An Equation for Life

At a certain point, in every speaking engagement we embark on here at HSCT, we are asked one of two questions:

“How is it that you have so much energy?”

And/or

“Where do you find the time to get everything done that you do?”

Also, we are accused of being too intense in our approaches to navigating conflict communication, making sure mediators and peace builders engage in entrepreneurship, and in making the point that the future is coming, whether we are prepared for it or not.

Three things:

Time: We here at HSCT have the same number of hours in a day—24 by last count—that Socrates, Einstein, and Elon Musk had and have. And so do you.
Passion: The word comes from the Latin root meaning “to suffer.” So, graduates, when you are told to “follow your passion,” what those well-meaning speakers are really telling you is “do your suffering.” We work hard here at HSCT.
Energy and Intensity: We believe in the value of the education and life experience that we have acquired over time. We believe in the value of our perspective and approach to business, entrepreneurship and peace building, and the validity of our knowledge and resources.

Finally, when all that belief, time well spent, and passion come together, we believe that we have no choice but to burn brighter than the Sun, with every chance we get.

Energy=Passion+Intensity+Belief/Time

A simple equation.

-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

Freedom From Fear

Feedback is part of a constructive process that involves collaboration and trust building.

Feedback is a giving action, which should come from a horn of plenty.

“No” is the beginning of a destructive process that involves competition and deception.

“No” is a taking action, that comes from a position of scarcity.

Feedback is active, but a “no”—particularly the ones provided “in your best interests,” or “to help”—are passive acts of resistance.

By the way, don’t confuse feedback from the crowd with a “no.”

Also, don’t confuse a “no” from an individual as feedback that reflects the crowd’s opinion of your idea/work/project.

-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

[Advice] The Right Brain-Left Brain Rap War

In a conflict or confrontation, it turns out that the right brain doesn’t know what the left brain is doing.

The right brain, which controls creativity and negative emotions, reacts in a conflict to protect the rest of the brain by shifting to quick action and focusing on the conflict at hand.

The left brain, which controls rationality and solution storing for problems, reacts in conflict by shutting up, sitting down and taking notes for further review later.

Adrenal glands release cortisol during stress and epinephrine (commonly known as adrenaline) during difficulty.

These glandular chemicals, along with norepinephrine, allow us to create new memories in concert with the sympathetic nervous system.

The left brain records the memories while the right brain battles it out. Kind of sounds like the way wars are fought, as the generals sit at the rear while the front rank charges.

How do you respond to someone in this state?

Disengage—don’t use logic with the person. It won’t work.
Listen and be empathetic—but don’t “buy-in” to everything that the other person is experiencing.
Then focus on the rational piece—but don’t expect much help initially. The other person is still lit up.

Now, because the other person is still operating in right brain mode, they will make judgments about you, your behavior, your responses to them and the situation. And if you do the wrong thing, or confront them, those judgments become hard to break later on.

[Thanks to Bill Eddy and others] for giving me the ideas for this blog post.

-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/

[Advice] Caucusing Arete

Caucusing in a mediation happens when a mediator takes each party aside and talks to them privately about issues and concerns that the other party may not be open to hearing.

In a divorce mediation, it could be about issues of infidelity, emotional abuse or unresolved anger.
In an organizational mediation, it could be about issues of pay structure, proprietary information, or that there’s a personal problem with the other party.
In a church mediation, it could be a about an interpretation of Scripture or a moment of clarity.

No matter what it is, however, the phrase heard most often within a caucus is “I don’t want [insert name of party here] to know this, but…”

A mediator’s virtue then shows, because she has a choice about addressing the opposite party with a concern that could tip the mediation one way—or another.

Arête is the Greek word for the idea of living up to your potential with excellence. And when a mediator navigates a caucus with arête, it can make all the difference.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

Email: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

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

Mediator Phronesis

Phronesis is the Greek word meaning practical, or moral, wisdom.

In a mediation scenario—where two parties are in conflict and they ask a third party to come in—phronesis serves a practical purpose.

In a caucusing situation, when the mediator takes one—or both—parties aside to talk privately about issues that matter that cannot be brought up in front of the other party, phronesis matters.

Outside of the healthcare and helping fields, core questions that revolve around the development of a person’s character are rarely discussed.

In the field of mediation, many practitioners are “seasoned citizens” and are thus able to bring the aggregate lessons learned from a lifetime of missed opportunities, failures and personal regrets.

Phronesis in a mediation—and specifically during a caucusing break—can be the difference between success and failure for a mediator.

How do you develop practical wisdom?

Well, the Ancient Greeks as well as many Christian denominations and sects, believe that the only way to develop character is by developing in the areas of:

Faith
Hope
Charity
Love
Temperance
Prudence
Justice

All of which can take a lifetime to develop.

-Peace Be With You All-

Artificial Wisdom

There is a demonstrable difference between intelligence and wisdom.

After watching the new Cosmos, with host Neil DeGrasse Tyson, we here at HSCT are amazed at how much human beings have accomplished.

It’s a miracle that we go from arguing with our parents and spilling our lunch down our shirts to going to engineering machines that can take people to the moon in the space of 32 years.

This is a human miracle that is very rarely commented on and when it is, we usually dismiss it and instead focus on our co-worker with the messy, meatball sandwich laden shirt who is 32.

Intelligence gets us to the moon.
Intelligence engineers Facebook and Google.
Intelligence determines how much concrete and steel need to go into a bridge to make it stand.
Intelligence measures how much water needs to go into a flower to make it grow.

But wisdom…well…that’s another thing altogether, right?

Wisdom waxes poetic about the shape of the moon and its meaning in our lives.
Wisdom ponders turning off the computer and turning to offline relationships.
Wisdom causes us to care (or not) about the plight of the people under the bridge.
Wisdom calls to us to touch the flower and talk to it to encourage its growth.

Does your computer, or Google, have that?

In a very short amount of cosmic time, we have managed to slice a sliver from the great stone of knowledge, but HSCT’s concern is that we have not attained the commensurate wisdom to go along with it.

HSCT’s conflict engagement consultant, Jesan Sorrells, will be presenting on the issue of online reputation maintenance in a world where virtues and traits such as love and wisdom, are not often addressed.

We would love to see you there!

-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

What Are You Doing Next Saturday?

6th Annual Conference on Applied Ethics:

Technology and Ethics

April 4-5 2014 at SUNY Broome Community College

What are the ethics of data mining, genetic screening and hydrofracking?
What is the significance and future of neuroethics?
Can there be ethical guidelines for the production and use of chimeras?
Is there a right to technological connectivity?

Keynote speaker for this year’s conference will be Dr. David Sloan Wilson, Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is a prolific author and frequent speaker at conferences around the world. His address on Friday, April 4th at 7pm will be on, “Ethics, Technology and Evolution.”

[Advice] All That Happens Must Be Known

Given revelations of internet data surveillance what concerns should be raised about the possibility of brain monitoring devices?

All this week on the HSCT Communication Blog, we are answering questions put forth by the folks running the at the upcoming Suny-Broome 6^th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference being held on April 4^thand 5^that Suny-Broome Community College.

This week’s question was posed by the plot of David Eggers’ most recent novel, The Circle, and was not definitively answered by the end of the book.

Well, we here at HSCT have three primary concerns about brain monitoring devices. And the NSA didn’t make the top three.

The first is around marketing and the idea of “opting-out” rather than a mandatory “opt-in.”

The most annoying moment on the internet or social media is waiting for the commercial at the front of a YouTube video to load, with the countdown going before the viewer can “skip this ad.”

As the customer (you and I) have gained more control over blocking being sold to, marketers and advertisers have had to come up with more clever (and blunt) ways to compel our valuable time and attention, with confusing and frustrating results for all parties involved.

Now imagine if marketers had access to the most intimate space on the planet: Your private brain space.There would be no “option to opt-out,” even though all the legalese would say that there would be.

Which gets us to point number 2…

The second concern that we have is that increasingly, the desire to not participate in social communication is seen as a sign of social ineptitude at best and dangerous at worst.

Case in point: Whenever a school shooting happens, the first thing that the media does is breathlessly report whether or not the perpetrator possessed a social media account.

If he (and it’s usually a ‘he’) does, then there is breathless data mining that goes on in a search for pathology, motive, and aberration.

In other words, the nature of the aberrant act itself is no longer enough to create outrage; the lack of social participation is the driver for primary outraged responses.Which leads to concern number 3…

The third concern is that we have long sought—as individuals, societies and cultures—to control people under the guise of freeing them from Plato’s Cave.

Brain monitoring devices won’t be used to give us freedom, collaboration and connection.Instead, they will be used to take away freedom, encourage and inflame false fracturing and individualization, and destroy connections between people.

In other words, criminalization of thought will happen using the same powerful social sanctioning to illegality continuum that has banned smoking from restaurants, trans fats from NY City restaurants, and has gotten the White House cook to quit.

The inevitability of technological progress demands that we think about the ramifications of power and control, not only from government and corporations, but also by and from each other.

So, HSCT’s conflict engagement consultant, Jesan Sorrells, will be presenting on the issue of online reputation maintenance in a world where virtue and ethics are not often addressed.

We would love to see you there!

-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/

Wisdom in the Machine

When the astronaut Dave powers down the rebellious HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and more recently in the 2013 film, Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix, we determine through pop culture, what machine “death” looks–and feels–like.

The fact of murder comes from the fact of life and ideas and philosophies that we have as individual humans–and collective societies–about what traits constitute life.

In the case of a machine, we here at HSCT take the position that a machine cannot overcome the limitations of its creator.

Life is defined, not only by self-sustaining processes (we were asked while writing this post, if it would be murder to power down a machine created by another machine) but also by wisdom that is attained through life experience.

The crux of wisdom lies at the intersection of common sense, insight and understanding.

HAL 9000 may have had one, or even two, of those things—such as insight and understanding—but “he” (see how we anthropomorphized an inanimate object there) lacked the third trait in spades: common sense.

Just like Skynet in Terminator or the machines and computer programming networks of The Matrix, HAL 9000 was unable to negotiate in good faith with his creator.

“He” made an “all or nothing” decision about Dave’s presence, Dave’s mission and Dave’s motives and then took extreme action.

The same way that the machines did in The Matrix and Terminator.

The ability to negotiate with others in good faith, and to honor those agreements, is a human trait based in knowledge, experience, common sense and insight, not just a happy byproduct of a conscious mind.

And until machines have the ability to negotiate with, not only their environments in the rudest sense of the term, but also with their creators, we should feel free to power them up—or down—at our will.

After all, our Creator does the same thing.

Right?

-Peace Be With You All-

Get Out of Your Head

Get some outside your own head help.

When you are writing anything, it is easy to get cloistered and wrapped up in your own head.

And while you may have had this idea for an e-book for years and have been noodling away at it on napkins at restaurants for the last five years, if no one else looks at it, then it may not be worth its weight in gigabytes.

This is a critical step in the writing process for both fiction and nonfiction writers.

Part of the freedom and glory of blogging is that there are no editors or authorities to filter your voice.

But in a dynamic selling environment, where you will be giving away an e-book consisting of your best ideas, you want to put your best foot forward and an editor will help you do that.

As usual, a professional beats an amateur, but sometimes, crowd editing (like crowd funding) can serve as an awesome way to let others in on what you are doing, as well as tap into the vast resource of the internet

known as the collective mind.

Is it scary?

Yeah.

But so is never adding to the world in a positive way.

Getting an editor—whether it be the crowd or a former disgruntled journalist—can be a scary, expensive proposition.

But not as scary as the long-term effects of choosing not to communicate effectively.

Here at HSCT, we can help you explore the how to communicate effectively safely and thoroughly.

Sign upfor the March 26^th HSCT Seminar, Choices in Communication, held at The Studios of Bree Elyse Imaging for only $89.99!

Click on the link http://bitly.com/18LX7HC to register!

We would love to see you there!

-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