[Podcast] If We Close Our Eyes… – The Earbud_U Minute

How Americans view the events of September 11th, how a turkey views the events of Thanksgiving Day, and how an HR manager views a workplace harassment claim all have three things in common:

The events themselves are considered unpredictable,

The events themselves are considered out of the “normal” social boundaries,

The events themselves are typically responded to with a mixture of shock, surprise and dismay.

The people (or animals) impacted negatively by each of these events, if given a choice, would rather go back in time and avoid the individual circumstances that lead to the event occurring. Unfortunately, the events appear in hindsight to be both inevitable and linear. Ironically, on the day before the penultimate event occured (in a film, it would be called the climax) the persepctive of the impacted parties was that “everything seemed alright.”

Then, the conflict starts.

The line from difficulty to confrontation to conflict is intersected by an line from fragility to robustness to antifragility. And human beings have arranged systems and set up paradigms that allow us to believe that conflict is an aberration, peace is an inevitability and that nothing really changes at all.

Conflicts within, and shocks to, systems (from family all the way up the scale to nation-states) happen when somebody else has a different idea of how things should work—and acts on it. Keep in mind that for the turkey on Thanksgiving, what happens to it before the moment of the decapitation and defeathering, is just another day in turkey paradise.

Three suggestions for building a system (either at work, in school or in the family) that can withstand the inevitable shocks of predictable people insisting on behaving unpredictably:

Tell yourself a more compelling, less predictable story—Many internal stories that we tell ourselves about the circumstances we are in, tend to focus too much on the benefit to us (“WIIFM” thinking) and focus less on the potential for circumstances to change. But the most compelling stories aren’t about us at all, but about change—and how we might respond to it.
Eliminate hindsight bias in order to engage in more critical analysis of why a system failed—This is a fancy way of admitting that you were wrong and all of the events that led up to an unpredictable, “Black Swan” type event were indeed just that: unpredictable in themselves. Eliminating hindsight bias enables us to forget the past, focus on the future, and guide others towards potential outcomes that they might not like.
Have the courage to acknowledge that the systems we’ve built are not that robust—This last one is the toughest, because it can involve guilt, recrimination and can be a blame focused realization. However, when an unanticipated conflict occurs, the first responses that many human created systems have, is to collapse immediately. However, in nature, building in safeguards and engaging in active, guilt free “what if” adaptations, allows systems to flourish. So, start with the system that matters most (for many people that will be family) and take a hard look at the system and ask the question: “Could our family survive a job loss, a major hospitalization, or another “that only happens to other people and won’t ever happen to us” type event in the future?”

Antifragility is the end goal in all of our systems, from corporations to families. Preparing to survive conflicts and shocks to the system is the only way forward to adapt to inevitabilities we cannot predict. It’s certainly a better option than closing our eyes and pretending that nothing can change at all.

-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/

[Strategy] Don’t Wallow in the Gap

Our heads are the most dangerous place to be in conflict.

We tell ourselves a story about the nature of the conflict, who’s at fault (and who isn’t) and what the solution should be (preferably one that benefits us and makes the other person the enemy).

We then plunge forward, tackling the conflict with the tools that got us into the conflict in the first place: we don’t actively listen, we don’t engage emotionally with the other person’s content around and within the conflict, and we engage (happily or miserably) in the gamification of the conflict process.

We temporarily pause the conflict (sometimes for hours, days, weeks, months, years or decades) and call that pause resolution—when in reality that pause represents a “lull” in the conflict conversation, where more content floods the gap.

And after all of those steps, we look around an wonder why our workplaces, our families, our schools and our churches are not “doing what they should be doing.”

This is not a condemnation, or castigation. We have engaged in all of these steps as well, with conflicts between us and other people in our own life. We engage in some of these ways even still.

But there is a way out of the narrative trap:

Break the language: Language = Thought and thought = language. Take a pause and review the words that you use to talk about yourself, about the other party in conflict and about the content of the conflict scenario. Words give meaning and set up paradigms for future behavior and decisions.
Break the trap of decisions: What got you here to conflict isn’t going to get you there to resolution. The decisions, patterns, and behaviors that got you into the conflict you’re in today (and the ones you’ll be in tomorrow) have to be broken through self-examination.
Break the gap: Being intentional about the outcomes you want to achieve through avoidance, accommodation, assertive confrontation, or any of the other choices for responses that you have in a conflict, is critical to avoiding the gap. That temporary pause, or “lull” in the conflict flow.

These tips seem obvious and easy, but if they were, we would be collectively performing them all the time, rather than stumbling through the narratives we’ve built. Ultimately, the way out of the narrative trap of conflict, takes having courage to take the steps in the first place.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Whisper Space – The Earbud_U Minute

We give language to our thoughts.

We speak into existence what we believe and—being narrative animals—we weave stories together and create myths for ourselves based on the conscious language of our thoughts.

We look for assurances that our stories are the “right” ones because, to hear something different—or to experience something different—causes a continuum of reactions inside of us, from mild cognitive dissonance to jarring trauma.

Our lizard brains seek comfort, reassurance, quiet and the reserve of the appearance of “normalcy.” Anything that might cause the lizard brain to reject its own, natural story and to create a new one is automatically rejected and dismissed.

Then, when our stories and other peoples’ stories rub up against each other in intimate locations—such as work, school or even church—we have difficulties, confrontations and conflicts.

In the whisper space between confrontation and conflict—a space which can also be referred to as “the dip”—we take a pause before either avoiding a new story, denying a new story, or incorporating a new story into our familiar one, and we hear the tiny voice, urging us to do the right thing.

However, in the impatience to rush to judgement, and give language to our raging emotions, we move past the whisper space—and ignore the choices that we are provided in that space.

And then we blame others, blame circumstances and—ultimately—blame the narrative that caused us to contemplate all of these changes in the first place.

Thus, we give language to our new thoughts—and the added elements to our old, comfortable narratives.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] The Buck Never Got Here in the First Place

At work, gossip corrodes and erodes relationships, but we can’t stop doing it. And now, unlike times previous to social media connecting, gossip no longer merely travels in whispers around the water cooler. Now it travels at the speed of thumbs.

Tall tales at work come about when someone—usually an employee or a group of employees—accomplishes a task (or series of tasks) no one else in the organization thought could be accomplished.

Tall tales become myths at work, which are then printed as legend in the reward and recognition pamphlets and brochures at year-end events.

Internal conflicts arise and spread in the workplace, because under every conflict—and above every conflict—lie gossip (which spreads the story of the conflict far and wide through the organization) and the tall tale (which serve to spread the conflict terms and outcomes and begin the formation of an organizational cultural myth).

People in the organization outside the conflict define the issue by what they see (the presenting issue) and then by what they hear (the gossip). Then, they proceed to move the tall tale forward, inexorably, toward organizational myth.

Is there a better way?

People in organizations sometimes require dissonace, disruption and conflict to create change, expose injustices, encourage positive behavior, or to innovate for the future. But, while organizational leaders talk all the time about how “gossip isn’t tolerated here” or “the buck stops here,” the cultural conflict legends of many organizations do not support the truth and veracity of such statements.

Instead, employees, supervisors, managers and even C-Suite executives go along with the culture of gossip and tall tales, and then wonder silently why a corrosive conflict culture remains endemic; serving as the never-ending white noise beneath the bottom line considerations of the organizations.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Print the Conflict Legend – The Earbud_U Minute

Who here remembers The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence?

[powerpress]

Nobody?

Ok.

The story goes that Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) a man of law and order, goes out west and has a few run-in’s with the local bad man, Liberty Valence (Lee Marvin). Eventually, things get to be so bad in the tiny town of Shinbone that Ransom finally realizes that law and order cannot stand in the face of evil, and that some things can’t be solved with a law book and “fancy words.” So, he gets a gun and, on the advice of Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), he decides to prepare for the ultimate showdown against Liberty.

Except, Ransom can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a bullet, and he doesn’t take out Liberty.

And at the climactic moment of truth, Tom Doniphon, shoots Liberty from the shadows, thus ending his reign of terror over the town and ensuring the rise of civilization and law and order.

It’s a great film (Woody Allen called it one of the best films in American cinematic history) but what’s the point of bringing it up?

Well, the titular line at the end—from the mouth of a newspaper editor—has come down in American cultural history: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

How many legends of conflicts that have occurred in your organization—be it a church, a workplace, a nonprofit, a school—have become truth, long after the facts of the conflict have been misremembered.

What shifts a conflict story down the line to conflict legend all the way to conflict myth, is the old schoolyard game, Whisper Down the Lane.

When the story of conflict, which is personal and meaningful, becomes calcified into legend, which is impersonal and dogmatic, no amount of conflict resolution or training is going to change the conflict culture.

And then the legend gets printed, over and over again, gradually becoming operating myth, which becomes codified in the worst phrase possible in an organization…

“Well, we’ve always done it this way.”

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] The Epidemiology of Resolution

Resolution is not the cure for the disease of conflict. Neither is forgiveness or reconciliation.

Resolution, forgiveness and reconciliation merely name the types of processes that have to occur in the hearts of people in conflict during the final stages of the conflict process.

But do not be deceived: the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:

Who can know it?

We addressed aspects of the science of epidemiology before, and where that science dovetails with the process of the resolution, forgiveness and reconciliation, is three fold:

Epidemiology involves examining the symptoms of presenting issues and how they relate to the overall disease map, or journey—the process of resolution has presenting issues, and the main one is the presence of a softened heart.

Epidemiology involves examining the roots of diseases to determine why they arose in the first place—the process of forgiveness, true forgiveness, involves looking at the roots of a relationship where conflict arose in the past, present and may arise in the future, and then determining what the roots of those conflicts are.

Epidemiology involves examining how a virus, or disease spreads among an at-risk (or not yet at risk) population—true reconciliation between damaged parties in conflicts happens very rarely, but when it does, the psychological and emotional benefits of moving forward from where the conflict ended, spread rapidly.

In the radio show of the 1930’s and 1940’s, Lamont Cranston was the vigilante known as The Shadow. In later years, Alec Baldwin portrayed the character in a big budget movie. At the core of The Shadow’s war on crime, was the idea expressed in the opening lines of the radio show, later abandoned in the 1994 film altogether:

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

The cure for conflicts through the processes of resolution, foregiveness and reconciliation is multifaceted, multi-angled and requires performing hard, emotional labor, that many of us would rather not perform.

But when everything else hasn’t worked, hard work is sometimes all the work that’s left.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] The Epidemiology of Conflict – The Earbud_U Minute

Conflicts, disputes and other disagreements are not the disease. They are symptoms of the disease.

When we think about how a virus spreads, doctors, researchers, data gatherers and others look at the patterns, causes and effects of health and disease conditions in a particular population.

Epidemiology is a very specific interdisciplinary science, but when we talk about the presenting issues that lead to conflict, even in our post-therapeutic age, we are still hesitant to become armchair analysts.

Or, we analyze and get it wrong.

The beginning of understanding the how and why the symptoms of conflict are confused with the nature of a conflict itself, begins with taking apart the behavioral and personality choices that individuals make—and that particular populations, in particular environments, support.

Think about it: In the workplace, there still remains the illusion that resources are limited, thus competition is reinforced.

Thus, individuals who would rather be collaborative are now in conflict with the underpinnings of the environment where they spend 40 to 60 hours per week.

Think about it: In the church—or any other religious organization—the illusion remains that faith and belief will remove the stain of previous wrongs and mistakes without active engagement on the part of the individual.

Thus, individuals who are looking for active engagement wind up within groups that would rather remain collectively passive in the face of all manner of wrongdoing.

Think about it: In the school, bullying behavior manifests, but politicians, teachers, policy makers and others would rather support a broken system that encourages collective, Industrial system based responses.

Thus, micro-schooling with smaller groups (or homeschooling) is pooh-poohed and parents (who vote) raise children who are overly aggressive due to familial environments, and are never directly confronted about the results of their uninformed parenting styles by the “system.”

Root causes—and getting back to them—is often the first thing that is dismissed by critics of therapy, counseling, and even mediation.

But without exploring and getting to the root of root causes, the solutions to the corrosive nature of conflict will never be fully teased apart.

And we will continue to be collectively surprised by apathy and inaction, bullying, poor communication, and ineffective organizational responses, even as we build more tools that separate us further.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principle 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/

HIT Piece 07.07.15

I don’t know what lies in the clearing at the end of the path.

But I do know that the way forward is through content: written, audio, visual. Content is the oil that greases the wheels toward success, rather than failure.

People often ask me, “Where do you want to end up at the end of Human Services Consulting and Training?” Or, “How are you going to scale this?”

I don’t know whether I am going to register as a minority and women owned business. I have no idea.

What I do know is that the work (not the jobs, by the way) will continue. And by putting one step in front of the other, I will get to the clearing at the end of the path.

My answer to both of those other questions, by the way, is “I don’t know,” and “I’ll scale when I’m good and ready.”

Thanks!

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Symbols Matter

Mattering and meaning are more important to the accomplishment of work tasks—and the avoidance of work conflicts— now than ever before.

But not if you talk to managers, supervisors, executives and others.

The people who are bosses still believe the Industrial Revolution idea that the work is the only thing that matters, that shows dedication, service and loyalty to the cause, the company and the future.

For employees though, symbols in the workplace have been cheapened because of the deeply held beliefs that bosses sometimes have, exemplified by human resource policies, time away, manifestos, and quotes on the wall. When asked, many employees (particularly those who have been in an organization more than six months) report that they “don’t even pay attention to that stuff anymore.”

This is because the symbolism behind the policies and procedures no longer matters to an employee, when the lived out, organizational substance doesn’t match.

In the world before Google based transparency, where rumors, tall tales and other misinformation could spread about an employer, the work was the substance and the symbols didn’t matter to anybody.

However, institutional lethargy and fear of change has caused many organizations to cling to the past, even as the waves around them swirl, demonstrating that symbols bring mattering to the workplace. And even more than that, symbols backed up by substance, history, and truthful stories told truthfully, are the only things that can give employee work meaning.

Otherwise, thrashing about work-life balance versus integration, time away versus time at work when away, and all of the other human resource based arguments that have arisen over the last forty years, don’t really matter much in the larger scheme of reducing workplace stress and conflict.

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

[Advice] What Will You Do With That Freedom?

The two natural processes of erosion and corrosion are long-term, insidious and the body being affected by them does not observe the effects immediately.

Erosion happens from the outside in: It’s a slow, steady, grinding down of the earth by the massive structural forces of wind, water and ice. It takes hundreds of thousands of years to complete and is never really over.

Corrosion happens from the inside out: It’s also a slow, steady process, where natural—or man-made—materials interact at a chemical level with the oxygen in the air. It takes less time to finish its work and is also never really over.

We underestimate the power of corrosion and erosion as entropy based systems that affect the earth, its properties and the things that humans create. But the circle of life—birth, maturity, death—continues inexorably forward.

On this July 4^th, the day that celebrates the United States of America’s founding with the signing of the most revolutionary document ever written (birth) let us ask two critical questions:

Where is our country, politically, ethically, morally, spiritually, and economically, at in the circle of life?
What social, moral, political and economic processes—either erosion or corrosion—are moving our country inexorably forward along the timeline of entrophy?

Countries, nation states and collections of people (tribes, if you will) also erode, and corrode, in their quest toward entrophy. This holiday weekend, let’s take some time, look around, and consider where we are at.

And what got us here.

-Peace Be With You All-