The One Limitation on Greatness

The one thing that destroys most negotiations is differing assumptions around value, resources and time.

One party may view resources as limited, value as scarce and time as a precious commodity to never be wasted.

The other party may view resources as approaching abundant, time as flexible and thoughts of value may never enter into their mind.

The destruction happens when one party cares little to nothing about attempting to enter the “headspace” of the other party, in order to see things from a different frame of reference.

They may lack patience, empathy, understanding or even the personal willpower to make that cognitive and emotional leap.

This is why there are so few diplomats, business “moguls,” great salespeople and great orators. It’s also why from the boardroom to the living room, life is littered with the corpses of failed negotiations.

The issue is not tactics—which everybody wants more of—but strategies—which require weeks, months and years to get 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: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

The Roots of Conflict – Biblical Edition

Conflict is a process that allows for changes to happen. It is inevitable because our world has a sin problem from which all our other problems flow like water from the rock.

Conflict grows because we are different and we view our differences through a frame—or prism—of selfishness, rather than selflessness and with a lack of self-awareness of the needs of others.

We see this illustrated in the Bible in several places, most notably, in John 16:33, Acts 15:36-41, Philippians 4 and James 4:1-3.

Between Christians, conflict can be managed, but not necessarily resolved, because conflict is normal and will never go away. There are other people in the world , with their own deeply held philosophies, baked in personalities, and rock ribbed interpretations of the way the world should work. And that will always separate us at a fleshly level.

There are a few things that we can do to manage conflicts better:

Separate people from positions: People are not the problem. The emotions that we have around them are the problem. The position that another individual holds about the problem can be addressed separately from the person. Remember that emotions around the problem and the position that the other person has taken about the problem cause disputes to grow in our hearts.
Use “I” statements: “I” feel, “I” want, “I” am…any sentences that begin with “I” statement perform two critical actions: They diffuse the problem and expose the emotions under the problem. “I” statements also create ownership of your emotions around the problem.
Engage with empathy: When you work from the neck up, you miss a lot. Tactics and strategy to approach another person in conflict are laid out in Matthew 18:15-17 are logical. Emotions are messier and more difficult to address. Empathy requires dealing with our own emotions and being tuned into what is going on inside of us, and also focusing on what’s going on with the other person.

God requires us to be “other-centered.” And in a fallen, self-centered world, it is difficult to operate in grace, forgiveness and with self-awareness.

But at no other time in the history of the world has there ever been a better time to start.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What to Do When You have Issues…

…and you will.

There will be days when no one will take your cold calls, your warm calls, or even a hot call.

There will be days when the family, the children, the house and other distractions will seem to crowd out the endless stream of productive work that you know you have to do.

There will be days when you will get angry/depressed/despondent/melancholy and it will seem to others that are outside of your internal mental circus that you are actually not all that engaged with reality.

There will be days when, no matter how many accolades and “thank yous” you will receive, they will seem to roll off of your back in the face of mounting debts, panic and fear of imminent failure.

On the days that the conflict consultant has these issues, she should push back from the table, take a break and go have coffee with a trusted friend or colleague.

Physical activity also helps, in taking a walk, or going for a run.

Finally, on the days when the committed conflict consultant has issues the most important thing to remember is that this too, shall pass.

-Peace Be With You All-

7 Points of Articulation

As journalism continues to crumble, thought leaders and cultural critics still write about blogging with a rhetorical sneer.

But, we don’t know of any other way for an aspiring writer (or journalist) to gain an audience before getting the job title.

In essence, the process for developing a resume has changed from writing down accomplishments on an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper and then showing up at a scheduled time to engage in a false dance and (hopefully) get hired to perform a job, to a process whereby if the aspiring writer isn’t blogging, tweeting, creating images and videos, and podcasting before the call comes from the major leagues–well then they don’t get picked at all.

And, since every blogger is not going to wind up with the name recognition of Andrew Sullivan or a writer for TechCrunch, there are seven different areas that a blogger may want to consider as they develop their blogging career:

Reciprocation: The rule of reciprocation says that we try to repay what another person has done for us. In the realm of blogging, this rule applies through comments on, social sharing of, and curation of, content from yourself and other sources.
Commitment: The rule of commitment says that, once people have agreed to do something, they feel compelled to follow-through on the agreement. In the realm of blogging, this commitment is demonstrated by showing up and writing every day.
Consistency: The rule of consistency follows from the rule of commitment and states that people have a tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with whatever stand they have initially taken. The successful blogger (not Andrew Sullivan level, but being able to buy an extra cheeseburger occasionally) should be ridiculously consistent.
Social Proof: The rule of social proof states that people view behavior as correct when they are surrounded by others doing the same thing. In the realm of blogging, this means channeling blog content through social distributive channels, aimed at gaining positive reinforcement from an audience.
Liking: The rule of liking really focuses on the fact that we do things for people that we like and that we build a connection and relationship with over time. Building connection with fans through backlinking, responding to comments, curating other people’s content and other ways of connecting follow from that rule.
Authority: The rule of authority states that we tend to defer to others in authority based on physical attributes, titles, or even clothes and other trappings of “power.” When you’re blogging consistently, with liking and social proof, it gives the blogger authority. Don’t have authority yet? Well don’t give up. Outlast the other bloggers.
Scarcity: The rule of scarcity says that we want more of what we can’t have—or that is in limited supply. In the digital world, where it seems as though every blogger is giving away content for free, scarcity comes to a blogger when they use their influence and authority to build a niche audience for their content, their point of view and their process through their writing. Scarcity also comes through building an effective distribution network for blogged content, including social media channels, email distribution lists, subscriptions and on and on. Combined with consistency and commitment, scarcity becomes the gold under the dross.

There’s a lot of talk about how blogging is disappearing, along with journalism. But, as the Internet of Things really ramps up, we don’t know how content is going to be managed on these devices, without bloggers having a voice at the root of the Internet of Things…websites….

-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/

Presentation Tips and Tricks

Presentation is the most nerve wracking thing for many conflict engagement professionals, as it is for many other professionals in many other fields.

Many presenters forget a basic fact: meetings, workshops, seminars, classes, podcasts, pitches, elevator speeches and even 1-on-1 conversations are presentations.

Any time that you stand up in front of somebody else and use your words, your voice and your presence to transpose information from your brain to another person’s brain, that’s a presentation.

With that in mind, here are three tips to keep it fresh:

Remember the audience: The average attention span is down, and there are plenty of distractions in the world, so remember that the audience is whoever is in front of you right now.
Lose the crutches: Images and slideshow are too often used as a crutch to support the presenter, rather than as an addition—like spice on food—to the actual meat of the subject matter. The bravest presentations that you can do are those that don’t involve images and a slideshow. This is why the only difference between a 1-on-1 conversation and a 25 person breakout session is scale.
Don’t get intimidated by size: When speaking, people are really comfortable 1-on-1, but the sweat level goes up as the size of the audience increases. Why is that? Why do we get intimidated by size so often? Scale scares us, because it seems as though the risk level increases along with the size. But we’ve got it backwards.

The risk level decreases as the size of the audience expands, but the importance of what you are presenting should increase, rather than your nervousness level.

Any time that you’re in front of a person, that’s an audience, and the real risk is not getting your point across the bow.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] The Container is not the Water

Anger is a secondary emotion, or so we have heard.

It exists below the primary emotions of either fear, frustration, grief, disgust, shame, anxiety and more.

When those underlying emotions are not addressed, they become a problem for other people, and for ourselves.

In the conflict process, where disputes between people are a part of the mix, sometimes anger manifests and parties use that anger as a weapon against each other.

Anger is only used one of two ways: either as a way to manipulate the other party, (in the form of passive aggressive anger) or to overwhelm and emotionally flood the other party (in the form of attacking anger).

The way to defuse all of this in the conflict process is to focus on two basic, immediate tactics:

People have emotions and emotions may influence and direct interests, and serve to harden positions in a conflict process, but people are not their emotions. The container is not the water.
The process of conflict engagement means moving into the anger and through it with the other party. This may mean walling off your own emotions—for a while—but keeping the other party focused on the higher goals of the process, rather than the presence of unresolved anger, can serve to move them away from manipulation and attack.

The long term strategy is to get the other party to agreement. The tactic is to look at people and the process, independently from the situation immediately in front of your face.

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-Peace Be With You All-

On a War Mentality for Peace

Peace (and peacemaking) isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t move the meter of the nightly news or go viral in social media.

Long form presentations about the nature of human beings, the integration of peace into lives, or the hard work of making the hard decisions, to change destructive behavior to proactive behavior, doesn’t make for very good entertainment.

Or so we collectively assert as a society and a culture, by the nature of what we show each other on traditional media, social media and what gets the attention of the seven second attention span.

Conflict and drama are exciting and get the endorphins flowing, but peace and the pursuit of innovative change is only interesting to an elite cadre of therapists, conflict consultants, social workers, lawyers and others.

Right?

Going to peace is just as compelling as going to war. People die, people fail. People succeed and people struggle. So do organizations and nations.

It’s long form drama. But with seven second attentions spans, and the reduction in intellectual understanding to the seventh grade level, how can we expect audiences to be drawn into the obvious drama of making peace?

Education can get us there, but moving the meter on the human heart takes a bit longer.

-Peace Be With You All-

On a Peace Mentality for War

Nations, organizations, and individuals lionize war because it represents the baser human emotions, and cuts through the fog of the everyday and the mundane, making choices black and white in a world of grey.

Nations and organizations mount up and prepare for war through moving troops around, creating new agreements and pacts of protection and creating safe and secure supply lines.

Nations also prepare their populations for the act of warfare through psychological and emotional reinforcement of the reasons for going to war through the use of propaganda, opinion journalism and rousing public speeches.

The war mentality is so ingrained in a population that the positions normally associated with peace—collaboration, cooperation, abundance, and on and on—become twisted to represent other things.

The way to appropriately apply the peace mentality to war, is to use the same steps that countries—and organizations—use to go to war:

Preparation
Relationship building
Information gathering
Information using
Bidding
Closing the deal
Implementing the agreement

But how many organizations, or nations for that matter, end up getting stuck on one of those steps and then throwing the whole process out, and moving into the preparations for war, in spite of “best intentions?”

-Peace Be With You All-