[Advice] Culture Matters

Culture matters.

At the core of most conflicts around immigration, emigration, and refugee movement, are issues stemming from cultural differences between peoples.

We make assumptions due to attributions about other people’s culture. And we do the same about our own.

Social proofing, social sanctioning, and social cueing dictate that we work doggedly to reduce the level of dissonance in our individual lives, but also at the societal level.

And, of course, we believe that if someone else were just doing something about the situation, rather than us, it would be all better.

The thing is though, people from other cultures—immigrant and refugees included—believe the exact same things that people who are “native” to the countries they desire to go to believe in.

There are a few ways out of these conflicts, but none of them are short-term, none of them are easy, and none of them are pleasant:

Listen honestly to what people are actually saying who come from another cultural mindset. This is the hardest one which is why it’s listed first. Listening at mass comes through social and other forms of media, but it also comes through laws, regulations, policies, and procedures. When we listen honestly, we begin to hear and recognize context and subtext.

Learn to say “no” firmly, respectfully, and be prepared to defend the “no” with clarity, courage, and candor. The fact of the matter is, some refugees from some cultures and some immigrants from some cultures are no more a “fit” in one country than they are in another. But when a “no” is given that sounds like rhetoric, prejudice, or ignorance, it is unconvincing and seen as being based in prejudicial opinion. And the fever pitch to enter the country whose leaders have said “no” without sufficient explanation of why, rises inexorably.

Implement solutions that strike at the core of why culture matters: ideas, perspectives, beliefs, and values. If a nation (any nation) is not led by politicians whose values and beliefs match the people that they represent, then there is going to be a lack of desire to implement core solutions to cultural conflicts. This is a tough reality to face, which is why elections have consequences. If culture matters (and it does in considerations of refugee and immigrant populations) then the culture of the politicians and the nations that they lead should match up, both in word, and deed.

Cultural beliefs, values, and ideas, are part of the framing of many conflicts around the world. When there is a mismatch between cultural frames, there will be conflicts. It’s nice to consider building bridges across cultures, but the reality is much more complicated and fraught with danger.

[Strategy] The Three C’s

Clarity is the quality of being clear and understandable.

Candor is the quality of being open and honest in expression. Not transparent, not vulnerable, but truthful.

Courage is the quality of doing something that is frightening.

The character Mattie Ross in the Charles Portis book True Grit, published in 1968, is the rare character in fiction who is unvarnished in her candor, uncompromising in her clarity, and unwavering in her courage.

In the way of fictional female characters before her, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice to L. Frank Baum’s Dorothy and beyond, Mattie’s character stands out because without her making a decision and then communicating that decision, nothing much occurs.

With the three c’s, she is able to move the action of the plot forward, demand acknowledgement from other characters in the narrative, and is able to get engagement—but not resolution—to the issues which are driving her.

With the three c’s, Mattie is able to look at her world, her choices, and her circumstances without nostalgia—but not without regret.

With the three c’s, Mattie becomes the character with grit—that quality of resilience that often gets overlooked in the pursuit of happiness.

Fiction often reflects truths of life in ways that make us uncomfortable. This is because fiction shows, through the representation of “pretend,” that the traits we look for so hard in others, must be curated and developed in ourselves first.

HIT Piece 8.23.2016

Courage, awareness of trends, and thinking outside of your own box, work well when pushing innovation and getting new ideas at the individual level, but are tough to get to scale past just a few people.

Group think, social proofing, ego driven statements, fear based responses, body language cueing and other forms of involuntary people management begin to kick in when a groups gets to be larger than four members.

Which is why understanding your own conflict style, your own communication approach, and being clear on your own goals (not at the expense of understanding and listening to others’ goals though) becomes the bedrock of innovative action.

Don’t believe me?

Try this: The next time you’re in a meeting with the “smartest” people in your department, your division, your company, or your organization, say nothing (or little) and instead watch how they respond to each other.

How they subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) manage each other.

And if the group is larger than four people, watch even closer.

Watch how “good” ideas become mired in indecision, vagueness, and lack of forward motion.

And then, wonder to yourself: “How can I make this situation better the next time?”

[Advice] There Are No Shortcuts…

The quality, or trait, of getting up and doing what needs to be done, particularly when you don’t want to do it, is sometimes called “will” or “grit” or “courage.”

But these are fancy labels for something a lot deeper that people can’t really, collectively describe.

And anybody who wants to make a dent in the universe, no matter how big or small, must possess this trait in great quantities if they are to make the dent they want to make.

Unfortunately, the audience on the outside of the dent making process, overrate the effect of the trait (the “dent”), and underrate the ability to engage with the getting toward the goal (the “will” or “grit” or “courage”).

Which is why there is so much coveting of the outcomes of exercising the “will” or “grit” or “courage.”

Which results in jealousy and envy on the part of members of the audience.

Which winds up with members of the audience expending valuable energy engaging with manipulation and deceit, rather than hard work, diligence, and patience.

There are no shortcuts to making a dent in the universe, no matter how much we might like there to be.

[Strategy] 1…2…3…What Are You Hiring For?

Entrepreneurs (some of them) remember what business owners of all types have forgotten, at scale:

You get the conflict culture you hire for.

Think about it.

If you hire people that are looking for the organization to guide them to another level in their careers, past self-doubts, bumps in the road, dips in projects, and changes in the economy, you will create a resilient employee culture.

If you hire people that are looking for reassurances, permission, the answer to “Is this going to be in the test?,” and people who want to be paid extra to give extra, don’t be surprised when your conflict culture is based in avoidance, delaying, surrender, and a lack of responsibility and hiding.

If you hire people that are empathetic, focused on others and their experiences (customers, clients, etc.), who can make courageous decisions and take action in the face of a lack of standard operating procedures, but still justify those decisions in the context of advancing organizational goals, values, and growing the brand promise, then you have created an organizational culture that people (customers, clients, etc.) will cry out for.

The trouble is that with 20th century mass production came mass hiring. With mass hiring the organizational idea grew that your organization wasn’t doing well, unless it hired everybody in a given pool based on factors that had little to do with your organizational culture, e.g. they lived close, they had the “right” credentials, they answered the questions in the interview in the “right” way.

Well, the era of being able to accomplish goals and do work at scale that matters with just anybody off the street, has passed; and, what has replaced it is ever smaller groups of people, doing more and more work that matters, using emotional intelligence, caring, resilience, and empathy to manage the inevitable conflicts that come with change.

If you want your organizational conflict culture to look—and people in it to have the courage to act—in a transformational manner, and be successful in an ambiguous business future, then hire for it.

Today.

But don’t complain that you can’t get where all the other organizations are getting, with customer and client awareness, attention, trust, and revenues, when you don’t hire for those outcomes.

And don’t complain when your “best” people leave the conflict culture that you hired for, for a more robust culture across the street.

 

[Opinion] Integrating the Path to Peace in Your Life

There is knowing the path toward peace, and there is having the courage to follow the path.

Many people know what they ought to do (or should do) but refuse to do it, mostly due to the influence of fears.

Many people know what they ought to do (or should do) and accept that doing it will be a struggle, full of moments designed to grow a person spiritually, emotionally, and psychically.

Both of these stories (and that’s what they really are) are designed to be true but not decisive. They are designed to be stories that push others towards the path of peace, while also courageously allowing ourselves a pass from the courage to make difficult decisions. They are designed to be stories that exemplify the dictum that “the high grass gets cut down” without the commensurate application of what a principled decision would look like in reality.

The path to peace must be forged with courage, and individual decisions, rather than with desires, hand wringing, pomp, or outrageous circumstance. The path to peace must be integrated within an overall vision of ourselves and what our futures hold along the path. Otherwise, the only principle worthy of discussion will be had along the path through the process of conflict.

-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] Who ‘Unmakes’ Your World?

The hinge swings both ways.

Human beings made the system of conflict you are in; they can unmake it.

The knife cuts both ways.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

When you’re in a conflict, it may seem as though there is no way out of it. When you’re in conflict, it may seem that the hinge only swings one way, that the knife only cuts you, and that there is no way out.

Well, actually there is. But it requires you to do some courageous work early (when everyone is excited), in the middle (when everyone quits) and at the end (when victory appears in sight).

Hinges, knives, pennies, pounds, and the will to undo, unsew, unravel, unmake, and unwind, the mistakes we have already made, the damage we have already done, and the past that seems to never stop shadowing our futures.

-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/

HIT Piece 12.15.2015

Two topic areas that have been popping up a lot for me lately in business conversations:

  • “People” lack follow-up
  • “People” lack initiative.

The first lament goes something like this: “I (the business person in question) reached out to “so and so” (another business person) and they didn’t get back to me. And I called them and called them and they didn’t show up or return my phone calls or emails.”

This first has happened to me more times than I can count with potential clients, clients I’ve actually had meetings with, and with clients I’m attempting to do a deal with.

The second lament goes something like this: “ ‘People’ [and then imagine someone sucking air through their teeth, squinting their eyes and sighing all at the same time] just don’t have the initiative or drive around here to do what you’re asking them to do. What you’re proposing won’t work…”

The second issue of initiative I chalk up to the fact that very few people have a motor driving them into business, and the difference between people who are “making it” and people who “aren’t” is the presence (or absence) of said motor.

These two laments I almost never hear from people in geographic areas that are cities, or even suburbs of cities. But in rural areas, small towns, or even villages consolidated across a major highway, you will sit down with the few people in town who are able to follow-up and have initiative and I will hear these two laments.

The future is coming and it’s not going to arrive everywhere all at the same time. The future is going to be driven by the people who have initiative first, and then second by the people who have the desire and the courage to follow-up. Without reassurance, without lack of faith, without a competitive desire to “get what’s theirs” first.

The income gap between the wealthy and everyone else is definitely something to think about overcoming; but the initiative and follow-up gap is something no one (outside of private conversations) is even thinking about shifting at mass.

-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] Clarity, Candor and Courage in Communication

Establishing clarity and getting candor are often confused with the use of profanity and “brutal” honesty in communication relationships too often filled with more noise than substance.

There has long been a desire from audiences—whether in a family, or on the other end of an email communication—for the clear sending of a meaningful message.

Consumers of messages want clarity in order to understand what the sender is asking and candor in order to determine the appropriate level of transparency and authenticity. Because there is so little direct communication in all manner of relationships, elements and techniques of persuasion from the sender are interpreted by the receiver as lying, obfuscation and methods of deception.

Transparency and authenticity cannot be replaced by the appearance of courage, which appears when content creators use profanity in the content they produce.

Accountability and responsibility are sometimes abandoned with this approach; and still, in many communications, candor can be preserved with courage, while also getting to truth.

Which is what every communication is really about; whether it’s an advertising message from a brand or the message a person receives from their ex-partner across a negotiation table.

-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/

[Podcast] If We Close Our Eyes… – The Earbud_U Minute

How Americans view the events of September 11th, how a turkey views the events of Thanksgiving Day, and how an HR manager views a workplace harassment claim all have three things in common:

Seeing Red

 

The events themselves are considered unpredictable,

The events themselves are considered out of the “normal” social boundaries,

The events themselves are typically responded to with a mixture of shock, surprise and dismay.

The people (or animals) impacted negatively by each of these events, if given a choice, would rather go back in time and avoid the individual circumstances that lead to the event occurring. Unfortunately, the events appear in hindsight to be both inevitable and linear. Ironically, on the day before the penultimate event occured (in a film, it would be called the climax) the persepctive of the impacted parties was that “everything seemed alright.”

Then, the conflict starts.

The line from difficulty to confrontation to conflict is intersected by an line from fragility to robustness to antifragility. And human beings have arranged systems and set up paradigms that allow us to believe that conflict is an aberration, peace is an inevitability and that nothing really changes at all.

Conflicts within, and shocks to, systems (from family all the way up the scale to nation-states) happen when somebody else has a different idea of how things should work—and acts on it. Keep in mind that for the turkey on Thanksgiving, what happens to it before the moment of the decapitation and defeathering, is just another day in turkey paradise.

Three suggestions for building a system (either at work, in school or in the family) that can withstand the inevitable shocks of predictable people insisting on behaving unpredictably:

  • Tell yourself a more compelling, less predictable story—Many internal stories that we tell ourselves about the circumstances we are in, tend to focus too much on the benefit to us (“WIIFM” thinking) and focus less on the potential for circumstances to change. But the most compelling stories aren’t about us at all, but about change—and how we might respond to it.
  • Eliminate hindsight bias in order to engage in more critical analysis of why a system failed—This is a fancy way of admitting that you were wrong and all of the events that led up to an unpredictable, “Black Swan” type event were indeed just that: unpredictable in themselves. Eliminating hindsight bias enables us to forget the past, focus on the future, and guide others towards potential outcomes that they might not like.
  • Have the courage to acknowledge that the systems we’ve built are not that robust—This last one is the toughest, because it can involve guilt, recrimination and can be a blame focused realization. However, when an unanticipated conflict occurs, the first responses that many human created systems have, is to collapse immediately. However, in nature, building in safeguards and engaging in active, guilt free “what if” adaptations, allows systems to flourish. So, start with the system that matters most (for many people that will be family) and take a hard look at the system and ask the question: “Could our family survive a job loss, a major hospitalization, or another “that only happens to other people and won’t ever happen to us” type event in the future?”

Antifragility is the end goal in all of our systems, from corporations to families. Preparing to survive conflicts and shocks to the system is the only way forward to adapt to inevitabilities we cannot predict. It’s certainly a better option than closing our eyes and pretending that nothing can change at all.

-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/