[Strategy] Different Mediums

The medium is not the message.

And if the most important thing is sending a message, what do you do when no one is using the same medium that you are, in order to hear the message, you want to send in the first place?

This is the trouble that leads to polarization in modern communication scenarios, as well as increases rates of conflicts, and escalations in the course of conflicts. It’s not about everybody speaking the same language (which we often think is the solution, either through training or codifying language in general); it’s about everybody communicating using different mediums.

And when my medium of choice for delivering (or receiving) a message of choice, is not your medium of choice for receiving (or delivering) a message you think that I need to hear, then conflicts, confusion, and escalation are bound to increase, not decrease.

-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] A New Mental Model of Trust

The mental model for trust is broken in workplaces.

The old model looked like this: I (an employee) work for you (the employer) loyally for a period of time (X) and, with enough reciprocation, I stay with you for the remainder of my career.

That mental model is one that only works under the specific economic conditions of the 1940’s through the 1970’s in America. However, since there is one thing that America does really well (the marketing of America to every other country in the world) as the mental model rubs up against changing economic reality, there is friction everywhere, between those people who want that model, and those people who are trying to create a new model. Employees at organizations of all kinds are in the midst of a great cultural, economic, philosophical, and social destruction of that old mental model and at the same moment are carving out a new mental model.

This new model (right now) looks like this: I (an employee) work for you (the employer) but not so loyally, and I take my accumulated intellectual capital from your workplace to another workplace, whenever it suits me, because you may not be around in five years.

There’s a lot of talk from employees, organizations, management thought leaders, and others about the virtues of disruption, innovation, and change in Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and the media centers of Los Angeles and New York City. But if you go to places outside of Madison, Wisconsin, or outside of Peoria, Illinois, or travel four hours north of New York City and talk to employees of organizations still struggling to maintain a semblance of the old model, the virtues of disruption, innovation, and change that get talked about breathlessly in those other places, get addressed in tones of defeatism, regret, and anger.

This tone and its lived reality is also a mental model. And the employees who exist inside the new mental model may out innovate, out disrupt, and out change the employees longing for a return to the old mental model; but, there must be ways to develop every potential employee together, without brutal economic and social Darwinism being the answer.

Here are the three ways to shift organizational mental models:

Access to the means of production is the linchpin: As more and more resources, time, and talent gravitates towards developing digital products, services, and processes there are questions about whether “everyone” can be a computer scientist. This is a red herring argument. Access to the means of production means high speed Internet in a neighborhood, whether you’re 50 miles outside of Overland, Kansas, or in the heart of downtown Miami. Such access shifts the mental model of ‘The-Internet-as-an-Entertainment-Vehicle’ to ‘The Internet- as-a- Economic-Development-Vehicle.’

Valuing and incentivizing emotional labor:I talk about this repeatedly, but it bears writing yet again: The mental model of what constitutes work in the workplace has to shift towards valuing and incentivizing employees who can collaborate, get along, and manage conflict in a competent and healthy fashion in a dynamic, globally competitive environment. This is the core of laboring with mind and emotions, versus laboring with hands and muscles. Both can be rewarded, but the incentives toward the labor which can be repeated until a person is on death’s door must be made infinitely more robust in workplaces.

Hiring for mental models rather than personality traits: As algorithms and computers have entered more and more into the hiring matrix of organizations, more and more creative, innovative, and change oriented people with growth-mindsets are abandoning all hope of being hired in some organizations, and are migrating to large cities where their value can be rewarded. Abandoning all of the hiring tools is not the point. The point is, how people perceive their agency in the world, based on what they’ve accomplished in the past (stuff that’s not listed on the resume and doesn’t get picked up by the algorithm), will matter more and more for discovering and hiring employees of value.

If organizations can shift their own mental models around these three areas, then they will survive and thrive as the century continues to unwind, with employees all over the world, who will be loyal, trustworthy, innovative, and change oriented. This new mental model may share some aspects with the old model, but it will survive future economic, social, technological, and cultural shocks which we can’t see coming.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What Collaboration Would Look Like in Your Organization

In the workplace, employees, managers, and supervisor all say they desire more collaboration overall, but in particular when conflicts arise. The desire for greater collaboration is often conflated with more teamwork, or strong team bonding, or building better teams at work, but collaboration is not any of these things. And, much of this stated desire is based in generating more productivity per person in order to generate larger bottom line profits.

The other drawback to collaboration is that the rewards for engaging in it (in the majority of organizations) are not outsized, but the losses in the event of failure are. Collaboration is still viewed by many organizations as The Alamo; that is, the place to make an organizational “last stand” when the resources run out.

However, when what matters is internal (employee) and external (customer) organizational trust, workplaces would be well advised to consider collaboration as a key metric of moving an organization forward and past conflicts and disagreements. This metric becomes even more of the platinum standard when an organization is in an industry space of rapid change and uncertain outcomes. Both of these factors create stressors on internal and external constituents and can lead to conflicts—places where collaboration actually is a useful tool.

We have an idea of what the collaboration mode should look like in actual practice, but as a behavioral choice in conflict, here are some high points:

The novice collaboration mode is marked by initial mistrust of other parties in the conflict (based on past relationships, current secondary conflict issues, the nature and content of the conflict at hand, etc.); but, is also based in the strong desire to work with the other party to get to resolution for the self, rather than the organization.
The advanced beginner collaboration mode is marked by growing trust and belief in the efficacy of individual personal emotional strengths in addressing the conflict scenario. This mode is also marked by growing resiliency and confidence in the resolution process itself (negotiation, mediation, arbitration, etc.).
The competent collaboration mode is marked by a desire to grow other parties in the conflict to the level of collaboration that this mode has already achieved. This mode of competency is also marked by frustration when parties refuse (or are incapable) of growing out of their own modes and toward collaboration.
The proficient performer collaboration mode is marked by a determination to allow other parties in conflict the autonomy to choose whatever mode they would like to choose to get to resolution (e.g. assertiveness, avoidance, accommodation, competing/controlling, etc.) but to not get “caught up” in those modes. Other party self-determination (and preserving that self-determination) becomes key at the proficiency stage.
The expert collaboration mode is marked by open communication, authenticity, honesty, as well as positivity and patience. This mode allows for other parties in the conflict to determine their own path through the conflict, but also advocates for collaboration as the ultimate mode of addressing issues.

In the workplace, collaboration is rarely seen, and is mostly associated with individuals who have attained emeritus status in an organization. Freed from the daily competition based in an organizational cultural perception of resource lack, those individuals become organizational ambassadors and diplomates in this mode.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What Competing-Controlling Looks Like in Your Organization

The entire history of humanity shows that responding to a complex conflict environment with the competition/controlling mode generates outsized rewards, and little downside, to the individuals who choose it as a mode of addressing conflict.

Wars, battles, fights, riots, pogroms, demonstrations, marches—all are forms, shades, and methods of competing with other people and groups and “winning” control over resources that may have been scarce in the past, but may be more abundant now.

In workplaces, competency at controlling other people, the space of conflicts, and even the resources that go into conflicts, generates outsized rewards in status, money, and position for individuals. In workplaces, competition is fostered (either through overt messaging or through covert cultural conditioning) as a way to separate “winners” from “losers” or “A” players from “everyone else.” The rewards for engaging in these types of competitions are outsized, as are the losses—of face, reputation, authority, and status.

Many of the other responses to conflict scenarios that people are competent at—including accommodating, passive-aggressiveness, assertiveness, and avoiding—are, at their root, responses to organizational work cultures that value competition and controlling in a conflict scenario over other potential responses. Those other responses are deemed organizationally useful as downsides, for situations where “everyone else” fights over the leftovers from the “A” players’ tables.

We all know what competency at controlling and competing looks like, but here are some behavioral high points:

The novice competitor/controller mode focuses on hiding competitive desires and manipulates behind the scenes. Sometimes this behavior will be confused with passive-aggressiveness, or hostility.
The advanced beginner competitor/controller mode focuses on developing elaborate plans to deceive other parties in conflict, and even to involve other people who have little to nothing to do with the actual conflict itself, but who have access to outsized resources.
The competent competitor/controller mode manipulates parties in conflict at a high level, and can also mask intentions through avoiding direct confrontation, using others to accomplish goals, and spread gossip and rumors without accountability.
The proficient performer competitor/controller mode advances through an organization by engaging in ignoring and minimizing past mistakes when confronted with them and removing people from positions that could report previous poor performance, bad judgment, or choices.
The expert competitor/controller mode attains outsized rewards, (i.e. personal, financial, organizational, etc.) but role models this behavior as a cultural response to conflicts in the organization, thus setting the table for future repeating of the same behavior.

If this all reads like the HBO show Game of Thrones to you (or a description of the political process in many contemporary countries) you would be correct. However over time, many organizations have developed crisis and resource poverty mindset-based cultures, focused around varied degrees of competition/controlling when faced with conflict scenarios, and many more will be focused in that way in the future, as communication and information increases transparency globally.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Burl Ives Was Wrong…

It’s the eve before Christmas in the Western world, and if you adhere to the Christian faith (or you just like getting and giving) then you’re trying to prepare for a holly, jolly…well, you know…

Personally, I’m annoyed by Burl Ives’s voice, but the fact the matter is, that the holiday season has changed for many people in the United States and throughout the West.

Call it the backlash against consumerism, the wreck of the post-Industrial Revolution age in which we all now live or the backwash from the events of 2001 and 2008, but there is the image of the holiday season, pushed and promoted through advertising, marketing and media, and then there is the lived reality.

When the legend becomes reality (or fact) the old admonition used to be to “print the legend.” And while that admonition still holds in too many public spheres, the fact is that much of the Western public, privately has moved on, forging new meaning and new definitions for this time of the year. And the fact that those definitions and meanings don’t show up in a Youtube video, or in a television advertisement, doesn’t make them less valid.

Things have changed in three areas:

Family experiences seem to matter more than gifts: Much is regularly made about how the “definition of family is changing” or has shifted in the last 40 years, but quite honestly, people still travel and communicate with people than they know, like and love over the holiday season now, more than ever before.

Public political proclamations don’t matter much at private holiday get together’s: Yes, Uncle Don came out last year after 15 years of being in the closet and is bringing his husband to dinner. Yes, Niece Sharon is 34 and had a child without a “man” in her life and is bringing the new child to dinner. Yes, Cousin Matt is a political conservative and a business man who just married an African-American woman who is a vegetarian and won’t eat the turkey.

A lot is made of these surface divisions in the media, political writing, and even in marketing, but the fact is, family and friends either get over it, or they fake it like they have until the person (or persons) have left, in order to preserve the peace, aiming at the higher goal of “family togetherness.” This is not wrong, this is not right. This just is. And for all of the family strife that is typically marketed (or displayed) in individuals’ Facebook feeds, the vast majority still gather around a table with people they disagree with.

The gadgets are not anymore the separators than the newspaper and television were 40 years ago: Are people on the screens more often? Yes, because there are more options and more screens than ever before. But while screen time may have increased, the sharing of that screen time with others cannot be accurately measured. The gadgets may separate, but they also draw together, and at the furthest end, are disconnected from when it comes time to engage with meaningful, face-to-face communication.

So, maybe Burl Ives was right, and maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But while our tools have changed and transformed, the internal stuff that makes us people hasn’t shifted dramatically in a few thousand years.

I think someone else pointed this fact out to stunned crowds without the benefit of high technology around 2000 years ago as well.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Disagreements are Conflicts

No matter what language you use to describe them….

“kerfluffle”

“drama”

“disagreement”

“viewing the situation differently”

“a fight”

“a ‘temporary’ setback”

“…a moment”

“there was an ‘incident’”

…they are all conflicts. And all the cutsey, metaphorical language that we use to not describe them as they are, is, in effect, allowing us to hide from the results of them, the process of fixing them, and making the hard choices to address the other party co-creating them with us.

When we seek to use other language that truthful language to describe the conflicts we are having, in our jobs, in our homes, in our churches, we effectively shift into miscommunication, leaving the door open to future…

“kerfluffles”

“dramas”

“disagreements”

“viewings of the situation differently”

“fights”

“‘temporary’ setbacks”

“…moments”

“incidents”

And though effective conflict competence requires naming before reframing, without accurate analysis and naming, reframing becomes another exercise in either futility or furthering the conflict we can’t describe that we’re in.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Conflict Management Style

From the boardroom to the bedroom, assertiveness as a mode of approaching all conflict situations, is valued above all other choices in America.

But, what is lauded in a competitive business landscape, driven by media, and advertised to a distracted public by marketers, does not represent lived reality. Reality is messy, unmeasurable down to the final metric, and unknowable all the way up to the point that we are allowed to enter someone else’s headspace.

And even then, we don’t really know anything. We just can measure outcomes.

And the reality is, many people would rather practice avoidance, accommodation or just compromise in a fight, a disagreement, or a dispute, rather than practice any variation of assertiveness.

But if assertiveness is promoted as the “be all and end all” of all possible conflict approaches; and, collaboration is confused with weakness; accommodation is seen as charitable and kind (but not effective); avoidance is paired with fear of conflict itself; and, compromising is too often framed as losing, what is the average person to do?

Well, the fact is that, many people—from the boardroom to the bedroom—rotate through all four styles depending upon the situation, or context, in which they find themselves and the goals they are pursuing within that context.

And while assertiveness may be fine when negotiating a conflict solution across the table from a manager or supervisor, it may not be as appropriate a style to adopt when negotiating a candy exchange with a five-year-old.

But with the pressures and stresses of life compounding, rather than reducing, and with conflicts over resources growing exponentially over time, the value of being able to make healthy, conscious decisions to switch from one style to another—and to let the others around you know that this is happening—is the ultimate goal.

Because in a world where the technologists are here and building a world where human agency will be reduced to a mere shadow of its former glory, in pursuit of brave, new outcomes, the human touch to approaching conflict wisely is the only result that will 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] Does Your Manager Think Managing Conflict is Important

The most often repeated piece of feedback is “The people who should be here in this training/presentation/speaking engagement are not here.”

What does that mean though, other than as a piece of feedback?

Typically, it means that the people in the hierarchical chain above the people attending the training are seen as part of the problem, rather than as part of the solution, by the people in the room.

It also means that the people in the hierarchical chain above the people attending the training are interested in maintaining the organizational “status quo” and not really moving forward to become part of the solution; by role modeling what the future might be like for the people in the room.

Either way, this piece of feedback is indicative of the appearance of members of management not really believing that conflicts, disputes, disagreements, or even fights in the workplace are all that important to deal with at the root.

This feedback also indicates that the attendees will probably continue to experience frustration in the organization; even as they implement all of their newly attained knowledge of how to engage with conflicts better.

And then, as the frustration mounts and the cognitive dissonance really kicks in, employees will either become more disengaged in the workplace—or leave the workplace altogether; creating a cycle of people who arrive, then get trained, get disillusioned and then leave.

Managers, supervisors, and others up in the hierarchical chain, can thwart all of this, but it requires an investment in finding the time many claim not to have in the short term, to play the long game in building an organization doing work that matters, in the long term.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] #GritFilledLivesMatter

Resiliency in the face of a constant barrage of stressors leads to addictive behavior, poor communication skills, erosion of personal relationships and leads to a reduction in the very resiliency, stressors were designed to develop.

We see evidence of this in communities torn apart by racial conflict, ethnic conflict and religious conflict. When there are too many external stressors 9and even internal stressors), individuals (and groups) cross the line from being “gritty” and resilient to taking up arms, protesting and pushing back.

Sometimes violently.

Which creates a cycle, based not in resiliency (though the other dominant party may resist the protests and pushback through avoidance, aggressiveness, or even passive-aggressive behavioral tactics) but in resistance.

And both sides will claim—either verbally or nonverbally— to be exercising resiliency in the face of unreasonable requests, protests and pushback from “the other.”

“We shall overcome” becomes the stated chant (and unstated belief) of both sides, and the first side to verbalize it, is most likely the side who will endure—or have the resiliency and grit—to make it to the end of the cycles of violence.

The critical question to ask (and answer) thus becomes: Will there ever be a way to encourage the development if grit and resilience in people, families, communities, and even in cities and nation-states, without triggering violent cycles of resistance, retribution and violence?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Creations of Commerce

By now, you already know that “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” are recent marketing creations, designed to get you to buy more, spend more, have more stress, engage in more consumption and to confuse “tradition” with moving money out of your possession and onto the bottom line revenues of brands.

We didn’t get here by accident though.

The human need to persuade, convince and to sell—and idea, a process, a service, a product—is so strongly embedded in human biology, psychology and even our spiritual DNA, that we have welcomed this change, from over 50,000 years of “not enough” to the last 100 years of “too much.”

We want to be sold and persuaded; but, we want to be persuaded and sold on the things that have meaning and mattering. This is why, even before commercial brands and corporations, there were empires, governments, and tribes. And, at a level even deeper than that, there are religions and belief systems that have toppled powerfully persuasive empires.

Which brings us to the reason for the season.

Meaning and mattering doesn’t come from buying one more item, no matter what the commercials tell you. Meaning and mattering doesn’t come from consuming one more meal, though the commercials will tell you this as well (it’s no surprise that gluttony and Thanksgiving have become closer commercial bedfellows in the last 20 years). Meaning and mattering doesn’t come from throwing away abandon and forgetting the old year and old mistakes and making resolutions that won’t be kept, because they’re too hard, too overwhelming, and too meaningless.

Meaning and mattering comes from remembering (and acting on) three core principles this holiday season:

Thanksgiving is a time for being grateful and seeking silence from the noise that doesn’t matter more so than for being gluttonous.
Christmas is a time for seeking redemption, giving the gift of forgiveness and seeking reconciliation with those who have harmed us, more than it is a Saturnalian bacchanal of commercialized shopping, glorious getting and begrudging giving.
New Years is a time for seeking resolution and closing the circle on gratefulness, remembering what we have gained in the previous year and looking forward with excitement to a new set of experiences, rather than a drunken brawl and a hangover riddled future.

Meaning and mattering.

Let’s focus on that this holiday season, rather than on the latest deal from the largest corporation.

-Peace Be With You All-