The Brain at Work

The brain is a fascinating organ.

It weighs around 3 pounds and it is in charge of everything.

The mind—the abstract part of us that conceptualizes our relationships between ourselves and the world—has just as much (if not even more) control that the actual physical operation of the brain.

The mind spends most of its time making abstract sense of a world that seems–on the surface anyway–to be irrational, disjointed and arbitrary. This is a 24/7/365 job.

And then, with all of that, we pack ourselves into vehicles, travel to artificially lighted spaces, hang out with people we did not choose and were not born with, and then we wonder why the whole thing just doesn’t work after about 200 years, give or take a few decades.

Our brains betray us.

Our minds flay us.

Our bodies decay on us.

And all we have to show for it is a few little notes with dead national leaders, trees or other objects on them.

-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/

[Opinion] A Modern History For Labor Day

“Eight-hour day with no cut in pay.”

Working for a $1.50 a day, 60 hours a week, during a six-day work week is enough to make any American decide that enough is enough.

At least, it was during the last twenty years of the 19^th century.

The last major economic disruption of technology, society, culture, politics and economics occurred at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

We who are living through the second decade of the 21st century, are going through another series of major economic and cultural disruptions right now and have been for at least the last 20 years.

The history of Labor Day though, tends to be forgotten, in light of the seemingly never ending, daily stream of reportage around conflict, uncertainty and social disruptions.

What does this have to do with Labor Day and the establishment of an eight hour a day/forty hour work week?

People these days, seem to do more work for less compensation, and this is the core of the issue of Labor Day, because, inherently, more money equals more happiness, less conflict, lowered uncertainty and more peace.

Right?

Well, if that were so, we would never need a day to celebrate the end of the summer and—tangentially—the eight hour work day.

Right?

-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/

Christian Peacemaking in a Fallen World – Bully Edition

Bullies are everywhere it seems.

They are at school. They are at work.

Have they always been around or are we only now becoming sensitive to their presence and their impact?

From Donald Sterling to the workplace bully to the disaffected school shooter, modern Western culture seems to be turning up more and more of the disaffected and the dysfunctional.

Eventually, the societal call will come to violate the inviolable in order to ferret out and better address the impacts of bully pathology.

The conflation between the everyday bully and the societal scourge will become easier and easier as time progresses and peace will become harder and harder to attain.

There will be less understanding, less forgiveness and the road to reconciliation will be even tougher.

The hard work of #BuildingForTheFuture is just beginning…

-Peace Be 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: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

The 3 Pieces of a Bad Idea

There is a bad idea floating around out here.

It is an idea based off of get rich quick, short-term thinking.

It permeates the atmosphere of media reporting around start-up culture.

It has moved from the realm of the late night infomercial to the realm of the internet with astonishing ease.

The bad idea states that if a person just does one, secret trick that they will lose weight, gain height, and in general, improve their lives and fortunes.

The core of this bad idea really lies in three areas:

Hard work is boring, not flashy. Anything that can be done to avoid it should be done.
Consistency is unsexy and should be done away with in favor of short bursts of spectacle.
Commitment is a trap. Distract the audience long enough with spectacle and they will forgive lack of commitment efforts in work that isn’t necessarily flashy.

Individually, these areas are easy to combat and train out of an approach to anything worthwhile, from mediation to marketing.

Collectively, however, these three areas give power to the bad idea of an “easy solution” which is so pervasive that, when it takes root, in any area is almost impossible to dislodge.

-Peace Be With You All-

Washing Hands

Conflict avoidance has a long and storied history.

On this day, Good Friday, we recall that the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate “washed his hands” of “that whole Jesus issue” sometime around AD 30.

The action (partially for the crowd, curiously enough) was symbolic, but symbols had mass meaning in times well before television, mass media and mass communication.

And they hold even more meaning now.

The symbolic washing of hands that Pilate did, was a way to avoid (for political and religious considerations) the consequences (and the resulting guilt) of rendering a decision.

Choosing to avoid conflict by making no choice at all is a legitimate way to resolve a conflict, but consequences still exist.

On this Good Friday…

-Peace Be 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: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Caucusing Arete

Caucusing in a mediation happens when a mediator takes each party aside and talks to them privately about issues and concerns that the other party may not be open to hearing.

In a divorce mediation, it could be about issues of infidelity, emotional abuse or unresolved anger.
In an organizational mediation, it could be about issues of pay structure, proprietary information, or that there’s a personal problem with the other party.
In a church mediation, it could be a about an interpretation of Scripture or a moment of clarity.

No matter what it is, however, the phrase heard most often within a caucus is “I don’t want [insert name of party here] to know this, but…”

A mediator’s virtue then shows, because she has a choice about addressing the opposite party with a concern that could tip the mediation one way—or another.

Arête is the Greek word for the idea of living up to your potential with excellence. And when a mediator navigates a caucus with arête, it can make all the difference.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

Email: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Wisdom in the Machine

When the astronaut Dave powers down the rebellious HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and more recently in the 2013 film, Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix, we determine through pop culture, what machine “death” looks–and feels–like.

The fact of murder comes from the fact of life and ideas and philosophies that we have as individual humans–and collective societies–about what traits constitute life.

In the case of a machine, we here at HSCT take the position that a machine cannot overcome the limitations of its creator.

Life is defined, not only by self-sustaining processes (we were asked while writing this post, if it would be murder to power down a machine created by another machine) but also by wisdom that is attained through life experience.

The crux of wisdom lies at the intersection of common sense, insight and understanding.

HAL 9000 may have had one, or even two, of those things—such as insight and understanding—but “he” (see how we anthropomorphized an inanimate object there) lacked the third trait in spades: common sense.

Just like Skynet in Terminator or the machines and computer programming networks of The Matrix, HAL 9000 was unable to negotiate in good faith with his creator.

“He” made an “all or nothing” decision about Dave’s presence, Dave’s mission and Dave’s motives and then took extreme action.

The same way that the machines did in The Matrix and Terminator.

The ability to negotiate with others in good faith, and to honor those agreements, is a human trait based in knowledge, experience, common sense and insight, not just a happy byproduct of a conscious mind.

And until machines have the ability to negotiate with, not only their environments in the rudest sense of the term, but also with their creators, we should feel free to power them up—or down—at our will.

After all, our Creator does the same thing.

Right?

-Peace Be With You All-

Take Me to the Other Side

Much ink has been spilled about the impact of Martin Luther King’s life and legacy.

As a conflict engagement specialist, though, I think of something else today.

Nonviolent resistance is the best way to expose the hypocrisy and unjustness of legalized policies and has been used from Jesus to Ghandi to MLK to Nelson Mandela to affect change in societies and cultures.

But what about those folks on the other side of the confrontation?

What about those folks in power in the American South who had instituted systems of privilege and power that oppressed people?

What about the British government in India or the Roman government in Judea?

What about the white minority population and government in South Africa?

Why didn’t they look at the resistance, stop what they were doing, lay down their arms, put away their power, and work collaboratively to come to a just and equitable resolution?

In conflicts and mediation situations, I often observe parties who are incapable of changing their patterns of behavior, their ingrained responses and their knee jerk reactions to external stimuli coming in the form of difficulty, confrontation and conflict.

If people as individuals cannot look at the resistance, stop what they are doing, lay down their (metaphorical) arms, put away their power, and work collaboratively to come to a just and equitable resolution in a personal or family conflict, then what hope do countries, cultures and peoples have?

The issue at that point becomes one of decisions, choices and the will to follow through on them.

Jesus and Ghandi had the will.

So did MLK and Mandela.

The will on the other side was weaker, the ability to “save face” was not as strong and the capacity for change was not as developed.

Mediators are the only ones with the training, expertise and desire to get all the parties to the table to even begin the talking process.

Yet, we still have volunteer mediators in this country.

Yet, we still think that mediation, collaboration and compromise are for the faint of heart.

Something to think about, today on January 20, 2014.

-Peace Be With You All-

Quality is Job One

Trust is evident when a company, organization, association or individual promotes themselves, their ideas, their products or their services online, either via social media or via search.

Trust works in a social sense (again, both on and off line) because without a relationship, even if it’s a tangential one, connection cannot happen and then referrals cannot happen and cash—revenue—cannot change hands.

Trust is the only thing that works to facilitate this transaction.

Trust works when something—a product, service or idea—is given generously, and nothing is expected in return. This is something new in our industrial based, “let’s all make a better widget the next time around,” process that has dominated the Western world for the last 80 years.

Trust worked then as well, but it worked more as trust in an industrial based, quality driven process, rather than people.

Trust got us more stuff, because the corollary to trusting in the industrial process, was trusting that the industrial employer would provide a safe job, for life, with safe working conditions: Same thing with government promises based on social programs, social safety and social/business regulation, both local and national.

Process, quality and precision came first, safety, security and high pay came second, people, relationships and “giving it away for free” came third—if they made the list at all.

Remember the old Ford ad tagline from the 90’s: “Quality is job ONE.”

Even the Bible, in Psalm 115, the exhortation to trust is evident in verse 11 which states that you who fear the Lord (where “fear “means to stand in awe, to be afraid or to have reverence for a superior being) trust in the Lord, for He is their help and their shield.

Why belabor this point?

Well, there are 20,000 volunteer mediators working in dispute resolution centers, court rooms and law offices around the country right now. And if you are a mediator or a conflict professional, trying to make a living—or make a little revenue—doing this work, then you are in a tough bind.

This is because so many folks who could be your target market for trust, connection, referral and revenue are already knee deep in trusting that a non-fee based relationship will endlessly provide for all of their needs.

Mediation is about connection and relationship. Mostly, it’s also about trust: Trusting the mediator to get out of the way; trusting the other party to deal fairly; trusting the process of mediation to produce whatever outcomes are desired by the two parties in conflict.

How does an enterprising professional then, transform freely given trust into paying revenue?

Well, that’s the real question for this week, isn’t it?

-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/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com

Why So “Serious?”

Amid the theater and drama surrounding the very real conflict around the 2013 government shutdown, the Affordable Health Care Act implementation and other events in Washington DC, we are a little surprised here at HSCT to hear one word fall consistently from our government leaders’ lips:

“Serious.”

As in, “I won’t negotiate without serious reform on the table.”

“I won’t talk to [Insert name of politician/political party here] until they make a serious offer for change.”

Now, part of our role here at HSCT is to teach people how to negotiate. We teach how to navigate stonewalling, interests, judgments about the future, risk tolerance, and time preference. In addition, we cover lessons around framing, communication and the use of deceptive tactics.

We’re also not naïve to the whims and modes of American political history and realize that there have been “budget battles” in Washington DC that looked intractable, but that eventually produced workable compromises between governing parties.

However, nowhere in our training or in our experiences, were we ever taught to not negotiate until the other party became “serious” and made an offer we could live with before beginning the bargaining process.

This all kind of puts us in mind of The Joker in The Dark Night .

He didn’t want to negotiate until Batman was “serious” either. And yet, somehow, negotiations (such as it were in the film) moved forward anyway.

And that’s what has us so surprised.

After all of the bluffing, deception, and everything else, we are absolutely sure that the debt ceiling, the government shutdown and the Affordable Health Care Act implementation will be resolved one way or another.

But, when people in power harden their positions—as do their followers, the pundits and the casual observers—the chances that, to paraphrase from The Joker “everything burns,” become that much more possible.

Why then, is there such emphasis on “serious?”

-Peace Be With You All-