[Advice] The Best Advice of 2016

It’s hard to know what the best advice is. After all, it’s been a long 2016, and its shaping up to be an even longer 2017.

Here is a list of some ideas to keep you going in the year to come. Or too look back on and wonder what I was thinking:

Relational resonance—The reason that litigation is such a poor method for resolving disputes is because of most—if not all—disagreements, fights, and “differences of opinion,” are about relationships, built on reciprocation and maintained through common resonance.

What do you do after you thin slice another party in conflict? — Thin slicing is at the core of the old saying “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” Yet, here’s the challenge: If you can’t even handle being challenged on your thin-slicing tendencies daily, then expecting that a candidate running for office, a celebrity, or some other person to do what you cannot, is a childish expectation.

No more looking…just leap…— Having the courage to make a change, take an action, do something generous, collaborative, or outrageous, and to do despite the dominant culture of your organization is the essence of leap day. This courage has nothing to do with looking (you’ve already spent an inordinate amount of time looking already) and has everything to do with stepping out and saying: I made this.

Doing what you’ve always done— Intentionality is the watchword in conflict. But, you do have an alternative. You can always keep intentionally doing what you’ve always done and hope that changes will result.

We are surrounded everywhere by the remains of “average”— We are surrounded by the remains of “ok” in a time when “ok” is no longer good enough. And when the disconnect between “ok” and reality reaches a breaking point, we get demagogues, marketers, con men, flim-flam men, and others selling us a bill of goods, rather than the hard truth: “Ok” was never good enough and doing “just a little better” than last year isn’t going to get the same outcome financially, morally, ethically, or materially anymore.

There is a difference between broadcasting, sharing, and interacting, both in the physical world and in the digital world— Broadcasting, sharing and interacting are happening at all levels in our society; and, our digital tools have provided us with the ease of communicating faster and faster. But this also means that our responses to conflicts in our lives become more shallow and immediate, even as the reactions cut us emotionally at a deeper and deeper level.

What are your core values? — Values are not positions (which are often about personal (and sometimes public) identity or maintaining “face”) nor are they about interests (which are often flexible, negotiable, situational, and impersonal). And too often in our public language, at work, at school, in social media, and other places, we use the language of principles to talk about positions—or even worse, to justify mere interests.

There are no shortcuts to accomplishing anything. Boy, do I wish that there were…— The quality, or trait, of getting up and doing what needs to be done, particularly when you don’t want to do it, is sometimes called “will” or “grit” or “courage.”

But these are fancy labels for something a lot deeper that we can’t really describe. And anybody who wants to make a dent in the universe, no matter how big or small, must possess this trait in great quantities if they are to make the dent they want to make.

The impresario’s dilemma is balancing between quantity and quality— When there is so much ephemeral stuff (such as content, ideas, and art), considerations around quality become the watchword for monitoring and disengaging with ideas that we find to be reprehensible. But keep in mind that, once you increase the quantity, quality only suffers when caring about the outcome takes a second place to getting the outcome to happen.

The leap (hey, I wrote about leaping again this year!) from the inside to the outside is going on right now— The deep revelation of the revolution called the Internet, is that it continues to demonstrate that networks are the most valuable resource that an individual, a corporation, or a government possesses to leverage innovation, change, and advancement.

The fundamentals changed this election year. This is rarely a metaphorically bloodless act. And it was not bloodless this year…— People place a lot of importance in understanding, revisiting, and honoring the fundamentals of a problem, because they come, not from conceived wisdom, or even perceived wisdom, but from received wisdom.

Demanding a return to the fundamentals can be a callback to received wisdom, but only if the current problem resembles a past one in any kind of way. And problems involving people, rather than processes, are constantly in flux.

Conspiracy theories abounded at the end of the year. So, here’s a tip about how to deal with all of that…— The standing rule is that people tend to most easily believe in conspiracy theories that they create, and tend to reject the conspiratorial thinking of others.

The trouble with our concerns about fake news is that they come from a place where critical thinking has been reduced in favor of playing to (and supporting) audience attention spans that rival hummingbirds.

In 2017, let’s all commit to growing the size of our ears to hear, our eyes to read, and our brain to absorb, rather than just our voices to speak.

[Opinion] Will You Read This?

There are a lot of tips, tricks, “how-to’s” and hack based articles, blog posts, and columns, everywhere. And there always have been.

Partially, this is because the people reading the articles want the easy out. This is evidenced in corporate training where attendees will say “I don’t want the theory, just give me the practical tips.” Or, ask “Is there a silver bullet for this?”

The silver bullet.

The easy answer.

Cheat codes in video games.

Will this be on the test?

What’s the shortcut?

I don’t want to hear your story.

I don’t care about the theory.

I want to work smarter, not harder.

More 10 second videos.

This was too long, and I didn’t read it.

Could you make the letter/blog post/email shorter?

Do I have to study?

Are we there yet?

This is taking too long.

It’ll be there in thirty minutes or the next one is free.

You’re using ten long words to say something you could say in four short words.

Yes, there are more and more ways to get around doing the hard work of engaging, relationship building, thinking about theory and how it applies to your life, and the challenges of actually addressing situations rather than outcomes. But there are fewer and fewer ways to get long form analysis, well thought out arguments, structured content, and opportunities to take in a philosophy, struggle with it, and learn from it.

We don’t need more tips and tricks. We’ve got enough of that.

We do need more deliberation, theory, thinking, and testing. And from that comes the ability to take calculated risks in conflicts—and perhaps to build that world that we all so desperately claim to want.

-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/

[Advice] On Focus Past the TL;DR World

In a world of seven second attention spans, and stimulus reward systems based in electronic tools that update with vibrations, beeps and blinking lights, believing in the efficacy of the multitasking myth is mentally and emotionally deadly.

The organizations, teams, and even individuals who will “win” the future, who will be the most successful in the long-term, will be those that can focus on one thing at a time. They will also be the ones that allow their employees the ability to mindfully focus on tasks to accomplish goals and reduce the friction engendered by interruption, conflict, and poor communication. This is the place where our new tools can take us, such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, and even the internet everywhere and in every physical thing.

It’s going to take more than a few new tools to reverse the evolution of the human brain: A brain wired for stimulus, reaction, giving into impulse, and desiring the illusion of safety and stasis at the expense of everything else. Sure, mental and tool-based “short hand” may fool our brains into thinking that we are avoiding chaos and indecision, and encouraging stasis and security, but in a world where the short-hand for absorbing ideas we’re too impatient to deal with is “too long; didn’t read” we need more focus, not less.

-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/

Actively Listening Past TL;DR

Relationships between humans become complicated in face-to-face communication when there is little use of emotional intelligence, little cognitive understanding of what is going on in a conversation and little ability to engage positively in conflict with another person.

So, in the digital space, tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) becomes a shorthand way of not listening to arguments we’d rather not hear.

Avoiding bad news and curating a social media feed becomes a way of limiting information that we feel is unpleasant and likely to lead to internal conflicts—or external ones.

And emotional intelligence goes out the window with flame wars, spam commentary and useless “noise.”

So, what’s the average person to do to combat all of this?

The way to actively listen online is too do the things that aren’t sexy:

  • Read the long, laboriously written article that lays out an argument that you can’t follow.
  • Watch a YouTube video—or better yet a TED Talk—covering an area where you have no knowledge.
  • Develop a sense of that which is “noise” and that which is “valuable” rather than throwing up your hands in the air and resorting to the old trope of “what’s the world coming too.”

Do these things successfully and you will find that actively listening through the digital noise is the same skill set that you have to engage with to actively listen through the face-to-face noise.

-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/