[ICYMI] Unpacking Other People’s Laundry

Unpacking assumptions is the first piece of the engagement process with conflicts in your workplace.

It’s hard enough to be confronted by the results of our faulty assumptions, but it is even more difficult to begin to unpack beliefs, values and perceptions that we have held for years.

In a conflict, we fail to unpack three areas:

Our Assumptions: The things that drive us are the things that hold us back. Typically they begin with the words “should” or “ought.” Our assumptions also color how we deal with (or ignore/dismiss) the other two areas.
Their Assumptions: The things that drive the other party are either dismissed, ignored or not fully understood by either party. Those drivers typically are prefaced by “they should” or “they ought.”
The Problem’s Assumptions: “There is only one way to solve an issue and it’s the way that benefits us the most. And, people are most always the problem because they won’t change. Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with me in this situation that solving the problem won’t solve.” These few sentences serve to build a foundation for continued disputes embedded in the conflict process. They assumptions inherent in them act as a concrete base, never allowing the problem to inch toward resolution and shutting down engagement.

With the level of knowledge to which we have access these days, the hard work that matters involves caring enough to seek out resources that can help get past the uncomfortability, fear and cowardice of the results of unpacking before engaging in the process of resolution.

-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/

[Opinion] Fear and Power

In a conflict there are two primary movers: Fear and Power.

Fear moves a conflict forward, or backward, or to the side, through resistance, panic, aggressiveness, and avoidance.

Power moves a conflict forward, or backward, or to the side, through domination, aggressiveness, passive-aggressiveness, and outright confrontation.

In many organizations, departments, teams, committees and even individuals, make decisions about changes and innovations as a result of their perceptions about both fear and power. This leads to a lack of genuine leadership, work being done badly (or not at all) and innovation being stymied.

Unfortunately, as long as people are around to create hierarchical chains of command, fear and power will be the two prime movers of conflict. The key thing to understand is that the party who uses fear and power as a primary mover in a conflict, is looking for a preprogrammed, evolutionary response from the other party. When a different response is provided, then the balance of fear and power shifts, from the instigator to the respondent.

This is the dance of conflict, driven by fear and power, and when the balance is successfully tipped—or shifted—the game changes.

-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/

[Strategy] Reframing for Dummies

In a world full of noise, one of the most valuable talents, is the ability to actively listen to another person.

We often take listening for granted, confusing it with hearing, responding, ignoring, or “taking care of the problem”—without really stopping to examine what the problem is, or even if there’s a problem in the first place.

We also straight up don’t listen to the other party, or parties, at all. We dismiss their concerns as merely “opinions” and don’t stop to examine the deeper reasons behind what the other party is actually saying. Typically, revealing their deep concerns, closely held values, and sometimes prejudices, that if taken into consideration and addressed, would make for a stronger communication scenario, with less conflict.

We dismiss concerns, ignore reasons, defy truths, because we believe deeply that, once we have stated a position, the other party’s responsibility is to give us the response that we “know” is the right one. This is particularly endemic when the party who is listening is a large organization, or a party with access to the resource of a megaphone. In these cases, we do not seek to respond, we merely look to get our next position across to the other party.

The solution to all of this is three fold, and it lies in the process of reframing.

Reframing is the act of repeating the other party’s words and statements back to them. It seems like an obvious rhetorical tactic, but in many cases, conflicts are rooted in a lack of reframing, and many parties never do it at all, even while claiming understanding and appreciation for a viewpoint that may differ from theirs.

Here are the three steps to reframing:

Actively listen—Not just for the content that you hear on the surface from the other party—the content that generates a reaction from you because you’ve stopped listening and are now forming arguments about how and why they are wrong—but the content that isn’t stated. This, the unstated content, is the content that needs to be addressed.

Avoid reacting—When we hear something we don’t like, we tend to lash out, lambast the other party, strafe the room with the gunfire of our rhetorical position, and then move on, justified in the feeling that we “won” they “lost” and “all is right with the world.” This is the pattern of the mob. Reacting is not the way to reframing, but it is the way to escalating.

Actually think—To reframe successfully, the party who is listening must absorb—and think about—what the other party says, stop (or pause) to absorb the information, and then respond by restating what has already been said in the form of a question. Many people—in the race to the bottom of escalation—miss the pausing before speaking part of reframing.

If reframing were easy, everyone would do it. And the core of the art of reframing is the pause, the dip in the conversation, between the two parties.

Your conversational dip will vary, but without one, you are well on your way to escalation, defensiveness, reaction and conflict.

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-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] We Built This City

There are systems in place inside of corporations, nonprofits and even families to manage everything, from the finances to the logistics of getting groceries.

Human beings create systems, in response to growing external complexity, which creates conflicts, friction and disputes. Think of Dunbar’s number, or the number of people you actually interact with on Facebook.

As the Internet has exploded all around us, the demand for a digital solution to almost every problem has increased, accompanied by the promise of decreased complexity, chaos, friction and disputes.

But this promise is a misnomer at best and a lie at worst, because the solutions to most conflicts lies in gaining greater awareness of self, moving past the need to rely on a system to solve complexity, and moving toward doing the hard work of discovering something about other people inside of ourselves.

There’s no digital solution for human problems, and with complexity of systems increasing, and with human beings outsourcing more and more of that complexity to algorithms in exchange for the ease of leisure, we have no choice but to start down the road of learning about ourselves.

Or else, the interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts between and within people will only grow more pronounced as man’s search for meaning and mattering becomes more and more acute, inside of the systems we’ve built.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Web 3.0 – The Earbud_U Minute

We need to figure out what kind of Internet we want to have.

The business model currently funding and pushing the growth of the Internet is based upon monetizing a base of users who come to a project and use it for free, or for a nominal price.

The user takes advantage of the content/service/process for free. And, as a result, the user is so enamored with the content/service/process that they keep coming back over and over again, building a trust based relationship with the creator/creators of the project. Subsequently, in order to fund the project, there are hopefully so many users that an advertiser has no choice but to put advertisements in front of a group of eyeballs with whom the project owner has built a relationship.

This is the model underlying Facebook. The nominal fee model (a subscription-based model) underlies LinkedIn, journalism models, ecommerce platforms and other content/service/process platforms.

Web 2.0 is what everyone is talking about now, but Web 3.0 is really, where the Internet has to move to.

Web 3.0 is beyond just the Internet of Things. Web 3.0 is the Internet as Everything. Web 3.0 is the Internet waging active battle with the last, sticky remnants of the world built through the assumptions of the Industrial Revolution. This is a world created around the rules, laws and policies, created by politicians and people to keep the common democratization of the Internet out of the hands of the common people before the Internet.

Here’s a question: Why is it that there aren’t any internet connected roads?

It has nothing to do with technological innovations such as creating concrete that can communicate with strips on the road. Or with computer chips that can talk to your car. Or signs and traffic signals that talk to the road, the car and each other.

The reason there aren’t roads that are intelligent is not a smart car issues, no matter what Google Cars would have you think.

The issue is really laws and regulations.

Laws are the last bastion of the Industrial revolution world that have yet to fall to the unending sweep of the Internet. We see the beginnings of this with our current thrashing around privacy, data, and “who owns the future” (either you or a corporation) but once we settle all of this we will have new business models that will allows the Internet to be truly “baked in”.

Then, once that happens, the sky truly will be the limit.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] An Antifragile Future

The future conflicts we can’t predict, the ones that come out of the sky and surprises us, are the easiest to prepare for. But we have to work at it.

Interpersonal conflicts come from both places: the places we can predict (that family member who’s “always been a problem,” or that co-worker who “just doesn’t get it…and never has”) and the places we can’t predict (“he was so normal,” or “she never said anything about it before”).

We don’t prepare for the unpredictable for two, major reasons:

It will never happen to me: Actually in the realm of all mathematical, probabilistic calculations, the likelihood that someone getting into a conflict with you whom you did not expect to is pretty high.

I’m already prepared in case it happens: Well, think about the last unpredictable event (for you) that happened? How did you respond to a flat tire in the middle of road? A screaming adult? A disappointed boss or co-worker who had never said anything previously?

We respond with the patterns comfortable to us, to conflicts and stimulus that are unpredictable, because we don’t think about, plan for, or even consider the fact that the unpredictable might actually happen.

This is why we’re always surprised by future outcomes, conflicts and situations, even as we look for patterns in the past, and assign blame or credit, in order to make order, out of the chaos that unpredictability represents.

There are a few ways out of this, none of them comfortable:

Think about future conflicts “tabula rasa”: Begin by thinking about conflicts that could arise with a blank slate, or tabula rasa. Think of the future—and conflicts that could arise in it—as unexplored territory.
Do not look to the past for solutions: The past is exactly that, the past. And it’s not a good predictor of future behavior, actions or choices. The past is merely history. Or, perhaps nostalgia. And sometimes nostalgia can be poison.
Be open to possibility: This one is really hard if people are not comfortable with change and require stability and predictability—or at least the story of stability and predictability—in order to go about their day. Being open to the possibility for conflict opens the doors to being creative in your reactions, and responses to it.
Creativity is the key: Many people struggle with creative ways to explore, challenge and respond to conflict prone situations. This is why the standard responses to receiving a divorce decree is to just accept it and get a lawyer. However, many conflict scenarios—both interpersonal and intrapersonal—can be resolved, accommodated, or even avoided, in a myriad of creative ways. And, depending upon the type of response you’d like to encourage in the other party, responding creatively is better than using past patterns of behavioral responses—and expecting a different result.

Employing some, or all, of these strategies leads to creating systems in families, churches and civic organizations that can be antifragile, rather than collapsing due to fragility, or overcompensating due to a robustness of robustness.

-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] The Epidemiology of Conflict – The Earbud_U Minute

Conflicts, disputes and other disagreements are not the disease. They are symptoms of the disease.

When we think about how a virus spreads, doctors, researchers, data gatherers and others look at the patterns, causes and effects of health and disease conditions in a particular population.

Epidemiology is a very specific interdisciplinary science, but when we talk about the presenting issues that lead to conflict, even in our post-therapeutic age, we are still hesitant to become armchair analysts.

Or, we analyze and get it wrong.

The beginning of understanding the how and why the symptoms of conflict are confused with the nature of a conflict itself, begins with taking apart the behavioral and personality choices that individuals make—and that particular populations, in particular environments, support.

Think about it: In the workplace, there still remains the illusion that resources are limited, thus competition is reinforced.

Thus, individuals who would rather be collaborative are now in conflict with the underpinnings of the environment where they spend 40 to 60 hours per week.

Think about it: In the church—or any other religious organization—the illusion remains that faith and belief will remove the stain of previous wrongs and mistakes without active engagement on the part of the individual.

Thus, individuals who are looking for active engagement wind up within groups that would rather remain collectively passive in the face of all manner of wrongdoing.

Think about it: In the school, bullying behavior manifests, but politicians, teachers, policy makers and others would rather support a broken system that encourages collective, Industrial system based responses.

Thus, micro-schooling with smaller groups (or homeschooling) is pooh-poohed and parents (who vote) raise children who are overly aggressive due to familial environments, and are never directly confronted about the results of their uninformed parenting styles by the “system.”

Root causes—and getting back to them—is often the first thing that is dismissed by critics of therapy, counseling, and even mediation.

But without exploring and getting to the root of root causes, the solutions to the corrosive nature of conflict will never be fully teased apart.

And we will continue to be collectively surprised by apathy and inaction, bullying, poor communication, and ineffective organizational responses, even as we build more tools that separate us further.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principle 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] You Can’t Get There From Here

Parties in conflict often ask the questions Alice did when she arrived in Wonderland.

The Cheshire Cat, that fictional animal who disappears, leaving behind only a grin was right, if a party in a conflict doesn’t know where they are going, then it doesn’t matter which way they go.

However, many parties in conflict are savvy enough to know (whether they are conscious of it or not ) that what got them into conflict isn’t going to get them out.

The problem is, many parties have a preference for when they would like the conflict to end (at a place of compromise, accommodation or winning) but they have no idea what the process to attain that outcome looks like.

Too many parties are also like Alice, in that they harbor suspicions of various peace building processes— negotiation, mediation, training, coaching, or litigation—not because they don’t understand the processes, but because they don’t understand themselves.

The prickly questions of:

How did we get here?
Was I in the wrong and not the other party?
Do I have a responsibility to make it better?
What if it gets worse?

And on and on, doggedly insist upon themselves in party’s whisper spaces, before a decision, during the process of getting to resolution (or not) and after the decision is made. On the other side of the whisper space and resolution is the tug at our heart strings of the regret that we cannot go back to the ways things were before.

Or party’s try to go back and only reignite the old conflict.

What got you here (to conflict) won’t get you there (to resolution) especially if each party has no idea what “there” should look like when they arrive.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Persistence and Commitment

Starting anything is easy, as we’ve pointed out before, because the social approval around starting is enormously powerful, positive and affirming.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s an education, a fitness plan or even a battle, starting is easy.

Continuing though, persisting through the slog of the middle, and coming out the other side in completion (whether in victory or defeat) is the hard part.

We were streaming a conversation with a blogger the other day and she mentioned how she had started a book, and then put it away for about a year, while she struggled with the decision of whether to publish, or not.

Starting is easy, the slog of the middle is hard.

She mentioned that, in the intervening time between deciding to write (to start) and deciding to publish (the middle) she had shown her manuscript (a fictional one) to a number of friends of hers to gauge their reactions.

Starting is easy, the slog of the middle is hard.

She mentioned that one of their reactions was to say, “You have gone through a lot.” But this person (assumedly) did not help her write the book, nor is she helping her critique the book.

Starting is easy, the slog of the middle is hard.

Persistence and commitment are the hallmarks of a successful person. But sometimes, human beings get caught in the idea that starting, going through the middle, and ending should follow in logical order, like lines on a map. We perceive the stops in time—and gaps between events—as places of failure, defeat and eventually, the place where everything stops.

Other people and their reactions, judgments and decisions affect us before, during and after the starting gun fires, the buzzer goes off, and the start begins.

But let’s not believe that the people who have the power to applaud, jeer, support, or be neutral have anything to do with us starting. Or getting through the slog of the middle.

That part is always in our power and up to us.

H/T to Jaimee Doriss

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] How to Motivate Yourself

Conflicts arise (or get worse)—both internal and external—when motivation wanes.

Because it is easier to do the wrong thing (sometimes the more convenient or expedient thing) than it is to do the right thing (sometimes the least convenient and hardest thing) in a conflict, many people revert to the apathy, avoidance, or accommodation.

Motivation is the driver for change and better responses to interpersonal conflicts, but one of the questions we get asked is “Well Jesan, all this interpersonal conflict tactics stuff is great, but what about getting people motivated to actually do it?”

We point out that the motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar, often made the point that motivation—much like showering—doesn’t last. And that you have to renew your motivation every day, in the same way that you shower every day.

We would make three additions to that assertion as well:

Our lives must have meaning first in order for us to get motivated to confront the issues and concerns that cause conflicts, the relationships that are “suboptimal” and the situations that make us frustrated. In the field of student development, this is called agency.

Our personalities must be resilient, able to take disappointment, failure and not achieving our goals the first time around. When there is resilience, motivation matters less, because the mindset changes from “I need to be motivated before I can confront a conflict in my life” to “I am resilient and know I can get through this conflict with this other person and that’s my motivation.”

Our lives must be well balanced in all five areas of wellbeing: social, career, physical, financial and community. That balance means more than just a few percentage points of feeling good here balanced against a few percentage points of feeling bad there. Without well-balanced lives, a lack of motivation to change leads to emotional apathy and physical lethargy.

Organizations, from family (the world’s first corporation) to churches, have a responsibility to acknowledge and support the balance of wellbeing, appropriate feedback, and encouragement in the form of appropriate recognition and reward, for individuals who search for meaning in their work, play, volunteerism and worship.

Being successful at this task requires the founders, funders, owners and even contributors to those organizations, to start examining their own motivations a little closer.

Or else conflicts, crises, confrontations and aggressive behaviors will continue to demotivate those who could potentially courageously be motivated to attain new meaning when conflicts arise.

-Peace Be With You All-