faith, without a competitive desire to “get what’s theirs” first.

The income gap between the wealthy and everyone else is definitely something to think about overcoming; but the initiative and follow-up gap is something no one (outside of private conversations) is even thinking about shifting at mass.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] The Death of F2F Communication

Our personal assistants have names like Cloe, Clara, Julie, Luka and Amy.

Our devices have names like Alexa, Siri and Cortana.

We are getting the future we were promised, though not evenly distributed (as has been pointed out in the past), and not in the same areas simultaneously. Soon, HAL 9000 will be in our homes, not in a deep space vehicle.

We have FitBits, Jawbones, and Apple and Android Watches. We are slowly getting augmented reality, virtual reality and even electric, automated self-driving cars.

Voice data, movement data, and biometric data collection technologies lie at the “bleeding edge” of future machine-to-human communication technologies. We do not have laws or regulations to deal with the consequences of having these devices; which are always on, always recording, always collecting and always reporting to someone—somewhere.

We have given up our privacy for convenience, and whether or not you believe this is a Faustian bargain, the deal is in the process of being struck even as you are alive and watching it happen. And the people of the future will not lament the loss of face-to-face communication, any more than present generations lament the passing of the horse and buggy.

How should conflict professionals respond to the death of face-to-face communication and the rise of machine-to-human communication?

Get involved in the collection of data, the organizations that collect it, and even on the boards of organizations that make decisions and regulations about the use of it—peace builders have an obligation to no longer sit on the sidelines, hoping that none of this will happen. Getting involved in all parts of the process, from creation ot decision making, is the new obligation for peace builders.
Build businesses that act as intermediaries (mediators, if you will) between Alexa, Siri and whatever is next and the people who will seek to control what those devices reveal about people’s private lives—private conflict communications are about to go public. And peace builders have seen the devastating effects of such publicity on relationships, reputation and understanding through the first level of all of this—social media.
Prepare to address the stress that will be magnified through people curating their lives, tailoring their responses to what “should” be said, rather than what will actually be “true”—with the death of privacy through all of your devices in your house either recording you, tracking you, suggesting items to you, or even interacting with you, the line between what is truly felt, and what you actually say, will become even narrower. Peace builders should prepare through training to address this cognitive dissonance, because it will only take a few generations before more masking of previously transparent communication will occur.

As man and machine begin to merge at the first level with communication, peace builders should be engaging with the process proactively and aggressively, rather than waiting and being caught by surprise.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Does Your Manager Think Managing Conflict is Important

The most often repeated piece of feedback is “The people who should be here in this training/presentation/speaking engagement are not here.”

What does that mean though, other than as a piece of feedback?

Typically, it means that the people in the hierarchical chain above the people attending the training are seen as part of the problem, rather than as part of the solution, by the people in the room.

It also means that the people in the hierarchical chain above the people attending the training are interested in maintaining the organizational “status quo” and not really moving forward to become part of the solution; by role modeling what the future might be like for the people in the room.

Either way, this piece of feedback is indicative of the appearance of members of management not really believing that conflicts, disputes, disagreements, or even fights in the workplace are all that important to deal with at the root.

This feedback also indicates that the attendees will probably continue to experience frustration in the organization; even as they implement all of their newly attained knowledge of how to engage with conflicts better.

And then, as the frustration mounts and the cognitive dissonance really kicks in, employees will either become more disengaged in the workplace—or leave the workplace altogether; creating a cycle of people who arrive, then get trained, get disillusioned and then leave.

Managers, supervisors, and others up in the hierarchical chain, can thwart all of this, but it requires an investment in finding the time many claim not to have in the short term, to play the long game in building an organization doing work that matters, in the long term.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] The Story of Your Fight

The stories of disagreements, disputes, arguments and fights matters more than the disagreements, disputes, arguments and fights themselves, to both the professional peace builder and the public looking for the right advice at the right moment.

The frame, or story, that conflict engagement professionals tell themselves about conflicts that they resolve, their professional strengths, and even what they have to offer to the public, is typically a positive, education based framing.

But the public frames conflict in negative terms, embedded inside personalized frames of reference:

“This happened to me!”

“He’s the problem, not me.”

“I’m right. They’re wrong. You fix it!”

No one needs help resolving conflicts in their lives, and the dichotomy between public and professional storytelling about conflicts backs up this assertion. The story of conflict for the public—and the narrative framing they operate in—is one that does not line up with the product offerings of many in the field of peacebuilding.

Ourselves included.

In the public, there are people who don’t see disagreements, disputes, arguments, fights, or confrontations as relevant occurrences in their own lives. Sure, other people have problems, but not them. The story that they tell themselves is one of floating through the world, disagreement free—and all a peace builders fervent framing efforts aren’t going to persuade them otherwise.

However, when other people around them are privately asked “Who causes the most problems around here?” the answer comes back to those individuals who think they aren’t the problem.

There is one way out of this for the public and two ways out of this for the professional peace builder:

For the peace builder, if the terms “conflict,” “dispute,” “resolution” and others have no meaning for the public (or target market) who you want to buy your products, processes, and services, then change the wording. And peace building professionals know, that when the wording changes, the framing shifts.
For the peace builder, as the framing shifts, turn the in-person and face-2-face moments of the narrative from a focus of trying to persuade the public (or the target market) that they have a conflict, to educating the public (or the target market) on what the impact of the story of the conflict is having on their personal relationships.
For the public, there are moments inside of every disagreement, dispute, argument, or fight, where you seek advice, counsel, and direction in what to do, how to proceed and how to respond to other people. These are the moments to seek the blogs, videos and podcasts of professionals that can entertain, inform and advise—without breaking your story.

When the stories of disagreements, disputes, arguments and fights matters more than the disagreements, disputes, arguments and fights themselves, there will only be more, not less, and the moment for peace builders—and the public—to start talking the same language is now.

H/T to Justin R. Corbett for his thoughts on this.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 12.08.0215

All great failings have moral and ethical failure at their core.

Morals and ethics inform, codify and frame behavioral stories we tell ourselves from our birth to the day that we die. Our morals and ethics lie at the root of the causal chain of behavior.

Where morals and ethics emanate from (or what stories animate them) is far less interesting a thought process, than understanding how those morals and ethics sift and change over time. And why.

Always why.

I am concerned with both the how and the why of those moral and ethical stories, because if we look around carefully and astutely, we can see that the noise informing the changing of our internal stories is having an external impact.

Many people don’t think about the moral and ethical failures that lie at the core of truly great failings—the ones that lead to divorce, desperation, depression—but there should be more exploration of the how and the why.

If not, our disagreements, disputes, arguments and more will be constantly tinged with the color of moral and ethical failure, but we won’t really understand—or learn—why.

And, thus be destined–or doomed–to repeat the same failure over again.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Does Your Boss Think Addressing Workplace Disputes is Important?

You work in a human resources capacity in an organization and your boss had never shown an interest in progressively resolving the consistent arguments, disputes, disagreements that lead to creating and developing a toxic workplace culture. And you—as the human resource professional—spend days, weeks, months and even years addressing these issues as a regular part of your job function. If this is you, then Conflict-Resolution-as-a-Service products, process and approach may not be for your organization.

One of the consistent pieces of feedback that I receive following a corporate training with supervisors, managers or heads of human resources is that “The people who need to be in this room aren’t in this room.”

My response is always “Well, get them in this room and they can take the training that you just took and we can begin the work of transforming the organization.”

Then, one of three expressions typically crosses the face of the human resources employee: fear, resignation, apathy.

Then they leave the room and I hear from them again in the next year, or through recommendations and referrals that they make to other human resource departments in other organizations.

There are three reasons for the fear, the apathy and the resignation:

Organizational cultural responses to arguments, disagreements, and disputes tend to mirror the emotional and psychological responses of the founders/owners. If the owner/founder doesn’t view arguments, disagreements, and disputes as problematic in their own life (or has an avoidance posture rather than a collaboration posture) then there won’t be a change in organizational culture no matter how much HR advocates for one.
Lack of organizational interest in addressing issues in the past is often seen as evidence that present and future issues should be addressed in the same way. Human beings have limited attention and energy (i.e. bandwidth) and thus seek out mental, emotional and psychological “shortcuts” to addressing issues as they arise. Past performance is often seen as indicative of future performance, not to mention future outcomes and responses.
It is often easier to do nothing because of the “arbitration stance” many individuals in upper management positions default to. The “arbitration stance” happens when an argument, disagreement, or dispute finally rises to the level where upper management is forced to address it. Both the parties in the conflict walk into a meeting separately, they each plead their cases and then a decision in response to the conflict floats out of the black box of the upper management’s office in the form of a meaningless, jargon filled, policy appealing memo. Nobody involved in the arguments, disagreements, and disputes knows what the resolution is, no one understands what the memo means and no one in human resources knows what to do next.

All of the above reasons cause human resources professionals to determine that the upper management (“the boss”) has not shown an interest in Conflict-Resolution-as-as-Service in their organization and never will. Thus leading to acquiring the bare minimum of training (a “nice to have”) and the feedback to the trainer (me) of “The people who need to be in this room aren’t in this room.”

For nimble organizations, where attaining employee-cultural “fit” is more important than making widgets, Conflict-Resolution-as-a-Service is a product whose time has come. For the remaining organizations, the four hour corporate training will remain standard until their organizations change, or go out of business.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] #GritFilledLivesMatter

Resiliency in the face of a constant barrage of stressors leads to addictive behavior, poor communication skills, erosion of personal relationships and leads to a reduction in the very resiliency, stressors were designed to develop.

We see evidence of this in communities torn apart by racial conflict, ethnic conflict and religious conflict. When there are too many external stressors 9and even internal stressors), individuals (and groups) cross the line from being “gritty” and resilient to taking up arms, protesting and pushing back.

Sometimes violently.

Which creates a cycle, based not in resiliency (though the other dominant party may resist the protests and pushback through avoidance, aggressiveness, or even passive-aggressive behavioral tactics) but in resistance.

And both sides will claim—either verbally or nonverbally— to be exercising resiliency in the face of unreasonable requests, protests and pushback from “the other.”

“We shall overcome” becomes the stated chant (and unstated belief) of both sides, and the first side to verbalize it, is most likely the side who will endure—or have the resiliency and grit—to make it to the end of the cycles of violence.

The critical question to ask (and answer) thus becomes: Will there ever be a way to encourage the development if grit and resilience in people, families, communities, and even in cities and nation-states, without triggering violent cycles of resistance, retribution and violence?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] On Writer’s Block

Very few people complain about being unable to speak.

Even fewer people complain about being unable to nonverbally communicate a message.

But many, many people, when challenged to write down the story of their conflict scenario (in 500 words or less, which is about a page and half of writing) will “freeze” up and complain of writers’ block.

However, those same people will write a post a diatribe about the latest twist in their conflict drama on Facebook. Or they will tweet it out. Or they will post a meme, share a GIF, or “like” a photo that expresses how they feel about a conflict scenario in their life.

I know this seems like a tenuous argument, but follow me:

If the posting, tweeting, liking and sharing are forms of writing—and thus subject to writers’ block—why is it that so few people have so little trouble expressing themselves via these new methods of communication?

There are three things at work here:

The rate of formalized reading decreases exponentially after a person finishes high school and many people (other than for work) never pick up a book for reading (either fun or otherwise) ever again. But the immediate entertainment factor of social sharing short circuits this tendency.
Sharing and communicating via electronic platforms is so new (comparatively) as an adaptation of human culture that the “rules” of communicating are being written (and rewritten) even as the platforms shift and develop. This makes social communication and social sharing truly the “Wild West” of communication styles.
Formalized writing is often viewed as the purview of business, academics, and government, with little “real world” applicability to the daily lives of many people. This is a more subtle shift that has occurred culturally (at least in the post-Industrial world) even as the nature of work has changes to become less about brawn and more about brains.

These three factors (combined with the idea that providing the space of attention and focus for formalized writing to occur is still viewed as a luxury rather than a need) lead to people literally “freezing” when asked to write down what happened to them in a conflict scenario.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #9 – Pattie Porter

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #9 – Pattie Porter, Conflict Coach, Podcast Host, Entrepreneur, The Hardest Working Mediator in Texas

[powerpress]

Fear, avoidance, escalation and getting out of our own way…

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.

Power over is sometimes confused with motivation and empowerment, especially by abrasive leaders.

In many organizations, departments, teams, committees and even individuals, make decisions about changes and innovations because of their perceptions about both fear and power.

Such perceptions (and misperceptions) within different organizations, sometimes 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.

Our guest for our show today, Pattie Porter, President of the Texas Association of Mediators and host of the Texas Conflict Coach Radio Show on the Blog Talk Radio network, faces these issues head-on. She works almost exclusively to address cultural clashes, abrasive supervisors and help HR departments in all types of organizations from NASA to higher education organizations.

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.

Pattie knows about the game changing and she is tilling the field of that change in order to engage with conflict competency as a skill for leaders and a skill set for everyone.

Ironically enough, Pattie bookends the second season of Earbud_U and closes off our first interview that we did with Neil Denny, way back in Episode #1.

Check out all the ways below that you can connect with Pattie!

Pattie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patriciaporter

Pattie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/txconflictcoach

Pattie on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TexasConflictCoach

Conflict Connections: http://www.conflictconnections.com/

Pattie on Podcasting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKip9iYd__s

Pattie’s Professional Profile: http://www.mediate.com/people/personprofile.cfm?auid=603

Pattie’s Interview with Dave Hilton: http://www.conflictengagementspecialists.com/blog/conflict-coaching-with-pattie-porter-texas-conflict-coach/

Pattie on The Culture of Empathy Series: http://cultureofempathy.com/References/Experts/Pattie-Porter.htm

Pattie’s Podcast, The Texas Conflict Coach Radio Show: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/texas-conflict-coach