[Strategy] Pursuing Justice

In a conflict, human responses range along a continuum, lurching through the stages of grief. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying” described the five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

When parties are hurt in a conflict, many seek revenge. That hot, fiery desire to inflict the same level of pain on the offending party, which they have inflicted upon us.

The processes of conflict resolution, mediation, negotiation and even litigation, seek to insert a third-party (sometimes another person, sometimes an organization) between each party. And, at the furthest end, transformative processes (and psychotherapy processes) seek to insert a third-party between each party and themselves.

Hurt parties seek justice through formalized litigation processes—but if we are being honest in this space (and we often tell workshop groups that we deal in truth), we must acknowledge that wounded parties seek a reckoning, with the outcome in their favor.

With this acknowledgement and understanding, it is important to note that revenge comes to the forefront and begins to poison even the most neutral of processes. Revenge disturbs parties in conflict, because culturally, we have been taught to abdicate our tribal rights to revenge to the state (in the form of mediation, litigation, etc.) in exchange for material safety and security.

True justice, Biblical justice, however, is really about forgiveness. Forgiving the other person requires each party to do three things; all of which can seem impossible when parties are in the throes of the five stages of grief:

Recognize and acknowledge anger, but do not become swept up by the emotional flooding that results. The corollary to this is to avoid the emotional toxicity of the other party’s anger in a conflict.
Control and manage the tongue. More and more research proves the psychological power of human storytelling. Gossip, rumors, innuendos, tales, and other forms of telling the conflict story repeatedly, add to the emotional and psychological detritus that piles up around the conflict, further confusing the pursuit of justice as forgiveness.
Realize that forgiveness is about justice for you as a party in conflict, not a panacea for the other person. There’s a lot of confusion in beliefs around justice and forgiveness. Consequences to actions can be legal, moral, ethical, and behavioral and come in other ways. But when we forgive as an act of justice, we release the agency of committing those acts to others in authority, rather than taking the authority (and it’s consequences), on ourselves.

Parties who have been wounded in conflict have a right to be angry, to be afraid, and a right to disengage for their own psychological and emotional protection. They do not have a right to inflict more pain, or to escalate the conflict under the pretext of pursuing justice, when in reality they seek revenge.

-Peace Be With You All-

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

[Strategy] Playing Chess in Conflict

Playing chess is something that not everyone does.

In the film Training Day, Denzel Washington tells Ethan Hawke that his moves on the street—playing criminals and cops against each other—are “chess not checkers.”

The strategy and thought process, the impulse control and persistence, and the ability to tap into the emotional content of your opponent on the other side of the board, make chess a worthy game for comparison to people in conflict.

But what happens when one of the parties ceases to respond in the familiar ways of the familiar chess game, and instead kicks over the chess board?

And what happens when one party in the conflict is playing chess, but the other party is playing checkers? Or pinochle?

Not everyone has a brain for managing the emotions of conflict, the responses of the other party, or the emotional ability to dive in with grit and persistence when the outcome may be less than guaranteed.
Not everyone has the courage to care about outcomes in conflicts and disputes that involve them, or the people that they work with or love, and the personal willpower to act on that courage.
Not everyone has the ability to determine when it’s time to move from being a bystander to a situation that could lead to conflict toward being an active participant in attaining a positive outcome.

But, we contend, that everyone has the capacity to learn how to do all of these things. Even if, once they have learned how to do all of these things, they still refuse to act.

Because, sometimes it is easier to do nothing, and even that act of inaction, moves chess pieces around on a board.

-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] The Balance is Not Mocked

Permission and permissiveness should not be confused.

Permission is something that is traditionally given. Permissiveness, however, is a passive act. Primarily a passive-aggressive act.

Permission seeks to collaborate and coordinate with another party. Permissiveness seeks to establish its own boundaries and is based in a “no” that sometimes comes off as a “yes.”

Permission is up front in establishing the hierarchy by which it operates. Permissiveness is sneaky and—let’s be frank—a little arrogant.

Permissiveness is taken from a party in conflict. Permission, however, is neither given nor taken. It exists in the whisper space between asking and taking.

There is a state of permission in many, many conflicts—interpersonal, work, church, school—that is confused with the permissiveness to “do as I like” accompanied by the corollary of “you suffer what I wish.”

The moment in conflict when a party commits an act of permissiveness is the moment when a conflict deepens negatively.

The moment in a conflict when a party commits an act of permission is the moment when a conflict deepens positively.

Do not be confused. The balance of permission/permissiveness is not mocked.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Conflict Jazz

Jazz music is a narrative experience that tells a story based in improvisation, riffing and unpredictability.

Just like interactions in conflict scenarios, jazz has underlying rules and a structure, and you can choose to follow it.

If you do that though, the conflict never gets even close to being resolved.

Instead, just like in a jazz jam session, you and your conflict partner can choose to wind up the tension, escalating assertively, and appropriately, until real innovation and change springs forth from the scenario.

Can you do jazz when engaging in conflict?

Of course.

It’s all jazz anyway…

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Labor Conflicts

Computers and algorithms, big data and analytics, robotics and wearbles.

We are the first generation that might live long enough to watch our technology outstrip our ambition, our needs, our wants and even our good sense.

There is no software—or hardware—solution for human emotions though. And as we transition from being a society and culture based on economic consumption, we will have to develop a new economy based in creation.

We are going to have to monetize the outcomes, the talent, and the voice that emotional labor gives us.

Finally, mothers’ and feminists’ cries about the disenfranchisation of “women’s’ work” will be answered. We will have to place a monetary value on empathy, story, design and artisanal focus, and move away from the precision that machines can give us.

Conflicts will arise that will be unexpected around issues of access rather than race, gender or economics. The “left brained” people aren’t going to just stop analyzing, using logic and developing new ideas.

And the conflicts that have always existed under the surface in the global economy between the arts and the humanities and engineering will be waged on different ground, more favorable to those who can compose and create, rather than those who can defy logic or program a computer.

Trainers, developers, speakers and presenters, will have the unenviable job security of curating and collating the knowledge that exists all across the virtually infinite space of the infinite web.

Mediators, conflict practitioners, facilitators, and arbitrators will have to be great designers, storytellers, visual artists and—at the furthest end—movie makers, in order to train, educate, convince and convert a population who will be frustrated, disintermediated, and staring a seemingly hopeless, jobless future in the face.

We are excited about the future. There will be more opportunities, more adventures, and even more hope.

But not human generated hope.

-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: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] The Unfairness of Courage

In a conflict, the courageous don’t always win.

And this is not fair.

Winning can be defined as “getting an outcome beneficial to them and their perspective on the issue.”

Winning can be defined as “making change in the face of opposition.”

Winning can be defined as “seeing my ‘enemies’ defeated and driven into obscurity.”

Winning can be defined as “living long enough to see my values and story become dominant and see other values that I oppose recede into obscurity.”

The courageous are those who seek to do three things well:

Engage with the hard emotional labor of dealing with other people and trying to see the world through their lens.
Establish the boundaries and lines that are non-negotiable for them, but understand that the other party might be flexible.
Energize the other party (or parties) with the ability to become allies and friends (at least for the moment) in the pursuit of a greater goal.

If this all sounds hard, that’s because it is.

If all this sounds impossible, it’s really not.

If all this sounds like the purview of diplomats, generals and politicians, rather than auto mechanics, nurses or office managers, it is both.

But, because we deal with other people, with mixed motives, hidden agendas and other issues, the courageous don’t always win.

And this is the output of emotional labor.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] 3 Steps to Eliminating Hurry

Ruthlessly eliminate hurry in your life.

Many time management seminars and productivity hacks, mobile applications, in-person trainings and coaching sessions, skirt around the core problem at the heart of modernity: There are only 24 hours in the day.

The problem is not that people have too many tasks in their adult lives (we do); the problem is not that people are constantly busy with priorities that don’t really matter to them (we are); the problem is not that people are stressed out, frazzled, feeling like they are browsing through life, and deeply emotionally and spiritually unhealthy (we are).

The problem is that most of what we read, absorb and try to put into practice focuses around moving around the priorities we don’t like, and trying to squeeze one more ounce out of the 24 hours we do have—so that we can do more things we don’t like.

All while telling ourselves the story (in this case, the lie) that “Well, if I just do THIS thing, I’ll have more time to do what I want to do.”

Really, the issue comes down to patience. In our American culture (and if you’re reading this another country, or from another cultural background, this statement may or may not apply to your experience) we value impatience, hurry, and idolize the cult of busyness, over many other areas.

We resent people who appear to have more time than they know what to do with. And we envy in our hearts people with wealth, who at least outwardly, appear to have no worries about time at all, and appear to have boundless energy.

Then, we read the articles on productivity, time management, wealth creation, the “1%” and on doing more with less, searching for assurances that we are right and “they” who appear to have more than us, are wrong.

But, what if we tried three other things rather than just moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic one more time?

Say “no” more…and mean it—“no” to promotions that we don’t really need and that take more time from priorities we said were “non-negotiable,” “no” to obligations that come packaged as opportunities and “no” to productivity and time management “hacks” that don’t get at the core of what we really need. Which is the courage to say “no” in the first place.
Eliminate hurry—don’t hurry. That’s it. Just slow down to a crawl. Take time to talk to people in front of us, rather than the people on Twitter (we are deeply guilty of this one, so we are are talking to ourselves here as well). Take time to drive in the slow lane for a month at the posted speed limit. Do the old things (like writing and reading) that require us to put aside the things that don’t matter (like work) and put in front of us the things that do matter (like self-improvement).
Get active—55% of mobile phone users go online through their phones. Most of this is browsing, shopping and in general, watching what other people are doing. Television used to be the driver for passivity, but we now have a TV/computer/radio in our pocket all the time. But getting active in our own lives requires us to stop watching the escapades of people who are already active in their lives.

Difficulty in balancing seemingly competing demands is the first stop on the road to conflict. For many people, difficulties begin with the management of their perception of hurry, patience, stress, and other people. When we have the courage to ruthlessly eliminate hurry, stress is reduced and difficulties become manageable, rather than events that can derail an entire day with anger, stress, and impatience.

-Peace Be With You All-

[ICYMI] Organizational Climate Change – Part 2

Anthropogenic is a big word that basically means, “the fault of human beings.”

When we look at organizations built by human beings, from families to governments, there are a lot areas where anthropogenic issues combine to create a negative, toxic conflict climate.

And since conflict is a process that never really ends, there are only two kinds of environments that it can happen in, nurturing or harmful.

We all know what a harmful environment looks like, but a supportive, cooperative environment, where conflicts can happen and not leave traumatic scars that carry over into other aspects of our lives—well that’s the Holy Grail isn’t it?

Anthropogenic conflict climate change starts with disrupting the internal focus around an ancient resource that many people lust for deep in their hearts, but no one knows how to define.

Innovations around power tend to focus on redistributing the detritus that arises from the resource—such as wealth, social control or political influence—without ever really addressing the power itself.

There’s gotta be a better way…

Originally published on January 27, 2015.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] Organizational Climate Change – Part 1

The presence of climate change is real. And the climate is heating up the planet.

Everywhere on earth there are objects expelling hot air, and other gases, that serve to create a harmful climate.

And the climate that’s being created is the opposite of creative, nurturing and balanced.

Changing the climate of the planet is hard, but changing the conflict climate of an organization, filled with people with their own ideas, has to be focused on disrupting four areas:

Power abuse and threats
Unhealthy competition
Endemic distrust
Defensive behaviors

And the conflict climate where the psychological atmosphere is balanced in favor of these four areas (rather than in another direction) is bound to experience negative change.

This is particularly true when the conflict management tools used regularly in an organization, are focused in areas that support power, competition, distrust, and defensiveness, such as litigation and policy regulation.

This is also true when the conflict continuum is focused on escalation, and continuing comfortable levels of dysfunction, without seeking to break apart the underlying psychological processes.

Global climate change didn’t happen in a vacuum, and neither does changing the conflict climate of an organization.

Originally published on January 26, 2015.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] Curating Vulnerability

We tell ourselves compelling stories, where the drivers of the conflicts that move the narrative along, are not us, but others.

We do this for two reasons:

We want more credit for successes and less blame for failures.
We get uncomfortable with tension and discomfort.

In an era of curated reality, the biggest tension is between the realities we choose to show our audiences, versus the realities we know exist inside of us.

Social media provides somewhat of an outlet for us to resolve this tension. However, too many people keep telling the same faulty story, where we are the stars and everyone else is a goat.

In reality though, we are just perpetuating the tension and creating more unreality.

But, what is “real?” Is the “real” person the one that lives inside of us, or is the “real” person the one we display to the world via our endlessly streaming social feeds?

Acquiring authenticity requires us to be vulnerable in ways that we cannot, because we have never learned to be vulnerable within ourselves, too ourselves, and by ourselves.

The leading of double lives are destroying and reshaping the social contract, and the results of that destruction are ongoing and endless intrapersonal conflict, as well as depression, anger, resentment, impatience, and narcissism and so on, and so on, and so on.

Originally published on December 15, 2014.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!