[Advice] Conflict-Resolution-as-a-Service 2: KPIs

Understanding where people’s conflict responses are in their quadrants and where they position conflict messages in their brains, are critically important to consider. Particularly as you develop key performance indicators as you start resolving conflicts in your organization, differently than you have been before.

If a person prefers an avoidance stance toward conflicts in my professional life, then a person with a more collaborative stance (in the quadrant opposite) will have some problems with the avoider.

If a person prefers to be in control and compete around conflict (as many in the aggressive world of work sometimes do) then the accommodator in the opposite quadrant might have some problems.

The marketing theory of positioning (as expounded by Trout and Reis) says that there is limited “shelf space” in a person’s mind for messages. It further states that, once a message has been anchored onto a shelf, it’s not going to be dislodged by a new message in the same space. Instead, the jujitsu lies in creating a new message in the quadrant opposite the established message.

In relation to conflict management, a key performance indicator of whether or not your conflict training efforts have “worked” or not is: are people communicating messages to each other in the heat of conflict in a different way that reveals messaging anchored in a different position in their minds.

This is a KPI that is so subtle, so hard to actually see, that many managers, supervisors, owners, and others, who aren’t necessarily dialed into to language, emotional depth, and other conflict driving factors, will miss it. However, outside of people communicating with each other with courage (which comes with coaching, not necessarily training) people communicating differently, using different words, phrases, and even body positions, and getting different outcomes, it’s the only metric that matters.

[Opinion] Show Them What They’re Made Of…

Show them what you’re made of.

Why would you do that?

The ultimate call to escalation, ego, and more conflict, comes first in the call, then the attempt, and at the end, either the success (they saw what you were made of—and backed off) or failure (they saw what you were made of—and you were found wanting) is writ large for others.

Instead, here’s a better idea.

Show them what they’re made of.

Many parties in conflict have little idea of how much of themselves they show to another party through the conflict process. They give little consideration to the levels of vulnerability and exposure that they engage in when they choose to escalate. Many parties lack the awareness to know that their language choices, their communication styles, and even their conflict management stances, are all forms of reveal.

A magic trick has three parts: the pledge (the magician shows you something ordinary); the turn (the magician makes the something ordinary seem extraordinary by making it disappear); and the prestige (the magician brings back the ordinary thing).

Every conflict communication requires you to be a successful magician of resolution. Conflict is ordinary. To make it disappear through showing the other party what they’re made of, is the turn. And then to bring the conflict interaction back around to resolution (or at least engagement) is the prestige.

Show them what they’re made of.

[Strategy] How to Avoid Being Swept Away by Conventional Wisdom

There are two things to remember about conventional wisdom.

The first thing to remember is that the wisdom is conventional. Meaning that it’s the perceived wisdom of the crowds, held tightly, based in a cascade of life experiences, in accordance with what is “generally” done or believed. Conventional means standardized.

The second thing to remember is that the wisdom isn’t really wisdom. Meaning that the wisdom of the conventional variety is based in theory (what we’d like our interactions in the world to be like) and belief (what we’d like to believe our interactions should look like), rather than good judgment, principles, or any species of scholarship, lore, or sophistication.

Conventional wisdom only works when it works. And when it doesn’t work, people who formerly relied upon its benefits (as a shortcut to not engaging, thinking, or developing other ways of looking at the world) are often confused and irritated.

There are no simple ways out of the trap of conventional wisdom, but here are a few ideas:

One of the simplest ways to overcome the thinking around conventional wisdom is to realize that common sense is no longer commonly held. With the fragmentation of American culture in particular (and global culture in general) the power that commonly held sense used to hold is now dissipating.

The other thing to recall is that defaulting to conventional wisdom gives people in power a “leg up” over you and your situation. When they are operating within the confines of decorum, manners, and other conventional wisdom tropes, they can’t move as quickly to be creative, thought provoking, or to generate new wisdom based in changed mores.

Wisdom—just like courage—is in short supply. And it always has been. Wisdom can’t be downloaded or Googled. It has to be lived. And separating wisdom from the confines of conventionality allows the parties with that wisdom to be more cautious when responding to change. But it also allows those with wisdom to be more impactful when change arrives.

Conventional wisdom is often based in laziness of thinking and lack of imagination and curiosity, rather than any species of patience. Patience is the province of the unconventional.

Conventional wisdom is the province of the crowds. And the crowds have been wrong before.

And they’ll be wrong again.

[Opinion] Integrating the Path to Peace in Your Life

There is knowing the path toward peace, and there is having the courage to follow the path.

Many people know what they ought to do (or should do) but refuse to do it, mostly due to the influence of fears.

Many people know what they ought to do (or should do) and accept that doing it will be a struggle, full of moments designed to grow a person spiritually, emotionally, and psychically.

Both of these stories (and that’s what they really are) are designed to be true but not decisive. They are designed to be stories that push others towards the path of peace, while also courageously allowing ourselves a pass from the courage to make difficult decisions. They are designed to be stories that exemplify the dictum that “the high grass gets cut down” without the commensurate application of what a principled decision would look like in reality.

The path to peace must be forged with courage, and individual decisions, rather than with desires, hand wringing, pomp, or outrageous circumstance. The path to peace must be integrated within an overall vision of ourselves and what our futures hold along the path. Otherwise, the only principle worthy of discussion will be had along the path through the process of conflict.

-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/

[Strategy] How to Put In the Work

Putting in the work has to happen even as the work changes.

Work is no longer just about physical labor.
Work is no longer just about mental labor.
Work is now about spiritual and emotional labor.

Putting in the work changes when the labor changes.

Labor is no longer about getting paid for just showing up.
Labor is no longer about waiting your turn, raising your hand, and asking if ‘Will this be on the test?’.
Labor is now about caring, engaging with other people, and doing it with courage.

Putting in the work is not about the tools.

Unfortunately, too many people are still confusing the tools with the work, and thus are missing out on chances to shape how the future of labor and work looks.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Who ‘Unmakes’ Your World?

The hinge swings both ways.

Human beings made the system of conflict you are in; they can unmake it.

The knife cuts both ways.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

When you’re in a conflict, it may seem as though there is no way out of it. When you’re in conflict, it may seem that the hinge only swings one way, that the knife only cuts you, and that there is no way out.

Well, actually there is. But it requires you to do some courageous work early (when everyone is excited), in the middle (when everyone quits) and at the end (when victory appears in sight).

Hinges, knives, pennies, pounds, and the will to undo, unsew, unravel, unmake, and unwind, the mistakes we have already made, the damage we have already done, and the past that seems to never stop shadowing our futures.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Challenging Your Conflict Culture at Work

Yes, changing your conflict culture in your workplace will require you to take risks with courage.

Yes, changing the conflict culture of your workplace will require you to start with yourself and them move onto all those “other people” who currently seem so problematic to you.

Yes, changing the conflict culture of your workplace will be unpopular, particularly if the people inside the organization like the outcomes they are currently getting with the approach to conflicts they are currently using.

Yes, it will seem to take a long time to change your own internal conflict culture, in the same way that it will seem to take a long time to change the external, organizational culture.

No one is going to ever give you enough permission, reassurances, or hedges against outcomes occurring that you may not like, so that you won’t have to take on any risks at all to make change.

But not one significant innovation—of people, products, processes, or philosophies—has ever occurred without the changes that conflict brings. And if your culture truly wants to innovate, then changing the conflict culture is the first innovation you have to embark upon.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Fighting on Ground You Didn’t Choose

We often engage in conflicts on ground we didn’t choose.

We go into engagements with people and wander through them, surprised by the depth of the presenting problems, caught off guard by the visceral nature of the emotions, and completely off balance in how to respond.

In addressing conflicts on topics we didn’t choose (the ground) we often take the Donald Rumsfeld approach of engaging in the conflict we didn’t want with the tools we already have, and we wind up in the opposite of the General Grant position of worrying about what we are going to do in the conflict. Our responses become reactions, our reactions become incendiary, and then we engage in conflict avoidance the next time a problem arises on ground we didn’t choose.

There are a few ways out of this:

Make a plan. Never go into an interaction with someone where you know that a conflict will arise, without making a plan for what you’re going to say or do.
Implement the plan. Many plans fail for lack of execution. Many approaches to conflict fail, because it’s easier to rea a list of best practices and then forget about that list, than it is to implement them.
Ruthlessly focus on your goals in the interaction. Make goals in the planning stages and then ruthlessly focus on accomplishing them. Your goals might be to preserve the relationship, to side-step an older argument, or even to hold onto your heart, but no matter what they are, focus on accomplishing them.
Let adults be adults. Don’t own the other party’s emotional content. They can carry it around by themselves well enough without you. Constantly checking in on yourself internally as you engage, may seem like a daunting task, but here’s the thing: it’s even more daunting to just surrender and accept the other party’s paradigm or premise.
Get out. Sometimes, an exit from an interaction is the entirety of the purpose of your interaction. There’s nothing wrong with choosing this as a goal. But how you exit one interaction, sets up how you enter another.

The best case scenario is to engage in conflict on ground you have chosen. Barring that option, engage with intentionality and focus.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Hold Onto Your Heart

In any conflict, the hardest thing to do is to hold onto your heart.

When people mediate conflicts, whether professionally or informally, they run the risk of being demoralized by seeing the behavior of participants in the conflict.

Have you ever heard the joke about the family and divorce mediator who mediated their own divorce after doing this work for many years?

It’s not a good joke.

Hold onto your heart. Hold onto your vulnerability. Hold onto your tenderness. Hold onto your openness.

It’s too easy to let go when everyone around you is letting go as well.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Blogging for the Peace Builder

Blogging is still the easiest, lowest cost, way to build a business, establish a client base, become an influencer, or just to use a voice that matters.

It’s almost free marketing that is always on, always distributed, and always accessible.

There are great ADR professionals such as Cinnie Noble, Tammy Lenski, Victoria Pynchon and a few other high profile ADR practitioners, capitalizing on their blogging efforts. But for many ADR professionals, other than the contributors at Mediate.com (and here at ADRTimes.com), blogging is still viewed as a “one-off, one-time” thing.

There are many objections to blogging from the peace builder, but three are primary:

I don’t have time to blog.
I don’t know what to blog about.
I’m not a writer.

Let’s break those down:

I don’t have time to blog: ADR professionals lead busy lives. They mediate, negotiate and arbitrate complex issues that place psychological and emotional strain on them. Then, they return to homes where they may be confronted by more conflict (Ever hear the joke about the mediator who mediated their own divorce proceeding? I have. It’s depressing.) And, peace building professionals are exposed to more conflicts in social media feeds and from popular culture.

Then, there are children, partners, and responsibilities. By the time the end of the day comes, they are ready to do what their clients do: Go to bed and go to sleep. Then they get up and repeat it.

Who has time to blog?

Well, I’m writing this article in between just having fed my four-year old daughter and working on a client project. What I have found is that there are spaces in the day where thoughts worth blogging about can come flooding in. And, when we sit down at our seats in front of the computer, time becomes available, in spite of distractions, children, clients and other responsibilities.

I don’t know what to blog about: There is so much conflict in the world, at both an organizational and individual level, that I am often surprised by how many peace builders believe this. Peace builders witness disputes in line at their favorite coffee shop in the morning. Disputes occur at local school board meetings, attended the night before. There are disputes in our social media feeds, or even in the newspaper.

When I started blogging regularly, I worried about filling digital space with something meaningful. Then I had a revelation: The number of people consuming content in a digital space will always outweigh the number of people creating content in digital space.

The other piece to consider in this, is a thought that many peace builders have that goes “I don’t have anything to say (or write) so what could I possibly write about?” The fact of the matter is, we need more people who are involved in building peace to have the courage to lay out an argument, stake a claim to a position of truth, and then defend it vigorously and assertively. Courage has always been in short supply in the digital space (see the proliferation of Buzzfeed-like listicles and “Top 25” posts) and hiding away from the consequences of taking a position on topics such as neutrality, client-self-determination, or even the area of deep listening, does not negate the overwhelming need for online wisdom. The fact of the matter is, wisdom is also in short supply in a world where every piece of knowledge is a Google search away. We need more peace builder’s wisdom in the online space and the best place to get that wisdom across is through online, long-form, writing.

I’m not a writer: Many people stop writing regularly about the same time they put college (or high school) in the rearview mirror. Writing is hard, but for the peace builder, writing is the best way to explore and develop thoughts about process, procedure and practice and to grow the field. We need more writing, not less.

And, putting together a sentence or two is really all that it takes to begin. Once that happens, the real struggle becomes how to improve writing, rather than how to start.

One last point on all of this: Many peace builders want to begin writing, but fear that when they are vulnerable in the online space; when they take a position, raise their hand and say “this is me, this is what I’m making,” that there will be pushback from trolls, baiters, scammers, critics, and other bad actors (or actors with mixed motives) online. The thing to remember is that, at a practical level, the bad actors, spammers, and trolls are merely seeking negative attention and—even more perniciously—are seeking to place their shame on the person taking a stand.

At a practical level, the way around this for the peace builder to not accept comments on their blog. Or, to moderate them, or even to not read them. But, peace builders should never allow the bad actor to steal their voice, out of their own mouth, before it has even been used.

-Peace Be With You All-