[Strategy] Getting Resolution to Conflict When the Other Party Would Rather Not

There are always two sides to every conflict.

There is always a third side to every conflict as well.

But each party (or sometimes all parties) have little to no interest in getting to that third side. They like the feelings that being in conflict gives them—righteousness, powerfulness, attention and validation.

The party who moves past these desires and feelings and who longs for resolution may never achieve it with the other party. This can lead to feelings of frustration and sometimes even giving up altogether on the process of resolving the conflict.

There are a few things for the party that’s ready to remember, when addressing a party who’s not ready:

Forcing the conflict towards resolution disempowers the party who’s ready and empowers the party who’s not. It’s the same concept as the one behind forcing a screw into a hole where it doesn’t belong. The screw doesn’t fit, the person who’s forcing it gets more frustrated, the hole gets stripped (or broken) and nothing changes.
Before being at peace with the other party (the one who’s no ready) be at peace with yourself. Self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and spiritual growth are all required for the next step.
Be patient. The most unused resource in our world today is rock-ribbed patience. Ghandi had it, his followers didn’t. Jesus had it, his followers didn’t. Those are just two examples, but the point is, sometimes waiting on the other party to change involves just that—doing what you need to do to attain peace with yourself first and letting the other party do whatever it is that they are going to do.

Empowerment through patience, wisdom and personal diligence does not come overnight, nor is it a “get resolution quick” scheme. But it’s rewarding and life affirming, whether or not the resolution that comes about is the one that either party expected.

-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] Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow – The Earbud_U Minute

The King James Bible explains Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus in Acts 26:14 this way:

And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

Modern translations of the Bible have changed the word “pricks” to “goads.” But the meaning—that it is unwise to rebel against authority, particularly Heavenly authority— resonated deeply for the Apostle Paul’s audience in the court of King Agrippa when he was explaining his conversion from Judaism to Christianity.

In addition to the spiritual point, the idea that people (as well as bovines) have to be pricked to alter their course and change their ways is as old as time. Or, at least as old as the Greek proverb from which the wording of the proverb originates.

People in conflict sometimes enjoy the outcomes that they experience through engaging, or avoiding, or accommodating, the conflicts endemic in their lives. When a difficulty arises in an individual’s work or family life, people respond in ways familiar to them and others, following established patterns and mouthing lines in a script written long ago and repeated so often, that it’s not new to anyone involved. When a disagreement between two people happens, they both respond in ways that are “baked in” to their biology and psychology—and then they wonder silently why the outcomes are similar all the time.

American culture celebrates a rebellious spirit. After all, the Founding Fathers rebelled, and all the way from then until now, rebellion, rioting, “speaking truth to power,” and all of the other iterations and manifestations of refusing to go along with any authority have been lauded and honored in American culture.

This is not a recent development. Marketers, novelists, and filmmakers (nonconformists all) were the people who created the image and mass marketed the message that sameness, uniformity and conformity was a negative rather than a positive.

But, think back to the beginning words of the proverb “It IS HARD for thee to kick…”

Rebellion leads to conflicts, wars, and disruptions as power structures at cultural, societal and even familial levels are overturned and democratized. But once the flame of rebellion is lit and stoked, it swells to a brush fire that consumes everything in its path—and its wake. We recall the legend of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

For peace builders, rebellion begins with questioning the underlying assumptions that society has around peace, conflict, resolution, and reconciliation.

But it IS hard to manage, mediate, negotiate and facilitate the fires of rebellion, once they are lit. Saul turned Paul realized this. So did King Agrippa. And we would be wise to recall the deeper meanings and consider the hard ramifications of the old lesson, in our modern, fractious times, as well.

-Peace Be With You All-

[ICYMI] Organizational Climate Change – Part 2

Anthropogenic is a big word that basically means, “the fault of human beings.”

When we look at organizations built by human beings, from families to governments, there are a lot areas where anthropogenic issues combine to create a negative, toxic conflict climate.

And since conflict is a process that never really ends, there are only two kinds of environments that it can happen in, nurturing or harmful.

We all know what a harmful environment looks like, but a supportive, cooperative environment, where conflicts can happen and not leave traumatic scars that carry over into other aspects of our lives—well that’s the Holy Grail isn’t it?

Anthropogenic conflict climate change starts with disrupting the internal focus around an ancient resource that many people lust for deep in their hearts, but no one knows how to define.

Innovations around power tend to focus on redistributing the detritus that arises from the resource—such as wealth, social control or political influence—without ever really addressing the power itself.

There’s gotta be a better way…

Originally published on January 27, 2015.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] Organizational Climate Change – Part 1

The presence of climate change is real. And the climate is heating up the planet.

Everywhere on earth there are objects expelling hot air, and other gases, that serve to create a harmful climate.

And the climate that’s being created is the opposite of creative, nurturing and balanced.

Changing the climate of the planet is hard, but changing the conflict climate of an organization, filled with people with their own ideas, has to be focused on disrupting four areas:

Power abuse and threats
Unhealthy competition
Endemic distrust
Defensive behaviors

And the conflict climate where the psychological atmosphere is balanced in favor of these four areas (rather than in another direction) is bound to experience negative change.

This is particularly true when the conflict management tools used regularly in an organization, are focused in areas that support power, competition, distrust, and defensiveness, such as litigation and policy regulation.

This is also true when the conflict continuum is focused on escalation, and continuing comfortable levels of dysfunction, without seeking to break apart the underlying psychological processes.

Global climate change didn’t happen in a vacuum, and neither does changing the conflict climate of an organization.

Originally published on January 26, 2015.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[Opinion] Trust + Accountability = Quality

There’s a lot of negative social proofing going on right now.

Some of it is transmitted through social media; some of it comes through more traditional means.

Personal branding as a marketing term has fallen out of popularity, now replaced by the equally amorphous term “thought leader” which will soon be replaced by influencer.

Microcelebrity via YouTube, Vine, Facebook videos, and other forms of entertainment are becoming more and more popular, as the inevitability of tools that enable marketers, brands and individuals to create audiences that show up just for them.

The thing is the courage to create and develop a positive, consistent presence in the face of a lack of positive social proofing has never been in shorter supply than it is right now. At the core of this lack are three crucial areas:

Trust: There is a trust shortage. People, personalities and companies that have shown up, day-in and day-out succeed, but will the current crop of YouTube celebrities make it ten more years? And when there’s no belief that the People Who Matter are even paying attention, then organizations and individuals trust themselves more than the community.
Accountability: When there is little trust—or even belief that anything (or anybody) worth trusting will show up in the first place—then there is little incentive for people and organizations to stand up and say “Yes, I made this decision.” Social shaming, a continuing erosion of public (and private) empathy, and the increasing visibility of public (and private) narcissism, are the ingredients that create a toxic stew where Bystander Behavior (or worse) is supported, condoned and given a pass.
Quality: The quality shortage is most loudly evident in the explosion of voices on social media. But it goes deeper than that. In the pursuit of thinner and thinner profit margins, and with high unemployment and social unrest, the search for quality—of work, of attitude, of standards, of values—becomes a quiet, desperate search, which very few organizational supervisors, human resource hiring managers, recently elected politicians or media talking heads, ever really address.

Trust + Accountability = Quality.

It used to be that circumstances, such as poverty, a lack of articulation, a social power structure, were barriers which could be overcome with a little grit, persistence, faith, trust and accountability.

But the belief that underlies those ideas is eroding because the disconnect between the story behind circumstances, and the reality of erosion in the above three areas, is becoming more and more pronounced.

-Peace Be With You All-

Organizational Climate Change – Part 3

There are veiled threats, open threats, unspoken threats and curbed threats.

Threats come about when people are frustrated, feel as though they are powerless, or when they know that they have the power.

Power, of course, is influence and control of events. But the weird thing about power is that it works two ways, kind of like nuclear forces. There is strong power and weak power.

Strong power controls resources, affects goal achievement and creates dependency.

Weak power releases resources, impacts goal achievement and creates independence.

The presence of strong power creates consequences, as does the presence of weak power.

Threats link power to outcomes that are perceived as negative based upon the perception of the receiver of the threat, not the sender of the threat.

The receiver mistakenly believes that they are rendered powerless by the threat. And in a harmful conflict environment, more disputes arise when a receiver believes that they have no agency or autonomy.

When was the last time you felt the strength of weak power in your organization?

-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/