[Strategy] Leadership Through Reconciliation

“Our values are our strength.”

“Our people are our greatest resource.”

We could go on, but pointing out the hypocrisy evident in the difference between the words written on the organizational masthead, and the actual organizational action, has been written about to death.

Leadership in many organizations is tricky for a variety of reasons, but the primary one is that organizational values are often seen as a marketing tool for advertising to external and internal stakeholders about how great the organization really is, rather than as a daily, lived ethic in the trenches. For the latest example of this disconnect, see the publication of the most recent “expose” of working conditions at Amazon.com.

There are inertia issues in all organizations, when the culture, much like a child, just begins to grow out of hand.

But leadership requires guiding that growth, especially through conflict situations, disappointments, economic downturns, and other unforeseen troubles. It is in crisis that true values, competencies and strengths are exposed, to say nothing of weaknesses.

Nowhere is this more evident than when an organization has to seek reconciliation with another entity (a person, another organization, etc.) that they have wronged–or who has wronged them.

Leadership—management, supervisors, etc.—in organizations view reconciliation in the same way that many individuals in the general public do:

They believe that reconciliation means returning to the status quo of the relationship before the conflict occurred—it doesn’t.
They believe that reconciliation provides the other party (who they still think is in the wrong) with the tools and means to hurt them again—it doesn’t.
They believe that reconciliation prevents justice, truth and “the real story’ from being known to the public (i.e. other parties not involved directly in the conflict) and thus being unattainable in the future—it doesn’t.

These three wrong assumptions haunt the ability for leaders to step out of their protective, organizational shells and do the hard work of forgiveness (another thing that’s not often talked about), provide apologies (something rare to even hear) and seek reconciliation (name the last time this happened with a public or private organization).

For leaders to break the culture of the organization and to seek reconciliation, they must first break the culture of themselves, and be willing to dance with vulnerability and fear, and focus on long-term growth rather than short-term stock prices. There are three places to start this process:

The culture must be reorganized philosophically around the long game—this is the hardest step, which is why we put it first. Organizational philosophy begins with the founders or owners and filters down to everybody else in the organization. Leaders below the founder/owner level are either told directly what the philosophy or are left to figure it out themselves from nonverbal cueing and behavioral tics exhibited by other leaders. Articulating the principles of the long game and the philosophy behind it has to come from the owners/founders. If it doesn’t, the leaders will organize around their own short games which can damage the organization in the long term.

The culture must be articulated—Having a meeting is not always the best way to do this. We heard a story from a high producing sales employee in an organization that reflects this. The story focused on some conflict scenarios going on in the hierarchical structure that the employee didn’t understand. The employee stated that the only reason she was still at the company in the midst of all of the conflict, was that a leader she respected (instead of calling a meeting) actually came out the sales field and talked to her directly. That’s a leader articulating culture through action rather than through a meeting.

The leaders must be humble internally and externally—many leaders believe that humility is best left to the marketing department and that brash, arrogant, or out of whack pronouncements are the way to create and manage change, push employees to do their best, and to get innovations out the door. But here’s the dichotomy: Humility is a character trait, arrogance is a marketing tool and the public (and internal and external stakeholders) are not always going to know the difference.

To build a culture where apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation with another party in a conflict is even possible, first there must be the environment for such things to even happen in the first place. The core of much of designing a system for resolving conflicts internally and externally that leaders can advocate for, followers can believe in, and external parties can trust in, begins with philosophy and continues with internal humility.

Such developments transform past the masthead proclamations and get to the core of what organizations really are, what their leaders really believe, and what their teams can really accomplish.

Download the new FREE eBook courtesy of Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT), on Forgiveness and Reconciliation by clicking the link here.

-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] Leadership Through Failure

If you look for it, failure is heralded in many, many corners of the Internet.

However, outside of specific areas on the web that focus on entrepreneurial ventures, start-up culture, or high tech, hard charging companies, the failure of organizational leaders is almost never heralded.

This is because failure is often personalized in ways that success is generalized. In many sectors of the economy, employees may feel as though they are punished in light of company failures with lowered salaries, delayed promotions, no raises and being treated as if their work productivity and years of effort are worthless. And, with all of the political talk about income inequality, CEO compensation rates and escalating corporate profits and stock buy backs, they can be forgiven for thinking that something is amiss with failure.

But, for organizational leaders at the managerial level and above, failure is not seen as a leadership competency, because, much like when NASA decided to go to the moon, failure is not an option.

What’s the way around this?

Realize that failure is an option—the issue with many leaders is that the same confidence that allows them to lead, also blinds them to the potential for a project, a company, an idea or an innovation to fail. This state of “confidence as a blinder” can lead to hubris and perceptions of arrogance, which are really shields for the great fear—that of failure. For organizational leaders, the realization is that fear should be danced with, not avoided, accommodated or ignored.

Get help dancing with fear—fear is at the core of many responses that organization leaders take to conflict scenarios. Many organizational leaders choose to avoid, attack or accommodate rather than to figure out ways to advance engagement in healthy ways. Choosing those alternate paths would go a long way to building and maintaining healthy organizational cultures that will be antifragile, courageous and inspiring in developing their leaders and their leadership. Getting outside help through training and consulting is a must in this area.

Talk about failures, but don’t embellish them—instead of running away from failures when they happen, organizational leaders should be trained to embrace those failures as part of the business development curve and as the growth curve. Embellishing failures leads to the rampant pornography of failure stories that abound across the Internet. Talking about failures while also draining the emotion from their consequences is tricky, but changing the conversation around them is the first step in that direction.

Failure at scale is an organizational bad dream for many leaders.

But, the reality is that failure will happen. But failures are not to be confused with organizational dips and setbacks. For many leaders though, knowing the difference is critical to developing, training and advancing new leaders.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Leadership Through Risk

A results driven organization is typically led by managers and supervisors out to minimize downside risk, maximize upside shareholder value and drain all the unique out of the pond called their product.

Consequences, results if you will, are inherently unknowable, and many organizational leaders, cognizant of that fact, seek to either avoid or accommodate employee disputes. They typically do this by handing off the responsibility to professionals in the human resources department, but then they do not empower these individuals to make real changes.

Because, that would be risky.

The paradox of risk in conflict is that if an organizational leader does nothing, it might get worse, or it might “go away;” and, if an organizational leader does something—anything—it might get worse and not go away.

This perception of leadership as a spot to squat was never an okay position to take, but many leaders are encultured and trained through looking and role modeling, and if organizational leaders have never done more than avoid or accommodate risk, future leaders will do the same.

The inability to take on a risky conversation, a risky conflict scenario, or even a risky business decision, defines many organizational environments and outcomes. There are two solutions to this:

Recognize that what’s underneath all of that risk is fear—fear is a powerful drive of conflict, but it’s also a powerful driver of attacking, accommodating or avoiding conflict. Most of the time, directness in communication is associated with courage because there is so little organizational courage. It’s not courageous to engage in a high-risk, highly emotional, conflict conversation, if you as an organizational leader are not “built” to handle it. It’s more courageous to say “I can’t handle it” and hand it off to someone in the organization who can.

Build an antifragile culture in your organization—antifragility builds on accepting the idea that there will be organizational conflict wherever there are two or more people. After that’s accepted, then comes the material fact of acknowledging that the culture has to build around, not managing the conflict through avoiding, accommodating or attacking, but through addressing, engaging and communicating assertively about the material facts and emotional content of conflicts. The last part of developing an atifragile ethic in an organization involves engaging with emotional labor in a meaningful way and figuring out how to recognize and reward that labor in an organization, beyond a once-a-year, alcohol-fueled bash.

Ultimately, the question that leaders both avoiding, accommodating and attacking risky conflict scenarios, and engaging with them effectively, is the same question:

What kind of conflicts do we want to have in our organization?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Leadership Through Apology

Much is made in the Western world of the importance of an apology.

When we start out as children—and our world is starkly black and white—apology comes, not from inside of us, but from outside of us. It is a statement we are compelled to say to others when we hurt them, under threat of punishment from someone in a position of power, i.e. a parent, a guardian or an older sibling.

These apologies are rarely meant, rarely come from a place of empathy about the situation or the other person harmed, and rarely lead to long-term resolution of conflicts, hurts, or injuries.

As we grow older, however, we become used to doing everything that we can to respond to conflicts through attack, avoidance, and/or accommodation. Interestingly enough, adults use all three of these methods to get around, get past and smooth over the need to either give an apology or receive one.

Then, this tendency scales to the workplace; a hard charging environment concerned only with the acquisition of revenue, the holding of power, the maintenance of position and continual growth. And when there’s a mistake made, a wrong committed, or an injury to a customer, a client or a partner, apology becomes a place for liability to lurk in the shadows.

There’s no room for apologies in this environment when people are hurt through conflicts there.

Just get over it, and move on.

But, what if the courage to apologize, much like the courage to take a risk and resolve a conflict in a different way, were a leadership competency, rather than a trapdoor for an executive leader to lose their position?

What if we thought about the process of risk, forgiveness, failure reconciliation, and apology differently?

As was pointed out last week, people get into disputes with other people, but because organizations and workplaces operate at scale, there is little room for the individual to get resolution—or apology—at scale. The only solution is to change the way we operate in organizations at scale, and to shift the conversation around conflict, disagreement, and even injury away from litigation and toward resolution.

The only people who can do that are the people at the top of the hierarchical pyramid. The ones that set the culture of (to paraphrase from John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) “No apologies. It makes us look weak.” The ones that promote, and expand, the image (the myth, if you will) of the hard charging executive.

We see this beginning to happen with Zappos, and the growing interest in implementing a holocracy system in organizations. A system where there is flattened hierarchy. This is the beginning of rethinking how we redesign organizational myth and culture, but for apologies to be effective, and for the act of apologizing to be an effective leadership competency, there must be three things evident before a mouth opens to give a statement:

Sincerity—because the distance between the person affected by a conflict (whether external stakeholder or internal stakeholder) and the person who can give the organizational apology is long, the issue of sincerity in an apology becomes paramount. The only way to close this distance for the leader is for them to actually do some emotional labor and engage with humility.
Humility—because of the nature of organizational cultures (governments, businesses, etc.) arrogance is “baked in” to the structure of the organization, its culture and its ways. This is something that the person giving the apology has to break, but this also has to be reinforced by all of the people down from her in the organizational chain. When the leader is humble enough to apologize, but the mid-level manager is not, the chain of apology is broken.
Acceptance—because of the nature of power in organizations (power over, not power with) and because of how leaders perceive the products of power (i.e. money, time, etc.) there is little ability to accept the idea that an apology when given might not be accepted by the other party. This puts the organization (a group of the many) at the disposal of the injured party (a group of the one). This lack of ability to accept an unpredictable outcome (and not having built an antifragile organization in the first place) creates the environment where the default thought is “We’ll just go to litigation.” Which is the ultimate power play.

For organizations to continue to develop, scale and grow successfully in the 21^st century, leadership training, competencies and even research has to shift in favor of increasing leaders’ development in the three above areas, before an apology-based culture is even considered.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] The 4 Areas of Organizational Conflict

In many organizations, the anticipated fear of doing something that might not work when resolving a conflict outweighs the anticipated benefits of taking a risk and resolving a conflict in a new way.

This anticipated fear shows up in four areas.

Customer service interactions—these are the ones that involve poor or miscommunication, bad service, a dissatisfied customer, or even a service that doesn’t do what the end-user (i.e. the customer) thought that it would. Conflicts in these areas tend to be the ones who’s outcomes are used to define the organization by its external supporters and detractors. They are usually resolved through speed and immediacy flooding the point of contention, followed by organizational silence.
Product recall incidents—these are incidents where a product is created, developed, produced, distributed and marketed in “good faith” but then proves to be defective in some way. Conflicts in these areas tend to focus around a material loss of some kind and are rarely resolved with an apology. They are resolved through litigation, regulation and in some cases, destruction of the organization.
Process innovation failures—this is when a product or service changes in some way and the changes are dissatisfying to the end user, the seller of the product or service, or the creator of the original product or service. Conflicts in these areas tend to take a long time to manifest and usually begin in the customer service area. They are usually resolved through changing cultures at two steps below the surface level (i.e. firing and hiring) but are rarely resolved thoroughly.
Employee disputes and conflicts—these are the most common internal conflicts and occur when visions, values and goals rubu up against each other. They are usually responded to internally through either avoidance, accommodation or attacking and are rarely resolved thoroughly until employees “move on.”

Many organizations assume that immediacy of response in all four of these “dispute” areas equals resolution. The problem “goes away” and then there is silence—from the press, from the customer, from the stakeholders, and from the employees.

This assumption exists because organizations operate at scale. Scale creates degrees of separation between the person impacted by the outcome of the interaction, the incident, the innovation or the conflict, and the person who is “at the top” of the hierarchy in the organization.

As human beings, from the age of tribes to the age of multinational organizations, we have outsourced the resolution of conflicts to third parties—chiefs, in essence—with the expectation that with distance comes freedom from emotional entanglement and rationality in decision making.

When the chief knew everyone in the tribe, this might have been—and may continue to be—true. But when Dunbar’s Number kicks in at scale, and organizations begin to grow, more and more resolution is outsourced to fewer and fewer people who are called to sit in judgment, render a verdict and not consider the consequences.

The unspooling of the Industrial Revolution and its outcomes and consequences, at scale, has put to lie, the myth promulgated throughout mass media, mass advertising, mass unionization, and even mass government for the majority of the last century: The individual, whether employee, customer, neighbor or advocate, can get resolution to conflict, disagreement, or disappointment at scale from an organization.

All conflicts, interactions, incidents, disturbances, and any other synonyms humans use to describe conflicts and disputes are always interpersonal, and thus can only be resolved at the interpersonal level. But many organizations—schools, nonprofits, businesses, corporations—only function well and “change the world” at scale, rather than in interacting with one person, employee, customer, neighbor or advocate, at a time.

The solution for this is not to prevent organizations from scaling. This is as impossible as canceling biological maturation or natural growth. The deep solution is for the chief to purposefully change attitudes and minds at the individual level through coaching, training, and leading, and then leaving a culture in an organization behind that repeats the vision, mission, values and goals that they want to see.

This is the real innovation that requires courage at the beginning, the middle and the end to execute. But many organizations would rather put out burning fires than build a better house in the first place.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] KPIs For Managing Workplace Conflict

There are typically three methods employed to manage workplace conflicts:

Avoid the issue and let the employees involved know that the work is what matters, not the conflict. Avoidance looks like censure, a write-up, a conversation in private or in public, or a mandated training.
Accommodate each employee and try to negotiate with each party to get them to return to work, not the conflict. Accommodation looks like supervisory silence, employees teaming up and deciding what’s going to happen in the conflict situation, or not actually doing the work at all.
Attack each employee and make sure that any other employees know that the work is what matters, not the conflict. Attack looks like threatening to fire employees, a write-up, a “disciplinary warning,” a mandated training, or even actually firing somebody.

None of these methods is effective at preventing, addressing and resolving employee conflicts. All the methods represent a hybrid of personalized conflict management styles, poor, little or no organizational training, and deeply ingrained organizational cultures that resist shifting for a variety of reasons.

There is, of course, another choice.

The goals for managing conflict in the workplace should go beyond merely the metric of “Is the work getting done in spite of what’s going on?” and should shift to “Is the productivity of the people being impacted because of a conflict fueled work environment?”

Here are some alternate metrics to consider:

Measure the resolution of conflict as a value that is offered as a customer service to internal stakeholders (i.e. employees). This metric can be tied to specific benchmarks with consequences attached to missing the benchmark—or attaining it.

Develop the process of conflict resolution through creating systems as a series of steps that are antifragile in nature—flexible and sturdy at the same time. Most systems in organizations cannot withstand external shocks (i.e. economic downturns) or internal shocks (i.e. a sexual harassment lawsuit) well. This is why any resolution system based in mediation, arbitration or even litigation must be flexible based on the nature, type and intensity of conflicts.

Implement training that focuses on three levels: knowledge gain, skill set gain, and emotional gain. Most corporate training is mandatory, meaningless and ultimately not absorbed or used by the employees who need to absorb and use it. This is primarily because most employee training in conflict resolution focuses on skill attainment and some knowledge gain, but there is little attention paid to emotional content. Mindfulness training, de-escalation tactics and active listening strategies are the first step in this direction, but in reality, after 100 years of psychology and therapeutic methods, there are many, many more.

Coach managers, supervisors and others higher in the hierarchical chain to attend trainings and get involved in the conversation around conflict in the workplace and what can be done about it. Many employees are elevated to supervisor or managerial status without fully understanding how they can motivate and encourage people, what their own conflict management styles are, and how to develop competing styles in a work environment that is perceived as resource deficient. This reality seems easy to overcome (“We’ll just bring in an outside trainer!”) but without follow-up, support and coaching from their supervisors, the training is just as useless for them as it is for the employees they supervise.

Elevate departments, divisions and even employee positions that were previously viewed as “hand slapping” or “regulatory” into change agents, charged with supporting the development and maintenance of new systems after the training is over and the consultant is gone. Raising the profile and status of human resources from a regulatory/litigation prevention arm of an organization to the status that it deserves as a change agent takes time, training and trust. It also requires a shift in the cultural thinking of C-suite executives about how their organizational culture can change its approach to change.

When organizations complain about the establishing of these metrics and relegate them to the province of HR, they surrender the ability to create workplaces that employees desire to be productive inside of.

Establishing a new management style, developing training and following up with it through coaching and implementation of outcomes, and means testing resolution strategies is not just “fluff.” Taking such actions represents the only way forward for many organizations. Past short terms wins that appeal to shareholders and the media and toward long term gains that create genuine, long lasting cultures.

Saying to employees in conflict “Just get back to work,” just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Download the new FREE eBook courtesy of Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT), on Forgiveness and Reconciliation by clicking the link here.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] KPIs for Your Conflict Management Skills Training

Effective conflict management should be a consistently pursued leadership competency in all organizations.

Often though, it’s not even pursued.

Or, even worse when it is pursued, it’s relegated to attending a one off workshop, or seminar over a weekend with little to no follow-up. Neither of these realities lead to lasting changes in the ways that employees choose to react and respond to conflicts occuring in their organizational cultures.

This happens for many reasons.

And typically, the feedback that the conflict management expert receives during the workshop is “Well, all this seems like it would work. But it all seems so indefinable.” This piece of feedback reveals the challenge that many organizations have, when pulling people off the floor, off assignment, and away from work, to attend HR mandated diversity trainings and other offerings.

And those are offerings that are mandated to keep organizations out of regulatory trouble, out of litigation and open for business.

Conflict management trainings, conflict communication trainings and conflict resolution trainings are not mandated in many organizations, and thus are seen as “nice-to-haves,” by supervisors, managers and others.

Kind of like marketing.

The fact of the matter is, the impact of unresolved conflicts on turnover, productivity, decision making, retention and innovation efforts, touches internal stakeholders (i.e. employees) directly. And in a world where more and more product is produced by fewer and fewer people, human capital must be managed properly and effectively. And the outcomes of that management must be measured, tracked and analyzed more effectively.

There are three key ways to do this, and they should be established before sending off employees to another “nice-to-have” training:

Establish benchmarks and attainable goals—What do you want your employees to understand, appreciate and implement from the conflict management training you are sending them to?

Just wanting the “conflict” to “end” and for everybody to “get back to work” isn’t a benchmark of success in any meaningful sense of the word. Without definable, organizationally based benchmarks and goals, the chances that your organization will be in litigation—or in a mandated rather than voluntary training situation in the future–increase exponentially.

Implement outcomes from the training—Without implementation of practical skills, attained through conflict management training exercises and facilitation, the fact of the matter is that many employees will revert to what’s comfortable, what “feels” right and what is immediate.

They will do this for a number of reasons: lack of organizational support, a desire for the perceived security from predictable conflict outcomes, or just plain old fear. Active implementation (and support) of the results and learning from conflict resolution, management and communication trainings, increases employee buy-in and productivity and decreases the measurable costs of conflict in increased litigation, increased health care costs and decreased productivity.

Enable supervisors and managers—Here’s a smaple scenario: Employee X goes to conflict resolution training because they can’t get along with Employee Y. They were told to go after their last performance review from Supervisor N. Supervisor N told them “This is your last chance, so we need to see some changes—or we’re going to have to implement some changes.”

Employee X, filled with dread, attends the two day training on Thursday, enjoys the training, feels good about the training all weekend, and goes back to work on Monday. Supervisor N later on Monday, casually asks Employee X “Well, how was it?”

And that’s the extent of the follow-up until the next performance review.

Thus, Employee X has no idea if they succeeded or failed, if they have any support in the organization to implement what was covered in the workshop, and has no idea if they are going to keep their job or not. And, Supervisor N, who didn’t attend the training or review the material with the trainer, has no knowledge to implement follow-up, no understanding of what was talked about during the training and no way to measure success or failure in the employee.

This is not an uncommon scenario.

The solution is to enable supervisors and managers to attend trainings, review materials and be involved in the benchmarking and goal setting process for success with the employee, rather than acting as a bystander in the employee’s development.

The outcomes of conflict management training may seem undefinable, but that’s only if the organization chooses to allow them to remain so. This choice reflects cultural issues and cultural choices orgnaizations have become comfortable with over time. Shifting out of these comfort zones requires everyone to be on board, from the lowest entry-level employee, all the way to the executives in the suites.

It is often believed that training in conflict is a “soft skill” and thus relegated to the back burner in many organizations. But the hard metrics of success and development in lowering employee turnover, increasing employee retention, encouraging employee productivity and decision making and driving innovation, yield dividends that can be seen all over the bottom line.

Download the new FREE eBook courtesy of Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT), Assumptions and Expectations by clicking the link here.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] How to Reconcile When You Don’t Feel Like It

“I don’t feel like it.”

Actually, we understand that you don’t.

An apology never works when it is given based in coercion, because an apology should be an active, uniting act. However, reconciliation following an apology doesn’t have its basis in feelings.

Don’t get us wrong, the fact of the matter is, reconciliation when you don’t feel like reconciling should not be an option for many parties in conflict, because if either party is unwilling to come to reconciliation circle, then the whole thing falls apart.

Reconciling with another party in good faith, can only happen when engagement with the conflict has happened in good faith by both parties as well. Good faith is something that we talk about in workplace disputes, and we even bring it up in union negotiations, but very rarely in interpersonal conflict spaces. When both parties are committed to the same outcome, regardless of their feelings, their constituencies’ feelings, and changing circumstances, then reconciliation can occur.

The worst deception—most a particularly in workplace conflicts—occurs when one party think they are reconciling in good faith and the other party is merely buying time for the next opportunity to revisit the old conflict pattern, because that’s where they believe their power lies.

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

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] The Ability to Remember

The ability to remember makes it hard for us to be reconciled with those who have harmed us.

This remembering lies at the core of our unwillingness to extend a hand of forgiveness toward those who have wronged us, whether it be in the business world, the academic world or even our families. This remembering lies at the core of our willingness to engage in vengeance, to couch and justify judgments and to close ourselves off from the other party in a conflict, under the guise of “self-protection.”

Many people hide behind their memories of “who did what when to who” in a conflict, in order to avoid letting go of the emotional pain associated with impact of the conflict; but, many more people would rather be reconciled to those who have wronged them in the past and continue in relationship.

Human beings are built for relationship, not ritualized conflict. And in non-Western cultures, where communitarianism is valued over individualism and conflicts are seen as tearing at the root fabric of relationship, the ritualized process of reconciliation is framed in the language of restoration.

In the West, though, outside of family and school we focus too much about the surface of relationships. Exploring this pathology is another blog post for another, day. The point is, we must figure out three things when we feel like we are ready to be reconciled with the one who has hurt us:

We are beginning a new relationship with an old person, and what happened in a past conflict no longer determines the current parameters of the new relationship. This is the hardest part of reconciliation, because we often want to hold the other party continually accountable for what we think is their part of the conflict, regardless of whether or not the situation has changed.

We are surrendering our “right” to revenge, continued blame, and “dredging up the past.” This is the second hardest part of reconciliation, because we project our view of the conflict onto the other party, and subscribe to them motives that we have secretly inside ourselves. Where there is fierce conflict, there needs to be equally fierce reconciliation.

We are reconciled to people, not to brands, organizations, governments, corporations or even neighborhoods or families. This is the third hardest part, which paradoxically, makes it the easiest to nod our heads and accept when we hear it (or read it). However, really consider it: When people litigate, they are looking for an apology (more on this phenomenon later) from a human being. Too many of us hide away from relationships that make us uncomfortable, or that expose our vulnerabilities in ways that make us seem weak. Reconciliation only occurs when people are exposed to other people and experience their desire for a renewed relationship. Systems and structure cannot engage in reconciliation (or even apology) in any kind of meaningful way.

The ability to remember is a choice. Just as the ability to reconcile is. Both require active participation on the part of one (or both) parties to a conflict. They also require repeated refreshing at the well of relationship.

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

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Top 5 Strategies for Forgiveness

The first thing that we have to understand and accept is that forgiveness is an active act, not a passive one.

The common misconception is that if we do nothing, or if we avoid, or if we just give in “a little bit this one time” or we don’t stand up for ourselves, that somehow, conflict situations will just magically resolve themselves.

But, much like being an entrepreneur of any stripe, if you are in conflict and you don’t act to get forgiveness (or to be forgiving), nothing will happen. Conflict events will just unspool towards outcomes and consequences that may not work for you, but may work out quite nicely for the other party.

Because resolution, forgiveness and even mindfulness is so wrapped up with philosophy, theology and spirituality in the West, we often forget that there must be action taken on our part in the physical, material realm to get anything started in the first place.

We have to decide—the first strategy is that we have to make a conscious decision to longer mentally, spiritually, and emotionally carry the baggage of another’s perceptions of us. What happened in the past cannot be undone, and revisiting old conflicts repeatedly in language, stories, narratives and other ways, only serves to allow each conflict participant to hold on.

We have to act –the strategy of action cannot happen before decision, though many people try. The strategy of action is what we teach our children (“Go and say you’re ‘sorry’ to your sister”) when they have wronged each other. Rarely do we tell them that this is the second step. Without deciding to act, the action of seeking resolution, forgiveness, and restoration become hollow exercises that retain as little meaning to the other party as they do for you.

We have to face forward – the strategy of facing forward goes past a lack of empathy (which is focused on others) and goes directly to confronting and giving language to unarticulated fears. This is the hardest thing to do, because human beings are encultured to avoid even talking about their fears aloud in casual conversation. Our modern tendency (in the West) to confuse transparency (“I posted a rant on Facebook and people responded”) with authenticity (“This rant on Facebook reveals what I REALLY think about ‘X’ issue”) is another way for us to hide from what scares us. Before we can seek forgiveness, or pursue it from others, we have to confront what we’re afraid of and articulate our fears.

We have to be empathetic –the strategy of being empathetic is one that also can be perceived as being disingenuous when it’s not performed in concert with these other strategies, which is why many trainers leapfrog over it. Or, we give a head tilt in it’s general direction, and then move on to addressing what we feel are more concrete areas of impact. But empathy is other focused and requires us to put down our selfishness (based in our fear of lack) and really see the other party for who they are. We have to care. And the things is, many of us don’t.

We have to want the forgiveness as badly as we want to attack, avoid, or accommodate the other party in conflict—the strategy of wanting forgiveness and restoration to a new relationship is personal. So personal, in fact, that we almost never say it to the other party. Instead, we many times opt to hoping that the other party will just “get it” from our nonverbal communication and then become frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Or, we don’t want to admit that we want the conflict scenario to continue because of the feelings of power and control that it gives us in the relationship.

All of these strategies are hard, time consuming and might not work. They also have to be employed when you might not feel like employing them, instead desiring to “just do what I’ve always done.” But getting forgiveness (and giving forgiveness) are not actions based in hope.

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
Principle Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
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