[Strategy] Avoiding Conflict is an Appropriate Response

Avoidance is the “mother’s milk” of conflict competency.

In the American workplace culture, avoidance is viewed as both a nicety for “just going along to get along” but it is also viewed as a weak response to conflict situations.

Many times though, avoiding conflict situation is appropriate when:

You have nothing at stake in the fight.
You are not directly (or even indirectly) affected by the outcome of the fight.
You are looking to preserve a relationship over attaining a goal (i.e. winning, beating your opponent, etc.)

Where the trouble lies for the novice, the advanced beginner, the competent practitioner, the proficient practitioner, or even the expert in avoidance is figuring out the gossamer levels of difference between the three above options.

And since no conflict is “pure” and there are many mixed-motives and levels of relationship involved in conflict behaviors, sometimes avoidance looks like the best (out of a series of bad) policies.

But in a workplace, picking the best choice out of a series of bad choices, can sometimes lead to even worse outcomes, such as bad behavior, poor decision making, organizational apathy, and confusion.

In order to create a new competency model, we have to acknowledge the presence of avoidance, the differences between it and accommodation, and recognize it as a valid choice for many people in a conflict scenario. Once we do that, we can decide what kind of culture we want to have, and who to hire, fire, and promote in order to get that culture.

-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/

[Advice] What Passive-Aggressiveness Looks Like in Your Organization

A predominance of passive-aggressive responses to organizational conflicts indicates that people inside an organization are competent at depression, apathy, excuse making, (otherwise known as playing the “blame game”) and navigating the gossip/rumor mill.

Passive-aggressiveness as a mode of addressing conflict “fits” into a competency model, because the people engaged in that response mode are able to effectively mitigate the hazards of responsibility, accountability, risk taking, and positive confrontation. By the way, the “designated” person who is competent in passive-aggressive responsiveness is typically very entrenched in the organization and serves as the vital glue binding together other modes of addressing conflict, either in opposition to itself, or in support of itself.

There’s levels to this, of course:

The novice passive-aggressive mode of response is characterized by mild complaining or by demonstrating a minimal lack of task oriented motivation among people in the organization.
The advanced beginner mode of response is characterized by people initiating rumors and gossip and then claiming not to be the source of such information or acting in such a way as to deflect examination.
The competent practitioner mode of passive-aggressive response is characterized by full-fledged defeatism, expressions of disbelief at organizational announcements meant to be uplifting and positive, and a general sense of pessimism.
The proficient performer mode of passive-aggressive response is characterized by those rare individuals in an organization, sometimes described by others as “black holes,” which curiously enough, no supervisor can remove due to their seniority or positional authority in the organization.
The expert mode of passive aggressive response is characterized by those individuals who rarely show up for team/organizational functions, contribute little to the forward momentum of an organization, and yet somehow still get compensated (either through money or goodwill) for the little work they actually do.

The key to success in developing passive-aggressiveness in the competency model is that people in organizations who are allowed to ascend to the highest levels of competency in this mode, often have their behavior characterized by others as bullying, manipulative, conflict prone, and coercive. Yet bosses and supervisors are continually placed in positions over them, with little change in the individual or the organization’s response to the individual.

The thing is, passive-aggressiveness as a response to unresolved organizational conflicts is based in one thing only: fear. Fear of choosing something different; fear of changing the status quo; fear of not accomplishing/accomplishing organizational goals.

Who carries the most fear in your organization?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Sometimes Accommodation Works in the Workplace

In the workplace, accommodating bad behavior, poor decision making, and the outcomes of both of those processes leads directly to accusations by others of organizational apathy and confusion.

When we talk about competence though (or write about it) the general idea seeps through the page that somehow being conflict competent requires abandoning accommodation as a strategy. But it makes sense as a strategy when:

The organization is so entrenched in whatever conflict choices they are making that the only way to resolve them all is to tear the organization down and start over again
The individual who is engaged in accommodating conflict choices has little to no positional authority and views their own power stance poorly in relation to the organization’s power stance
The groups or teams that function inside the organization actually run more fluidly with accommodation as a method of choosing how to address conflicts, because the people who are at the top of the organizational chart have role modeled accommodating as a perfectly valid choice.

If these all sound like terrible conflict modes, you would be correct. But most competency models focus on overcoming accommodation to match the dominant communication style that many organizations mythologize in the United States. Which is one of direct confrontation and attack.

In order to create a new kind of competency model, we have to acknowledge that competency at accommodation is not only a valid choice, but also one that creates space for outcomes to occur that may be suboptimal inside an organizational structure.

As a matter of fact, it would look like this:

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 1.5.2016

Well, it’s a New Year and here are some new hits:

It’s time to start saying “no” more often: This doesn’t mean that I’ll be saying “no” to every opportunity that comes along, but it does mean that there is going to be a newly instituted “three strikes and you’re out” mentality and behavior moving forward. It’s amazing to me that more professionals don’t say “no” when they are treated shabbily by large clients. Integrity and respect matter more this year.

It’s time to clean out my email inbox: With two (and upwards of three) different email accounts I juggle daily; last year was a time suck of epic proportions around email. I have started 2016 by deleting 19,276 emails from my “promotions” tab in Gmail. And that’s not an exaggeration.

It’s time to write more often: After working with an editor on my upcoming project, I have become more convinced that second drafts of blog posts are the way to go, rather than what I did last year too often. As a matter of fact, this is a second draft right here…

It’s time to read more books (that relate to where I want to go, versus where I am right now): Last year I read a lot, but this year, I’d like the reading to be more targeted, like The Consulting Bible by Alan Weiss. This book I started over the holiday and it’s been kicking my butt.

It’s time to be done by 6pm (or 7pm): The nights that my kids are home (and I’ve been at home grinding all day) I should be done by 6pm. Yes, I know that Gary Vaynerchuk and many others promote the grind and the 8pm to 12am philosophy of working, but I get up at 5am, so….

It’s time to be more “real” in my blog writing (and to get someone else to build a website/manage it for me): I spent an unconscionable number of hours last year on the back end of the website that supports this blog. But I’m not a webmaster, web designer, or web consultant. I’m a conflict engagement consultant, corporate trainer, and social media marketer for peace builders. It’s time to outsource the rest of it.

It’s time to “get real” about video, streaming and otherwise: Yes. I know about the upside down economics of working on YouTube’s farm. And I realize that less than 2.5% of the country has even heard of Periscope, Meerkat, Vine, Twitter Video, Snapchat Video, or realizes that Facebook rolled out video on their platform in the 4Q of 2015.

But I know.

And I know what they’re about and the utility (or lack thereof in some cases) of the applications to my business.

It’s time to travel more—for business: Last year, I logged close to 10,000 miles in travel. Just around the state of NY alone. I need to expand beyond the state of NY and expand into air travel, which means more targeted focus in the last area.

It’s time to meet my audience (both in person and digitally) and to engage with them more: The audience is everything and I need to meet them more. I know who my fans are, and I know what they like, by virtue of which blog posts they share, like and comment on. So, I’d like to meet them in person, to grow the network, grow the engagement and to talk with them about the upcoming projects and products, I’ve been developing and will be launching in mid-1Q, mid-2Q and mid 3Q. Stay tuned…

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] A New Model For Conflict Competency

There are few subjects more boring to read about online than how to attain competentcy in any area, from leadership to instructions on plumbing. And it doesn’t matter if that reading is directly from an organizational HR manual, or from the very informative HBR.org website.

Reading about watching paint dry might rank higher.

Typically, such articles are drily written and are rarely brought to life in any way that’s going to help you in a “real life” scenario.

Or, the advice contained in them comes off as “pie in the sky.”

Part of that is the way that these articles are written.

The other part is that you make a choice about what to remember and what to forget after about 8 seconds when you skim an online article or blog post.

So do I. So does that guy over there.

The real issue with such writing is not lack of reader understanding about the levels of competency or the modes of conflict. It’s not even the epidemiology of conflict, the fact that your boss may be a conflict incompetent, or even that there are really very few tangible KPI’s for reducing conflict in the workplace, other than emotional ones (and emotion in the workplace is a “no-no” as “everybody” knows).

The real issue is that there is very little robust measuring or tracking of the links from competency in any given situation to addressing how people actually behave when placed in a situation they find to be uncomfortable, distracting, irrelevant to accomplishing their goals, or that they have no interest in. There’s also very little robust descriptions of such situations to buoy the writing along.

Competency is the combination of observable and measurable knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes. Competencies are demonstrated by real people, who are able to recognize hazards associated with a particular task, and have the ability to mitigate those hazards witin a set of defined standards, consistently and over time in an organizational setting, from their home to their workplace.

This definition is so narrow and specific (and dry), that OSHA requires jobsites to designate a person on the site as the individual who is competent enough to perform safety tasks in a suitably repetitive manner. And by the way, merely appearing to be competent isn’t good enough when OSHA shows up on a jobsite.

Imagine if such thing were required in every workplace?

There are five levels of competency: the novices, the advanced beginners, the competent practitioners, the proficient performers and the experts. Competency used to be sexy and interesting in an Industrial Era focused on the metric of maximum production out of the maximum number of people, but that has shifted as fewer people can do more work. And in the Information Economy, even at the highest levels of many industries, competency (whether HR defined or emotional) is still confused with expertise—and rewarded.

So, it seems as though it is time to propose a new model for the workplace; or at the very least, initiate a mash-up of several research areas and to explain why a new direction is needed.

Who’s the “designated competent person” in your workplace?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] A Common Confusion

Too often, mere competency is confused with expertise. And just as equally as often, expertise is confused with competency.

In the space of a fight, a disagreement, or a “difference of opinion,” the person who appears to be the most competent (and in the Western world, this looks like controlling your emotions and behaving “logically”) to the party they’re in conflict with, to others looking on from the outside, and to themselves, tends to be viewed as a “winner.”

But the appearance of competency is a strategy that most often comes from an internal place of previously codified passive aggressiveness, avoidance or accommodation responses.

The challenge in 2016 is to reset our assumptions around emotional and logical responses and reactions to the conflicts that are bound to pop-up this year. The challenge is not to manufacture disagreements, or strife, in order to show off how adept we are at defusing the bombs we make. The challenge is to change our perceptions around what true conflict competency looks like, not only for the people we see in conflict around us, but also for ourselves.

If we continue to carry the same confusions, assumptions, and appearances into 2016 that we had in the past year, we will continue to get the same outcomes as we did last year, no matter the resolutions we are making today.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 12.29.2015

And the hits just keep on coming.

The end of the year makes people take stock of what they’ve done and who they’ve helped (or hurt) in the year that has passed.

I’m no different in that respect.

However, where I am a little different from some others is that I take stock of the future, rather than the past.

There are all kinds of opportunities available if you’re not bound by your past. If, instead of looking at the past constantly, seeking reassurance, righteous judgment, or even retribution upon thiose4 who have injured you, you instead focus on de4veloping talents skills and abilities to meet the rising road ahead of you.

Many people are bound by the past. And I’m a big fan of history.

This year, in this space, I have used this platform to talk about the past and to encourage and spur my audience on toward the future. The future is, in many ways, an even scarier place than the past, because it seems as though here is no map to get there.

And the hits just keep on coming.

My take on 2016 is that, for many of us, it will be more of the same: The same arguments, the same disagreements, the same fights, the same confrontations. Because too many of us focus too hard on the past and not hard enough on the future.

And I will keep documenting my changes, as I try different things and different methods, hopefully leading to different (but not necessarily always better) outcomes for both myself and the people around me.

More introspection.

More self-awareness.

More HITs.

-Peace Be With You All-

The HSCT Reading List – THE BEST BOOKS OF 2014

We here at HSCT think of the question “What are you reading?” in the same way that Joan Rivers asks the question “Who are you wearing?”

So, for all of those who are interested, the following is our 2014 Book List:

Nonfiction

Sales

The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer

Marketing

YouTility by Jay Baer
Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It by Mitch Joel
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
Launch by Jeff Walker
Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Conflict Resolution

Influence: The Art of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
Handling Verbal Confrontation by Robert V. Gerard
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler
TongueFu: How to Deflect, Disarm, and Diffuse any Verbal Conflict by Sam Horn
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Neuroscience

Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Mindsight by Daniel Siegel
Predictive Analytics by Eric Siegel

Entrepreneurship

The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way by Wayne Dwyer
David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
The Rise by Sarah Lewis

Physics

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku

Fiction

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Freedom by Jonathan Frazen

All of these books are available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million and even your small, independent bookstore around the corner can get them.

Check back in 2015 for an updates reading list and email me at jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com and let me know what you think of them!

The HSCT Reading List – THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015

We here at HSCT think of the question “What are you reading?” in the same way that Joan Rivers used to ask the question “Who are you wearing?”

So, for all of those who are interested, the following is our 2015 Book List:

Nonfiction

Sales
Fire Your Sales Team Today by Mike Lieberman and Eric Keiles
What to do When You’re Rejected by James Altucher
Resonate by Nancy Duarte

Marketing

Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love by David Sturt
Product Launch by Jeff Walker
Tribes by Seth Godin
The Dip by Seth Godin
The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer

Conflict Resolution

Thanks for the Feedback: The Art and Science of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen
The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton

Biography/History

Regan at Reykjavik by Ken Aldeman
God, If You’re Up There, I’m F*cked by Darrell Hammond
David Spade is Almost Interesting by David Spade
Now I know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground by Emily Parker
Tin Can Treason: Recollections from a Combat Tour of Vietnam by Terry Nardone

Politics

All Politics is Local and Other Rules of the Game by Tip O’Neill

Entrepreneurship

Prayers That Avail Much for The Workplace by Germaine Copeland
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Beyond the Obvious by Phil McKinney
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Everybody Writes by Anne Handley
What to Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn) by Seth Godin

Fiction

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer
The President’s Shadow by Brad Meltzer
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh

All of these books are available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million and even your small, independent bookstore around the corner can get them.

Check back in 2016 for an updates reading list and email me at jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com and let me know what you think of them!

[Advice] Burl Ives Was Wrong…

It’s the eve before Christmas in the Western world, and if you adhere to the Christian faith (or you just like getting and giving) then you’re trying to prepare for a holly, jolly…well, you know…

Personally, I’m annoyed by Burl Ives’s voice, but the fact the matter is, that the holiday season has changed for many people in the United States and throughout the West.

Call it the backlash against consumerism, the wreck of the post-Industrial Revolution age in which we all now live or the backwash from the events of 2001 and 2008, but there is the image of the holiday season, pushed and promoted through advertising, marketing and media, and then there is the lived reality.

When the legend becomes reality (or fact) the old admonition used to be to “print the legend.” And while that admonition still holds in too many public spheres, the fact is that much of the Western public, privately has moved on, forging new meaning and new definitions for this time of the year. And the fact that those definitions and meanings don’t show up in a Youtube video, or in a television advertisement, doesn’t make them less valid.

Things have changed in three areas:

Family experiences seem to matter more than gifts: Much is regularly made about how the “definition of family is changing” or has shifted in the last 40 years, but quite honestly, people still travel and communicate with people than they know, like and love over the holiday season now, more than ever before.

Public political proclamations don’t matter much at private holiday get together’s: Yes, Uncle Don came out last year after 15 years of being in the closet and is bringing his husband to dinner. Yes, Niece Sharon is 34 and had a child without a “man” in her life and is bringing the new child to dinner. Yes, Cousin Matt is a political conservative and a business man who just married an African-American woman who is a vegetarian and won’t eat the turkey.

A lot is made of these surface divisions in the media, political writing, and even in marketing, but the fact is, family and friends either get over it, or they fake it like they have until the person (or persons) have left, in order to preserve the peace, aiming at the higher goal of “family togetherness.” This is not wrong, this is not right. This just is. And for all of the family strife that is typically marketed (or displayed) in individuals’ Facebook feeds, the vast majority still gather around a table with people they disagree with.

The gadgets are not anymore the separators than the newspaper and television were 40 years ago: Are people on the screens more often? Yes, because there are more options and more screens than ever before. But while screen time may have increased, the sharing of that screen time with others cannot be accurately measured. The gadgets may separate, but they also draw together, and at the furthest end, are disconnected from when it comes time to engage with meaningful, face-to-face communication.

So, maybe Burl Ives was right, and maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But while our tools have changed and transformed, the internal stuff that makes us people hasn’t shifted dramatically in a few thousand years.

I think someone else pointed this fact out to stunned crowds without the benefit of high technology around 2000 years ago as well.

-Peace Be With You All-