HIT Piece 05.19.2015

As a good facilitator, when I walk into a room, I know when the crowd will be tough and when the crowd will be amenable, in about 30 seconds after I get into the room.

There are tough crowds everywhere in my life, from my house and family, to the individual interactions that I have at church.

There are two key elements I’ve found that I can focus on when overcoming the psychic weight of the tough crowd:

Never lose focus on the point you’re making.

Don’t get caught in their weeds.

A tough crowd seeks to move me for their own motives, motivations, desires and outcomes. However, there is nothing like not moving, to keep me in sharp rhetorical shape.

-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 05.12.2015

I get asked a lot of questions. For the most part, I try to answer many of them in the FAQ section of the HSCT website.

But then there are questions that don’t fit in the area of frequently asked questions on a website. And I’d like to answer some of those questions today.

How do you have the energy and the time to do all of this?

I don’t. I have just enough energy to get done what I can get done and I don’t really have any more than that. Typically, I am ruthless with my time and I spend a lot of days (and nights) up late doing the things that I need to do to make projects come together. I also try to keep my priorities in order. Which is about as tough as it sounds.

Do you really practice what you preach?

As much as is as humanly possible. Which is a fancy way of saying that I fail much of the time. Look, I consult and train people in how to address conflict effectively in their lives. I have many ways of addressing conflict in my own life, but there are times when my professed values fail to match up to my stated values. But none among us are righteous. No. Not one of us.

How do you handle a client in a consultation situation?

As carefully as possible. I tend to listen more and provide more assurances than when I do in a larger group setting. This is because individuals are granular. Groups are not. People in a group can sometimes be influenced by the nodding of agreement of other people in the same space. In a 1-on-1 situation, listening to the issue and providing accurate, non-circuitous advice is critical for long-term client success.

What kind of stories do you tell yourself?

Ones that are personal to me, and that reflect the parts of my identity that I’m comfortable with. Many years ago, I decided to stop being such chameleon and start being more of the “real” me. With all the vulnerabilities and problems that come with that decision.

What’s it like to be a black entrepreneur in your field?

I was thinking about the answer to this question in the context of another black entrepreneur that I know a little bit more personally than in the context of Twitter or LinkedIN. There are two models of black success—and from that black entrepreneurship—that black folks my age see:

The Bill Cosby/Generation X model—this is the model I see the most often. It’s not flashy. It’s not shiny. It’s based on the idea that a college degree, and then an advanced degree, must be attained before entrepreneurial success can even be considered. This is the model that my mother (who is 65) pioneered for me in my house and that one of my sisters’ (who is 43 this year), followed—or at least tried to. For that generation, entrepreneurship was something that was only considered after a “fall back” was already established in some kind of way.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air/Jay-Z Model—this is the model that many black entrepreneurs look up too. It’s the model based on leveraging another talent (Jay-Z leveraged money from record sales and other areas to produce other artists’ work and to eventually buy a stake in many other ventures); and then using that money to do something else. Kanye and Will Smith have done this well. Sports stars such as Michael Jordan and LeBron are doing the same thing. The other piece of the model is based in an idea that you may be able to stumble into something if you are fortunate enough to have a “Bill Cosby” like rich uncle.

In the field of peacemaking there are many black people doing great work under both of these models; or doing great work in a hybrid of two of these models (or more). But for me, as a black entrepreneur in the space of peace making and peace building, sometime it’s a lonely walk.

There are so many tools and techniques that are laying around that all the old models are going away. That’s the nature of my game.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] The Unfairness of Courage

In a conflict, the courageous don’t always win.

And this is not fair.

Winning can be defined as “getting an outcome beneficial to them and their perspective on the issue.”

Winning can be defined as “making change in the face of opposition.”

Winning can be defined as “seeing my ‘enemies’ defeated and driven into obscurity.”

Winning can be defined as “living long enough to see my values and story become dominant and see other values that I oppose recede into obscurity.”

The courageous are those who seek to do three things well:

Engage with the hard emotional labor of dealing with other people and trying to see the world through their lens.
Establish the boundaries and lines that are non-negotiable for them, but understand that the other party might be flexible.
Energize the other party (or parties) with the ability to become allies and friends (at least for the moment) in the pursuit of a greater goal.

If this all sounds hard, that’s because it is.

If all this sounds impossible, it’s really not.

If all this sounds like the purview of diplomats, generals and politicians, rather than auto mechanics, nurses or office managers, it is both.

But, because we deal with other people, with mixed motives, hidden agendas and other issues, the courageous don’t always win.

And this is the output of emotional labor.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] On Courage

The difference between people who “succeed” and people who “fail” in a conflict scenario is individual levels of courage.

Courage is in short supply and always has been since the days of the playground bully and meeting new people once you got off the bus for the first time in the first grade and Mom and Dad weren’t there to hold your hand anymore.

Courage is not about preparation, learning, discipline or even persistence and grit—although all of those skills and internal factors help.

Courage is about not needing external validation from the world—basically, not needing assurances to do the right thing—and just doing the right thing in the first place.

Which is often the hard thing.

In a conflict scenario, it takes courage to confront in a healthy way, prepare for the feedback you will receive about your role in the problem and then integrating that feedback into your worldview, while also giving feedback to the other person about their role in the scenario.

It takes courage to confront a cheating spouse, explain how what they did impacted you and your family and then to listen to them tell you why they made their choice.

It takes courage to address a difficult employee who has little social skills and appears to have even less desire to develop them, and try to find a middle ground to get tasks done in the workplace.

It takes courage to speak up when you think bad decisions are being made in a fraternal, civic, volunteer, or church organization that you disagree with. And it takes courage to hear and accept why those decisions may not be the best for you, but are the best ones for the organization.

Courage is at the bottom of all resolution. Forgiveness is at the bottom of all reconciliation efforts. Labor is at the bottom of all engagement practices, advice and opinions.

So then the question becomes: How much do you really want to grow as a person before you leave this life?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] 3 Steps to Eliminating Hurry

Ruthlessly eliminate hurry in your life.

Many time management seminars and productivity hacks, mobile applications, in-person trainings and coaching sessions, skirt around the core problem at the heart of modernity: There are only 24 hours in the day.

The problem is not that people have too many tasks in their adult lives (we do); the problem is not that people are constantly busy with priorities that don’t really matter to them (we are); the problem is not that people are stressed out, frazzled, feeling like they are browsing through life, and deeply emotionally and spiritually unhealthy (we are).

The problem is that most of what we read, absorb and try to put into practice focuses around moving around the priorities we don’t like, and trying to squeeze one more ounce out of the 24 hours we do have—so that we can do more things we don’t like.

All while telling ourselves the story (in this case, the lie) that “Well, if I just do THIS thing, I’ll have more time to do what I want to do.”

Really, the issue comes down to patience. In our American culture (and if you’re reading this another country, or from another cultural background, this statement may or may not apply to your experience) we value impatience, hurry, and idolize the cult of busyness, over many other areas.

We resent people who appear to have more time than they know what to do with. And we envy in our hearts people with wealth, who at least outwardly, appear to have no worries about time at all, and appear to have boundless energy.

Then, we read the articles on productivity, time management, wealth creation, the “1%” and on doing more with less, searching for assurances that we are right and “they” who appear to have more than us, are wrong.

But, what if we tried three other things rather than just moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic one more time?

Say “no” more…and mean it—“no” to promotions that we don’t really need and that take more time from priorities we said were “non-negotiable,” “no” to obligations that come packaged as opportunities and “no” to productivity and time management “hacks” that don’t get at the core of what we really need. Which is the courage to say “no” in the first place.
Eliminate hurry—don’t hurry. That’s it. Just slow down to a crawl. Take time to talk to people in front of us, rather than the people on Twitter (we are deeply guilty of this one, so we are are talking to ourselves here as well). Take time to drive in the slow lane for a month at the posted speed limit. Do the old things (like writing and reading) that require us to put aside the things that don’t matter (like work) and put in front of us the things that do matter (like self-improvement).
Get active—55% of mobile phone users go online through their phones. Most of this is browsing, shopping and in general, watching what other people are doing. Television used to be the driver for passivity, but we now have a TV/computer/radio in our pocket all the time. But getting active in our own lives requires us to stop watching the escapades of people who are already active in their lives.

Difficulty in balancing seemingly competing demands is the first stop on the road to conflict. For many people, difficulties begin with the management of their perception of hurry, patience, stress, and other people. When we have the courage to ruthlessly eliminate hurry, stress is reduced and difficulties become manageable, rather than events that can derail an entire day with anger, stress, and impatience.

-Peace Be With You All-

[ICYMI] CRaaS for Your Organization

Conflict resolution skills are not just for human resource professionals.

As our workplaces shift away from being industrial based to being intellectually based, workplace locations are shifting from being physical to being ephemeral.

But as we’ve noted in this space before, conflict stays the same because, while the jury may be out on whether or not Google is making us stupid, our brains as biological organisms still engage in conflict with other brains.

Human resource professionals in organizations are more burdened than ever before with dealing with regulatory changes, endless legal issues and addressing perceived “soft skills” based issues such as bullying and harassment.

Conflict resolution skills become more critical in this type of environment, but who has time to develop the “human resources” in their intellectually based organizations doing intellectually based, customer service oriented work?

The answer is, much like the offering of Software-as-a-Service most recently, to take the learning of conflict resolution skills outside, off-site and “to the cloud.”

Conflict Resolution-as-a-Service becomes the only viable option in this shifting landscape of workplace evolution.

Originally published on July 9, 2014.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] On Being CRaaS in the Workplace

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the newest thing in the modern workplace.

But, in spite of cloud storage and web based computing, people remain sticky and unreasonable.

Conflict resolution skills are still considered soft skills, even in a workplace that requires deeply intellectually technical skills.

HSCT offers workshops, training and coaching sessions that can be purchased one-time (workshops), paid for via subscription (the HSCT Communication Blog) or offered as needed (coaching sessions).

We offer conflict resolution skills training in a variety of areas for our clients, including:

Active Listening
De-escalation Tactics
Anger/Frustration Control
Emotional Intelligence
Effective Negotiation
…and many more.

Now, none of these skills will ever be offered via the cloud, automated, or robotized via nanotechnology.

HSCT is always face-to-face (F2F), always in person and always on.

Conflict resolution-as-a-Service.

Be CRaaS in the workplace with HSCT.

Originally published on June 23, 2014.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] Organizational Climate Change – Part 2

Anthropogenic is a big word that basically means, “the fault of human beings.”

When we look at organizations built by human beings, from families to governments, there are a lot areas where anthropogenic issues combine to create a negative, toxic conflict climate.

And since conflict is a process that never really ends, there are only two kinds of environments that it can happen in, nurturing or harmful.

We all know what a harmful environment looks like, but a supportive, cooperative environment, where conflicts can happen and not leave traumatic scars that carry over into other aspects of our lives—well that’s the Holy Grail isn’t it?

Anthropogenic conflict climate change starts with disrupting the internal focus around an ancient resource that many people lust for deep in their hearts, but no one knows how to define.

Innovations around power tend to focus on redistributing the detritus that arises from the resource—such as wealth, social control or political influence—without ever really addressing the power itself.

There’s gotta be a better way…

Originally published on January 27, 2015.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] Organizational Climate Change – Part 1

The presence of climate change is real. And the climate is heating up the planet.

Everywhere on earth there are objects expelling hot air, and other gases, that serve to create a harmful climate.

And the climate that’s being created is the opposite of creative, nurturing and balanced.

Changing the climate of the planet is hard, but changing the conflict climate of an organization, filled with people with their own ideas, has to be focused on disrupting four areas:

Power abuse and threats
Unhealthy competition
Endemic distrust
Defensive behaviors

And the conflict climate where the psychological atmosphere is balanced in favor of these four areas (rather than in another direction) is bound to experience negative change.

This is particularly true when the conflict management tools used regularly in an organization, are focused in areas that support power, competition, distrust, and defensiveness, such as litigation and policy regulation.

This is also true when the conflict continuum is focused on escalation, and continuing comfortable levels of dysfunction, without seeking to break apart the underlying psychological processes.

Global climate change didn’t happen in a vacuum, and neither does changing the conflict climate of an organization.

Originally published on January 26, 2015.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[ICYMI] Acting “As If”

When we first started in the working world—and by extension in the adult world—one of the salient pieces of advice we were repeatedly given by other working people was, “fake it until you make it.”

Now, in most contexts of the workplace, where things happen—projects, ideas, tasks, etc.—underneath the force of organizational inertia, this is perhaps wise advice.

But in the conflict entrepreneurship game, “Fake it until you make it” is terrible advice. So too is the advice to “act as if.”

If the conflict engagement consultant fakes knowing the answer, fakes being empathetic, or under delivers the goods as promised, the client will know immediately.

By the way, bait and switch doesn’t work either, because showing up as one thing, when you’ve advertised another, is a sure way to guarantee never being called again.

Here’s some better advice for the conflict engagement consultant: Being confident in yourself, your approach and your process, comes when you embrace the fear of not being confident. Embrace cannot become paralysis, and self-fulfilling prophecies are like a dose of nerve gas against the conflict consultant.

Walk through the fear, is much better advice.

It’s the only way for the conflict consultant, and her client, to walk out whole on the other side.

Originally published on January 29, 2015.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!