[Advice] The Law of Average

It used to be ok to be, well, “ok.”

It used to be “ok” to do good enough work at home with your kids, in the neighborhood with your community, and in your church with your time.

It used to be “ok” to just show up, do what you’re told, don’t ask too many questions, and be the nail that hammered itself down.

It used to be “ok” to not do the little extras, to not give a little more, to care only at the level you were comfortable caring at and to devote little or no time to thinking about why that was ok.

And in this time, when things used to be “ok,” political world leaders still were elected and assassinated with regularity, wars still were started and ended, products were still invented and sold, television programs, the newspapers, and other forms of communication tools still worked to get you information. And people still lived and died, marketing still worked, and scandals still intrigued the masses.

So what happened?

The Law of Averages says that in a sample of any kind, from neighborhoods, to marketing campaigns, the statistical distribution of outcomes among members of a small sample must reflect the distribution of outcomes across the population as a whole.

The law has always been a fallacy, based on observed, personalized experiences that are then transposed to a much larger (or sometimes different) population sample. And the rules that the industrialists, the marketers, the politicians, and the policy makers created in the 20^th century (and that they are mightily trying to recreate in the 21^st century) are responsible for the massive belief in the law of averages.

But, wishful thinking is not reality. And the reality is, it was never good enough to just be “ok”: whether at your job, at communicating in conflict situations, or at creating a project, or taking a risk. And now, because of technological shifts that have been long remarked upon and analyzed, the fallacy is being exposed at mass, for what it is.

It’s not good enough to be average at communicating in a conflict scenario.

It’s not good enough to just show up at home, at church, in your community, or at work.

It’s not good enough to not go the extra mile, do the extra thing, and take the extra time, even if you don’t get paid for it. Especially if you don’t get paid for it.

It’s not good enough to disengage from what’s going on in someone else’s political, economic, spiritual, or financial reality because “that doesn’t impact me over here.”

Wishful thinking that “it will all be ‘ok’” doesn’t work anymore (and never really did), because it won’t be “ok.” The cultural, social, political, and financial machine that used to guarantee that “ok” would be good enough, is breaking down.

Its only individuals (not the masses at scale) who can choose to do the hard work that moves humanity collectively from merely “ok” in our emotional, spiritual, and material interactions with each other, and moves us to better, and finally to best (or most remarkable) in the world: meaning the world individuals inhabit on a daily, weekly, yearly basis, not the whole wide world.

Navigating the tension between the desire to passively slip into the anonymity of “ok” and the need to actively move from “ok” to better to best, is the place where engagement—personal and meaningful—must happen in the 21^st century if humanity is to become the best version of humanity it can be.

-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/

HIT Piece 5.10.2016

Seers.

Psychics.

Prognosticators.

All of them are false, phony, fallible, and human.

Trust me.

Nobody knows anything about how tomorrow—whether literally tomorrow or five years from now—is going to happen.

But the socially sanctioned comfort provided by either breathlessly predicting Armageddon or predicting Paradise outweighs the reality of individual people who relentlessly do the work, every day, regardless of what the external circumstances are—and no matter how personally Apocalyptic their worldview and frame may be.

Gradualism, eating the elephant one bit at a time, taking the time to focus: These are not flashy traits, and they don’t make for a raucous Twitter feed, a stunning reality show, or brilliant social media newsfeed. But a personal lifetime that matters, is made up not of repeated, breathless predictions, but instead of plodding, professional, daily work.

There will always be predictors (currently backed up by Big Data) and with computer algorithms and artificial intelligence on the horizon, the gap between prediction and failure of a specific prediction to come to pass (or the accuracy of the prediction coming to pass) will get smaller and smaller—probably narrowing down to a statistical meaningless difference. This will be most helpful with weather patterns and mathematical constructs—less so with people.

But the work, the plodding, professional, unsexy, work is what will matter.

And in the end, there will still be people whose life work, life focus, and lifetime professionalism will defy all the predictions of seers, psychics, and updated, Big Data bloated, statistical prognosticators, and will still be unpredictable, surprising, and ultimately, delightful.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Haters

The critic who has never produced anything…other than criticism.

The dilettante who has never done the hard work of going deeper…except in going deeper into dabbling.

The professional noticer who only notices the negatives…and begrudgingly gives space to the positives.

The Internet troll or commenter who takes perverse pleasure in commenting negatively…but who’s own personal life is in shambles.

There have always been critics, dilettantes, gossips, trolls, and commenters whose only job in the tribe is to maintain the status quo by determining who’s “in” who’s “out” and whether it makes a difference or not. And in a world where the masses mattered and the opinions of a few people could make or break the launch of your product, this function served a golden purpose: separating the wheat from the chaff.

The world has moved on though (as it always does) and the role of the critic, the dilettante, the professional noticer, the troll, the gossip, and the commenter, have to shift from curating for the masses, to curating for the small group. The function of social curation is never going to stop, but the audience that used to applaud public curation has moved on (as it also always does). This is reflected in the increasing ubiquity of trolling and the decline of constructive criticism.

And when the performer is conducting a show, the professional noticer, and the impolite troll are lumped into the general category of “haters.”

In a new communications world, in the midst of the fourth mightiest revolution in human history, the artist, the impresario, the performer putting on the show, has the power to shun the haters and their attempts to culturally curate through shaming. This is a hugely unremarked upon power shift, that has implications beyond communication in the digital realm:

What if it didn’t matter what the person in the other cubicle over thinks of you when you resolve that conflict?

What if it didn’t matter if you showed your humanity at work by treating people like people rather than like objects?

What if it didn’t matter how much revenue you made in dollars, but instead it mattered how much goodwill you could engender in the people who matter?

What if laboring emotionally was rewarded financially rather than looked upon as an outlier, or a spillover effect?

What if the statements and pronouncements of the critic, the dilettante, the professional noticer, the troll, the gossip, and the commenter couldn’t hurt your business because it’s really not for them, never has been for them, and never will be for them—and that was ok?

What if not scaling because you don’t have to please everyone at mass anymore, just a few hundred thousand people, really was the way to create engines of economic, cultural, and social growth?

What if the critic, the dilettante, the professional noticer, the troll, the gossip, and the commenter had to add something to the world and be vulnerable themselves, instead of trying to recapture an element of lost power that was an illusion in the first place?

What if you could hug your “haters,” but shun their shame, and grow from that emotionally, spiritually, and financially?

What if in every communication scenario, we started calling people’s bluffs, and having them really stand up, take responsibility and accountability, and encourage creativity from the challenge of saying “this is who I am, this is what I’m making” and let the work be on the line, rather than letting their inner selves be on the line?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What Are Your Core Values?

There are values.

There are beliefs.

There are principles.

Values are what we are willing to put our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honors on the line to defend, protect, and advocate for. Values are based typically in a moral or ethical code, or standard of behavior, sometimes enforced by society and culture, but much of the time determined privately by individuals.

Beliefs are what we really think, down deep, past the words that come out of our mouths. Beliefs are a core part of the stories that we tell ourselves about the values that we have. Beliefs are about trust, faith, and the confidence in something (typically values) that will come to reality.

Principles are the combination of values and beliefs. Principles serve as the fundamental truths that are the foundation of a chain of reasoning that leads to a set of manifested behaviors that shape our realities. Principles are bedrock, they are eternal, and they sound like positions when we articulate them.

But they are not positions (which are often about personal (and sometimes public) identity or maintaining “face”) nor are they about interests (which are often flexible, negotiable, situational, and impersonal).

There is little productive talk about values using anything but position-based language, designed to inflame people, rather than unite them. There is even less productive debate about beliefs using anything other than language designed to conjure up images of religion, rather than relationship. In both cases, the use of persuasive, argumentative, anchoring language is designed to separate people from each other (which is easy), rather than to engender deeper introspection (which is hard). And too often in our public language, at work, at school, in social media, and other places, we use the language of principles to talk about positions—or even worse–to justify behavior based in mere interests.

Don’t let people fool you. There’s plenty of hard, emotional work in introspectively determining what your values are, articulating to others what your beliefs are, and in figuring out how both of those are walked out in your lived principles.

But there’s no glamour. There’s low (or no) pay. And there’s often no audience. But it’s when there’s no glamour, pay, or audience to put on a show for, that we discover what really lives at our core.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Priority Management vs. Time Management

You can’t get more hours in the day.

I can’t get more hours in the day.

Neither can anybody that you know.

But have you looked at your priorities lately? Have you examined the choices that you make that reveal the priorities that you have?

Your p riorities matter more than how you spend your time. But this is tricky because, while it may be obvious to us (and everybody else) what our priorities are when we choose what to have at lunch between a roast beef sandwich or a vegetable dish, it’s only obvious to us (and not so much to anybody else) what our priorities are when we choose between being engaged or disengaged in a conflict.

Priority management reveals our deepest choices, desires, and motivations around, under, and above, the thing we talk about valuing the most—our time. Talking about the choices that undergird our priorities is not sexy or exciting. It’s sharp, cutting, and sometimes embarrassing. Which is why it’s easier to write about being productive, or “managing” time, rather than training adults in how to prioritize their lives by examining the stories they have chosen to create around their lives, and the lives of others.

Like many things in our lives, the thing that matters even more than our priorities (which are revealed after we make a decision) is the narrative we tell ourselves about our priorities before (and after) we make the decision to act on them. Or not.

To go back to the previous example: You may choose the roast beef sandwich because you think that meat tastes better because you were raised in a household where meat was eaten 3 times a day. Another person may choose the veggie dish because they think that the roast beef is too fatty and salty, and they’re trying to lose weight and eat better because they want to sit on the beach without embarrassment in August.

So, one makes roast beef, or veggies, the priority, then they order lunch in a blink, and they don’t beat themselves up over it.

But the story changes when the stakes are higher, like in the story we tell ourselves about what we do at work, the work that we have chosen to do, or the tasks we are asked to do at work. The story changes when we have to choose between priorities at home, and priorities in the community.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #9 – Qiana Patterson

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #9 – Qiana Patterson, A Fearless Experienced Ed-Tech Executive, Thinker, Educator, and Technologist

[powerpress]

Race, culture, education, and technology; all of these things matter to our guest today, and she’s going to make sure that you at least think about them before we’re done here.

In our world today, race, gender, and culture seem to matter more now than ever before. This interview sort of dovetails with the interview that we did with Mitch Mitchell a couple of episodes back.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but a person’s vocal inflections, tone, and language should have no racial overtones, but I remember the last time we went around and around the block about race in this country—during the Orenthal James Simpson trial—that there was some discussion about whether or not O.J. had a “black” sounding voice.

Speaking of language, my grandmother came from a time when women and minorities in general weren’t getting a public fair shake in any sense of the word and she raised me to speak with as clean and as unaccented a voice as she possibly could. She believed—as Booker T. Washington before her also did—that speaking well was the first step toward writing well, which led inevitably to living well in a racist world.

I think that our guest today, Qiana Patterson, would have had an interesting discussion with my grandmother. These are two women separated by a lot of history, a lot of years, and by philosophies. That’s not to say that Qiana’s perspective or philosophy on education, race, and where they meet in the realm of technology is problematic.

Far from it.

I think that we have to be open to hearing from everybody in this racially, ethnically, and even economically diverse world. Because if we don’t, then self-awareness, self-motivation, and the courage to act differently (forget just thinking differently) become mere punchlines that we repeat at cocktail parties.

And I think that my grandmother, Qiana, and myself, have had quite enough of all that.

Haven’t you?

Check out all the ways below to connect with Qiana today:

Qiana’s Education Post Page: http://educationpost.org/network/qiana-patterson/

Qiana’s Twitter Feed: https://twitter.com/Q_i_a_n_a

Qiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qiana-patterson-87427b2

Qiana’s About Me page: https://about.me/QianaPatterson

[Opinion] What’s On Your Billboard?

If you show me your checkbook and your daily calendar, I’ll show you your priorities.

This basic truth is difficult (not hard) for many well-meaning people to accept, which is why time management, productivity, “hacking,” and other terms have come into the Internet lexicon over the last few years.

In the workplace, the industrialists’ idea of greater and greater productivity being encouraged through the adoption and integration of labor saving/time shaving devices and machines, has led to a revolution, going on since the 1970’s at least, where the work people used to do is now being done by machines—whether they be hardware or software.

But the rub is that all those employees still feel squeezed for time. Squeezed even as work and life more and more overlap and intrude upon each other. Squeezed even as the current generations in the workplace demand more meaning and mattering in even the performance of menial labor. Squeezed even as the new, post-modern, post-industrialist creators, digital geniuses, and the financial manipulators seem to accrue more wealth, while those who didn’t get in on the ground floor, seem to accrue fewer and fewer rewards.

If you show me your checkbook and your daily calendar, I’ll show you what areas of your life get the most of your attention.

We can do very little about the creators, the digital geniuses, or the financial manipulators, but we can do something about the areas that are near to us. Our checkbooks reveal the stories we tell ourselves about our money. Our calendars reveal the stories we tell ourselves about our time. Because, while we may not all have the wealth of Warren Buffet, we all still have the same number of hours in the day that he does.

And this is where the friction—the intrapersonal conflicts—really lie: Many of us believe the story that the industrialists of the last century told us repeatedly about our money, and our time. The story is that time = money and if you’re not working to get paid, and if you’re not productive in the way that they want you to be productive, then your priorities are skewed. And whatever time you have leftover in the day is a gift from them.

The labor movement fought against this thinking, leading to the creation of unions.Unions effectively used the language of rebellion, and changed the language of priorities, in favor of those who were working. But now, in the face of a post-industrialist economy, individuals making their own priorities paramount matters more than either the story on life support of the industrialists or the clever linguistic jiujitsu of the union representatives.

If you show me your checkbook and your daily calendar, I’ll show you what’s on your personal, interior billboard.

What are your priorities?
What does your checkbook reveal about where you spend your money?
What does your calendar reveal about how you divide up the same number of hours in the day that Warren Buffet, or Mark Zuckerberg, or the guy down the street, has?
What do you—as an individual—really value?

Answering those questions honestly, and with penetrating self-awareness, will begin the process of getting more out of your life—and the choices you are choosing to make—than any time management article possible could.

-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/

HIT Piece 05.03.2016

The audience for the window dressing has left the building.

The thing is, the audience for whom the window dressing was designed, was probably there against their will for most of the show anyway.

All the way from how teachers present school assignments to how carnival barkers work the crowd, the audience for the show has to buy into the window dressing that covers the content, and they have to have the patience and the desire to be there in the first place.

But at a certain point adults get tired of formalized schooling and audiences get tired of being yelled at by commercials that are louder than the show they are interrupting and all of us begin to make alternate choices.

Post-school age adults confuse the window dressing of the set-up of the classroom, the routine of the school day, and the frustration of navigating the daily school environment tension between what they would like to have done, rather than what they were supposed to do, with learning valuable information—and almost 45% of post-school age adults never read another book after high school.

Audiences confuse the window dressing of the loud voice, the annoying 30-second interruption, the lack of real relationship, and their desire to have the show come back on, with all advertising that annoys them—and they employ ad blockers online, cut the cord from cable and use on-demand, streaming services, or turn off the television altogether.

I’ve been getting some feedback lately that the window dressing over some of my training content has to go. That audiences are impatient, disengaged, and only willing to sit through bite sized content, delivered quickly, and entertainingly.

But the thing is, the audiences I talk with, who contain individuals in conflicts, disagreements, disputes, and “differences of opinion” at work, didn’t get to where they are before they walked into my facilitation space quickly. It was a slow, steady, build-up of sediment consisting of frustrations, expectations, false reassurances, and miscommunications that got them there.

I don’t specialize in keeping anybody around against their will. And if the audience wants the window-dressing to go, it can go.

But to confuse the mechanics of the learning, with the tools of how and why to learn, merely perpetuates a pattern of disengagement, disillusion, and disheartening outcomes that got the audience here listening in the first place.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] The Trust Deficit

Losing trust and getting it back—always a hard process—has become that much harder because of how we have changed socially in reaction to the presence of our new digital communication tools.

Credibility used to come from the work you performed, and from showing up every day, like clockwork. In the world of work, our workplaces, and in the world of communication, when everyone can show up, credibility is lost when consistency is abandoned. Just look at the world of lifestyle coaching, blogging, podcasting, and even the early days of adoption of streaming video platforms such as Meerkat, Periscope, and Blab. Credibility used to be built by sticking around after the “newness” of something wore off. Now, in the constant, impatient chase to pursue the new, credibility takes a hit.

Transparency used to not even be a consideration in public communication. The public was happy not knowing the details of the lives of those considered to be “famous.” Affairs, cheating, fraud, abuse, addiction, moral failings: all of these used to be fodder for the arena occupied by scandal rags, “yellow” journalism, and gossip columnists—and dismissed, or viewed as scandalous in and off themselves, by “decent” people. But now, all of that has gone mainstream. And while there are a few people still around who value the old ethic of the personal and the private not being public, many individuals choose to transparently video stream, Tweet, Facebook update, and otherwise expose their reality to the world. We are arcing over to a time when how much you have been transparent matters more than what you have been transparent about. A place where the act of participating matters more for your credibility than the content you are sharing.

Authenticity used to be about the soundness of moral (or ethical) character, in the face of tough decisions no matter their impact. Sayings such as “He (or she) is bona fide” speak to the idea that being authentic was once about character—which no longer often gets commented on. This is not to say that character no longer counts, but the shared moral and ethical framework that undergirded much of societal cueing about who had character—and who didn’t—has gradually eroded away. Now the way we determine authenticity has become individualized, rather than corporately shared, and authenticity is simultaneously about ourselves (“I need to be free to be who I genuinely am”) and about negating a previously publicly shared moral and ethical framework (“Don’t judge me”).

Establishing, building, and maintaining trust in an environment of tools that reward impatience and a lack of focus, where the act of being transparent matters more than what we are being transparent about, and where authenticity has become personal rather than shared, has become infinitely more difficult.

But not impossible.

The way out of all of this is to hearken back to some older truths:

Credibility is about commitment and consistency, rather than about the shiny, the new, or the tool. Judgement about credibility should come from looking at a track record, rather than a snapshot, moment-in-time event.

Transparency has to revert back to being a sacred part of a two-way relationship, rather than either a selfish one-way act (“I broadcast to you.”) or a selfish two-way act (“We broadcast—or share—only with each other and our narrow band of ‘friends’.”).

Authenticity is the sacrifice that the libertine makes on the altar of the public good, rather than seeking to hold onto it all the time at the expense of the public. Shakespeare had it right about Julius Caesar: The sacrifice of being “on” all the time in public and in private is the ultimate trust building tool.

But all of this is hard.

And without getting our arms wrapped around these three areas as leaders, employees, and even individuals, trust will become yet another sacrifice made on the altar of our post-modern communication tools.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] On Non-Defensive Listening

Defensiveness.

Stonewalling.

Denial.

Silence.

These are all aspects of defensive listening. This is the listening that involves argumentation. This is the listening that involves a lack of focus on the other party. This is the listening that involves pushing your “I’m right” on someone who doesn’t believe, want to hear about, or care about your “I’m right.” They believe in their own “I’m right.”

All of the aspects on defensive listening are most often cued to others, not through speaking (although vocal inflections, tones, and word usage do play a part) but instead through the nonverbal communication of body language, facial expression, and onomatopoeia (sounds that when written convert to imagery (and sounds) in our minds).

Non-defensive listening is about the opposite of all of this. Non-defensive listening—above all else, even above non-defensive responding—is about focusing on the other person’s communication in order to understand, get clarity, and respond, rather than react, appropriately.

Without all the stonewalling.

To effectively engage with non-defensive listening, there are three things to do right away:

Focus on what the other person is saying, doing, and communicating in an interaction. Fear modulation is huge in this area.

Engage with a response that will address what the other person actually communicated, rather than what you think they communicated, what you think they meant to communicate, or even what you wanted them to communicate.

Be silent as a way to cause separation in your own head for thoughts to come to your mind clearly. This is practicing silence as a form of mindfulness, rather than using silence as a method of escape from the conversation, or interaction.

Above all else, being intentional—as if you were a brand advertising a car in Times Square—is the number one way to engage effectively with non-defensive listening.

Otherwise, there’s going to continue to be a lot of “coulda,” “woulda,” “shoulda” in your communication.