Santa’s Accountability Problem

Trust during the holiday season is freely given. It must be something about the charitable feeling and spirit around the month between the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Christmas.

Whatever the psychological, theological or emotional motive this feeling of trust springs from, the public is sure to hear stories in the news about organizations (the Salvation Army), corporations (any retail giant) and governments (yes, I’m looking at YOU Healthcare.gov) abusing this trust for nefarious means.

It kind of puts in perspective what was said here and here this week; but bear our indulgence on this point for just a moment:

Trust requires that the giver and the receiver engage in a dance of vulnerability and responsibility.

The giver must be willing to put down cynicism and suspicion and the receiver must be accountable and responsible.

The charities and organizations that are doing best—both now and in previous holiday seasons—are those that focus on the intersection between quality, accountability, transparency and relationship.

When trust happens between the giver and the receiver, a relationship is built up over time that neutralizes deceit, suspicion, obfuscation and irresponsibility.

And that’s a process that’s even more scalable than the industrial based processes that got us to where we are now.

Remember, it took us 100 years to get to this point…it will take at least that long to get us back to sanity.

Are you, and what you are building, up to the challenge?

-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/

Towards A More Thankful Union

We here at the HSCT Communication Blog are all thankful this day for many things:
The country where we live,
The family that we have,
The connections we are about to make,
The business that we are growing,
The tools that we have to explore the world,
The intellect and science behind them,
The religiousity that allowed people to develop ideas,
The advancements in the world that feed more people well,
The times that are a changin’,
The peace we have an opportunity to build,
The relationships we have had a chance to build,
The connections that we have made,
The critics, naysayers and disbelievers that we have,
The “no’s,”
The “yes’s,”
The “maybe laters,”
The incredulity,
The pain
…and the promise…

-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/

A Suggested Donation

Placing trust and value in a process that is not fee based—instead is given away for free, a low cost or for a “suggested donation”—is the future in an abundant, connection based economy where, ultimately at the end of the day, everyone will be giving something away for nothing.

“Well, you know, we got what we paid for,” is the common lament expressed by many who have participated in a free process.

The two most common questions that people have who have little trust in a free, abundance based process are:

“When are you going to take all of this stuff that you are doing for free and make some money off of it?”
“When are you going to stop putting out ‘junk content’ and monetize it?”

The questions tend to come from individuals, corporations, organizations and others who are so wedded to the industrial based past, that they cannot understand that “free” creates an abundant, connection based future.

The reverse of these two questions are the ones that many (who are also wedded to the industrial based past) ask who are at the provider end, offering a service for “free” or in exchange for a “suggested donation.”

“Why can’t we get people to pay us to do this (insert name of humanitarian service here)?

Scarcity in an abundance economy is built around the cornerstone of trust: If payment is coming for something that is offered initially for free, then trust must be established and maintained that what is being paid for has even greater value than what was just received for free.

Or, I have to trust that the organization or person requesting a “suggested donation” for a service that they just provided for free, will give me back something with even better consistency and quality.

Either way, the hard work for the provider, shifts from asking for a fee and hoping that one will come while toiling under budget constraints and doing mediocre, rote work, to instead providing the service for free and then creating a relationship with the end-user based on the idea that something else more awesome lies just behind the pay wall.

The newspaper business couldn’t figure this one out.

Neither could the music industry.

Both have collapsed.

And more collapses are coming, from the way cars are sold to the way that the United Way raises money.

-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/

HSCT’s website: http://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct

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

Top 8 Negative Communication Traits

Everyone is in sales all the time everywhere.

We try to persuade our family to go to the store, or on vacation.

We try to persuade our bosses to give us a raise, or more control in our division.

We try to convince others to buy whatever it is that we are selling as part of our jobs, or our volunteer work.

However, here at HSCT in our role as peacemakers, we are constantly reminded that it’s not what we say, but how we say it, that is important.

There are ways to drive these people apart

What we say may lead to escalation.

How we say what we say, will definitely lead to escalation: Particularly that escalation from merely a difficult situation or conversation to an all-out conflict that may emotionally ignite and reignite for years.

What are the top eight ways to communicate with other people that will guarantee you a negative relationship?

Passive-Aggressiveness: This is the classic “I don’t have a problem. Them folks over there have a problem.” If you don’t think that you are the problem, it’s time to get self-aware about…well…yourself.
Put-Downs: “Of course Sheila causes the problem, she’s never not been an idiot in this organization.” Or, “When was the last time Bill actually contributed anything of value?” Cue everybody laughing. Cue a difficult conversation upcoming with Bill or Sheila.
Scapegoating: “I didn’t have anything to do with the failure of this idea. I was just the middleman.”
Denial: Is not just a river in Egypt. “I didn’t do it. You never saw me do it. You can’t prove anything.”
Argumentativeness: There are people who love to cynically disagree and there are people who aren’t seeking to disagree, but to merely act as the “Devil’s Advocate.” The first type seeks to destroy for the sake of elevating themselves and dismissing others (see Put-Downs above). The second type seeks to push others to greatness in projects and ideas. It’s a simple matter of collaboration versus condemnation.
Lying: This one is simple. Just remember, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. Just ask President Nixon. Actually, no, ask former President Bill Clinton.
Slander: Slander is a false spoken statement. For instance “Sheila has to have this project succeed, after all, she’s gotta support her kids since her husband lost his job.” Libel is a false written statement. For instance, Sheila has ten kids by four men and can’t support any of them.
Gossip: This last one is particularly cancerous and corrosive because in life, while “that’s just how Bill is,” or “Sheila always takes a long lunch,” may not immediately seem to be damaging, the long term effects of such statements can serve to lead to everything other negative communication behavior on this list.

-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 page on Facebook

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

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

HSCT’s website: http://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct

My First Job

In the spirit of the blog series going around LinkedIn, featuring thought leaders and influencers writing about the first jobs that they had, some of which laid the foundations for attaining the success and influence they currently enjoy, I want to add to the noise by writing about my first job.

I started working “officially” at around age 14 or 15.Before that, I had briefly been a child actor at around age 8 or 9 in a few local commercials in the American Southwest, as well as performing in the pilot for a show that was to be produced by an Italian film company, based on the old school children’s cartoon, Lucky Luke (check the ballad out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Gm3acD0V4). I had also been an altar server in the local Byzantine Catholic church and had worked with my mother “off the books” in a janitorial capacity for the company that she started very briefly.

However, my first, official paid gig, was working in a privately owned dog kennel/animal rescue shelter in Naperville, Illinois. I went in the business in the evenings, after hours and worked from around 5pm to around 11pm.I worked with a team to clean up after the animals, move them from indoor kennels to outdoor kennels, feed them and make sure the place was locked up at the end of the night and that things were prepped for in the morning.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of dog and cat poop as well as bird and reptile poop to clean up on a nightly basis. I once cleaned up after a Kimono dragon. Some of the animals were well behaved; others not so much. One of the dogs there (who was classified as a “long-term” boarder because she was so neurotic that no family would adopt her) was consistently filthy and borderline dangerous.

And, after all of this, my first paycheck was a robust $68.55, based off of the old $4.25 minimum wage.

This first job taught me three valuable lessons that I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else and that I have kept throughout the years that I have worked other jobs and other entrepreneurial ventures:

There is no legal, moral, ethical job or position that I am “above” doing. Humility is egalitarian and will take you further than pride, ignorance or ingratitude.
There is no benefit to lacking compassion. The animals were unable to take care of themselves and for 6 hours a day for three days a week, I was part of a team that could give them compassion and care.
There is nothing valuable in being greedy. To paraphrase from The Big Lebowski, “it’s not about the money!” Sometimes, to get your foot in the door, you have to be willing to play chess at about four levels higher than everyone else and realize–at an emotional and psychological level–that this too, shall pass.

Rolling up my sleeves and getting involved in cleaning up in the arena of peace, talking and writing about new approaches to doing the “same old things,” and pushing to be compensated accordingly, all began at a dog kennel/animal rescue shelter.What was your first job?

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

The Final Conflict

Our societal focus tends to be on the beginning and the middle of a life.

And the events that clog up the middle of a life.

You know the ones: school, single hood, marriage, kids and retirement.

But in the youth oriented society that we have unarguably built over the last 50 years in this country, we have neglected to talk about the necessity of mortality and death.

Maybe with the new federal healthcare law and it’s eponymously dubbed “death panels” we will change our societal approach, but we here at HSCT aren’t betting one it.

With the exception of the Showtime series, Six Feet Underfrom a few years ago, when was the last cultural moment of seriousness around this topic?

Death and its surrounding shoals represent the final conflict: People’s souls and Spirits fight the flesh to leave this world and the flesh (both the flesh that is dying and the flesh that is the people surrounding the flesh that is dying) has fights with the people.

We are trapped in this world, but, whether a devout atheist or a devout believer, the desire is to resolve the last conflict in our favor and to win the last argument.

And death does that.

It is the ultimate leveler. It wins all arguments and settles all debts. Google, NSA data centers, federal student loans—none of them have ever overcome–or will overcome–that final leveler.

What does death cost the living?

In terms of money and fees associated with the burial, internment or cremation of the last earthly evidence of a human being—the body—the cost can range from either astronomical to affordable.

But we the living don’t find that out until the flesh is almost at an end.

Legal documents, procedures, the medical process and all the other human—and dare we say, temporal—aspects of death are just as mysterious and shrouded in silence.

What are we to make of this equation: Youth oriented society + Silence around the topic + simple processes made to seem esoteric = death made mysterious.

We as mediators, conflict managers, coaches, negotiators and peacebuilders need to educate ourselves more around this final area, cloaked in silence, in order to expose the conflicts and generate better outcomes that will create peace for those who are left behind.

-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 page on Facebook
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/
HSCT’s website: http://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct

[Opinion] Rendering Unto Peace

There is nothing more capitalistic and freedom loving than making peace.

Think about it.

Two people come together to agree (or disagree) on an issue.

The issue gets resolved, gets to stalemate or gets blown up, but no matter what happens, the people involved in the process (the warring parties and the mediator) get to participate together.

Managing conflict is a place where the capitalistic principle of work = pay should rule.

The principles of freedom and republican democracy work in conflict management as well, because all parties involved can make a choice, whether they want to participate or not, and to get to resolution, everyone must learn and practice the principles of negotiation.

We here at HSCT grow weary of hearing political commentators and others talk about the fallacy of conflict resolution and of developing peace, while at the same time focusing on litigation, imprisonment, warfare and strife as the preferred way to go.

Jesus talked about peace. He also talked about money (check out Matthew 22:15-22 on this one).

When are we going to cease believing that making peace and making money are mutually exclusive?

-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/