No great change happens without conflict.
Not one.
And every great conflict generates resistance.
Every time.
So, since you know both things, decisions should be comparatively easy to make about change.
Right?
Tag Archives: fear
Disconnect as the New Standard
The disconnect between what people know about how the Internet (and by extension social media) “works” (choices, behaviors, options, etc.) and what people use the Internet (and social media) to accomplish (tasks) is underrated and massive.
Part of the disconnect comes from a lack of interest and caring about how the world of communication (and the tools in it) work, not only for the people with whom we are immediately communicating but also for the people not part of the communication.
Part of the disconnect comes from distractions that exist in the world of social interactions between people, and differing filters of awareness and attention. Individuals pay attention to all kinds of things that other individuals believe are unnecessary, irrelevant, uninteresting, or even unknowable. And then, because the human mind seeks order out of chaos, individuals, make judgments, create attributions, and create frames and boxes for language and ideas that further the disconnect.
Part of the disconnect comes from a lack of curiosity and even a lack of education about what to pay attention to. Lack of curiosity is endemic in discussion around the Internet (and social media) because our communication tools have prioritized lack of curiosity as the “new normal” in social interactions. Lack of education comes about when the market responds to a lack of curiosity as a new standard, and then complies by providing less nourishing meat (education) and more easily digestible milk (displays where people advance by how well they kiss).
The disconnect is massive and troubling, for two reasons:
In the market’s breakneck race to monetize every human interaction and behavior, combined with the alarming reduction in human economic productivity, we have a recipe for a society and culture where the very tools of educating, enlightening and uplifting are being monetized and controlled by a select few individuals—or organizations.
Which would be fine if those individuals and organizations were angels, but like most people, they’re just people.
The second reason is economic in that we have prioritized facility and adaptation as ways to get ahead in a world of Internet-based (and social media based) communications where competition for attention and awareness is fiercer than ever. But if the average individual is non-curious (or too disinterested or disconnected to care) about where their future dollars to pay their future electric bills are going to come from, then we have opened society to the wavering whims of every political, social, cultural, and economic demagogue (both individual and organizational) promising to make such important decisions “simple.”
“Simple” of course meaning, “Simple in a way that works for me, my power base, and my tribe, and creates distractions, confusion, disillusionment, and disengagement, for you, your power base, and your tribe.”
Which would be fine if those individuals and organizations were angels, but like most people, they’re just people.
A standard of anti-intellectualism comes from a standard of non-curiosity, which combined with the disconnect between people and how they use their new communications tools, leads to the creation of a world of communication, rhetoric, persuasion, and power, we should all be wary of.
To resist the new standard, we need to fight to establish access to education about how to use our new social tools across the disconnect, eliminate distractions as a way to encourage disillusionment and disengagement, and re-establish curiosity about the unknown (or about blind spots) as an alternative “normal.”
Otherwise, the conflict outcomes could be disastrous for everyone.
Overcoming Your Fear of Working to Connect
Fear of not connecting with another person, fear of not making an impact, fear of speaking and having no one listen, is the old resistance, dressed up in a new outfit.
It’s really just another form of hiding.
Attempt to connect.
Fulfill your promises.
Try to make an impact.
Speak whether anyone listens or not.
By the time you’re done fighting the resistance, you’ll care so much about the connections you do have, that hiding from doing the hard work of connecting, impacting, and speaking, will be dwarfed.
You don’t have to own all the corners. Just a few.
Dissatisfaction Times Vision Times First Steps Must Be Greater Than the Resistance
The equation that drives change is simple:
Dissatisfaction times Vision times First Steps must be greater than the Resistance to the impact of all three combined or else change efforts falter.
There are plenty of dissatisfied people in your workplace, your work group, or even just your organization.
There are people who insist that providing negative feedback is the only way to encourage organizational growth and they provide it liberally.
There are people who have been dissatisfied for years in your organization; who have made brief, or even faltering, attempts at change, but have been stymied and have now surrendered.
There are people inside your organization who claim they are dissatisfied, but who are mimicking the sounds of dissatisfaction as a political power move to angle for a better position at the organizational table.
There are people with vision in your workplace, your work group, and your organization. But this vision is hazy, or they are easily distracted by the next “hot” leadership initiatives, or their vision can be compromised with just a little more money or promotion.
There are people who take first steps and attend training, workshops, and seminars.
They read books and articles, combing the internet for advice and guidance about how to overcome the organizational ennui that holds back change.
There are people who take the same first steps, but their enthusiasm doesn’t go anywhere.
They stop at memorizing the “how-to” listicle and when trying to apply the emotional jujitsu against the resistance in their organizations, they experience limited success.
But these elements, dissatisfaction, vision, and first steps, must be greater than the sum of the organizational resistance to them. Or else, the changes that you are seeking inside of your organization, your work group, or even the team that is inside your sphere of influence, won’t happen.
The resistance to change is pernicious, persistent, and it never gives up. The resistance to change is sneaky and sly and sometimes comes in the form of well-meaning people and situations that appear as though they are helping your cause of change when in reality they are hurting it.
No great change happens without conflict. And no great conflict can happen without the resistance being overcome.
And if you think that it can, then you are bound to wind up stuck in the same place of dissatisfaction where you initially began your change journey.
There Are Easy Solutions to Complicated Problems
The two most difficult roadblocks to success in resolving hard problems are the presence of real trade-offs and considerations of power.
Most complicated problems and difficult conflicts have simple solutions. We often confuse what we believe is a hard solution with a complicated one. What makes solutions to hard problems not easy are the presence of trade-offs (scare resources in scare environments) and power.
In a world of scarce resources (the two scarcest being time and attention these days…even more than money) the trade-offs that must be made to create the space for solutions to your most pressing conflicts can seem insurmountable.
Here are a few (of many) trade-offs. Each one can either represent a zero-sum trade-off or an even exchange trade-off:
Conflict or Apathy
Attention or Ignorance
Awareness or Ennui
Momentum or Slowness
Going Along or Resisting
Reassurances or Courage
Change or Status Quo
Focused or Distracted
Power is the consideration behind most forms of fear. Either a lack of power or power focused in an area that doesn’t benefit getting to a solution. That power is often cloaked in reassurances and comes with a healthy dose of resistance.
We often confuse easy with simple in our own minds. Easy solutions to conflicts usually involve the kinds of solutions that favor whatever trade-off benefits us and validates our perspective.
Easy solutions also preserve our power (maintaining the status quo), or grow our power in each conflict situation. Hard solutions take away or diminish our power, as well as go against whatever trade-off we’d like to have honored.
What makes solutions hard to simple problems is that we are often blind to what is hard, and are aware of what is easy.
Be sure that you are making trade-offs you can live with, in a search for complicated solutions to hard problems.
When You Won’t Need Validation
Recognizing that you once held a belief and that now this belief is changing, is the essence of learning.
And by the time you attain that essence, you won’t need the extrinsic validation from an “A” letter grade, a raise, a promotion, or any other validation that you believe extrinsically motivated you to learn in the first place.
To go a step further, you won’t care if the validation for the learning comes or not, from an external source.
And you won’t need reassurance about the actions you take to implement and execute on your newly acquired self-knowledge.
Core Emotional Alchemy
Do you care?
This is the binary core question that we avoid asking out loud, or ask each other in unclear, murky, nonverbal ways, or just don’t ask at all.
This is the right question to ask before thinking of strategies to engage in the practice of emotional alchemy. The kind of alchemy that transmutes emotional labor into motivation in other people.
Alchemy has long been considered a joke, but in leadership, conflict management, and emotional labor, the placebo effect of emotional alchemy is just beginning to be part of a core conversation about how to motivate others.
But the fact is, no one knows (really) how to extrinsically, or intrinsically, motivate others, render them “unlazy,” or otherwise get them to do the work that matters at the level you would like them to do it.
And any article that proposes to do so, is selling a brand of alchemy all its own.
[Advice] Nostalgia and Disposable Income
When a town economy runs on the fuel of nostalgia for an imagined past, and relies on a pool of people with disposable income who are willing to spend money to remember the past, the town is in trouble when either the nostalgia or income run out.
This is not anything new in the culture of towns away from bustling city centers globally, but the phenomenon will become more acutely noticed in the coming years, as nostalgia is abandoned in favor of the new and the shiny (you can’t compete with that) and as disposable income becomes less evenly distributed and less disposable.
And if you don’t think that it can happen in the 21st century, well, there are gold and silver “rush” mining towns throughout the American West that do a brisk business in seasonal tourism as ghost towns.
And it only took them 100 years to get there.
HIT Piece 9.6.2016
Every day of the week, the month, and the year, is Labor Day when you’re in conflict.
Conflict with family, friends, enemies, co-workers; the bandwidth to actually deal with each scenario and relationship in a healthy way, diminishes with each passing moment.
But then, sometimes, through mixing and applying a heady cocktail of avoidance, accommodation, and collaboration, the labor becomes less, well, laborious.
The emotional high that goes along with establishing this sort of safety in the group (thanks to a calmed fear response deep in your amygdala) can last for many days…sometimes for many months.
Until you forget and the next conflict flares up.
Because it’s scary to deal with the problem underneath, and drinking heady cocktails (metaphorically), can always be used as a substitute for the real action of confrontation.
[Advice] Stare Uncomfortable in the Face
The part of the conflict process that is addressed the least (and the most) is the uncomfortable part.
Not the scary part, where you’re actually doing the hard work of resolving an issue with people that you may (or may not) like.
Not the uncomfortable part that comes after you’ve decided to do the work and now you have a choice of whether or not to continue forward when the going forward becomes difficult.
Not the difficult part that comes when you decide to take a step back and examine the entire conflict process and determine where your emotions are coming from.
The most uncomfortable part comes at the beginning of the conflict process, when the resistance is at the highest, and the need for assurance is the most critical, and when you are looking into the eyes of the other party and think:
“This isn’t going to work out.”
That’s the most uncomfortable part.
And we talk almost not at all about it because to do so would be to acknowledge that we might not be emotionally, spiritually, and even physically, strong enough to manage the ups and downs of a process we’d rather avoid.
But the uncomfortable part comes before avoiding. It comes before surrendering. It comes before delaying. It comes before confronting. And it comes before engaging.
The people who can stare the uncomfortable part of the conflict process in the face—and not blink—will be the people who will create teams, that will form organizations, that will win the future, by doing emotional work first, and every other labor second.
It all starts with being able to stare being uncomfortable in the face.