On Our Former Greatness

From Detroit, Michigan to Gary, Indiana, urban decay is a fact as cities evolve from the physical industrial totems to 20^th century progress into the semi-transparent, high technology incubators of the virtual 21^st century.

And, with 70% of the human population living in cities by 2050, the crimes, poverty, squatting and homelessness that occur in the midst of inevitable urban decay, will make the distinction between the virtual and the physical more and more stark.

The often highlighted conflicts between residents in the cities and those in rural areas will become more acute as well, but they will not be the most serious.

With all of the in-migration occurring, urban decay becomes a consequence of conflict between a vision of the past and the possibility of the future.

Environmental degradation, fossil fuel use, convenience to services, access to information and job security will all become the battlegrounds in the war between the physical and the virtual.

And when more and more people need fewer and fewer physical places to produce the same amount of goods and services that they did 70 years ago, what will become of the totems to humanity’s former industrial greatness.

Oh, by the way, since the poor—those in spirit, those in material wealth and those in talent—will be with us always, the discarded remnants of the current and future world’s former glory—physical and digital—will also increasingly become places to carve out their own form of prosperity, security and culture.

-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/

Gimme An “E”

There are two mindsets and one, which was chiefly dominant throughout the 20^th century is in decline, while the other is ascending.

The Entrepreneur mindset is based on taking on risk, pushing the boundaries and restlessly finding new visions and new horizons.

The Employee mindset is based on committing wholeheartedly to a project, getting paid, and then going off to do a hobby, have a family or use the money to leverage another interest.

The Entrepreneur mindset focuses on what could possibly be and the Employee mindset is focused on what is.

The Entrepreneur mindset is best exemplified through the myths of the Old West. The Employee mindset is as well.

Which mindset will “win” the future?

Neither. And that’s a good thing, because both require each other.

The Entrepreneur mindset requires some infrastructure to be built by those with an Employee mindset. The Employee mindset benefits from the “newness” and adventure in which the Entrepreneur mindset bastes.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Talking to Your Partner

The professional consultant and coach most often acts as a solopreneur.

She is most often alone in the pursuit of dream.

She is typically overwhelmed by concerns about accounting and how much she must charge to make a profit, how her marketing is working (or not) and multiple other competing priorities.

She is alone in her business and her business practice, but she is not alone in her overall life.

She has a partner and/or friends. No woman is an island. She’s driven, but she has to make two decisions early:

How to pick a partner or friend

How much to tell that person about her solopreneurship.

The best practice is to be as honest as possible with intimate partners (and business partners are about as intimate as possible without taking off your clothes) and tell the other party, just how long it’s going to take to scale.

One less conversation to be had can make her life easier and less complicated.

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

Cultural Negotiating

The most important driver for success in the 21st century, as the workplace shifts from being about making things with our hands, to making things with our ideas, is emotional intelligence.

Don’t get us wrong, building physical objects still means something, but the most important building is happening with ideas, a keyboard, and publishing platforms, rather than using hammers, adhering some nails and getting rough hands.

After all, I hear that these days, even a known author can’t get a book deal without an already built-in audience.

With that being noted, cultural competence—alongside emotional intelligence—becomes another tool in the box labeled “FOR IDEA BUILDING.”

Being aware of the personal, political and social cultural backgrounds and ideas of partners on a project (combined with cognitive emotional intelligence) can make navigating differences easier.

In a global world, where the lingua franca is English and everyone can see what you Tweet, post, message or blog, cultural competence (not necessarily sensitivity) becomes even more critical to getting everybody on board.

The hard work now is not only uniting the twelve team members at your table, but also uniting the distributed teams working across the globe–and doing it with a semblance of understanding.

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

Interviewing For Cultural Fit

Culture defines how employees make meaning about the work that they do.

Workplace culture is defined as ways of thinking, behaving and working in an organization that provides boundaries for where employees can and cannot place value.

The issue comes when the personal culture that an employee comes from doesn’t match the culture of the organization that they are joining.

In other contexts, this disruption is noted as lack of product market fit, and typically, in the open market, when an organization makes something that no one wants to buy, they go out of business.

When we think of hiring, the interview process is used as a way to avoid—or minimize—the detrimental results of a lack of product (people) market (job) fit.

However, these days the interview process is so artificial and so unable to determine if a person can actually do the job for which they have been hired, it is a wonder we haven’t done away with it.

Conflicts in the workplace arise from the get-go, because the initial person/organization fit is poor, and then they escalate when two people, tasked to work together to accomplish a company goal, can’t get along with each other and disagree about where they fit in the organization.

Cultural interpersonal conflicts at work are corrosive, damaging and dangerous and could probably be avoided if–instead of asking a series of artificial questions, or filing out meaningless, psychological assessments—the hiring organization could discover each individuals’ story about why they want to work for an organization in a particular position.

Would this be harder, more time consuming and require a deeper level of emotional intelligence on the part of the hiring committee? Sure. But firing and rehiring are just as time consuming and harder still.

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

Going to Work Angry

Anger and stress are natural reactions to external and internal stimuli. However, it is unfortunate that many of us go to work angry.

Do we do this because we think that we’re entitled to a good time?
Do we do this because we think that we’re going to be able to negotiate a better deal?
Do we do this because we think that we’re going to get a better result on a different day?

Anger–just like its kissing cousin revenge–poisons the heart, both physically and emotionally.

But, we can’t seem to get out of our own way can we?

We are so wrapped up in our own stimulus responses that we can’t see a way out, and by the time that we are ready to be done–and we are emotionally exhausted–it’s too late.

-Peace Be With You All-

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

[Advice] Presenting to the People Who Matter

There are people who matter and people who don’t.

The tough thing is telling the difference between the two.

The line between the successful consultant or coach and the “also ran” is the one who strikes a balance between knowing who are the smartest people in the room…and who are just hanging out waiting to applaud.

-Peace Be With You All-

Getting Out of Our Own Way

Getting out of our own way—and leaving other people well enough alone—used to be easy, right?

In the past, if we wanted to resolve conflicts, the world was much simpler.

Before the prevalence of psychology, biology, pharmacology, therapy, counseling, and the “-isms” of feminism, masculinism, cultural relativism and social justice.

The world was much simpler in the golden age of whatever time before the time we are talking about now.

Right?

Except…except…

The world of the past was actually just as complicated as the world of the present. Particularly to the people living in that world at that time.

Here’s the truth: It’s not the whiz bang technology that makes life seem fast and complicated. It’s not even the toes that we have to now tip-toe around, that it seems our grandfathers and grandmothers didn’t have to step around, that makes everything so “complicated.” In reality, life was always this complicated, but people tend to mistakenly believe that history began the moment that they were born—and that everything will end the moment that they do.

No. It has always been this complicated to get along with other people in the world.

The only difference is that we have so many more outlets to voyeuristically view the difficulty, the dysfunction and the spectacle of people who persist in getting in their own way.

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

The Brain at Work

The brain is a fascinating organ.

It weighs around 3 pounds and it is in charge of everything.

The mind—the abstract part of us that conceptualizes our relationships between ourselves and the world—has just as much (if not even more) control that the actual physical operation of the brain.

The mind spends most of its time making abstract sense of a world that seems–on the surface anyway–to be irrational, disjointed and arbitrary. This is a 24/7/365 job.

And then, with all of that, we pack ourselves into vehicles, travel to artificially lighted spaces, hang out with people we did not choose and were not born with, and then we wonder why the whole thing just doesn’t work after about 200 years, give or take a few decades.

Our brains betray us.

Our minds flay us.

Our bodies decay on us.

And all we have to show for it is a few little notes with dead national leaders, trees or other objects on them.

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

The Top 3 Hard Things

The hard things are the very things that appear easy.

Active listening seems easy. It’s easy to be engaged, totally focused on the content of a conversation or an interaction. It’s easy to pay close attention to what another person is saying, or doing, in the moment.
Active engagement is the easiest thing in the world. It’s easy to be engaged with a situation, a conversation, or a person whom we love and care about.
Active participation with your life, with another person’s life or with a critical situation is the easiest thing in the world.

But, it turns out, in a world of fractured attention spans, media distractions and fancy technical tools, attention, engagement and activity come at an embarrassingly high premium.

And we all make private choices (reflected publicly in our social media posting choices) about what events, people and places we give the most precious resource that we have–our attention–and then, when the world “explodes” the first question we ask is “Why didn’t I know about this?”

Well, we could have paid attention and could have known, if we had really wanted to…right….?

-Peace Be With You All-