[Strategy] BATNA-WATNA 2

In any negotiation scenario, there are three possible outcomes:

An agreement

This is what happens when every party gets an agreement they can live with and one that meets, not only their own needs, but also the needs of other parties not present at the bargaining table.

A best alternative to a negotiated agreement

The BATNA is what one party has in their back pocket that will allow them the “freedom” to walk away from the table without negotiating an outcome. The term has the word “best” in it, and represents what the party who has come up with it, thinks is the best. One party may look at (or hear about) the other party’s BATNA and think privately (or say out loud) “I’d never go for that outcome.”

A worst alternative to a negotiated agreement

The WATNA is what one party has in their back pocket that binds them to the table with the other party, whether an outcome is negotiated or not. The term has the word “worst” in it, and represents what the party who has developed it, believes is the “worst possible outcome, in spite of all other outcomes.” One party may look at (or hear about) the other party’s WATNA and think privately (or say out loud) “That alternative outcome isn’t so bad. What’s the problem?”

In a negotiation, because human beings have to be prompted to act altruistically, parties often overlook BATNAs and WATNAs. Even worse, the negotiating parties often overlook BATNAs and WATNAs, until either a stalemate is reached, or a checkmate situation looms on the horizon. The term “alternative” is often emphasized in discussions of BATNAs and WATNAs because human being like the idea of having access to alternatives in a negotiation scenario with a party they don’t trust, but actually accessing and developing those scenarios, requires expending emotional energy.

And many parties would really prefer to “win” the negotiation rather than to take the time to develop alternatives, and to map out possible scenarios, if things go sour at the bargaining table.

There are three ways to limit the power of this tendency to go for the “win” at the expense of developing alternative scenarios to a “win”:

Recognize that the other party is often dominated by factors they don’t bring to the table. For instance, if an employee is negotiating a raise with their boss, they should keep in mind that the boss reports to other people as well. Then they must ask the question “How would my boss, giving me the raise I deserve, make my boss look good?”
Recognize that you are dominated by factors that you may not want to have the other party bring to the table. In the example, the employee may need the raise in order to care for a sick child, or to meet an emergency expense. The boss in that scenario might want to ask himself or herself “What are the motivating factors behind this person asking for a raise?”
Recognize that agreement doesn’t always have to be the ultimate outcome. Both parties can always separate and come back, while they develop BATNAs and WATNAs. This feels counterintuitive, but the best diplomats never try to close a deal immediately. And the best negotiators open soft, give the other party time to think the process over, and always follow up promptly. The caveat to this is that timeline will vary per the context of the negotiation. A police hostage negotiator may have minutes to get to agreement, a diplomat may have weeks, months or even years, but an employee may have days.

Expending emotional energy to develop negotiation alternatives (both “best” and “worst”) can help a negotiator move from someone who merely pursues short-term gains to one who develops long-term engagement with the other party.

-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] Conflicting Narratives

Storytelling, when a name is put to it, is the act of getting across to other people who we are, why we matter, what our thoughts and feelings are and what we value.

This process happens from the time that we begin to learn to talk (and sometimes before) and continues throughout our lives, creating narratives, and strings of narratives, everywhere we turn.

Many people claim that they don’t have a narrative, or that they don’t view their lives and the things that happen to them, in the context of a storytelling triangle, or arc. Instead, many people claim that things “just kind of happen” to them.

This lack of agency over the narratives in our own lives leads to frustration, stress, feelings of futility, despair, and at the furthest end of the spectrum, depression and nihilism. This lack of agency over the narratives in our own lives, can lead to some of us starting and perpetuating dysfunctional communication patterns and engaging in destructive conflict. Because, after all, if there is no narrative, no purpose, and if life events truly are “one damn thing after another” then what is the point?

But here’s something to consider:

Every story reveals the storyteller’s desire to create meaning.
Every story reveals the storyteller’s desire to create mattering.
Every story reveals the hearer’s desire to create relationship.
Every story reveals the hearer’s desire to connect to the teller of the story.

When told, the five most common workplace stories, reveal all of the desires for both the hearer (the consumer) of the story and the teller (the creator) of the story. When these desires conflict—and they tend to around values, behaviors, and choices revealed through stories—then the process of change begins in either the hearer or the teller.

-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/

[Strategy] Top 5 Strategies for Forgiveness

The first thing that we have to understand and accept is that forgiveness is an active act, not a passive one.

The common misconception is that if we do nothing, or if we avoid, or if we just give in “a little bit this one time” or we don’t stand up for ourselves, that somehow, conflict situations will just magically resolve themselves.

But, much like being an entrepreneur of any stripe, if you are in conflict and you don’t act to get forgiveness (or to be forgiving), nothing will happen. Conflict events will just unspool towards outcomes and consequences that may not work for you, but may work out quite nicely for the other party.

Because resolution, forgiveness and even mindfulness is so wrapped up with philosophy, theology and spirituality in the West, we often forget that there must be action taken on our part in the physical, material realm to get anything started in the first place.

We have to decide—the first strategy is that we have to make a conscious decision to longer mentally, spiritually, and emotionally carry the baggage of another’s perceptions of us. What happened in the past cannot be undone, and revisiting old conflicts repeatedly in language, stories, narratives and other ways, only serves to allow each conflict participant to hold on.

We have to act –the strategy of action cannot happen before decision, though many people try. The strategy of action is what we teach our children (“Go and say you’re ‘sorry’ to your sister”) when they have wronged each other. Rarely do we tell them that this is the second step. Without deciding to act, the action of seeking resolution, forgiveness, and restoration become hollow exercises that retain as little meaning to the other party as they do for you.

We have to face forward – the strategy of facing forward goes past a lack of empathy (which is focused on others) and goes directly to confronting and giving language to unarticulated fears. This is the hardest thing to do, because human beings are encultured to avoid even talking about their fears aloud in casual conversation. Our modern tendency (in the West) to confuse transparency (“I posted a rant on Facebook and people responded”) with authenticity (“This rant on Facebook reveals what I REALLY think about ‘X’ issue”) is another way for us to hide from what scares us. Before we can seek forgiveness, or pursue it from others, we have to confront what we’re afraid of and articulate our fears.

We have to be empathetic –the strategy of being empathetic is one that also can be perceived as being disingenuous when it’s not performed in concert with these other strategies, which is why many trainers leapfrog over it. Or, we give a head tilt in it’s general direction, and then move on to addressing what we feel are more concrete areas of impact. But empathy is other focused and requires us to put down our selfishness (based in our fear of lack) and really see the other party for who they are. We have to care. And the things is, many of us don’t.

We have to want the forgiveness as badly as we want to attack, avoid, or accommodate the other party in conflict—the strategy of wanting forgiveness and restoration to a new relationship is personal. So personal, in fact, that we almost never say it to the other party. Instead, we many times opt to hoping that the other party will just “get it” from our nonverbal communication and then become frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Or, we don’t want to admit that we want the conflict scenario to continue because of the feelings of power and control that it gives us in the relationship.

All of these strategies are hard, time consuming and might not work. They also have to be employed when you might not feel like employing them, instead desiring to “just do what I’ve always done.” But getting forgiveness (and giving forgiveness) are not actions based in hope.

Click on the link here and download the FREE HSCT White Paper on FORGIVENESS AND RECONCILIATION TODAY!

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principle 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] Reasons to Forgive

How many times do you have to forgive the other party in a conflict?

Well, if certain books are to be believed, quite a lot.

In a world of instant messaging, instant gratification and instant stimulation with instant reactions, the long, slow, deliberative act of forgiving someone else for something that they’ve done to you can be emotionally exhausting for many people.

There are a few things to consider before getting on the forgiveness train:

Who does it impact? – Finding the motive to forgive, just like finding the motive to engage in a conflict, comes down to understanding who benefits from forgiveness. Do you benefit more than the other person, or does the other person benefit more than you? Many people will respond from zero-sum thinking (“If I forgive the other party, then I lose something, i.e. my position, my ability to be ‘right’, etc.”) but sometimes the gains are deeper than the losses.

What can really change, and what can’t? – Do people change? Well, we don’t know the answer to that question, but we can say that people deserve the chance to change. And sometimes people deserve to be punished. But without knowing everything about a situational conflict (and people inside of situational conflicts rarely know everything about themselves or the other party) makes that decision harder, not easier. In popular culture, dealing out death in judgment, is seen as retributive and righting all wrongs. But asking the question about what can change in a situation to make it better for both you and the other party is key to getting on the path to forgiveness.

How do you go about doing it? – Advice, tips, tactics and even strategies fail here, as the “how” is invariably entangled in the gossamer of the conflict itself. But one thing to consider is how to heal oneself first, before attempting to “fix” the other party. Forgiveness is a personal act that starts from within and moves outward in ever expanding concentric circles.

Where does forgiving somebody begin and where does it end? – Restorative justice practices unite perpetrators and victims of crimes. Depending upon the cultural background of the victim and the perpetrator, these efforts may work, or may backfire. However, when there is a conflict in the midst of a shared culture (a work culture, a school culture or a family culture) forgiving begins in the minds—and hearts—of the participants in the conflict. As far as where forgiveness ends, well, that’s subjective as well.

When can you forgive? –Whenever you like. Or not at all.

In the West, forgiveness is wrapped up with religious proscriptions, but in reality, forgiveness is deeply psychological and a process based in science. The results of forgiveness—lowered blood pressure, less stress, reduced stroke risk—should be tied more to the actual process of getting on board with someone who has wronged you.

But the act of forgiveness is personal, difficult and time consuming, But in a world of emotional labor, it might be the most important journey we ever embark on.

Click on the link here and download the FREE HSCT White Paper on FORGIVENESS AND RECONCILIATION TODAY!

-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/

[Opinion] Strategic Escalation

Most of the time, in a conflict management scenario, escalation of any kind is viewed as a net negative.

Most trainings—whether corporate, academic, online or in-person—focus on teaching techniques and tactics that will bring the other party from a less defensive emotional position to a more collaborative emotional position.

These are great tactics if each party is emotionally invested in the process and outcome of the conflict, but what happens when the other party is apathetic at best, and disengaged at worst?

Customer center call representatives, from organizations that can’t outsource that service (i.e. local utility companies, local banks/credit unions, bill/debt collectors, etc.), or retail clerks, tend to be emotionally at either one of those two poles: apathetic, or disengaged. Rarely does a employee call a customer’s house, or interact with a customer at a retail store, in a way that reflects emotional engagement and intrinsic care to potentially escalate (even negatively) if the interaction doesn’t go as planned. And the solution to this issue is not more automation, and less human to human interaction, because escalating with a machine is ineffective, time consuming and pointless.

Strategic escalation is the process of positively escalating the other party to a collaborative emotional position, from a net apathetic one. The skills to do this effectively are at the opposite of the skills we all possess (name-calling, judging, moralizing, blaming, threatening, denial, etc.) that we default too naturally if we believe that an interpersonal interaction isn’t going well—and we feel powerless to make it better.

Escalating an interpersonal interaction toward a positive outcome involves:

Complimenting (“You’re doing a good job…”)
Thanking (“Thank you for the help you gave me today…”)
Calling a person by name (“Cindy, that’s great that you got that for me…”)
Taking responsibility for being wrong (“I took the wrong approach to asking for what I wanted…”)
Using positive feedback (“I’m going to tell your manager what a great experience this was…”)

We must shift the ingrained, Industrial Revolution thinking that has us believing that such interactions are meaningless, irrelevant and unimportant, because increasingly, they are the only kind of interactions that matter.

-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] The Antifragile Ethic

The fundamental ethical issue of our time is how to engage with a world where situations and systems, are fundamentally indecent. And sometimes the people inside of these systems and situations choose to behave and respond indecently—and to do it repeatedly.

The issue is not whether or not historical past situations, peoples and systems were better or worse than current ones, that argument only serves as a distraction from addressing our current age of indecency. The real, core issue is how to manage the increasingly interpersonal conflicts that come with dealing with indecent situations and people in the world we have built for ourselves today.

This requires us to do the hard work of actively building new systems, and engage in situations by developing and maintaining an antifragile ethic:

Coming to grips with the idea that there will always be indecency (and this definition of indecency is individual, granular and personal, rather than institutional, democratic and systemic); and, the idea that individuals will have to make an active choice to address this indecency in behavior and choices head-on, rather than making the active choice to avoid, is the first part of the core of developing an antifragile ethic.

The second part of developing antifragile ethic is the idea that individuals must do the hard, emotional labor of engaging with themselves first and then others. The strongest antifragile ethical systems have at their core, a strong understanding and acknowledgement of the foibles and problems of the self first—before getting around to managing other people.

The last part of maintaining the antifragile ethic is to recognize that the choice to lead or follow is a daily, granular, choice-by-choice, day-by-day struggle that will lead to failure, disappointment and wrong decisions. But having that knowledge doesn’t allow us to abdicate the responsibility and accountability for making the hard choices (and accepting the consequences) granularly on a day-to-day basis.

Our need for ease (aided by our rapid technological growth and scientific knowledge) has led us to exchanging the hard work of being decent and building an antifragile ethic, for the faux immediacy of the unsatisfying search for an “easy” button, for addressing the difficult intricacies of interpersonal conflict.

There is no guarantee than this ethical development will work.

To search for such a guarantee is to ensure that the hard work of building an antifragile ethic will never happen. This is a fearful and childish search, doomed to never bear the fruit we so desperately need, to address our current, deepening, interpersonal conflicts.

-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] Managing Reality

Changing expectations of outcomes corresponds to changing our assumptions about other people in conflict–and out.

This is difficult, because assumptions are grounded in pattern seeking behavior that our human minds engage in, to make stories about the behaviors of other people in the world.

When those stories don’t match up to the expected behavior, people often experience disappointment.

Then the stock price goes down.
Then the family erupts into disagreement and conflict.
Then the organization begins the long, slow, traumatic process of firing an employee.

Disappointments are based in having unrealistic expectations about the behaviors of other people; but, since other people also have a skewed view of one another, the disappointments coalesce into conflicts, hurt feelings, and eventually, unrealized expectations.

There is no way out of this cage as long as human beings create narratives about the world, based primarily around the way that their unknowable inner lives either match up (or don’t) with the outer reality.

The thing about reality though, is that it’s relative.

Emotions drive expectations, disappointments and assumptions. They lead us to build and manage narratives about how we’d like the world to be, rather than how the world actually is structured. This structural process leads to far more conflicts than the actual conflict issues at hand.

Leaning in (to borrow the phrase) comes from addressing the hard things repeatedly, rather than just erecting new expectations, based in old assumptions, which lead to seemingly fresh and new disappointments.

-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/

[Opinion] Well, That Was Difficult…

“Well, that was easy.”

Actually, no it wasn’t.

And the expectation that it should be, raises more problems than it solves for many organizations, institutions, and even individuals.

If the resolution to the expectation of how the conflict should proceed, results in an outcome that seemed “easy,” that outcome—and the process to get to that outcome—should be reexamined.

Expectations around finishing—or resolving—a conflict, a pain point, or a problem, are often characterized as needing to be “easy” in order to be sold to the skeptical party on the other side of the negotiation table. But the expectation that resolution shouldn’t require anything of one party (and everything of another party) is a childish assumption that many adults act on in very sophisticated ways.

The expectation of an “easy” resolution to conflict leads to poor organizational storytelling around a conflict narrative (particularly in a customer service complaint context) as well as poor organizational dealings with employees who may (or may not) be “pulling their weight.”
The expectation of an “easy” resolution to conflict leads to policies, procedures and laws that lack common sense, hide devilish details in meaningless language and public pronouncements by organizations that should be trustworthy, but ultimately come off as satirical and farcical.
The expectation of an “easy” resolution to conflict leads to disappointments, which deepens dysfunctionality, creates a cycle of more conflict (not less) and allows individuals to hide behind fear, avoidance of accountability and accommodation of unethical behaviors.

The marketing of the “easy” button was genius from a marketing perspective. However, tangled geopolitics, organizational ethics problems and individual ennui are not resolved with a button.

The expectation of difficulty in resolving both simple and complex conflicts—coupled with the courage to do the difficult thing anyway—leads to long-term resolutions, deeper engagement and real, genuine relationships.

“Well, that was difficult. But it was worth it.”

-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/

[Strategy] Change Frames 2

Expectations, assumptions, disappointments and the actions that come from all of those areas are poisonous at the negotiation table.

The emotional and intellectual states around expectations, assumptions and disappointments, allow individuals to create frames inside of their intellect and emotions about the other party at the table. Then, parties act upon those frames, generating predictable responses from the other party. Then, there’s a “return to normalcy:” dysfunction continues, people get frustrated, innovation stalls, and the stock price of public companies (or the public credibility of private companies) goes through the roof.

To really innovate though, the first thing that has to happen in a conflict is that those frames of reference based in assumptions, expectations and disappointments have to be broken by at least one of the parties in conflict. This takes courage and is part of the core of emotional labor that is starting to define workplaces and organizations of all kinds in the 21^st century.

At the individual level is where all of this breaking of frames has to begin, but if the individual is unwilling to do it, then they are accepting the status quo. The hardest thing to realize is that piece right there, but once it is realized, then there is a diminishing of disappointments in either the other party, or the situation. This happens because one party is now seeing the other party as a human being, rather than as a conflict construct.

After the ability to be disappointed recedes, then the next piece to go are the assumptions about the conflict, it’s nature, or even the outcome of the negotiations at the table. This is a critical middle step that many parties in conflict seek to skip over because it’s not “sexy” and it’s hard. But, without abandoning assumptions, the other party is still trapped in a cage (or a frame if you will) not of their own making.

Finally, the last piece of the frame to be broken is the one created by expectations. This one seems line the hardest to break, but in reality, it’s the easiest to break once the other two are abandoned by either party. However, many parties in conflict seek to start the process of change by breaking expectations, rather than by addressing and breaking disappointments; this leads to more, not less, conflict.

Breaking frames created by expectations, assumptions and disappointments can feel like escaping from an emotional Supermax prison facility. But, breaking those frames and destroying those emotional prisons is required for the success of emotional labor at the negotiation table.

-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/

[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-

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/