[Advice] Evolving Cultural Sensibilities and ADR

As the economic, cultural, and spiritual forces that used to bind us together continue to refragment from overarching macro-cultures to indispensable micro-cultures, alternative dispute resolution practitioners must take notice.

Overarching macro-culture was driven by communal events, television, economic stability, and overarching cultural “norms” that allowed people to engage in conflicts and disputes with the same regularity they always have, but also allowed the impacts of those conflicts to be dampened.

Indispensable micro-culture is driven by technology, network connections that defy geography and notice, a dismissal of the status quo, and a strong identity component. People still have conflict in these micro-cultures (what used to be called “sub-cultures”). But the impacts of those conflicts are like wildfires that catch the masses attention for a moment, but without a “there” there, there is little sustained effort mounted to ameliorate the effects upon people in those micro-culture conflicts.

Conflict resolvers, conflict coaches, conflict engagers, mediators, arbitrators, and others have watched this evolution occur over the last fifty or so years, with greater acceleration, but the response to the evolution through providing access points to conflict resolution has not been as quick. This is mainly for three reasons:

  • Indispensable micro-culture is still seen as “niche” and not really enough to build a business model on by the entrepreneurial conflict resolver. This is a terrible fact, but except for some people doing some great work in resolving conflicts in specific areas with specific groups in conflicts (i.e. with parties in churches, with divorcing or separating pet owners, etc.) there is more focus by ADR professionals on how to gain credibility with the courts—still standing as the last guardians of a passing away overarching macro-culture.
  • There are still enough parties in conflict participating in the remaining civic life of a formerly overarching macro-culture. This is something that will pass away over time, but right now, there are enough of the “masses” left around that many professional conflict resolvers look at the problems and conflicts of that group and decide to address their issues first. Both as a way to make a “dent” in the universality of conflict, and to make money from a reliable income stream.
  • Refragmentation is still not understood—or accepted psychologically, emotionally, or spiritually—as an inevitable outcome of the erosion of the twin, post-World War 2 oligopolies of corporation and government. Now, this is not to say that government will disappear either now or later; but the fact is, that as conflicts and disputes between parties in indispensable micro-culture become harder and harder to understand, the overarching macro-culture responses from government entities (i.e. new laws, regulations, taxes, and fees) will be less and less effective. This is because indispensable micro-culture conflicts are driven by esoteric, identity based rules, that require conflict resolvers to engage in relationships with those cultures to resolve—and to go beyond the overarching macro-culture rubric of intercultural communication skill sets.

None of these three areas are that daunting to overcome. And once overcome, the business models to get ideas for resolution to people in conflict begin to overwhelm the entrepreneurial conflict resolver. All that is required to get there is the courage of conflict resolvers to act outside of the “box” they have been trained in.

[Advice] 10 Year Overnight Success V

People tell themselves stories about success and failure.

Most of those stories overlap with cultural stories that may, or may not, be factual. Cultural stories overlap with success and failure stories carry an impact. Success stories range from stories about hard work to stories about perseverance, patience, and tenacity.

What often gets missed in these stories is a discussion (or even a curiosity) about the individual and corporate moments that lead to the successes: The moments of gossamer when someone made a decision—or didn’t—and the consequences that resulted from that decision. Very rarely is decision making viewed through this lens as a series of deliberate and coincidental acts, complete with a dizzying array of textures, and moments.

The other thing that is often missed in all of these stories is the acknowledgment of the presence of a moral component in decision making. It is a sign of how far our post-modern world has come, that stories of success are tied more to the presence or absence of psychological traits, than they are tied to the presence or absence of spiritual traits.

The change really shows its colors when we either express guilt at the perceived underserved outcomes of our success—no matter how hard we know we worked for them. And it cuts particularly deep when “so many other people around me didn’t have the same success.” We compound our problem when we lack the commensurate humility in attaining our successes and are arrogant around the impact of our failures, exhibiting both a lack of a higher moral code and even more, a lack of an understanding of the limits of our own individuality and freedom.

There are no overnight successes: Parent work to ensure that their children have advantages that they did not have in their experiences. Adults work, experiment, try and fail, and neither the rewards, nor the failures, are equally meted out. People tell themselves stories about themselves (or repeat the stories they have been told by others since birth) and in repeating the narratives of success, failure, ennui, or moral uprightness, they continue to perpetuate myths that harden into legends, and become lived truths, echoing on down through the generations.

Nothing “bad” and nothing “good” happens overnight. It takes years (some would say at least 10,000 hours) to get to the epicenter of mastery of success and it takes just as long to get to the center of failure.

And the tenacious, and the patient, are rewarded, each to their own ends.

-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] Engagement-As-A-Service

Imagine if engagement with customers, clients, and others could be measured as a trackable KPI of success in your organization?

Imagine if you actually engineered your organization at all levels to compete not in a race to the bottom on price, product, or service, but instead if you engineered (through reward and recognition) for engagement through failure, risk-taking, and decision making?

Imagine if the digital tools you have laying around that you don’t know what to do with, were engaged in actively and intentionally increasing engagement, rather than just selling?

Imagine if engagement were the service your organization offered, and the product (physical, digital, or another form) was actually an afterthought?

Imagine if quality engagement with your employees through open-book management, pay transparency, and treating adults as if they are adults, were the “new normal” rather than a “radical departure.”

We don’t have to imagine. There are organizations at scale that are doing all of these things all around us in all areas of the global economy.

The only question your really have to ask (and answer) in your organization is: Do you have the courage to go past imagining to acting?

-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] 3 Thoughts That May (Or May Not) Intersect…

Three thoughts that may (or may not) intersect with each other:

Thought #1: There’s a lot of high profile, persistent, whining going on in the space of web publishing, content creation, and even in the scrappy world of podcasting. This phenomenon of whining is also extending into commentary around entrepreneurship as the venture capital money that has been floating big bets for years begins to dry up. The thing is though, if you are a web publisher, or a podcaster, or a content creator, or a struggling entrepreneur, the whining has got to stop. The landscape of the Internet is infinite, no matter what the big digital brands are telling you through their marketing.


Thought #2: Attention and awareness are the coin of the realm right now in any digital space, and all you need to be successful (whatever that means) is 1,000 people willing to bet on your reputation, have a relationship with you, then give you revenue, and make a referral for your service or product. The idea that the digital system can be gamified through creating fake followers, fake awareness, and false hype is dying as fast as the money dries up.


Thought #3: In the digital space, and in our off line, real life interactions lately, the substance of truth is seen to not be as marketable as the illusion of symbolism. But this is a false paradigm. Substance based in truth has always grow more followers, attracted more awareness, and generated more revenues (in trust first and money last) for more people that anything else tried ever.

The problem comes when many people—from celebrities to the average man on the street—buy into the frothy hype of the short-term gain at the expense of the long-term relationship. As the bubbles pop all over the place and as web publishers, content creators, entrepreneurs, and others have to get back to the substance of building products, let’s hope they focus on communicating the truth—no matter how scary it is.

-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 #10 – Cinnie Noble

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #10 – Cinnie Noble, Mediator, Conflict Coach, Social Worker, Entrepreneur, Lawyer, and Pioneering Conflict Coach

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #10 – Cinnie Noble

[powerpress]

Brand building is not easy, particularly in a world where peace building and brand building are not often associated with each other. But our guest today has figured out a way around that problem, by slowly and surely doing the things that matter.

I’ve been reading a lot of books about advertising, writing copy, and philosophies on how to embed a marketing message deep inside a consumer’s mind. But for the professional peace builder, brand building, advertising, and on and on seem overwhelming at best.

I even talked to a person last week who’s a corporate trainer in a different space, who when I mentioned my passion for marketing, she threw up her hands in disgust.

But one of the ways to overwhelm the advertising heebie-jeebies, is to build your peace business in the way that Cinnie did: with aplomb, intentionality, and care. She has been able to build a brand that has influenced many people: leaders, managers and clients.

But she has also managed to be industry facing and has challenged people in her industry to evolve tools and products that have helped mediators expand beyond just mediation and toward developing products that can serve as early stage interventions, instead of struggling to manage late stage interventions.

Co-creating a relationship around things that matter is part and parcel of the language of coaching. So is the CINERGY® Model that Cinnie came up with.

But for our field, co-creating a relationship with the incremental brand building practices that Cinnie has pioneered is about the future of the field.

And Cinnie, Tammy Lenski, and Pattie Porter, and Anne Sawyer, and many others are doing that co-creating right now…

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

Cinnie’s Websites:

Cinnie’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/cinergycoaching

Cinnie’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cinnie.noble

Cinnie on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/cinnienoble

Cinnie’s Books on Amazon:

[Opinion] The Project Work Trap II

In order to effectively scale such transitive and necessary products as peace, honesty, good faith and courage, project work—freelancing—has to serve as the next step up from the typical minimal viable product, an entrepreneur might focus on developing.

A blog (not a pretty website) may be the minimal viable product for the beginning peace builder, but the way to scale from that is to be clear about developing project work through freelancing. The trap of project work though, is that it can lead to the peace builder developing a “feast-or-famine” mentality.  This mentality is the jaws of the project work trap.

Developing books, developing processes, developing software applications, developing “train the trainer” processes and more are ways around, through and over the project work trap. Product development such as this is the path to entrepreneurial ways out of the project work trap. Developing product that makes money for the peace builder while she sleeps is the entrepreneurial goal.

The gap between freelancing and entrepreneurship is consulting. Consulting is the linchpin between project work and entrepreneurial growth.  It serves as the lever at the top of the triangle between work that can be done by the peace builder and the outcomes that may need to occur to develop peace.

And the savvy peace builder knows this…

-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 #5 – Anne Sawyer

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #5 – Anne Sawyer, Executive Director-Southern California Mediation Association,

Passionate Mediator, and Entrepreneur

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #5 – Anne Sawyer

[powerpress]

The real trouble with mediation is capitalism. But our guest today has a way around that by using collaboration, mentorship, and an animated adherence to the core principles of mediation.

Peace builders of all stripes need larger fulcrums to move a conflict ridden world. Championing peace at the earliest stages is the hard work. The hard work comes because Peace builders must persuade, convince, and sell to a skeptical, conflict comfortable public.

Marketing and business development, mentoring and networking, and training beyond just the academy, will grow the filed organically over the next few years.

But there’s one area that mediators—and all peace builders— struggle with (and sometimes mightily) and that’s in getting the “ask.”

All sales are relational in nature, but, in order to “sell” peacebuilding, the peace builder must become a champion of peace. This requires a changing in the thinking of the peace builder around the sales process. The second step after marketing then becomes, not the “ask,” but the process of building a fulcrum to demonstrate value, and then leveraging that value to grow the revenues of relationship, trust, and money.

The only way for the peace builder to sell ethically is to build a fulcrum (from Seth Godin and his book Free Prize Inside) and to become a champion for peace. Through such a process, the peacebuilder becomes the “free prize” inside the value they add to the client.

The practical steps in building a sales fulcrum involve:

  • Determining if the customer you’re selling to as a peace builder thinks the work of building peace is worth doing.
  • Determining if the customer you’re selling to as a peace builder thinks that you are the person to build that peace.
  • Determining if the customer you’re selling to as a peace builder believes that the outcomes of work of building peace are actually an added benefit to them, their organization, or their lives.

By definition, all of these practical steps are hard for the peace builder to answer, because they are based in assumptions, ideas, and a worldview that is unproveable, unknowable, and unquantifiable, until after the work of building peace is already in progress—or already completed.

But Anne has a plan for all of this. And she’ll talk about laying the first steps toward building a fulcrum with the help of the Southern California Mediation Association in the podcast today.

Check out all the ways below to connect with Anne, and the Southern California Mediation Association, today:

Anne’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annesawyer1
Anne on Twitter: https://twitter.com/annesawyer
Anne’s Website: http://mediate2resolve.com/
SCMA’s Website: https://www.scmediation.org/
SCMA’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scmediationassn/
SCMA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SCMediationAssn

[Opinion] The Part of Belief We Don’t Talk About

Belief—insane, determined, focused, irrational belief—is sometimes the difference between a successful entrepreneur and a failed entrepreneur.

Having such belief in the accomplishing of “big, hairy” ideas, is often lauded as the only way forward in order to build projects, scale them, employ people in them, and then sell them to the highest bidder and go off to make trouble elsewhere.

Having such belief is the benchmark of successful professional entrepreneurs who consistently develop “crazy” schemes and seem to have the Midas touch when it comes to developing business ideas in spaces that other people, without such belief, dismiss out of hand.

But belief is a tricky proposition.

It can come from the entrepreneur, or project builder; from their internal drive to impose their vision on the world through personal force of will.

It can come from the world, reinforcing that the imposed vision is indeed a well-accepted one and that it is profitable as well.

Both of these visions of belief are human focused, and when successful, are lauded as being “lucky” both by people who supported the entrepreneur in their vision, and by people who detracted from that vision. Both perspectives on the power of belief can lead to developing myopia on one hand and hubris on the other.

Faith is almost never addressed in the entrepreneurial community, except when it is noted in passing. If insane, irrational, determined, and focused belief is the difference between success and failure for the entrepreneur, then faith—in a power greater than themselves that’s moving through this world and their lives—must be a huge part of that difference.

Faith is too often wrapped up with religious practice, which blinds rational people to the power of relational interactions, the impact of serendipity, the importance of preparation, and the limits of personal, individual power.

Faith is the thing that brings genuine humility to the project builder, because it opens their mind to the reality that while their belief may be the most powerful force they have ever wielded, it is not nearly the most powerful force in the world, operating on their behalf.

More talk about faith as a deep driver for entrepreneurial success—not wrapped in religious language, imagery, and symbolism—would go a long way toward deflating the arrogance, hubris, and endless calls for “hustle” that surround many entrepreneurship conversations, happening in the world today.

-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!