[Advice] Reasons to Forgive

How many times do you have to forgive the other party in a conflict?

Well, if certain books are to be believed, quite a lot.

In a world of instant messaging, instant gratification and instant stimulation with instant reactions, the long, slow, deliberative act of forgiving someone else for something that they’ve done to you can be emotionally exhausting for many people.

There are a few things to consider before getting on the forgiveness train:

Who does it impact? – Finding the motive to forgive, just like finding the motive to engage in a conflict, comes down to understanding who benefits from forgiveness. Do you benefit more than the other person, or does the other person benefit more than you? Many people will respond from zero-sum thinking (“If I forgive the other party, then I lose something, i.e. my position, my ability to be ‘right’, etc.”) but sometimes the gains are deeper than the losses.

What can really change, and what can’t? – Do people change? Well, we don’t know the answer to that question, but we can say that people deserve the chance to change. And sometimes people deserve to be punished. But without knowing everything about a situational conflict (and people inside of situational conflicts rarely know everything about themselves or the other party) makes that decision harder, not easier. In popular culture, dealing out death in judgment, is seen as retributive and righting all wrongs. But asking the question about what can change in a situation to make it better for both you and the other party is key to getting on the path to forgiveness.

How do you go about doing it? – Advice, tips, tactics and even strategies fail here, as the “how” is invariably entangled in the gossamer of the conflict itself. But one thing to consider is how to heal oneself first, before attempting to “fix” the other party. Forgiveness is a personal act that starts from within and moves outward in ever expanding concentric circles.

Where does forgiving somebody begin and where does it end? – Restorative justice practices unite perpetrators and victims of crimes. Depending upon the cultural background of the victim and the perpetrator, these efforts may work, or may backfire. However, when there is a conflict in the midst of a shared culture (a work culture, a school culture or a family culture) forgiving begins in the minds—and hearts—of the participants in the conflict. As far as where forgiveness ends, well, that’s subjective as well.

When can you forgive? –Whenever you like. Or not at all.

In the West, forgiveness is wrapped up with religious proscriptions, but in reality, forgiveness is deeply psychological and a process based in science. The results of forgiveness—lowered blood pressure, less stress, reduced stroke risk—should be tied more to the actual process of getting on board with someone who has wronged you.

But the act of forgiveness is personal, difficult and time consuming, But in a world of emotional labor, it might be the most important journey we ever embark on.

Click on the link here and download the FREE HSCT White Paper on FORGIVENESS AND RECONCILIATION TODAY!

-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] The 10 Year Overnight Success IV

We laid out for them, at one point in the meeting (a meeting that we had scheduled for, pushed for and planned for, by the way) all of the projects in which Human Services Consulting and Training is currently involved.

When we were done talking, we admitted to feeling—and thinking—that we have been in a bit of a long-term dip, since last October.

They (the other party on the other side of the table) laughed and told us that we had been “very busy” for being in a dip.

In another interaction we had, we were talking with another up and coming podcaster. We were talking about how long it takes to create a blog following versus creating a podcast following, versus creating a video based following.

We talked about how you need at minimum, 1000 raving, dedicated fans, gathered from the long tail, to make this work in the long-term.

Our fellow podcaster raised his eyebrows and said something to the effect of “It takes ten years to become an overnight success.”

Someone else, about a year and a half ago, said the same thing.

Stories of success (and the pornography of failure stories) litter the Internet, entrepreneurship, small business literature and, the truly American section of the local bookstore, the self-help section. But what is never pointed out in those stories, is that for at least a decade before you read the story on the Internet, became a fan online, watched a TV show with a “shark” in it, or even picked up that self-help book, the people that made that were toiling away in anonymity, just like you.

The path to both success and failure takes a decade of commitment and consistency, trial and error, tears and joy. Dizzying heights and terrible dips.

And whether you’re building a product, a service or some weird, wonderful hybrid, you better be willing to commit to a ten year long journey of ideas that might not work, people that might not like you all the time and projects that might fly, or crash and burn.

What separates the employees, from the risk takers, and the owners from the entrepreneurs is the willingness to go on a ten-year long walk.

Just keep walking…

-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: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Content Commitment

The thing that destroys most content creation efforts is not lack of talent, ability, or innate skill.

The thing that destroys most content creation efforts is not lack of resources, lack of time or lack of money.

The thing that destroys most content creation efforts (from live streaming via Periscope and Meerkat all the way to writing a blog on a daily basis) is the lack of a will to consistently commit to a course of action.

Whether it works, or not.

Whether it attracts attention, or not.

Whether it scales, or not.

The lack of a will to commit to the process, regardless of outcome, seems foolish and pointless when stacked against economic metrics that have dominated content production for the last 100 years.

We still run into professionals who either own businesses, who have built projects, and who are accomplished at wringing a profit margin out of the world, who are shocked that we blog every day, or that we have a podcast with only one advertiser–at this point in its development.

Then they are even more shocked that we plan to do more things that do not produce revenue right away.

By doing things that do not produce revenue now, enable us to do all kinds of things that will produce revenues later on.

If more thinkers, builders and doers would adopt this mindset (by the way, it is the only mindset that works in the world of the digital, the automated and the algorithmic) the long tail would become fat, the economic value of consistency and commitment would experience exponential growth, and the level of the quality of content being created would increase.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Access to the Means of Production

There is a growing chorus from the progressive parts of the US economy, concerned that many historically marginalized race and class groups may not be benefiting from the fullness of the revolutions occurring in high technology, economics, and communications.

This chorus centers in the world of high technology startups of Silicon Valley and their media/opinion outlets. Ironically, this call is coming from a world that has historically been dominated by the mostly male, mostly white (or Asian) and the mostly highly educated.

The gender/sexual discrimination case of Ellen Pao and her plight as CEO of Reddit, has brought the issue of “women in technology” to the forefront of tech Twitter. Missing in this discussion (or maybe floating around the edges of it) is the fact that discussions around the core issues of class and racial advancement and economic development continue to employ the language of the past to define problems of the present; and, to frame discussions of the future. This framing (or storytelling, if you will) has to shift in three areas for there to be more participation from those currently existing exclusively in the space of the historically discriminated against:

Access to technology, content creation mechanisms, and the knowledge of how those systems work (and why) needs to be framed as a social justice issue, rather than as a technology/economic issue.

The challenging and uncomfortable question that no one asked (not the NYPD, not the Mayor of New York’s office, not the multiple variations of protestors, not the progressive pundits) about the entire Eric Garner incident is: “Why was Eric Garner on the sidewalk, selling “loosie” cigarettes, and having continuous issues, run-ins and arrests with the NYPD in the first place?”

Think about that question for a moment and then think about this, equally challenging question: “If Eric Garner had sufficient access to technology, content creation mechanisms, and the knowledge of how those systems work, would he have had to be on a sidewalk at all, or could he have fed his family, from his home, by using those mechanisms?”

These are two questions that need answers, advocacy and more noise behind them, because access to the means of production is the social justice issue of the 21^st century—regardless of race, culture, class or creed. And let’s not even get into dissecting the background of other lives and how they could have been positively impacted by a greater knowledge and access to technology that could bring them—at minimum—the beginnings of an income and a better life.

Creating (and co-creating) rather than constantly consuming as a means of understanding how new technological and economic systems will work in the future.

Even with 1.5 million pieces of blog content being created every day and 175 million blogs being out there (along with all the videos on Youtube, live streaming, podcasts and other image based content) there is still a dearth of quality, meaningful content. Particularly, content that reflects the lives that are lived by people other than a thin stratum of wealthy, North American and European peoples.

As the Internet expands globally, many young, African Americans run the risk of being left behind on a global web, full of aggressive, young focused content creators. Understanding the how and why of content production allows people to co-create their lives with others. This is an idea that’s an easy sell when a culture leapfrogs the desktop computer; less so when a subculture is historically marginalized and suffers from the results of educational disparities for a wide variety of reasons.

Changing mindsets around the possibility of owning and building something requires telling a different story about what risks matter—and which risks don’t matter.

As the risks that used to matter begin to matter less and less, appropriate preparation through role modeling and education is important for everybody in the US culture. However, for those people who will be left behind as the perceived security of employment becomes more and more a thing of the past (“In my experience as a black entrepreneur, I saw the majority of my family take the government job route, while I always had the itch to pursue a self-made career.”) there will be no gentle landings as circumstances change. Just sudden, violent bumps.

As the Singularity eventually arrives, the solution is not to ameliorate the impact of these bumps through the creation of Universal Basic Income systems, or micropayments and micro-lending schemes. These are band-aid solutions at worst, and recipes for negative social disruption at scale at best. Instead, the long-term solution is to begin to teach future generations what the real risks are. The mindset and attitude that causes success to have many fathers and failure to be but an orphan, still reigns in many sectors of this economy, but that shouldn’t prevent our society from investing in education about the risks that matter: emotional labor, collaboration, and building credibility and trust through the long tail, rather than relying on the short mass.

In the end, there are disruptions that have to happen in education, economics, finance, real estate, and other areas, not to level the playing field—this is an impossibility—but to create new fields, with new rules for new participants that may have been historically disenfranchised by the past.

Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime. But teach a man to build and sail a boat, and he’ll go to the furthest horizon and teach someone else. Isn’t it time for us to advance the access, technology and discrimination battles past the language of 20^th century battles, and frame them instead in the language of the 21^st century, that we’re already 15 years into?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #4a (Special Edition) – Dianne Crampton

Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #4 (a) (Special Edition) – Dianne Crampton, Consultant, Organizational Development Entrepreneur, TIGER for Success in Organizations

Consulting and training is hard, but not for the reasons that you would think.

I have sat in a lot of situations with people in organizations who have power in those organizations, and when viewed from the outside, those situations look like interviews.

I’ve actually had my wife correct me on this distinction with a difference before she got distracted by my quote-unquote cute butt.

The hard part of consulting and training is determining what the client needs, even though what they say they want is not always what they need. The other hard part is a corollary to that: developing a product for other people who are part of your business network who may not be able to afford your services.

Our special guest for our show today, Dianne Crampton, has discovered the solution to this.

Dianne lives and works in Oregon, so maybe it’s something in the start-up air that’s wafting up from San Francisco and other points south, but she’s managed to do some hard work and gotten some attention for her work.

The other part of developing a consulting product is funding the development of that product, and that’s where the Indiegogo part of this all starts.

Dianne will talk about all of this in our podcast today.

So, support the show, go to Dianne’s Indiegogo page (link here–> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/improved-360-team-behavior-work-culture-survey/x/8706859#/) and donate a few bucks to help a consultant productize a service that matters. There is a $5 reward for each funding lead, so go check out all the details!

Trust us, leadership is as important to resolving conflict as practical skills are.

Connect with Dianne in all the ways you can, below:

Dianne Crampton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diannecrampton

The TIGERS Success Website: http://corevalues.com/

The TIGERS Success Blog: http://corevalues.com/blog/

The TIGERS Among US Website: http://www.tigersamongus.com/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/TeamBuildingSuccess/timeline/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Diannecrampton

HIT Piece 09.22.2015

You probably don’t have “what it takes” to found a start-up.
You probably don’t have “what it takes” to learn how to play an instrument.
You probably don’t have “what it takes” to build a business.
You probably don’t have “what it takes” to write a book.
You probably don’t have “what it takes” to paint a picture.
You probably don have “what it takes” to do any of these scary things.

So, you’ll probably vacillate, hem and haw, and eventually go work at a 9-to-5 job, consume content other people create through your mobile phone, watch some television and go to bed.

Don’t feel bad.

I didn’t “have what it takes” to do any of the things I mentioned above.

And, in many ways, I still don’t.

So, I just went out and did those hard things anyway.

The people who write, and opine, about how hard it is to do what they do (or how easy it is, let’s be honest) aren’t doing you (or me) any favors. Zig Ziglar said repeatedly over his 50 years long career (which he didn’t think he could do either, and which he started in his mid-40’s) that “There’s always room at the top. It’s getting out of the bottom that’s hard.”

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Ok…So Ad Blocking is Here…

Ok…so ad blocking is here….

From browsers to mobile hardware, the drive is on (whether from the creators of ad blocking software or just from us all talking about it now) to empower consumers of content to block advertising they don’t want to see via software based means. This advertising, small and large web publishers argue, is part of a fundamental principle of mass media, going back at least a century. The principle comes down to a deal, which—like many deals—can be renegotiated and changed to reflect shifting values and principles:

We (web publishers) create content without charging you for the creation of that content, and in exchange you (the content consumer) give us attention and we charge a third party, the advertiser, to put ads in front of, and around, our content.

This same deal drove the development and growth of platforms, such as television, radio and newspapers, and the development and growth of content on those platforms, for the last 100 years.

But, the Internet was supposed to be a different content delivery platform.

Right?

Apparently not.

Now, consumers—instead of just choosing to ignore interruptive ads like they always have (and because measuring audience engagement is difficult (but not impossible) there are more intrusive, interruptive ads, not less)—content consumers are choosing to block everything.

Seth Godin wrote with hope fifteen years ago about permission marketing. Cory Doctorow writes with abandon about the anarchy of the web. But both of those writers and thinkers assume a fundamental point about most content, whether it’s on the internet, on the radio, on television, or in a magazine or newspaper, that must be written down and repeated out loud:

Most content on any platform isn’t good enough, interesting enough, relevant enough or entertaining enough, to act as the glue binding the audience of content consumers to the content creators in a “revenue for value” exchange based relationship.

This is why there are millions and millions of cat and baby videos on Youtube, but only a few breakout “stars.” This is why Vogue magazine (or Burberry on Instagram) will be fine with ¾ of their magazine content (or their social distribution feed) being ad space, but Mother Jones or The National Review might just wither and die with ad blockers. This is the reason there are 152 million blogs on the Internet, publishing 1.3 million pieces of content a day, but no blogger has risen to dominance on the web in 15 years.

Thus advertising.

There are a few ways out of this bind, but before we get to that, the question of “What kind of internet do we want to have?” must be answered. We (and we are including ourselves in this group as a content consumers) have not answered this question in any kind of meaningful way. Content consumers have to be a part of the conversation before the endpoint of plopping and advertisement in front of our eyes is reached. Content consumers (to build trust and get their permission) have to be engaged in the building, creating and disseminating of a product from start to finish—or not at all.

The first way out of this bind is by crowdsourcing content development. There are some sites on the web that do this well; there are many more that do it badly, or not at all. Crowdsourcing journalism, entertainment, and other forms of content may lead to less ad blocking—and higher revenue—rather than more by content consumers who feel emotionally invested in the product.

The second way out of this of this bind is by creating more subscription-based platforms. For subscriptions to work, there must be a consideration (and a careful one at that) by the web publisher about what kind of content is being created. Long tail philosophy should be ruling with brand-based content, but many are still stuck in the 1950’s. By the way, this is the only way that data gathering, analytics and implementation based on the data is useful as a tool for content creators and publishers, as well as the incorporation of micropayments via cryptocurrencies. Don’t believe me? Ok. What’s in your Netflix queue right now? And have you paid for a reSnap recently?

The third way out of this of this bind is by rethinking distribution systems. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Google and Apple are going to war with each other to decide who controls the ad space of the mobile phone screen and the app walled garden. This war has to be fought (I guess) but thinking of these platforms less as content delivery systems, and more as content broadcast systems, would free many creators from the false choice of “Do I or don’t I put an ad in front of my content?” Email and RSS feeds circumvent broadcast systems and go directly to the audience content creators want. This is also the reason that creators on Meerkat and Periscope who are live streaming events (and their lives) are going to have trouble monetizing their content if the platform ever has to respond to the vicissitudes of Wall Street shareholders.

The fourth way out of this bind is by rethinking all the assumptions underpinning the web. The Internet has moved over the last 25 to 30 years, from being a niche communication channel to a worldwide, glorified telecommunications delivery system. What if the Internet shifted from being a global mass bullhorn, to being an individualized, personalized content delivery system? Mobile phone, tablet and app development is pushing the Internet in the direction of this development, but frankly, not far enough. Which is where blockchain technology really comes to the forefront.

The fifth way out of this bind is for content creators to make conscious choices—and stick to them—about how and where to monetize their content with ads. We are not naïve enough to think that advertising will disappear; there were ads broadcasting the services of prostitutes painted on the walls of buildings in Pompeii and Ancient Rome. However, when everyone can publish (but not everyone will publish) everyone has the choice to run a Google ad (or not) in front of specific content, they produce. We run ads in front of The Earbud_U Podcast, but not on the HSCT #Communication Blog, for a reason.

Ad blocking will not be the end of Internet publishing, nor will it serve as the death knell for advertising on the Internet. By defaulting to the opposite of these five alternatives to advertising on the Internet, many content creators will wither away, and die, on the web.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] 3 Fundamental Reasons for Escalation

A large part of negative escalation is the insistence on advocating for a perspective, not with courage, but with obstinance.

The moment of truth is revealed when, through such negative escalation, we become trapped in a paradigm of our own making, between the relationship we have with reality through our own perspectives, and the relationship with reality that the other party has.

That dynamic tension—between two different views of what is the reality in a conflict scenario and what is not—drives forward negative escalation. Parties in conflict often throw up their hands and proclaim later on “I had no other choice.”

But this is a statement said so often that it is no longer in the provenance of a lie, but it goes into the area approaching truth. Parties in conflict genuinely believe that they have no choice but to escalate a minor communication issue into something larger for three fundamental reasons:

They feel powerless and impotent in the face of the situation, the other party, or the atmosphere of the conflict.

They want an outcome that they either feel they can’t get, or they feel that they are “owed” but are being blocked in pursuing, or they feel as though their options are limited because of inherent issues they bring to the conflict that have nothing to do with the material nature of whatever is going on.

They are full of the desire to be right as well as possessing the will to make the outcome come to pass that they favor.

So, they escalate negatively.

The way out of this is to dive further into the relationship with the other party in conflict. But many times, we don’t want to…

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What’s Underneath All That Risk…

The trouble with most conversation that leads to conflict isn’t that it’s earth shattering or amazing, but that it’s banal and boring.

This is one of the many reason why there will always be more online content consumers than online content creators. It is hard to be interesting to others when you secretly are not that interested in yourself.

This is one of the many reasons why, in the context of conflicts, many participants seek to avoid any type of conversation that could trigger latent, unresolved conflicts; bringing to the surface old issues and never addressed concerns.

Participants, when asked later, will identify their conflict engagement style as being “avoiding” or “accommodating” of the other person, but it’s really a style that is based in the inability to engage in an interesting, high risk conversation. This inability, however, hobbles the potential in participants for learning new skills to manage, engage and resolve the inevitable arrival of the kind of exciting, conflict driven conversations that they seek desperately to avoid.

There are two things to recognize (other than just the banality of many conversations and the ability to avoid) that can help anybody craft a meaningful strategy for talking when the topic is high risk, but the participants are not:

Fear is at the root of avoidance, accommodation and even assertive tactics—At its root, fear of consequences, outcomes we can’t control, the situation, other people, the material facts of the conflict itself, “getting involved” and many other emotional situations, lead to the desire to pursue continuing the status quo. This fear is why a person at work who causes confrontations because they are addicted to the power rush they get from domination behavior, is “allowed” to continue the behavior, while people whisper behind their backs.

Boredom (and the desire for entertainment) is at the root of banality—The corollary to fear is boredom. Boredom happens when a person is surrounded by uninteresting conversations, uninteresting people, or uninteresting situations. The reason for the rise in conflict avoidance tactics as an interpersonal skill set among many individuals is based in the fact that many in-person social interactions are not exactly intellectually stimulating. And when and entertaining (or intellectually stimulating) alternative is offered people will take it. This is not exclusive to the now: there are many artistic representations of people ignoring each other while reading the paper, while crowded around the radio, or while watching the television.

There are arguments to be made for developing resilience, being polite, knowing enough to have a conversation, and being forgiving of people and situations. But when conflicts (particularly around issues that matter) arise, the default is to embrace the banal, continue to be boring, and hope it all blows over.

Such as it ever was…

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 9.15.2015

It’s always interesting to watch people’s faces when I talk about exploring the efficacy of attaching market value to emotional interactions.

At first they are confused, as if I’m talking about emotional intelligence. Sometimes, if they get it right off the bat, they are downright hostile. Occasionally, the person will go past both confusion and/or hostility to the question of “How are you going to do that?”

It’s amazing to me how successful the Industrial Revolution was at convincing people of three ideas that are immediately are exposed as false when I begin talking about this area:

The emotional content of work based relationships is meaningless and not worth considering.

The only energy that matters is the energy put behind the process of producing either what we can see, touch, taste or feel (a product) or what we can conceptualize and turn into a product (a service) and everything else is a scam.

The work that people do inside of families, homes, and communities really doesn’t matter, because we can’t quantify it, measure it, or slap a KPI on it, and so it’s worthy of being ignored, dismissed or devalued.

The mechanical/technological process of determining, developing and executing compensation for the market value of emotional interactions, is on humanity’s horizon, even as we speak. Overcoming the fear, resistance and hostility to the material fact of this, will be the true work of nonprofits, charities, and other organizations for the next couple of hundred years.

-Peace Be With You All-