[Strategy] Persistence and Commitment

Starting anything is easy, as we’ve pointed out before, because the social approval around starting is enormously powerful, positive and affirming.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s an education, a fitness plan or even a battle, starting is easy.

Continuing though, persisting through the slog of the middle, and coming out the other side in completion (whether in victory or defeat) is the hard part.

We were streaming a conversation with a blogger the other day and she mentioned how she had started a book, and then put it away for about a year, while she struggled with the decision of whether to publish, or not.

Starting is easy, the slog of the middle is hard.

She mentioned that, in the intervening time between deciding to write (to start) and deciding to publish (the middle) she had shown her manuscript (a fictional one) to a number of friends of hers to gauge their reactions.

Starting is easy, the slog of the middle is hard.

She mentioned that one of their reactions was to say, “You have gone through a lot.” But this person (assumedly) did not help her write the book, nor is she helping her critique the book.

Starting is easy, the slog of the middle is hard.

Persistence and commitment are the hallmarks of a successful person. But sometimes, human beings get caught in the idea that starting, going through the middle, and ending should follow in logical order, like lines on a map. We perceive the stops in time—and gaps between events—as places of failure, defeat and eventually, the place where everything stops.

Other people and their reactions, judgments and decisions affect us before, during and after the starting gun fires, the buzzer goes off, and the start begins.

But let’s not believe that the people who have the power to applaud, jeer, support, or be neutral have anything to do with us starting. Or getting through the slog of the middle.

That part is always in our power and up to us.

H/T to Jaimee Doriss

-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/

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #1 & 1a – Neil Denny

Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #1 – Neil Denny, Mediator, Collaborative Solicitor, Author, Grudge & Forgiveness Expert

Neil Denny’s perspective and approach to peace starts where most people think the path ends—at forgiveness and reconciliation.

But don’t get us wrong, he’s also a peace building entrepreneur who understands the need that all mediators, negotiators, attorney mediators and others have to do to get other people to walk along the path to peace.

Building a business and keeping your equanimity are not mutually exclusive. When the money doesn’t come in and when the doorbell (or phone) isn’t ringing, what else is the peace builder to do?

Well, applying principles of marketing and development can help, along with understanding how partnerships really work between people in business.

Neil is involved in a number of projects, developing new niches for peace, including Get Artisan with Jason Dykstra.

Feel free to connect with Neil in all the ways that he’s differentiated below:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/neildenny

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/neildenny

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Neil-Denny/e/B005HSOTNY

Youtube: https://youtu.be/WTmUDGib-VQ

Get Artisan: https://getartisan.wordpress.com/

The Conflict Specialists Show w/Dave Hilton: http://www.conflictengagementspecialists.com/blog/collaborative-law-and-the-get-artisan-movement-with-neil-denny/

By the way, this is our first two-part episode here on Earbud_U. So listen to the first half by clicking on the audio player above and then come back here for the second part, later this month!

HIT Piece 06.30.2015

“He’s so full of himself.”

“He brought a NYCity attitude up here to Binghamton and that’s not going to work here.”

“He was totally a commercial the entire time.”

“His intro was too long. He talked too much about himself.”

And that’s the feedback that was written down.

The formalized feedback process for workshops, seminars, in-person trainings and other events is based off of an old model that hybridizes the immediate feedback a stand-up comedian receives (either the audience claps or boos) and the more long distance feedback that politicians and actors receive (either the audience buys a ticket, or doesn’t).

Both methods of giving feedback to a presenter, or speaker, are gradually fading away in an era of immediacy with social media, but that’s with crowds that are majority 18-34. The crowds that I still present to, train in front of and receive feedback from (like that written up there in those quotes) is still in the 35-55 year old age group.

I was going to write today’s HIT Piece about the endgame for this entrepreneurial project I’ve got going, but the feedback issue has been growing in two ways:

Audience members now feel comfortable enough with me (which I guess means that there’s a sense of rapport now) where they feel as though they can come up to me and say almost anything. Like the gentlemen that approached me and said “f—k you” to me after a workshop I did recently.

Audience members now feel comfortable enough to give feedback in the forms of praise and support; or, critique and condemnation. Critique and condemnation are easy to give. Praise and support fade over time when immediacy of feedback (“I’m really excited about you, how can I help you now!” “Well, you can get me hired someplace else.” “…oh…ok…”) looks to the receiver like a call for more business.

I don’t know what the way forward is out of this, but I have more insight now into why it’s easier (not better) for celebrities, politicians, comedians and other performers to put up walls (psychically, socially, culturally, economically, emotionally, etc.) between themselves and the audience—after the show is over.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Separating People From Positions

Too many times, well-meaning people cannot emotionally separate the personage of the other party in conflict from that party’s positions.

To do this successfully requires an understanding of (and a caring about) the difference between principles and interests.

Principles are based in values, traditions, and narratives that give meaning to each party in a conflict.
Principles are typically non-negotiable and—when it comes right down to it—parties in conflict view their principles (when they think about them at all) as their “Alamos.” In essence where they land emotionally, psychologically and narratively in a conflict as a last resort.
Principles do not change, they are “baked in.” Principles go to the core of who a person is, and why they value what they value.

Interests are none of these things.

Interests are negotiable, ever shifting, mercurial in their manifestations and outcomes and temporary at best. Interests may have a high negotiating price, but they are negotiable. Interests can unite disparate parties around the pursuit of a common goal, but this unity may sometimes come off as cynical to others, based on avoidance and accommodation of other conflicts, and ultimately damaging to both parties.

In current society and culture in the Western world, there is a lot of confusion around principles and interests. Many individuals and organizations confuse their interests for their principles by using the language of principles while actually expressing an interest. What follows from such confusion is social shaming, public bullying, and even emotional, legal and cultural efforts to engage in destruction of the character of the other party in conflict.

This is part of the reason why many social media based movements fizzle and die: It’s easy to dump a bucket of water on your head to support a cause (interest), but it’s hard to go to a place where people who have different principles from yours gather and actually get to know them as people (principle).

Conflicts in the culture, the workplace, schools and churches grow ever more violent, corrosive and detrimental to all parties as the line between principles and interests becomes more and more confused.

What’s the way out? Well there are three steps, each harder than the last:

Decide what you believe. In a conflict scenario, take some time and examine your own motives, interests and your deeper principles. This seems easy, but much like empathy, active listening, anger management and many other areas of conflict, if you’re choosing not to do it, then it won’t be easy. It will be hard.
Separate people from positions. Positions are always based in interests. Principles are always based in character. Hate the sin, but love the sinner. Easy sounding, but hard to do for each party in a conflict, no matter what the root cause.
Unite with the other party on principles. This is the hardest thing to do, because it requires leaving the comfort zones of separation, demonization, bullying and “othering” and requires each party to go and see “how the other half lives.” By the way, if you think that you know how the other party thinks, feels, and what their principles are because of a few examples of behavior in the past (or present), you really don’t.

When we separate people from positions, they transform, from the image that we have of them in our heads to the reality that they are in the world. We get an opportunity to preserve their autonomy, freedom and integrity. And, we don’t take actions to escalate conflicts, pushing the other party toward their personal conflict “Alamos.”

And we avoid pushing ourselves there as well.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] What To Do With A Barking Dog

Nothing is more annoying than a persistently barking dog, whether you are traveling in a Persian caravan across the desert or you are a mid-thirties single woman in Manhattan in the 90’s.

The majority of dogs bark, because of an instinct to do so in situations they perceive as being hostile to the community, or the pack. The dissonance of noise between parties in conflict, surrounding the feedback that many people get in a communication situation, can come off like the endless barking of dogs.

And yet, if we stop screaming at the dogs of conflict to “shut up” long enough to recognize what is actually happening in the conflict interaction. Or, we can decide that the barking is pointless noise, based in fear, apathy, avoidance and accommodation, and then we can move on from the conflict.

In the crowded desert of human interactions—or the empty desert of Manhattan—communication about the Truth of conflict, matters more than the noise around what we didn’t do, what we didn’t say or how we didn’t act, yesterday.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] How to Motivate Yourself

Conflicts arise (or get worse)—both internal and external—when motivation wanes.

Because it is easier to do the wrong thing (sometimes the more convenient or expedient thing) than it is to do the right thing (sometimes the least convenient and hardest thing) in a conflict, many people revert to the apathy, avoidance, or accommodation.

Motivation is the driver for change and better responses to interpersonal conflicts, but one of the questions we get asked is “Well Jesan, all this interpersonal conflict tactics stuff is great, but what about getting people motivated to actually do it?”

We point out that the motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar, often made the point that motivation—much like showering—doesn’t last. And that you have to renew your motivation every day, in the same way that you shower every day.

We would make three additions to that assertion as well:

Our lives must have meaning first in order for us to get motivated to confront the issues and concerns that cause conflicts, the relationships that are “suboptimal” and the situations that make us frustrated. In the field of student development, this is called agency.

Our personalities must be resilient, able to take disappointment, failure and not achieving our goals the first time around. When there is resilience, motivation matters less, because the mindset changes from “I need to be motivated before I can confront a conflict in my life” to “I am resilient and know I can get through this conflict with this other person and that’s my motivation.”

Our lives must be well balanced in all five areas of wellbeing: social, career, physical, financial and community. That balance means more than just a few percentage points of feeling good here balanced against a few percentage points of feeling bad there. Without well-balanced lives, a lack of motivation to change leads to emotional apathy and physical lethargy.

Organizations, from family (the world’s first corporation) to churches, have a responsibility to acknowledge and support the balance of wellbeing, appropriate feedback, and encouragement in the form of appropriate recognition and reward, for individuals who search for meaning in their work, play, volunteerism and worship.

Being successful at this task requires the founders, funders, owners and even contributors to those organizations, to start examining their own motivations a little closer.

Or else conflicts, crises, confrontations and aggressive behaviors will continue to demotivate those who could potentially courageously be motivated to attain new meaning when conflicts arise.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Innovation and Change

The problem stopping most workplace innovation and change strategies, is that too many people–founders, funders, entrepreneurs, owners, and starters–have thought too little about how they personally and professionally respond and react to a culture built on change and innovation.

We’ve addressed this before:

You get up and go to work every morning and work with people whom you have developed third level relationships. You are tasked with accomplishing goals that may have little to no meaning for you. And in exchange, you are compensated with pieces of paper with the pictures of deceased leaders on them.

Then, changes happen (or innovation arrives), both internal and external and you are required to manage the change, manage the disruption you feel about the change and manage the responses and reactions of the other people who are impacted by the change.

In exchange for expending the emotional labor required to do this successfully, sometimes you are recognized and rewarded in ways that matter to you. Sometimes you aren’t. Too many organizations are still led by managers, teams and supervisors at the middle management level who think “Well, you got a paycheck this week. So that’s good enough.” Even worse, many of those same organizations were founded, funded and continued by people with the same Industrial Revolution, Henry Ford mindset.

Some of this is mindset is changing, no doubt.

With the work that human resource researchers, behavioral psychologists and organizational experts are doing throughout the world, the workplace is gradually shifting. As we noted in a workshop that we facilitated the other day, we are all collectively exiting the hangover remaining from the Industrial Revolution.

Innovation for people and organizations, true innovation, will require founders, funders, entrepreneurs, owners, and starters, to turn the corner on two corrosive mindsets that remain, leading to all kinds of conflicts, both internal and external:

We have to stop thinking of innovation as an imposition.

People, whether employees, supervisors, managers or executives, are not prone to behaving in change-oriented ways. Because of our biology, reinforced through work, social and personal cultures, we are inclined to favor the least amount of resistance (or friction) possible. This response, of course comes from the flight and fight parts of our brains. We rationalize these responses in many different ways, but for the most part, people tend to view innovation they did not initiate as an imposition, rather than as an improvement.

We have to stop making change a “value container” for our personal issues.

People make judgements and rationalize their responses to changes in many different ways, but the biggest way is that people determine that change is really a verdict on past decisions. Specifically, an indictment. This pre-conceived judgement comes from the idea that “what came before must have been bad.” This type of thinking paralyzes people in endless meaningless arguments about the validity of past decisions, closes people off to determining how the material fact of change can be integrated into the present circumstances, and blinds people with fear about what other changes the future may hold.

Innovation and change are merely stories, told by people desiring a new narrative.

Innovation and change always comes with conflict and conflict is an incubator of change.

Without founders, funders, entrepreneurs, owners, and starters doing the hard work of laying the groundwork of wellbeing, strengths based leadership, emotional intelligence, and conflict engagement skills training in their cultures from the beginning, organizations will continue to find it difficult to innovate.

Even as the waves of external changes, buffet them back and forth across the blue ocean of business.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] On Preparing for a Podcast

Choosing equipment, editing the sound, uploading the audio file and choosing the distribution platform are not the hardest decisions to make when starting podcasting.

The hardest parts of the podcasting process are two-fold:

Finding interesting guests

AND

Making the guest interesting.

Finding interesting guests does not mean finding guests who are personally interesting to the host. Finding interesting guests means thinking of the demographic, the audience and the listener to the podcast. Radio broadcasters and TV hosts have struggled with this throughout time.

Making guests interesting does not mean manipulating the interview, the questions, the conversation or the process, to transform the person from an audial scullery maid, into an audial Cinderella through some form of spoken magic. Making guests interesting means thinking of the questions to ask that will cause the guest to engage in conversation with the host (us) to get to a larger point.

Getting caught up in decisions around equipment, distribution systems and platforms, uploading processes, and on and on, is thrashing and avoidance, based in fear.

Engaging with the podcasting process requires the same internal capacity to go for it and abandon the fear of performance and perfection that curating, blogging, speaking and presenting require.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 06.23.2015

I have been traveling around New York state for the last three to four weeks pretty consistently and I’ve got a few thoughts:

The amazing natural beauty and landscapes of this state reflect what the original colonists saw. I can’t imagine what this state must have looked like to the original colonists who settled here from England, Germany, Scotland and even Denmark.

And no, I’m not forgetting that the Native Indigenous People were here first.

There are very real possibilities in the state of New York, but some of those possibilities have been squandered by well meaning, but misguided people. I am not opposed to the people who have decided to live in the most populous city in this country, but there are millions and millions of other people who deserve to have access, and the possibility of growth, who are in places not in New York City.

The false dichotomy—and false conflict—between those who are within (the “city”) and those who are without (“upstate”) is the most pointless and meaningless division in the history of this state. And it is easily overcome through being open to learning, innovation and true, genuine, scary growth.

I’ve got some other observations, but this is supposed to be short.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Marketing for the Peace Builder

Peace builder’s have to be willing to get vulnerable in their marketing.

In a professional field, dominated by people familiar with—and comfortable with—the way that the world worked under Industrial Revolution rules, this can be a difficult transition.

Peace builders of all kinds—conflict resolution professionals, mediators, trainers, attorneys, social workers, and on and on—are facing world where permission is no longer granted, and where technology gives anyone the tools to change the rules.

It is important to note, however, that perfection, exactitude and quality are thought of in different ways now. A woman at a conference last week asked us a question: “How can you write a blog post that’s ‘just good enough’ when that is out there and it could show the quality of your work to a potential client?”

Good question.

The answer is three fold:

The line from “good enough” to “perfect” has nothing to do with a potential client’s perception of the work. It has to do with the author’s perception of what they have written or created. Your “good enough” and our “perfect” are going to have different meanings. And thus draw different clients, with different motives.
In a world of endless noise and multiple information options, the higher work is not to be bound to a mythical idea of “quality” based on rules that no longer apply. Instead, quality is now defined as “being out there in a world full of noise with commitment, consistency and persistence.”
The audience decides or the audience doesn’t, but the audience has expanded by multiple factors. No longer are peace builders bound to the television, billboards, editorials, word-of-mouth referrals, and praying that the next client will come in. Now peace builders have an expanded audience to whom they can appeal (see the Long Tail for more of this idea) and with 6.5 billion people on the planet, the audience is global, not local.

Before doing any of this, before writing one blog post, or making one video, peace builders have to be willing to throw away fear, the need for assurances and their preconceived expectations, and dance with vulnerability, to market effectively.

We’ve got an e-book describing our journey through this minefield. Download it by following the link here. And it’s free.

-Peace Be With You All-