The ultimate purpose of managing interpersonal conflict is to grow us emotionally in self-awareness, storytelling, emotional management, and moral and ethical character.
There aren’t any apps, searches, or other fancy technological shortcuts for the development of those traits in us.
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.
The fundamental ethical issue of our time is how to engage with a world where situations and systems, are fundamentally indecent. And sometimes the people inside of these systems and situations choose to behave and respond indecently—and to do it repeatedly.
The issue is not whether or not historical past situations, peoples and systems were better or worse than current ones, that argument only serves as a distraction from addressing our current age of indecency. The real, core issue is how to manage the increasingly interpersonal conflicts that come with dealing with indecent situations and people in the world we have built for ourselves today.
This requires us to do the hard work of actively building new systems, and engage in situations by developing and maintaining an antifragile ethic:
Coming to grips with the idea that there will always be indecency (and this definition of indecency is individual, granular and personal, rather than institutional, democratic and systemic); and, the idea that individuals will have to make an active choice to address this indecency in behavior and choices head-on, rather than making the active choice to avoid, is the first part of the core of developing an antifragile ethic.
The second part of developing antifragile ethic is the idea that individuals must do the hard, emotional labor of engaging with themselves first and then others. The strongest antifragile ethical systems have at their core, a strong understanding and acknowledgement of the foibles and problems of the self first—before getting around to managing other people.
The last part of maintaining the antifragile ethic is to recognize that the choice to lead or follow is a daily, granular, choice-by-choice, day-by-day struggle that will lead to failure, disappointment and wrong decisions. But having that knowledge doesn’t allow us to abdicate the responsibility and accountability for making the hard choices (and accepting the consequences) granularly on a day-to-day basis.
Our need for ease (aided by our rapid technological growth and scientific knowledge) has led us to exchanging the hard work of being decent and building an antifragile ethic, for the faux immediacy of the unsatisfying search for an “easy” button, for addressing the difficult intricacies of interpersonal conflict.
There is no guarantee than this ethical development will work.
To search for such a guarantee is to ensure that the hard work of building an antifragile ethic will never happen. This is a fearful and childish search, doomed to never bear the fruit we so desperately need, to address our current, deepening, interpersonal conflicts.
-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/
Wisdom and behaving ethically often overlap. But most often not always.
In a mediation, arbitration, facilitation or when having a transformative moment with a transgressing client, ethics can go out the window for the professional peace builder. This is because facilitators, mediators, arbitrators—peace builders all—are human.
There is the idea among some peace building professionals that advocacy, evaluation, design and decision-making are not integral to the role of a peace builder, and thus cannot be transformative acts. This idea underpins the much touted ethics of preserving neutrality and maintaining client self-determination.
Evaluation and transformation can happen together ethically between a client and a peace builder, but then what happens to identity, power and the deeper meaning and significance of the work of the peace building fields?
Bernard Mayer and many others have struggled with these questions in the field of mediation, but the real, scary questions lie far outside the field and relate directly to the underpinnings and assumptions about how to create conditions for peace making, or even peace keeping, and how to plot those points as destinations between two conflicting parties.
The average client involved in a workplace dispute, a divorce mediation, a church power struggle or another conflict/confrontation/difficulty scenario, may not know what is ethical or unethical based on some ancient Greek philosopher’s definition of how the world works.
They just want their world, in this moment, to work.
-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 European High Court handed down their opinion dubbed the “right to be forgotten.”
What’s missing in all of the subsequent debate occurring around issue of privacy versus censorship, is the very real issue about a lack of organizational (read “Googles’”) ethical dealing.
“Organizations are seeking honest, fair, reliable, benevolent partners who will commit themselves to the relationship and prove trustworthy. In other words, they seek ethical partners.”
Organizations seek ethical
who will deal fairly—and transparently—in the public commons space of the pro-social spheres that we have created.
However, when asked to engage in the same trustworthy behavior, (read “providing individuals the benefit of the doubt, forgiveness and grace about their messy histories”) they balk.
And then organizations wonder why individuals—who only build real, lasting relationships based on genuine trust, collaboration, ethical dealing and just plain enjoyment of each others’ company—balk at having their every move monitored, recorded and then used against them later.
Doesn’t sound like the thinking that leads to the behavior that will sow the seeds of peace to us.
-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/
Conflict avoidance has a long and storied history.
“The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I would have become a watchmaker.” – Albert Einstein
The Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT) guest blogger for this week, Joshua Munchow, is a professional model maker who has worked on a variety of fabulous projects for many years.
He is employed as the Technical Development Lead for Formation Design Group Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia.
They are a product development firm focusing on new product innovation and have won numerous design awards and patents for their innovative design solutions.
Please take the time to contact Formation Design Group, Inc. for all your product development needs.
