[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #7 – Elizabeth Clemants

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #7 – Elizabeth Clemants, Conflict Entrepreneur, Trainer, Mediator, Shaman, Listener, “Ruckus Maker”

[powerpress]

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with leadership and how competency in conflict engagement overlaps with all of the things that we don’t teach our leaders, managers and supervisors to do.

A role that I believe more professionals in the peace building fields should be involved in is that of “ruckus maker.”

This is not a role that many peace builders are necessarily prepared for academically, but it is a role that “fits” certain conflict contexts. Many peace builders pride themselves on getting intractable conflicts resolved, on guiding parties in conflict toward goals that they thought were unattainable, and even in engaging in transformative work with people.

Yep. Transformative work.

What if, though, the entire field of peace building, myself included, were ultimately looking in exactly the wrong direction, while looking to transform people, systems and processes toward the direction of peace?

And what if we’ve been staring in one direction for so long that it now looks like the right direction?

A couple of episodes ago, we talked with Donya Zimmerman, and this interview with Elizabeth Clemants feels a little bit the same (sort of like a pair of transformative bookends) but also very different.

Transformative change is happening in the field of peace building. That change is happening out here in the hinterlands, in the grassroots, and away from the major academic programs and not via the well-worn routes that many peace builders have taken to success in the past. This change is happening in those areas that the field thought were rock solid and sacrosanct, but that are now being upended through the work of people like myself, Dave Hilton, Neil Denny and Elizabeth Clemants.

One of the areas where we’re making the most ruckus is the career trajectory and economic security areas, because, sometimes, it isn’t all about peace building.

Sometimes it’s about providing for your family, building a business that works, day-in-and-day-out, creating a reputation as a thought leader—and yes, even a “ruckus maker.”

Also, it’s about being able to sleep at night, knowing that you have done the best that you can to transform, not only the world, but also the people who want to go out and change the world after they grow a little older.

Check out all the places below, that you can connect to Elizabeth as she’s doing transformative work:

Small Business Arbitration Center of New York Website: http://www.sbacnyc.com/

Elizabeth Clemants’s Website: http://www.elizabethclemants.com/

Planning Change: http://www.planningchange.com/

The Planning Change Blog: http://www.planningchange.com/blog/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/planningchange

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PlanningChangeInc?fref=ts

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/elizabeth-clemants/3/2ab/261

HIT Piece 11.03.2015

If you haven’t seen the film Election, directed by Alexander Payne and starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick, go get it on Netflix and stream in right now.

[HIT Piece] 11.03.2015

The script, from the movie released in 1999, shows the results and feedback loop that power, strategy and the ruthless pursuit of position can have in electoral politics.

And all wrapped up in the context of a high school student government election in Omaha, Nebraska. The director, Alexander Payne has directed many other films and brings a European sensitivity to Midwestern American dramatic situations, people and aesthetics.

In light of the results of your local elections yesterday and in light of the current political gamesmanship going on in American electoral national politics, it’s worth looking at.

And all before the era of social media, virality, the commonality of cell phones, and even the ubiquity of the Internet.

-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] Pivot to a Stalemate from a Checkmate

There’s a bind for supervisors in the workplace, when they act as mediators, inserting themselves into conflicts between their employees, whether they want to insert themselves, or they are compelled to insert themselves.

When one employee won’t move, shift or change their approach to conflicts with their co-workers in any meaningful way and the mediator, acting as the supervisor, that party may try to maneuver the supervisor into a stalemate. This maneuvering could appear in three forms:

Game playing the mediation/supervision process through telling the supervisor one story, and then telling the other employees another story.
Gossiping by telling the mediation/supervisor nothing at all—or actively avoiding the interaction with the mediator/supervisor (or any other passive aggressive acts)—and then passing around a story about the other party in conflict.
Harassing the other party in the conflict and, sometimes harassing (or intimidating) the mediator/supervisor into making a decision favorable to them in resolving the conflict.

Stalemate makes the mediator/supervisor as the third party feel powerless, impotent and feel as if they have no chance to affect change in the outcomes of the conflict process.

But stalemate is really a checkmate—imposed upon the instigating party who won’t move—initiated by the mediator/supervisor, sometimes not consciously and based on the stories that the mediator/supervisor is telling themselves about the conflict process.

Which means the power really lies with the mediator/supervisor and not the party who thinks they have the power, the instigator of the conflict process, and the other party in the process who may be looking to escalate the conflict to satisfy their own motives.

Other mediator/supervisors in the past may have given up their power, to the two parties in conflict before, but that doesn’t mean that the current person has to continue those patterns of behaviors.

Checkmate.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] The Temptation at Mass

When you build a product, create a service or develop a process, the temptation (whether at scale or not) is to pursue the acceptance of the masses and be for everybody.

When building, (and planning to build) the discipline is to be targeted and to pursue the special and the narrow—the long tail in essence.

The primary drivers for pursuing the acceptance of the masses at scale are fear, desperation and greed:

For money
For prestige
For status
For power

The fact of the matter is, the myth of mass acceptance as being the “golden ticket” to profitability over the long-term has been exploded by the presence—and the influence—of the most dominate communication tool yes invented by man—the Internet. Sure, there will be blips of products, services, and process, that will appear to catch the masses attention, but in reality, the mass effect is dying a hard death. As audience attention becomes harder and harder to contain and obtain at mass, the benefits of a product, service or process being for “everybody” erodes under the weight of mediocrity, ineffectiveness and banality.

For the peace builder, if the processes, services, products, and philosophies that you provide are not for “everybody” in conflict, the real discipline is in developing your own emotional and psychological responses to what that means, and then methodically acting on them.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Voting on Conflict

Every day is Election Day, when you are making choices about how you respond (or don’t) to a conflict or dispute.

Avoidance means you’re voting with your emotional feet to keep going and not confront.
Attack means you’re voting with your emotional feet to engage the other party in a way that makes you feel comfortable, but which may do nothing to alleviate or change the process.
Accommodate means you’re voting with your emotional feet to “go along to get along” as either part of a larger strategy, or just because you don’t have the energy to confront, don’t think that it’s worth it, or don’t want to be involved with the conflict process at all.

There are many societal and cultural messages about voting on Election Day in the United States. Many of them focus on words like duty, responsibility and accountability and equate voting for a person with meaning and mattering in a civic sense.

In a democracy (or a republic) voting matters for many reasons, but the words that we use to get across the message that going to perform a public act privately one day every two to four years, could also be applied to educating ourselves about the ways we vote with our emotional feet.

Otherwise, why make a choice (about a candidate, or a conflict) at all?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] 3 Stages to Launch – Part 2

There are three hard parts to launching any peace building project:

The first hard part is attaining technical knowledge (i.e. getting a degree, getting experience, phoning a friend, etc.).

When launching a peace building project, the savvy peace builder often doesn’t think too hard about the first part. In peace building fields from mediation to law, attaining technical knowledge is considered a rite of passage. Which is why peace building is so dominated by the presence of volunteer labor at one end (mediation) and highly paid labor at the other end (litigation) and there is a squeeze in the middle. As a result, many peace building practitioners continue to fund a self-perpetuating economy of training and certifications, rather than doing and experiences. This is a hamster wheel for another reason: The training and certifications are to reinsure that the peace builder continues to remain proficient in old skills they already know and practice (i.e. mediation skills) rather than training and certifying them in new skills that might be uncomfortable fro them to learn and practice (i.e. marketing, sales and business development).

The second hard part is getting the hardware together and attaining a certain level of comfort with it, particularly if it is new.

When launching a peace building project, learning new hardware (or software in the case of many entrepreneurial peace builders) is the second hardest part. Admittedly, there are ton of applications and software solutions that can be cobbled together to create the operational infrastructure for a functioning business model. But too often peace builders (as do many other entrepreneurs) become so focused on avoiding learning the new application (or fiddling with it constantly) that they miss completely the third hardest part of developing and launching a peace building project—sales.

The third hard part is developing content—and allying with partners in that development—and getting that content distributed to the right audience to genrate a lead, create a relationship and to close a sale.

When launching a peace building project, content development—books, articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, workshop/seminar content, and on and on—is seen as the most overwhelming aspect of launching. At the core of most content development practices are three objectives for the peace builder to consider:

What do I want my content to do? (i.e. drive brand recognition, drive sales, create actionable leads who will pay, etc., etc.)
Where do I want my content to be distributed? (i.e. from a workshop, from a blog post, from a podcast, etc., etc.)
Who do I want my content to target? (i.e. women with children, business owners with conflicts, men in divorce, judges in arbitration, etc., etc.)

Unfortunately, many peace builders get caught in a spiral of focusing obsessively out of fear on “how to make money” rather than focusing on “how to make a difference.” To be successful as an entrepreneurial peace builder, the things is to manage thinking about how hard the three hard parts might be to accomplish collectively, rather than avoiding actually taking the concrete steps to think (and act) differently about at least one of them individually.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Google for Podcasting

The rumblings have started through the podcast world, and the big players haven’t said (or written) anything about anything yet, but I’m sure there’s been all kinds of back end, off line chatter for months now. And, two days ago, Google announced that content creators of podcasts can get their shows listed in the Google Play Store.

There are several significant issues with podcasting, which have been addressed by writers here, here and here. The Google announcement (you can check out the link to the announcement page here and the interview they did with Libsyn (a podcast distribution company) here) while great in the light of Google discontinuing Google Listen in 2012, doesn’t answer how this new venture is going to significantly impact podcast content creators positively in two areas where they struggle:

Getting accurate audience analytics

and

Developing a strong marketing and branding process.

Let’s all be clear for those of you who consume, but don’t create, audio content:

Itunes and Apple doesn’t care about audio content (i.e. podcasters don’t get accurate download information and analytics on listeners (i.e. who’s listening when and through what device)) because Itunes and Apple don’t make any money off of downloads of podcasts.

Yet, Itunes is where most podcasts (even The Earbud_U Podcast) are located. Apple has ruled the roost for 10 years during this era of podcast creators struggling with inaccurate distribution metrics and having podcasters beg listeners to give review of podcasts in Itunes to demonstrate they are listening. And all this was happening while Google was busy developing life sciences projects and tanking Google+. This phenomenon of inaccurate analytic data also haunts how podcasters monetize what is still an expensive process for many content creators to start, while showing little traction (even less than starting a blog in some cases) early on in the production process. This combination of inaccurate analytics, the struggle to get traction and the lack of support from the larget distribution platform on the planet, leads many podcasts to be abandoned by frustrated creators.

Thus, the question: Is having a podcast in the Google Play Store going to improve the tracking and analysis of downloads and listeners for the benefit of podcast creators, in a way that Apple has caved on providing or developing?

In other words, by submitting to Google Play Store and Google Play Music, are podcast producers going to have access to the entire suite of Google products to track and monetize their downloads, i.e. have access to Analytics, Search, Google Ads (which Google promises not to put on top of creator owned content, or insert into content mid-show) and even Google My Business?

This leads to the second concern that wasn’t addressed in the interview that Google did with Libsyn: Branding for podcasting is all about getting the right audio content, at the right moment in front of the right listeners. This leads directly into the vagaries and complications of getting discovered through Google search, which to Apple’s credit, they have largely left up to the content creator to manage and struggle with. Most branding and marketing for podcast content is a shot in the dark, leaving many podcasters thinking that the best way to market is as an “always on, always downloadable” piece of content; and then, to go off and make content in other areas, bringing those audiences over to the podcast from platforms that have nothing to do with podcasting. A lot of these decisions are based on how Google manipulates its search algorithm in relation to podcast content in particular and audio content in general. There’s no “You Tube” for audio content.

The question then is: If a large podcast creator whose content already generates 10 million downloads a month (i.e. Serial, This American Life, The Adam Carolla Podcast, The Jay Mohr Podcast, The Marc Maron Podcast and on and on) is going to be ranked at the top of a Google search in Google Play Music (where they dominate without being listed in Google Play Music currently) how does that impact who gets listed highly in the Google Play Music library for listeners?

And then, what is going to happen to the searchability of the content of the mid-range folks (people like Arel Moody and The Art of the Charm Podcast–among others) who already are struggling to market themselves and rank as highly as the big players?

And then, where do smaller podcasters (like The Earbud_U Podcast, The Launch to Greatness podcast, Grammar Girls, and others) whose content doesn’t rank highly in their own niches (or who are having to partner with other podcasters to form networks (like The Rainmaker Platform, Relay.FM and others), because audio content consumption hasn’t happened yet at mass in their niches?

Google moving into the space of promoting podcasts in their store is interesting to me as a podcast creator, in the same way that IHeart Radio partnering with podcasters and Spotify also partnering is interesting to me. None of these moves take away the core responsibilities of the content creators, which is to create an engaging, interesting and motivating platform and then to create audio content on top of it.

In the future, as more and more marketers, organizations and brands discover the power of the spoken word, I predict a time when all of the branded, walled garden, distribution players (don’t be surprised if in three years Facebook announces it will launch a search service for podcasts) will seek to bend the arc of engaging content creation (and content creators) in their direction. This might be good for the field of podcasting (which is still niche at around 200,000 podcasts compared to 1.5 million blogs) but the audiences are growing, slowly, niche by niche.

And don’t worry. I already got Earbud_U approved to be in the Google Play Store, and I’ll let you know when it goes live.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Contributor] Glass Houses: Social Interactions for the Modern Age

Contributor – Alexander Gault
Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexanderBGault

As the popular adage goes “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

Essentially, this means that people who have certain weaknesses shouldn’t criticize others for those same issues. However, a new spin to this old saying can be used.

Now, people live in those glass houses by putting their information all over the internet, and throwing stones is just saying something that might be damaging to themselves or others.

Many people in the first world have a social media account of some kind.

Older generations tend to favor Facebook, the youth of today favor Twitter and Snapchat, and Instagram is used by anyone with a camera phone. With these social medias, we put our thoughts, feelings, and lives out into the world for almost everyone to see.

This is not without consequence.

Let’s start at a fairly low level of how this impacts our lives; our real life social interactions.

If you post something to your social media account that, for example, contains an anti-gay marriage quote, and you have any gay co-workers, friends, classmates, or acquaintances who follow you on that account, most likely they will, at the very least, ask you about it later, making a fairly uncomfortable conversation out of the topic. More often than not, however, they might not talk to you, consider you anti-gay and sever their ties, and in a more extreme case, band together with other pro-gay marriage individuals to shut you out of any group you may have been in with them.

The next level would be professional interactions, with businesses, employers, or contractors.

If you post something considered very out-of-line with the ideology of a potential employer, you could lose your chance of getting that job. This could include making political remarks, talking about various social deeds deemed less than respectable, talking about drinking, partying, breaking laws. While many people don’t consider their social media at all connected with their jobs and professional life, many businesses look at the internet personas of their potential employees, and even current employees, to ensure their business is being well-represented among its employee-base.

For younger people, colleges are another potential pit-fall when it comes to social media.

Many colleges look at prospective students social media accounts to see what the student puts on there. The college may look for posts about how the student feels about that particular school, the student’s personal life, and even the language used. One misplaced swear-word can end a student’s chances at a top-tier school before the Admissions department even sees their application.

Even high schools are getting on the train. Some districts employ full-time social media monitors to keep a watchful eye on the social media environ that surrounds the student body. They mainly keep an eye out for excessive online bullying, threats between or at students, potential inappropriate student-teacher interactions, and terror threats by students. These monitors can suggest disciplinary actions for any student they take issue with, from detention to expulsion, depending on the severity of the infraction. And many of these schools have no set code delineating how their social media monitors make these decisions, leaving it to the discretion of the district.

Social media accounts are a double-edged sword.

They create a dangerous ecosystem for people to destroy their own and others’ lives, sometimes unwittingly. They create a system where people can remove their own privacy, put their private lives on display for all levels of society and business, and subject themselves to immeasurable pain in the process. But social media also allows those who use it properly to grow, develop new connections, maintain old friendships, and keep themselves informed.

Social media is a dangerous weapon, and with all weapons, its users must understand the dangers before they can enjoy the benefits.

Alexander Gault-Plate is an aspiring journalist and writer, currently in the 12th grade. He has worked with his schools newspapers and maintained a blog for his previous school. In the future, he hopes to write for a new-media news company.

You can follow Alexander on Twitter here https://twitter.com/AlexanderBGault.

[Advice] Conflicting Narratives

Storytelling, when a name is put to it, is the act of getting across to other people who we are, why we matter, what our thoughts and feelings are and what we value.

This process happens from the time that we begin to learn to talk (and sometimes before) and continues throughout our lives, creating narratives, and strings of narratives, everywhere we turn.

Many people claim that they don’t have a narrative, or that they don’t view their lives and the things that happen to them, in the context of a storytelling triangle, or arc. Instead, many people claim that things “just kind of happen” to them.

This lack of agency over the narratives in our own lives leads to frustration, stress, feelings of futility, despair, and at the furthest end of the spectrum, depression and nihilism. This lack of agency over the narratives in our own lives, can lead to some of us starting and perpetuating dysfunctional communication patterns and engaging in destructive conflict. Because, after all, if there is no narrative, no purpose, and if life events truly are “one damn thing after another” then what is the point?

But here’s something to consider:

Every story reveals the storyteller’s desire to create meaning.
Every story reveals the storyteller’s desire to create mattering.
Every story reveals the hearer’s desire to create relationship.
Every story reveals the hearer’s desire to connect to the teller of the story.

When told, the five most common workplace stories, reveal all of the desires for both the hearer (the consumer) of the story and the teller (the creator) of the story. When these desires conflict—and they tend to around values, behaviors, and choices revealed through stories—then the process of change begins in either the hearer or the teller.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 10.27.2015

There are not many ways to grow (or scale) past merely being a solo entrepreneur, freelancer, or consultant.

You can “productize” a process (see Brian Casel’s approach for more about this), or you can develop a product that you can sell repeatedly, such as a workshop, or even a seminar.
You can begin to charge more for developing a process or a product for a client (Seth Godin promotes this approach), but that only generates more revenues, which conflates the illusion of growth with the presence of revenues.
You can take on larger and larger clients, with larger and larger contracts, which give the illusion of running a business, but is really just expensive freelance labor. And when the project (no matter its size) is over, then you have to let the people you hired go. Or try to get an equal size, or bigger, contract for the next go around.
You can also develop a software product, funded through business revenues, that supports a piece of a business process and then sell that solution to other solo entrepreneurs, freelancers and consultants.
You can produce white papers, blog content, e-books, audio content (podcasts, audio white papers, etc.), or even self-publish a book and put it out through Amazon. And then you can create more workshops and content around that.

But at some point, the solo entrepreneur, freelancer or consultant must hire other people to grow and must begin generating significant profits to support other people’s livelihoods, or else what you do remains as confining as the employment you left to start your project. Inspirational speakers from Zig Ziglar to Tony Robbins have made the leap. So have many others.

It’s a hard jump.

The hard part to solve with what I do, the way that I do it, through Human Services Consulting and Training is there are three elements for me to consider before growing to be large enough to potentially hire another person to do the work I do now:

Business philosophy – I want to hire somebody who is ethical and who will have such an ethical compass that they will be able to spot problems before even I see them. Not cautious, just prudent.

Personal philosophy – I want to hire somebody who has a strong, positive, moral core: The question “What will you do so that we can make a profit together?” has to be answered in a moral fashion, rather than just a financial one. After all, when (not if) an immoral choice has consequences, the name on the front door is mine. Not theirs.

Societal philosophy – I want to hire somebody who can believe, exemplify and live, the societal philosophy that’s on the back of all of my business cards “Helping YOU ethically attain PEACE in your life.” This is a societal call for peace through self-awareness first, and everything else second.

Even without these three considerations, scaling would be hard. Which is why so many solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and consultants stay singular, stay small, and are frustrated by the level of impact they have in their niche—and outside of it.

I’m not frustrated. And I’m not in a hurry. I’m out here walking around, looking around for someone.

See: [Genesis 18:23-33] for a living example of this conundrum.

-Peace Be With You All-