[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-

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] On Courage

The difference between people who “succeed” and people who “fail” in a conflict scenario is individual levels of courage.

Courage is in short supply and always has been since the days of the playground bully and meeting new people once you got off the bus for the first time in the first grade and Mom and Dad weren’t there to hold your hand anymore.

Courage is not about preparation, learning, discipline or even persistence and grit—although all of those skills and internal factors help.

Courage is about not needing external validation from the world—basically, not needing assurances to do the right thing—and just doing the right thing in the first place.

Which is often the hard thing.

In a conflict scenario, it takes courage to confront in a healthy way, prepare for the feedback you will receive about your role in the problem and then integrating that feedback into your worldview, while also giving feedback to the other person about their role in the scenario.

It takes courage to confront a cheating spouse, explain how what they did impacted you and your family and then to listen to them tell you why they made their choice.

It takes courage to address a difficult employee who has little social skills and appears to have even less desire to develop them, and try to find a middle ground to get tasks done in the workplace.

It takes courage to speak up when you think bad decisions are being made in a fraternal, civic, volunteer, or church organization that you disagree with. And it takes courage to hear and accept why those decisions may not be the best for you, but are the best ones for the organization.

Courage is at the bottom of all resolution. Forgiveness is at the bottom of all reconciliation efforts. Labor is at the bottom of all engagement practices, advice and opinions.

So then the question becomes: How much do you really want to grow as a person before you leave this life?

-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.

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[ICYMI] Acting “As If”

When we first started in the working world—and by extension in the adult world—one of the salient pieces of advice we were repeatedly given by other working people was, “fake it until you make it.”

Now, in most contexts of the workplace, where things happen—projects, ideas, tasks, etc.—underneath the force of organizational inertia, this is perhaps wise advice.

But in the conflict entrepreneurship game, “Fake it until you make it” is terrible advice. So too is the advice to “act as if.”

If the conflict engagement consultant fakes knowing the answer, fakes being empathetic, or under delivers the goods as promised, the client will know immediately.

By the way, bait and switch doesn’t work either, because showing up as one thing, when you’ve advertised another, is a sure way to guarantee never being called again.

Here’s some better advice for the conflict engagement consultant: Being confident in yourself, your approach and your process, comes when you embrace the fear of not being confident. Embrace cannot become paralysis, and self-fulfilling prophecies are like a dose of nerve gas against the conflict consultant.

Walk through the fear, is much better advice.

It’s the only way for the conflict consultant, and her client, to walk out whole on the other side.

Originally published on January 29, 2015.

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[ICYMI] Adventure Not Obligation

It’s tough to be generous when paying the bill for groceries every month is a struggle.

This is one of the fist pieces of feedback that we receive here at Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT) when we blog about trust and “giving it away to get rich later” in an abundance economy, as we did here, hereand here.

Generosity in an abundance economy is rewarded when every piece of content—words, pictures, videos, comments, etc.—are shared, “liked,” posted and re-posted on the internet via social media.

Being generous with what you have is not limited to the disruptive, conflict-ridden development of the connection economy through which we are all living now.

One of the key principles of Christianity and the Bible is the idea that believers in Christ are called to be generous: with their time, their money, their talent, their resources and their lives.

And this philosophy is based in the idea that God rewards a generous person mightily. This extends both to the rich man (who is generous out of an abundance of material wealth (see Luke 10:29-37) and the poor man (who is generous out of an abundance of love (see Luke 7:36-50).

This is where the work of charities, missionaries and people such as Mother Teresa comes about. This is also where 16^th, 17^th and 18^thcentury European colonialism had part of its roots.

Now, in a world where generosity is seen as something done out of abundance for someone else, being generous (as opposed to being greedy and promoting scarcity) has long been seen as a “sucker’s game” because anyone could (and would, and did, and still do)take advantage of such generosity while giving nothing back in return.

However, with the internet and social media (and wearables and disruptive tech start-ups and on and on) upending the economy of scarcity that we have all lived in for the last 100 or so years, the New Normal will increasingly be the old school “sucker’s game.”

In the connection economy, it doesn’t take a religiously observant believer to understand that the more content is given away for free, the more generosity becomes an adventure, not an obligation: Which of course, requires us to rethink the values that we have around ownership, access and privacy, long held values that no longer work in a world of shareable movies, downloadable Mp3’s and Facebook posts.

So, if everyone is sharing, posting, reposting, creating and giving generously, who’s getting “rich” and who’s getting left behind?

Originally published on December 2, 2013.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.

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[ICYMI] Bullying

There are all kinds of personalities operating in the world today.

There are the “weird” outliers who enjoy collecting odd, unusual items off of Ebay.

There are the “bosses” and the “employees.”

There are even the “nice” “normal” people who turn on their television and fall asleep in front of the Tonight Show and reality TV after putting in a hard day at work.

Then there are the people who are never talked about or mentioned.

These people are the ones who don’t get along well with other folks.

These are the people who don’t have multi-million dollar executive bonuses that serve to hide their evil ways.

These are the people who spam your inbox and send you unwanted junk mail through what’s left of the mail system.

We used to call these people “flim-flam” men (although they were also sometimes women) and matchstick men (from which the film takes its name).

There is also a more common name for them, which everyone uses now, particularly in the workplace and in the school system:

Bullies.

We all know the conventional wisdom about bullies:

Bullies are dangerous.

Bullies are angry.

Bullies are socially inept.

Bullies are misunderstood.

Bullies are just victims of other bullies.

Bullies are people who have to be taught that “that kind of behavior” is “unacceptable.”

Except…except…

Bullies have to pay the rent.

Bullies are going to continue to have children.

Bullies are going to drive cars and go to nice restaurants.Bullies vote in elections.

So the question becomes, in a world where the outlier is ever more trumpeted and celebrated and the weird is the new “normal,” how do we as a society give bullies jobs?

How do we co-opt and enfranchise bullies?

Not bullying behavior, that’s enough of a problem in and of itself, but how do we get a bully a job that will allow them to progressively be transformed into someone that is compliant, complacent and cooperative?

As you ponder this question, take this parallel into consideration:

Jerry Sandusky is widely considered to be a monster.He molested and took advantage of the system in which he was ensconced for almost 40+ years to steal innocence and trust from children and young adults. The English Tops of the Pops host, Jimmy Savile did the exact same thing in the exact same way.

However, while Jimmy is dead, Jerry is very much alive and buried in a prison where we as a society would like to forget him.But, someone is going to have to go into that cell with Jerry to talk with him, examine him and take him apart, so that his crimes against children can never take place again and so that we can ID predators early and do what we can to stop them before they become what they will ultimately be.

And that’s the parallel.

We will have to give bullies jobs in a world of niches and the “weird” so that we can gradually, societally, say, with some confidence that “Bullying doesn’t happen here.”

Originally published on July 30, 2013.Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] No

The word “no” is so compelling because it serves as both a positive and a negative.

We’ve written about this before, here and here, and it never fails to amaze us how much more there is to cover. This is because the crowning question that we asked, from clients to casual observers of our blog and social feeds is: “How do I say ‘no’?”

Saying “no” to an opportunity, a person or a situation is hard for three reasons:

It requires us to articulate the values that we hold dear.
It requires us to make judgment about those values in relation to another persons’ desires and requests.
It requires us to place a potential future best, above a present tangible good.

It is hard for people to say “no” (positively or otherwise) because we feel as though we are letting down other people. And being the social animals that we are, reciprocity and social norming exert a powerful pull upon our psyches, our hearts and even our souls.

The word “no” places a delineating marker between people, ideas, projects and purposes. It segregates, and closes off, even as it opens up other possibilities. This is why rejection is such a hard thing to overcome for sales professionals, marketers and others who engage in the business of persuasion.

“No” ultimately can feel like a rejection of persuasion, rather than a statement of preference:

Preferring the safety of nostalgia over the danger of the new
Preferring the comfort of the present over the uncertainty of the next moment over
Preferring the status quo over a change

What are you saying “yes” to by saying “no”?

Originally published on March 19, 2015.

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