[Advice] Values and Character

Values and character matter more than educational level when hiring people in an organization.

We can debate why that fact is important, but many organizations suffer from the effects of ethical lapses, poor judgment calls, and eroding communication patterns because they valued education above values and character.

Education in employees.

Education in upper management.

Education in board members.

Organizations very often struggle to define their own ethics and values, and thus struggle to hire people that are—well—ethical.

But there is a way out of this:

Determine what organizational ethics are and stick to them. Make them an integral part of the DNA of your organization. Have the courage to stick with those ethics, even when they impact the bottom line in the short-term.

Hire ethical people. The fact of the matter is, most (if not all) organizations are in a global war to hire and retain the most talented people that they can. And if a small manufacturer in Scranton, Pennsylvania and a large manufacturer in Birmingham, England are trying to get the same employees, the one who has a clear ethical stance will go a long way toward being competitive.

Get rid of unethical people. The whine here usually is “Well, we can’t get rid of (insert name of employee who is liked/perceived as bringing value to the organization here) because then we would get sued.” The majority of states in the US are “at-will” employment states. With this in mind, building in arbitration clauses (there are two kinds of arbitration, binding and non-binding) to employment contracts, creating NDA’s and fashioning a system where employees are educated on what their rights are, allows the organization to get rid of unethical people.

In reality, for most organizations, a lot of this comes down to having the courage to focus around the long-game of developing and encouraging values and character, rather than the short-game of quarterly revenue growth.

[Opinion] The Listicle is Simple and Seductive

Three points need to be emphasized at the beginning of any training, workshop, or seminar.

Your way of thinking about conflict, communication, and persuasion must shift before anything else can happen.

Your way of consuming information, your attention span, and your level of caring about the content you are about to hear, must shift before any deep learning can happen.

Your way of listening to the delivered content must shift from passive to active, for without that shift, nothing else can happen.

The desire, of course, from some of the participants is for these three things to happen. And these points being made out loud makes those participants relieved.

But there are other desires in the room.

The desire to get the tools, get the skills, get the listicle version of the information, and then to leave.

The desire to get the lecture, get the knowledge, but to not engage in any deeper change. After all, such change is challenging, and if there’s no support in the environment from which you came for change that needs to happen, well then it’s easier to ignore the calls to change.

The desire to not care. This is reflected in the phrases, the questions, the statements, and the observations that spring forth from the participants. Typically framed by some participants as “I hope that you can keep me awake,” or “You kept me awake more than any other facilitator I’ve ever sat through.”

The desire for the listicle version, the shorthand, the summary, the 30-second point, is seductive. But ultimately, changing the philosophy about how we think, matters more than applying shortcut tactics to achieve an outcome we might not enjoy.

[Strategy] Average in the Future

There have always been people in societies, cultures, and among populations all over the world and throughout history who have committed an average level of effort to the work of building their lives.

They lived. They died. And they didn’t make a ripple or a dent in the universe.

It’s only in the last 100 years or so that the protection for being average was codified at a mass level through the direct efforts of the Industrial Revolution and the aftereffects of that same revolution.

Another way of saying this is “C’s get degrees.”

Yes, they do.

But, over the next 100 years, they may have to get a different set of skills in order to maintain that “C” status, both in life, and in their careers.

It’s always been demanding to be average; to stay in your lane; to follow directions without critically thinking; to not be the nail that sticks up; to protect the status quo by not engaging in conflicts that matter.

And it’s just going to get even harder.

[Advice] We Are Surrounded By The Remains Of Average…

Have you looked at a factory building lately?

If you walk around your town (either America or globally) you can see the remains of burned out factory buildings, corporate office complexes, and even industrial parks that lie empty, vandalized, or half occupied by struggling commodity businesses.

If you walk around your town (mostly in America) you can see the remains of a K-12 education system that used to be the model of the world. Inside many school buildings, there remain students that sit in rows, raise their hands obediently, only speak when they are called upon, are taught to pass the test, and when they don’t or can’t perform in those ways, they are labeled and sometimes forgotten.

If you walk around your town (mostly in the formerly Western World) you can see the remains of churches. Sure, the seats are full in some buildings, but increasingly, buildings are emptying and churches are closing. And more and more there is the trumpeting of people who claim irreligiousness (or disbelief) and in response more and more churches are coasting on the past Spirit (both financial and otherwise) that used to there, and hoping that a positive change (that resembles past glories) will come.

What do the physical buildings, the educational system, and the church all have in common in your town? Or mine?

They are the remains of a time when being just average was “ok.” They are the remains of the third greatest revolution in human history, the Industrial Revolution. They are all that remains of a promise that was over engineered, over sold, and over bought: The consumer (or employee) can just show up at work, do average work just a little better year on year, and then retire and be “ok.” In addition, the consumer (or employees) children will be educated to a standard that will be just a little better each year, and the family will get a little safer each year, in a neighborhood that will be a little better each year, and everything will be “ok.” And, of course, the church will require just a little more (usually money) from the consumer every year, and this will be “ok.”

We are surrounded by the remains of “ok” in a time when “ok” is no longer good enough. And when the disconnect between “ok” and reality reaches a breaking point, we get demagogues, marketers, con men, flim-flam men, and others selling us a bill of goods about a return to a glorious past, rather than the hard truth about the realistic future:

Here’s the hard truth:

“Ok” was never good enough. And doing “just a little better” than last year isn’t going to get the same outcome financially, morally, ethically, or materially anymore–if it ever really did in the first place. The greatest psychological block of our time for people to overcome (at least in America) is this idea that average work, average effort, and average outcomes are still “ok”—even as everything we see economically, spiritually, and materially at the start of the fourth greatest worldwide revolution proves otherwise.

From our physical infrastructure to our internal responses to conflicts, meaning, and mattering, we’ve got to stop walking around our towns (either physically or metaphorically) trying to recapture “ok” and instead shift to inspiring people at every level to consistently pursue better than “ok” to get to best.

-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] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #9 – Qiana Patterson

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #9 – Qiana Patterson, A Fearless Experienced Ed-Tech Executive, Thinker, Educator, and Technologist

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #9 – Qiana Patterson

[powerpress]

Race, culture, education, and technology; all of these things matter to our guest today, and she’s going to make sure that you at least think about them before we’re done here.

In our world today, race, gender, and culture seem to matter more now than ever before. This interview sort of dovetails with the interview that we did with Mitch Mitchell a couple of episodes back.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but a person’s vocal inflections, tone, and language should have no racial overtones, but I remember the last time we went around and around the block about race in this country—during the Orenthal James Simpson trial—that there was some discussion about whether or not O.J. had a “black” sounding voice.

Speaking of language, my grandmother came from a time when women and minorities in general weren’t getting a public fair shake in any sense of the word and she raised me to speak with as clean and as unaccented a voice as she possibly could. She believed—as Booker T. Washington before her also did—that speaking well was the first step toward writing well, which led inevitably to living well in a racist world.

I think that our guest today, Qiana Patterson, would have had an interesting discussion with my grandmother. These are two women separated by a lot of history, a lot of years, and by philosophies. That’s not to say that Qiana’s perspective or philosophy on education, race, and where they meet in the realm of technology is problematic.

Far from it.

I think that we have to be open to hearing from everybody in this racially, ethnically, and even economically diverse world. Because if we don’t, then self-awareness, self-motivation, and the courage to act differently (forget just thinking differently) become mere punchlines that we repeat at cocktail parties.

And I think that my grandmother, Qiana, and myself, have had quite enough of all that.

Haven’t you?

Check out all the ways below to connect with Qiana today:

Qiana’s Education Post Page: http://educationpost.org/network/qiana-patterson/

Qiana’s Twitter Feed: https://twitter.com/Q_i_a_n_a

Qiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qiana-patterson-87427b2

Qiana’s About Me page: https://about.me/QianaPatterson

[Opinion] Marketing for the Peace Builder V

Focus group feedback is useful to the peace builder.

Here’s how you run one:

The peace builder, working with another party (typically the focus group moderator), puts together some questions in regards to a future product, a current problem, and the solution to both that is offered by the peace builder.

Then, the peace builder gets a room somewhere and invites some people—maybe five to ten—who are in the demographic that the peace builder wants to offer their services to.

Then, the peace builder orders some pizza, the moderator sits down with the focus group participants and asks them the series of questions that have been cobbled together. In addition, the moderator may coax information from focus group attendees through the use of open-ended questions.

The peace builder sits in the room, saying nothing, but taking notes and watching the attendees’ non-verbal reactions, listening to the moderator, and recording responses to the questions.

At the end of an hour, the attendees are thanked for their time, offered the opportunity to take advantage of the product, service, or process that they have been questioned about, and are sent home.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

The purpose of a focus group is three-fold:

  • To determine the reactions and responses of members of your target audience in a low-risk environment where they are rewarded for their participation.
  • To get feedback about the product, service, or process that the peace builder is developing through a process similar to an interview.
  • To collect the opinions from the focus group about the motivations of people who might actually use the peace builder’s product and to better understand how they perceive the utility of the product offering.

The savvy peace builder should be using focus groups before they launch workshops, seminars, training opportunities, books, curriculum, or any other product or process designed to appeal to a niche group of people. The savvy peace builder should avoid focus groups entirely when they are developing workshops, seminars, training opportunities, books, curriculum, or any other products or processes that have never been developed before, or which have been developed so long ago, that they have been forgotten almost entirely.

A warning though: Sometimes attendees fall into groupthink, peace builders and moderators, may fall prey to experimenter bias, issues of confidentiality around sensitive information in a group setting, and the fact that peace builders may cherry pick feedback to support a foregone conclusion.

-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/

The HSCT Reading List – THE BEST BOOKS OF 2014

The HSCT Reading List - THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015

We here at HSCT think of the question “What are you reading?” in the same way that Joan Rivers asks the question “Who are you wearing?”

So, for all of those who are interested, the following is our 2014 Book List:

Nonfiction

Sales

  • The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer

Marketing

  • YouTility by Jay Baer
  • Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It by Mitch Joel
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
  • Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
  • Launch by Jeff Walker
  • Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Conflict Resolution

  • Influence: The Art of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
  • Handling Verbal Confrontation by Robert V. Gerard
  • Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler
  • TongueFu: How to Deflect, Disarm, and Diffuse any Verbal Conflict by Sam Horn
  • Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Neuroscience

  • Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman
  • Mindsight by Daniel Siegel
  • Predictive Analytics by Eric Siegel

Entrepreneurship

  • The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way by Wayne Dwyer
  • David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
  • The Rise by Sarah Lewis

Physics

  • Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku

Fiction

  • When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
  • Freedom by Jonathan Frazen

All of these books are available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million and even your small, independent bookstore around the corner can get them.

Check back in 2015 for an updates reading list and email me at jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com and let me know what you think of them!

The HSCT Reading List – THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015

The HSCT Reading List - THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015

We here at HSCT think of the question “What are you reading?” in the same way that Joan Rivers used to ask the question “Who are you wearing?”

So, for all of those who are interested, the following is our 2015 Book List:

Nonfiction

  • Sales
  • Fire Your Sales Team Today by Mike Lieberman and Eric Keiles
  • What to do When You’re Rejected by James Altucher
  • Resonate by Nancy Duarte

Marketing

  • Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love by David Sturt
  • Product Launch by Jeff Walker
  • Tribes by Seth Godin
  • The Dip by Seth Godin
  • The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer

Conflict Resolution

  • Thanks for the Feedback: The Art and Science of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen
  • The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton

Biography/History

  • Regan at Reykjavik by Ken Aldeman
  • God, If You’re Up There, I’m F*cked by Darrell Hammond
  • David Spade is Almost Interesting by David Spade
  • Now I know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground by Emily Parker
  • Tin Can Treason: Recollections from a Combat Tour of Vietnam by Terry Nardone

Politics

  • All Politics is Local and Other Rules of the Game by Tip O’Neill

Entrepreneurship

  • Prayers That Avail Much for The Workplace by Germaine Copeland
  • Zero to One by Peter Thiel
  • Beyond the Obvious by Phil McKinney
  • The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
  • Everybody Writes by Anne Handley
  • What to Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn) by Seth Godin

Fiction

  • Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
  • The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer
  • The President’s Shadow by Brad Meltzer
  • Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  • Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
  • Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
  • River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh

All of these books are available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million and even your small, independent bookstore around the corner can get them.

Check back in 2016 for an updates reading list and email me at jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com and let me know what you think of them!

[Advice] How To “Make A Ruckus”

There are two ways to “make a ruckus,” if you want to:

The first way is to be generous, give away your knowledge and spiritual wealth (and maybe even your material wealth if you are led to) and to collaborate with others to use the power you have gained to help others less powerful.

The second way is to race to the bottom on price and cost, worry about the corners and the fractions of an inch, to create/lobby for regulatory environments that favor incumbents, to use power as a weapon and to deny the human individual, and only look at the masses.

One way leads to abundance and an ownership mindset, no matter what environment or context you happen to be in.

One way leads to scarcity of resources and a perpetual employee mindset, no matter what environment or context you happen to be in.

Envy arises in individuals and groups of one mindset when they observe the physical, external manifestations of an internal set of choices.  This feeling of envy, based in fear, clouds judgement, and leads to the false premise behind some conflicts. These conflicts—that are really about mindsets and values rather than about material resources—can almost never be resolved, they can only be engaged with—or moved on from.

If you want to “make a ruckus,” you have to make three decisions first:

  1. What kind of mindset do you want to have?
  2. What kind of environment or context will create the circumstances for acting on that mindset?
  3. What kind of outcomes are you willing to advocate to advance, to protect and to reject?

It’s easy to say “I make a ruckus.” It’s not that easy to do.

-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] Our Children

What we don’t teach our children in school for eight hours a day would be classified as child abuse, if we actually believed that the nature of the world of work has changed for adults.

But, we don’t.

The world of work is a place where adults are thrown together with other adults we didn’t choose to be with, with whom we have little in common, and must be “nice” to (meaning non-confrontational, but not too nice) in order to “get tasks done.”

School prepares our children for this, disappearing work world. The world of the white-collar office or even the disappearing, blue-collar factory. School tells our children to sit in desks for 8 hours a day, while an adult stands in front of them, lecturing every hour, on the hour.

No naps. No crackers. No grape juice. Not even in kindergarten anymore.

Governments get involved in schooling because people in power (politicians, political consultants, et.al) want nice compliant voters, workers and adults.

Parents send their children to school because that’s the only way to “get opportunities” out of an adult life that seems more and more volatile, or because of the threat of jailing.

Society overall demands schooling (and the ways we currently school children are a product of the Industrial Revolution, John Dewey, Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor—among many others) if no other reason than some adults would rather not see children “running around town” questioning the carefully constructed adult worlds.

Seems like an environment ripe for bullying, stress, mismanagement, organizational conflict, and avoidance of outcomes.

There are some ways out of this:

Teach to individuals, not groups.

The group lecture doesn’t work without individual engagement, even for well-trained adults. There’s a reason Greek philosophers taught outside by asking and answering questions, taught walking around, and were constantly considered to be “corrupting the morals of the youth” of Ancient Greece. If Socrates could do it with 15 kids under an olive tree (or walking through a marketplace), so can the post-modern, 21st century educator with all the technology that we have.

Teach principles, not values.

Here’s a principle: “Choose to be good to one another and learn how to get along with people you don’t like, and who don’t like you.” Here’s a value: “Let’s not bully each other because it hurts the other person’s feelings and it’s wrong.” Children are incredibly gifted at sensing the adult hypocrisy that lies dormant behind adults employing the language of principles to hide other motives that are sometimes value driven, and sometimes not.

Teach emotional intelligence, principles and individuals from ages 5 through 12, teach skills, abilities and life options from ages 12 through 17, then let children decide to go to college, or not with their families.

At a practical level, the current formation of primary schooling in this country is broken, no matter whether the governing policy is Common Core, No Child Left Behind or even Midnight Basketball (remember that from the 90’s). This is because the next world that our children face is post-industrial, requiring the ability to dance with fear, fail with grace and be courageous without shame (which children need reinforced between 5 and 12) and requiring people to be really skilled immediately, regardless of credentialing (what children need reinforced between 12 and 17).

Adults (who have children and vote and who don’t have children and don’t vote) need to change our story of why we send our kids to school, and change the assumptions and expectations that we have around learning and the world of work, before anything will change in the school system itself.

Until that happens, we will raise, and nominally educate, generations of people, who will be released into adulthood, with little understanding of what is happening to them in their working lives, why it is happening, and how to overcome it.

Which is a recipe for increasing societal conflict, not decreasing.