Seeking Validation

When someone asks you for validation about their approach to managing a conflict, what they are really asking for is reassurance that they are doing the right thing.

But since validation can only come from gatekeepers, and since gatekeepers have significantly less power in the world now than they ever have before, seeking validation is really an empty pursuit.

And since there is never enough reassurance that the right path has been taken, asking for validation—but really seeking reassurance—is a recipe for hiding from making the decisions that will move a conflict forward toward management and maybe resolution.

Instead of offering validation (or reassurance) offer opportunities and challenges to those who are hiding to have the courage to come out into the light, to make a decision, and to ship a solution that will be good enough for the conflict they are in.

How Crazy Do You Want to Act to ‘Win’ at Nuclear Poker

Playing poker with another party who holds the keys to nuclear weapons (literal, metaphorical, or figurative), and has given indications based on experience that they will be willing to deploy them, is a dangerous game.

The stakes are high, but not for the obvious reasons of total physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological annihilation.

The stakes are high for three reasons:

No one really knows another party’s motivations, needs, or interests. Unless we ask. And far too often our inherent selfishness in pursuing outcomes that benefit us exclusively, blinds us to the simple need to do some discovery about the other party.

Sometimes, only one person has cared enough to explore another party’s motivations, needs, or interests.

But then they use this knowledge cynically, to manipulate and exploit other parties who are more ignorant—and more selfish.

The far rarer case is that the party who has the knowledge and cares, shares; unselfishly, openly, and with the purpose of avoiding—or minimizing—disastrous outcomes.

Egos, self-interest, and selfishness tend to override rationality and logic in even the most innocuous negotiations. When potential destruction is the thing on offer, all bets are off.

The fact is, people at the individual level are irrational and emotional and in moments of high stress, tend to make short-cut choices that relieve tension in the amygdala, but create further problems down the road.

If the other party isn’t talking to a rational actor (such as it is) on the other side of the negotiation table, or leads with principles rather than interests, the changes of an undesirable outcome increase tremendously.

The appearance of being willing to do what the other party is either to scared, to demoralized, or to invested in alternative outcomes (their own BATNAs and WATNAs, for instance) to do, is sometimes enough to “win” the high stakes game of poker played with nuclear weapons (literal, metaphorical, or figurative).

Unfortunately, this sets a precedent in the mind and approach of the “losing” party around the potential for blackmail, coercion, or something even worse—subservience and the appearance of weakness.

The person who is willing to walk into a nuclear negotiation and deal fairly, transparently, and unselfishly with each party in the conflict is the one who wins the day today and tomorrow.

And not just a moral victory either.

Dollar Value of Mediation Skills in the Connection Economy

It’s hard to place a dollar value on human-to-human interactions in the current (and growing) connection economy, because connection is about engaging in acts of caring.

And whoever put a dollar value on acts of caring?

But here are a few challenge questions if that’s your attitude:

Whoever put a dollar value on the act of raising crops in an agricultural economy?

Whoever put a dollar value on the act of building a widget in an industrial economy?

Whoever put a dollar value on the act of providing a customer service in the service economy?

Humanity figured out the dollar value inherent in all the economic transitions from hunting and foraging, to agriculture, to industry, to service and created functioning economic systems—from trading and bartering to late stage capitalism. And humanity will figure out the current global transition we are in right now.

The space between the old system and the new system is a space of conflict, anger, incivility, uncertainty, spectacle, entertainment, along with a healthy dose of depression, worry, and anxiety.

This is a space where the skills of mediation (particularly around distraction, diversion, and deflection) can be helpful (and monetized) at scale.

But whoever put a dollar value on the acts of caring?

Asking is a Part of Negotiation

Most negotiations don’t happen because many people lack the curiosity to ask for what else might be on offer.

When you have the courage to ask the other party—and open a negotiation—you gain the power to get more.

You also grow the opportunity to move beyond mere transaction to something approaching a relationship.

When the pain points are highly painful (i.e. divorce, threat of imprisonment, illness, personal trauma, etc.) having the courage to ask for more allows the other party to move past their own objections—reasonable and otherwise.

But only if they want to.

When you don’t ask, you can’t receive.

Avoidance is a Worthwhile Strategy for Addressing Conflict

Avoiding a conflict is sometimes a strategic move.

We avoid conflicts for the obvious reasons that dealing with them makes us scared, threatens our sense of security, or we feel as though we don’t have the competency to address them in a way where the outcome will work for us.

But, then there are the non-obvious reasons to avoid conflicts.

One of which is to have the conflict in another way, in another way, with a party that has already been weakened emotionally by engaging in a previous conflict.

This is practicing avoidance as a negotiation strategy.

Another non-obvious reason to avoid conflict is that telling the story of avoidance has more resonance with another party we are currently embroiled with, rather than telling a story of resolution and success.

This is practicing avoidance as a storytelling strategy.

Still, another reason to avoid a conflict is that we don’t care how the conflict works out because the conflict “working out” is a short-term strategy that changes the balance of power for the other party in the conflict. And quite frankly, we don’t really care about how they work out their problems.

This is practicing avoidance as a long-game, future-oriented strategy.

The non-obvious strategies matter more in the long run than the short-term reasons we articulate, defend, and promote to other people, the other party, or even quietly to ourselves.

More deliberation—and articulation—of the long-term impact of avoiding a conflict as a strategic move, will serve to move the use of avoidance from a tactic we’re embarrassed to employ and lack the appropriate level of self-awareness to explain, to a strategy that has real benefits for ourselves and others.

Change One Percent at a Time if You…

…don’t have the courage to confront the ongoing, unresolved cultural conflicts and frictions in your organization.

…if the resistance to change at scale from the organization and even individuals is too hard to address.

…if your fellow employees who should be your allies, cannot be motivated because of internal, intrinsic factors that you can neither understand nor appreciate.

…if you are struggling with explaining to yourself how you continue to “fit” in the culture you’ve become used .

…if you attend in-person trainings, read books, try new methods and techniques, and still nothing changes.

…if you think that you have been patient long enough for change.

…if you have given up on changes happening and are now comfortable and familiar with the lip service that the overall organizational culture pays to change.

Then, you might be ready to take the courageous, risky step of changing the culture that you are in one percent at a time.

Change, driven internally by friction and conflict, always happens slowly at first (sometimes taking years) but then arrives all at once, to everyone’s surprise in your culture.

Anxiety, Worry and Hurry

Worry about things you can’t control and outcomes that are dependent upon other people responding (or reacting) is at the heart of anxiety.

Our modern struggle with anxiety comes from three areas: Our desire for immediacy of outcome (or resolution); Our lack of internal resilience; Our impatience with process as a method of accomplishing goals.

We narcotize our worry, or anxiety, with food, alcohol, drugs, violence (self-directed and other-directed) and even lately video games, social media, and coloring books.

The thing is, sitting with worry, and then learning to have faith and let that worry go, is the only way to find the peace that we are craving.

The process of getting from worry to letting go of worry can be mediated and adjudicated by meditation, prayer, and journaling (we forget past victories over worry unless they are recorded…memory is a slippery thing) but when we combine the desire for immediacy, control, and impatience, then hurry sneaks in.

And we are too busy to remember past victories. Too busy to engage in a letting go process. Too busy to do anything but worry.

The ways out of this are easy, but they require self-knowledge, self-direction, and self-regulation to work.

Not more distractions.

When You Won’t Need Validation

Recognizing that you once held a belief and that now this belief is changing, is the essence of learning.

And by the time you attain that essence, you won’t need the extrinsic validation from an “A” letter grade, a raise, a promotion, or any other validation that you believe extrinsically motivated you to learn in the first place.

To go a step further, you won’t care if the validation for the learning comes or not, from an external source.

And you won’t need reassurance about the actions you take to implement and execute on your newly acquired self-knowledge.

Captain of the Rescue Boats

The person who walks around while the Titanic is sinking, and calmly begins rearranging the deck chairs, organizing the evacuation, and gets everyone off the ship before it sinks becomes, by default, the future captain of the rescue vessel in the North Atlantic.

That person also becomes a new Noah.

Here is a list of 26 icebergs (non-exhaustive, your list (and mileage) may vary) where, as the Titanic ship of state known as global society collides with them and begins to sink, you can be the default captain of the rescue ships later:

Climate change
Fear of change
Growing use of A.I. based technology
Biodiversity disappearance
Lack of sufficient explanations that people can understand for necessary changes
Financial systems collapse
Refusal to be held accountable
Developing world debt
Connection economy of the Internet
Rethinking of Labor Value
The electrical grid in the postmodern world
Lack of access to creation on the Internet
Lack of courage in individuals to take risks
First world educational system
Scarcity of emotional labor
Child abuse and victimization
Lack of true, courageous statesmanship
Human trafficking
Increased spiritual hopelessness among the old
Increased spiritual hopelessness among the young
Lack of self-efficacy
Growing ability to hide from what matters
Thinking harder about the answers to binary questions
Lack of interest in self-awareness
Lack of ability to emotionally care
The increasingly intractable nature of conflicts

There are other ones out there as well. There’s no lack of icebergs. There is, however a lack of people calmly prepared to be captains in future rescue boats.

Obligation is a Funny Thing

Obligation is a funny thing.

And not funny as “ha-ha” but funny as in “Isn’t this a modern irony?”

The NFL owners voted almost unanimously this week, to move the Raiders franchise from Oakland to Las Vegas (a move fraught with its own implications in a professional sport full of people with questionable moral and ethical decision making practices…but bear with me) and their explanations to the fans of why they are moving, is reflective of a larger shift in our culture around the concept of obligation.

The attitude encapsulated in the owners’ comments following the vote reflects two views of obligation:

The first view is that of “we owe you nothing.” The franchise and the team played games, grew a fan base, and gave the entertainment to the fans of the sport that they craved. In exchange, the fans gave the team and franchise money through ticket sales and more.

Purely transactional.

The second view of obligation is that of “the only thing I ever owed you was a ‘good time.’” The players, the ownership (I’m a Denver Broncos fan, I know), and even the overall notorious behavior of the franchise reflected this “good time.” In exchange, the fans (both locally and regionally) gave the team, the owners, and the franchise attention, awareness, and an audience.

This is also purely transactional and reflects a view of obligation based not in attaining revenues of money, but attaining revenues of attention and trust. It’s the view that Frank Sinatra had about his life versus his performances, and that many celebrities of all stripes seem to have abandoned in recent years.

There are two large perspectives to consider here, both of which relate to conflict management and our real lives, as well as one small—but salient—point:

Our lives are never purely transactional in nature. There is always an exchange of emotion for revenues (either trust or money) and that transaction has never been more valuable than now in our overall organizational and public cultures.
Our conflicts are based on other people barreling past our obligations and asking us to give more emotionally, than we may be prepared to give. However, the reality is that our personal boundaries around obligation must expand, or our management (not to mention our resolutions) will be task oriented, thinly veiled attempts to get to a relationship based goal we don’t really value, with the other party.

The small point is this: The organizations and leaders that understand the nature of obligation and the power they wield in a transactional relationship, will attain far greater—and far more meaningful—outcomes from individuals, societies, and cultures, than those that don’t understand.

Or even worse, those that don’t care—or never cared—in the first place.