[Advice] Does Your Manager Think Managing Conflict is Important

The most often repeated piece of feedback is “The people who should be here in this training/presentation/speaking engagement are not here.”

What does that mean though, other than as a piece of feedback?

Typically, it means that the people in the hierarchical chain above the people attending the training are seen as part of the problem, rather than as part of the solution, by the people in the room.

It also means that the people in the hierarchical chain above the people attending the training are interested in maintaining the organizational “status quo” and not really moving forward to become part of the solution; by role modeling what the future might be like for the people in the room.

Either way, this piece of feedback is indicative of the appearance of members of management not really believing that conflicts, disputes, disagreements, or even fights in the workplace are all that important to deal with at the root.

This feedback also indicates that the attendees will probably continue to experience frustration in the organization; even as they implement all of their newly attained knowledge of how to engage with conflicts better.

And then, as the frustration mounts and the cognitive dissonance really kicks in, employees will either become more disengaged in the workplace—or leave the workplace altogether; creating a cycle of people who arrive, then get trained, get disillusioned and then leave.

Managers, supervisors, and others up in the hierarchical chain, can thwart all of this, but it requires an investment in finding the time many claim not to have in the short term, to play the long game in building an organization doing work that matters, in the long term.

-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] Does Your Boss Think Addressing Workplace Disputes is Important?

You work in a human resources capacity in an organization and your boss had never shown an interest in progressively resolving the consistent arguments, disputes, disagreements that lead to creating and developing a toxic workplace culture. And you—as the human resource professional—spend days, weeks, months and even years addressing these issues as a regular part of your job function. If this is you, then Conflict-Resolution-as-a-Service products, process and approach may not be for your organization.

One of the consistent pieces of feedback that I receive following a corporate training with supervisors, managers or heads of human resources is that “The people who need to be in this room aren’t in this room.”

My response is always “Well, get them in this room and they can take the training that you just took and we can begin the work of transforming the organization.”

Then, one of three expressions typically crosses the face of the human resources employee: fear, resignation, apathy.

Then they leave the room and I hear from them again in the next year, or through recommendations and referrals that they make to other human resource departments in other organizations.

There are three reasons for the fear, the apathy and the resignation:

Organizational cultural responses to arguments, disagreements, and disputes tend to mirror the emotional and psychological responses of the founders/owners. If the owner/founder doesn’t view arguments, disagreements, and disputes as problematic in their own life (or has an avoidance posture rather than a collaboration posture) then there won’t be a change in organizational culture no matter how much HR advocates for one.
Lack of organizational interest in addressing issues in the past is often seen as evidence that present and future issues should be addressed in the same way. Human beings have limited attention and energy (i.e. bandwidth) and thus seek out mental, emotional and psychological “shortcuts” to addressing issues as they arise. Past performance is often seen as indicative of future performance, not to mention future outcomes and responses.
It is often easier to do nothing because of the “arbitration stance” many individuals in upper management positions default to. The “arbitration stance” happens when an argument, disagreement, or dispute finally rises to the level where upper management is forced to address it. Both the parties in the conflict walk into a meeting separately, they each plead their cases and then a decision in response to the conflict floats out of the black box of the upper management’s office in the form of a meaningless, jargon filled, policy appealing memo. Nobody involved in the arguments, disagreements, and disputes knows what the resolution is, no one understands what the memo means and no one in human resources knows what to do next.

All of the above reasons cause human resources professionals to determine that the upper management (“the boss”) has not shown an interest in Conflict-Resolution-as-as-Service in their organization and never will. Thus leading to acquiring the bare minimum of training (a “nice to have”) and the feedback to the trainer (me) of “The people who need to be in this room aren’t in this room.”

For nimble organizations, where attaining employee-cultural “fit” is more important than making widgets, Conflict-Resolution-as-a-Service is a product whose time has come. For the remaining organizations, the four hour corporate training will remain standard until their organizations change, or go out of business.

-Peace Be With You All-

[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-

[Strategy] CRaaS for HR

Human resource professionals deal in regulation, policy and procedure.

Human resource professionals are often assigned to address conflict issues and determine consequences for participants involved in policy—and even legal and regulatory—violations.

And yet, for all of their necessity, human resource professionals are in an endless quandary of trying to be valuable, yet remaining unseen.

“No one wants to be in HR. Young people don’t even think about going into HR.”

As organizations shrink and change, the human resource professional must begin living up to the name of their industry. Learning to advance, beyond just the quick workshop session must occur in:

Innovation
Social media use
Conflict engagement
Emotional Intelligence

And then, the learning must be embedded into the organization and the HR professional, with software resources based in the cloud.

If not, the human resource profession runs the risk of being yet another industry—or division in an organization—where the question “Why don’t we just have AI powered robots do this work?,” becomes the opening question to disruptive change.

-Peace With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/