[Advice] Your Organization is not What it Seems

The main conflict situations in many organizations revolve around multiple, differing narratives about the value of work, the importance of compensation, the legitimacy of management and the possibility of leadership. But, outside of the organizations, many of the root causes of these conflicts used to never be seen by external candidates.

Many things get mixed in that brew of narratives, which leads to many organizations evolving to the point of the highest level of competency for individual performers, and then evolving no higher. But the strange thing is that, even in organizations where the narrative is broken, there is still hiring going on of external candidates for internal positions. This is because, the narrative that an external candidate tells themselves about the advertised role for which they are applying, doesn’t always match up with the internal organizational reality. But it takes a while for that mismatch to be discovered.

And this space—the space between getting hired and finding the mismatch—could take months, years or even decades to cross. Meanwhile, the organization benefits from the employees’ labor, time, talent and expertise, in exchange for a paycheck and providing a brief sense of security.

However, with more access to more information by more people about what is actually going on inside of an organization –it’s internal politics, it’s lack of leadership opportunities, it’s conflicting messages and methods of accomplishing goals and tasks—the chances of a candidate staying, or even initially applying for a position, grow narrower and narrower.

And this is the bind that many organizations find themselves in today. Even with economic uncertainty, political strife, cultural changes, and everything else, many individuals are finally waking up to the idea that they have options, they have choices, and they don’t have to settle for what’s available. Organizations have to realize that the quarterly numbers to the shareholders and great media coverage won’t continue to translate to hiring new productive employees and lowered internal conflict.

Particularly if the numbers continue to mismatch to lived reality, leaking out through media channels, in-person conversations, and passed on observations.

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] How to Deal with Less

When organizations want to justify budget cuts, workforce reductions, or a freeze on hiring, they often use the shopworn sentence “Well, we’re going to have to do more with less.”

At which point, in any organization, be it a nonprofit, a corporation, a small business, or even a church, the remaining employees, volunteers or members may feel as though they have one of two choices:

Leave

Stay and do more with less.

The fear and desperation that builds in these situations, serves to highlight, exacerbate or create, conflict scenarios. This is the exact opposite of what happens when an organization is doing “more with more” and everything is papered over “because everybody is getting ‘rich’,” or at the least, doing well.

Personal and professional reactions replace responses and when there is an environment of “doing more with less,” the set-up is perfect for conflicts, stress and disruption.

Compare this to something—a project, an idea, an organization—that is starting out. Much of the time at the beginning, the mantra “doing more with less” is really “doing more, creatively with what we have.” This is a much easier sell to employees, volunteers and members in the start-up stage than it is at any point in the life cycle of an organization, because starting is sexy and exciting.

But going through the middle with no more than what you started with–or less than that–can be disheartening, disempowering and disenchanting.

What’s the solution?

Abandon the “doing more with less” management mantra. Instead, switch to the truth. Whatever that may be about people, money, or other resources. This allows for creativity in the face of reality, rather than fear based responses.
Remember that fear, withdrawal and “hunkering down to weather it out” doesn’t engender confidence, creativity or faith in the organization, the mission, the values or the goals. Instead, erosion from the outside and corrosion from the inside will begin to destroy the organizational fabric.
Empower the people that care. These are not typically shareholders, external stakeholders or other individuals watching from the sidelines in the Coliseum, clapping, booing or calling for blood. The people who care are the people who have been in an organization since the beginning. They deserve to have their faith and hard work rewarded.

No one enjoys the fear, anger, frustration and resentment that can develop when having to do “more with less,” whether in a family, or a corporation.

But how we respond to the bad news of events that are out of our control, contributes more to the overall long-term viability of an organization, than doing the same thing that’s always been done, by everybody else.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] The Buck Never Got Here in the First Place

At work, gossip corrodes and erodes relationships, but we can’t stop doing it. And now, unlike times previous to social media connecting, gossip no longer merely travels in whispers around the water cooler. Now it travels at the speed of thumbs.

Tall tales at work come about when someone—usually an employee or a group of employees—accomplishes a task (or series of tasks) no one else in the organization thought could be accomplished.

Tall tales become myths at work, which are then printed as legend in the reward and recognition pamphlets and brochures at year-end events.

Internal conflicts arise and spread in the workplace, because under every conflict—and above every conflict—lie gossip (which spreads the story of the conflict far and wide through the organization) and the tall tale (which serve to spread the conflict terms and outcomes and begin the formation of an organizational cultural myth).

People in the organization outside the conflict define the issue by what they see (the presenting issue) and then by what they hear (the gossip). Then, they proceed to move the tall tale forward, inexorably, toward organizational myth.

Is there a better way?

People in organizations sometimes require dissonace, disruption and conflict to create change, expose injustices, encourage positive behavior, or to innovate for the future. But, while organizational leaders talk all the time about how “gossip isn’t tolerated here” or “the buck stops here,” the cultural conflict legends of many organizations do not support the truth and veracity of such statements.

Instead, employees, supervisors, managers and even C-Suite executives go along with the culture of gossip and tall tales, and then wonder silently why a corrosive conflict culture remains endemic; serving as the never-ending white noise beneath the bottom line considerations of the organizations.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Symbols Matter

Mattering and meaning are more important to the accomplishment of work tasks—and the avoidance of work conflicts— now than ever before.

But not if you talk to managers, supervisors, executives and others.

The people who are bosses still believe the Industrial Revolution idea that the work is the only thing that matters, that shows dedication, service and loyalty to the cause, the company and the future.

For employees though, symbols in the workplace have been cheapened because of the deeply held beliefs that bosses sometimes have, exemplified by human resource policies, time away, manifestos, and quotes on the wall. When asked, many employees (particularly those who have been in an organization more than six months) report that they “don’t even pay attention to that stuff anymore.”

This is because the symbolism behind the policies and procedures no longer matters to an employee, when the lived out, organizational substance doesn’t match.

In the world before Google based transparency, where rumors, tall tales and other misinformation could spread about an employer, the work was the substance and the symbols didn’t matter to anybody.

However, institutional lethargy and fear of change has caused many organizations to cling to the past, even as the waves around them swirl, demonstrating that symbols bring mattering to the workplace. And even more than that, symbols backed up by substance, history, and truthful stories told truthfully, are the only things that can give employee work meaning.

Otherwise, thrashing about work-life balance versus integration, time away versus time at work when away, and all of the other human resource based arguments that have arisen over the last forty years, don’t really matter much in the larger scheme of reducing workplace stress and conflict.

-Peace 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] Innovation and Change

The problem stopping most workplace innovation and change strategies, is that too many people–founders, funders, entrepreneurs, owners, and starters–have thought too little about how they personally and professionally respond and react to a culture built on change and innovation.

We’ve addressed this before:

You get up and go to work every morning and work with people whom you have developed third level relationships. You are tasked with accomplishing goals that may have little to no meaning for you. And in exchange, you are compensated with pieces of paper with the pictures of deceased leaders on them.

Then, changes happen (or innovation arrives), both internal and external and you are required to manage the change, manage the disruption you feel about the change and manage the responses and reactions of the other people who are impacted by the change.

In exchange for expending the emotional labor required to do this successfully, sometimes you are recognized and rewarded in ways that matter to you. Sometimes you aren’t. Too many organizations are still led by managers, teams and supervisors at the middle management level who think “Well, you got a paycheck this week. So that’s good enough.” Even worse, many of those same organizations were founded, funded and continued by people with the same Industrial Revolution, Henry Ford mindset.

Some of this is mindset is changing, no doubt.

With the work that human resource researchers, behavioral psychologists and organizational experts are doing throughout the world, the workplace is gradually shifting. As we noted in a workshop that we facilitated the other day, we are all collectively exiting the hangover remaining from the Industrial Revolution.

Innovation for people and organizations, true innovation, will require founders, funders, entrepreneurs, owners, and starters, to turn the corner on two corrosive mindsets that remain, leading to all kinds of conflicts, both internal and external:

We have to stop thinking of innovation as an imposition.

People, whether employees, supervisors, managers or executives, are not prone to behaving in change-oriented ways. Because of our biology, reinforced through work, social and personal cultures, we are inclined to favor the least amount of resistance (or friction) possible. This response, of course comes from the flight and fight parts of our brains. We rationalize these responses in many different ways, but for the most part, people tend to view innovation they did not initiate as an imposition, rather than as an improvement.

We have to stop making change a “value container” for our personal issues.

People make judgements and rationalize their responses to changes in many different ways, but the biggest way is that people determine that change is really a verdict on past decisions. Specifically, an indictment. This pre-conceived judgement comes from the idea that “what came before must have been bad.” This type of thinking paralyzes people in endless meaningless arguments about the validity of past decisions, closes people off to determining how the material fact of change can be integrated into the present circumstances, and blinds people with fear about what other changes the future may hold.

Innovation and change are merely stories, told by people desiring a new narrative.

Innovation and change always comes with conflict and conflict is an incubator of change.

Without founders, funders, entrepreneurs, owners, and starters doing the hard work of laying the groundwork of wellbeing, strengths based leadership, emotional intelligence, and conflict engagement skills training in their cultures from the beginning, organizations will continue to find it difficult to innovate.

Even as the waves of external changes, buffet them back and forth across the blue ocean of business.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] The Psychology of WellBeing

Conflict in the workplace doesn’t have to reduce overall career wellbeing.

But we think that it does for three reasons:

We think that work (and by extension careers) should be utilitarian pursuits, focused on drudgery, repetition and boredom. Which is an attitude remaining in the Western Culture from our agriculture and industrial past.
We don’t really believe that work (and by extensions careers) can change. We have thoroughly accepted the idea (pushed by industrialists, politicians, and the media) that “that’s just the way that it is.” And we are so trammeled in our cages of fear of being fired, that we will do anything not to make changes that will affect our wellbeing positively.
We frame material promotions and financial advancements, in the workplace as metrics of approval and signs that we are accomplishing good work. Partly this is because of the way that we think work should be. It is also partly because the value of work relationships cannot yet be monetized.

So, we believe these three things about work at varying levels in varying positions in the organizational hierarchies we find ourselves, and then we are surprised, disappointed and frustrated when difficulties, confrontations and conflicts arise.

What’s the way out?

We have to let go and stop thinking of ourselves as hostages to the workplace.

We have to do the dance with fear, increasing the tension between difficulty, confrontation and conflict, in order to accomplish material changes that will bring about the career wellbeing we crave—and that will change the cultures of the organizations we currently inhabit.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Why We Start But Don’t Finish

There’s no penalty for starting in our overall work culture.

If you start an initiative, a process or even start a project at work, there’s no conflict.

Sure, someone might come along (an employee, a colleague, a co-worker, a boss, a supervisor, a manager) and may make your life “difficult” by muddying up the process of starting. But even with such actions, it may feel like there’s a penalty, but there really isn’t.

Seth Godin in The Dip points this out. This is partially because there are parades and applause for starting throughout our overall culture: starting school, starting a volunteer project, starting a business.

But the cutural opportunity for penalty rises as the expectations of others (and yourself) rise (or fall) in relation to the success (or failure) of the process, initiation or project as it moves forward.

Penalties are reinforced for failure at work and then quitting is quietly proposed, with no fanfare or applause.

Think about the overall cultural language and phrases around quitting: “No one likes a quitter.” Or, “quitters never win.” Or, a more insidious one we have heard in some circles in the past “AA is for quitters.”

There’s a public penalty for quitting and it comes from a toxic combination of other people’s expectations, jealousies and assumptions, our own desires and assumptions about how the project, process or initiative should work, and the ways in which reality rarely dovetails with both of these.

And then, we are shamed for failing and subtly, socially encouraged, to never try again, to shut up our voices and to go along with whatever “the crowd” decides is good.

The way out of this is to begin publicly applauding quitting, quietly acknowledging starting (but not lauding it, or praising it) and having the courage to ignore the crowd, who are often blind, prejudiced, or biased.

-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/

[Opinion] On Emotional Labor

Just the other day at a workshop, after filling out a communication assessment, we heard this:

“I’m an engineer. This is all great stuff, but really hard to quantify.”

And later in the workshop, after we made another point, we responded by saying:

“You can quantify the effects of emotional mismanagement on the bottom line, in terms of lost productivity, health issues, declining quality of production and overall employee disengagement.”

The engineer nodded his head.

Emotional labor is the final frontier. It’s a space that care workers, mothers, therapists and social workers have inhabited for years. And, in an economy where manually (or technically) laboring was once seen as scarce, emotional labor didn’t matter much.

And yet…

40 hours a week, the average person goes to another location, away from their home, and interacts with people that they did not choose
26% of people report that they are disengaged at work and with work, and 13% of those people are actively disengaged at work
44% of companies are outsourcing jobs to other countries, across all sectors, with the vast majority of employers reporting that they are doing so “to control costs.”

What kind of labor matters?

Well, the kind that can’t be outsourced:

The kind that addresses people’s emotional inner lives, where we spend 99% of our time.
The kind that addresses issues of self-awareness, leadership, emotional intelligence, focus, discipline and many other emotional tasks.
The kind that builds resiliency encourages accountability and that develops people to be more than just cogs in the machine.
The kind that develops and encourages interpersonal communication, conflict engagement, and responsibility.

The challenge in this paradigm shift (for every organization), comes when 20% of the people in an organization are doing 80% of the emotional labor.

But, emotional labor, moving forward in a world where more and more will be accomplished by fewer and fewer people , is the only kind of labor that matters.

-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/

HIT Piece 03.03.2015

I am ready.

It’s time to start building something bigger than myself.

The first e-book is coming along, as is the first traditional book, the first leadership program and the first systems design program for organizations.

The first season of the podcast is here, the second season is coming along and the first presentation to a room of over 100 people is coming in the summer.

The first webinar project is coming, the first multiparty project is coming.

And yet…

I have been insecure and lethargic since October. I have been struggling to identify if any of this is working. I don’t know if I am running to avoid failure…or running to embrace it.

What do you think?

-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/

[Advice] A Positive No

The moment that you are ready to leave the office, complete a project, take a phone call, or meet a deadline, another person walks up.

This person has other priorities, but finding out what those are is not the thing that you are interested in, but that person makes sure to tell you all about their priorities.

The thing about time management is that managing other people is the unsung, unconsidered hardest thing to do.

Other people have their own priorities, and we are too embarrassed, too distracted, or too disinterested to discover what they are.

This is when the positive no, or the sandwich no, becomes the best way to address the energy vampires (or time sucks) that other people can be sometimes.

It goes something like this:

“Thank you for coming to me with [insert whatever the topic is here]. No, I don’t have time to talk about this right now. But, please come back [name a definitive later time here] and I will talk with you then.”

Then, put that time vampire on the calendar, turn around, and walk away firmly. This last part is important, because many people can’t close the conversation.

When using a positive no—or a sandwich no—remember to always be closing.

-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/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com