[ICYMI] Stories We Tell Other People

The stories that we tell other people in our lives (the cook, the waitress, the kids, partner, the co-workers, and the judge) tend to be of a different variety.

They tend to be “me” focused (as in “Can you believe that THIS thing happened to ME!”).
They tend to be really focused on convincing other people of the rightness of our position (as in “I’m a [insert positive adjective of your choice here] person, I don’t deserve this! Don’t you agree?”).
They tend to be structured to imprint over other people’s emotional content that they are generating about us and the story that they are hearing (primarily by using emotionally laden words, phrases, vocal tones and speech patterns).

The stories that we tell other people about the conflicts in our lives are focused around figuring out who’s on our side and who isn’t. Not about what was right, what was wrong or what was out of our control in the conflict.

Who are you trying to convince with your conflict story?

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

[ICYMI] Stories We Tell Ourselves

The stories we tell ourselves about conflicts and our roles in them, tend to have three characteristics in common:

Stories We Tell Ourselves

They tend to be incredibly personal,
They tend to begin with the word “I,”
They tend to primarily be focused on self versus others.

And, with the rate of personal self talk averaging around 300-1000 words per minute, per day, there’s a lot of storytelling going on out there about the world and our place in it.

Is it any wonder that we have such trouble hearing other people’s conflict stories above our own noise?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

[Opinion] Fear and Power

In a conflict there are two primary movers: Fear and Power.

Fear moves a conflict forward, or backward, or to the side, through resistance, panic, aggressiveness, and avoidance.

Power moves a conflict forward, or backward, or to the side, through domination, aggressiveness, passive-aggressiveness, and outright confrontation.

In many organizations, departments, teams, committees and even individuals, make decisions about changes and innovations as a result of their perceptions about both fear and power. This leads to a lack of genuine leadership, work being done badly (or not at all) and innovation being stymied.

Unfortunately, as long as people are around to create hierarchical chains of command, fear and power will be the two prime movers of conflict. The key thing to understand is that the party who uses fear and power as a primary mover in a conflict, is looking for a preprogrammed, evolutionary response from the other party. When a different response is provided, then the balance of fear and power shifts, from the instigator to the respondent.

This is the dance of conflict, driven by fear and power, and when the balance is successfully tipped—or shifted—the game changes.

-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] Your Organization is not What it Seems

The main conflict situations in many organizations revolve around multiple, differing narratives about the value of work, the importance of compensation, the legitimacy of management and the possibility of leadership. But, outside of the organizations, many of the root causes of these conflicts used to never be seen by external candidates.

Many things get mixed in that brew of narratives, which leads to many organizations evolving to the point of the highest level of competency for individual performers, and then evolving no higher. But the strange thing is that, even in organizations where the narrative is broken, there is still hiring going on of external candidates for internal positions. This is because, the narrative that an external candidate tells themselves about the advertised role for which they are applying, doesn’t always match up with the internal organizational reality. But it takes a while for that mismatch to be discovered.

And this space—the space between getting hired and finding the mismatch—could take months, years or even decades to cross. Meanwhile, the organization benefits from the employees’ labor, time, talent and expertise, in exchange for a paycheck and providing a brief sense of security.

However, with more access to more information by more people about what is actually going on inside of an organization –it’s internal politics, it’s lack of leadership opportunities, it’s conflicting messages and methods of accomplishing goals and tasks—the chances of a candidate staying, or even initially applying for a position, grow narrower and narrower.

And this is the bind that many organizations find themselves in today. Even with economic uncertainty, political strife, cultural changes, and everything else, many individuals are finally waking up to the idea that they have options, they have choices, and they don’t have to settle for what’s available. Organizations have to realize that the quarterly numbers to the shareholders and great media coverage won’t continue to translate to hiring new productive employees and lowered internal conflict.

Particularly if the numbers continue to mismatch to lived reality, leaking out through media channels, in-person conversations, and passed on observations.

Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Reframing for Dummies

In a world full of noise, one of the most valuable talents, is the ability to actively listen to another person.

We often take listening for granted, confusing it with hearing, responding, ignoring, or “taking care of the problem”—without really stopping to examine what the problem is, or even if there’s a problem in the first place.

We also straight up don’t listen to the other party, or parties, at all. We dismiss their concerns as merely “opinions” and don’t stop to examine the deeper reasons behind what the other party is actually saying. Typically, revealing their deep concerns, closely held values, and sometimes prejudices, that if taken into consideration and addressed, would make for a stronger communication scenario, with less conflict.

We dismiss concerns, ignore reasons, defy truths, because we believe deeply that, once we have stated a position, the other party’s responsibility is to give us the response that we “know” is the right one. This is particularly endemic when the party who is listening is a large organization, or a party with access to the resource of a megaphone. In these cases, we do not seek to respond, we merely look to get our next position across to the other party.

The solution to all of this is three fold, and it lies in the process of reframing.

Reframing is the act of repeating the other party’s words and statements back to them. It seems like an obvious rhetorical tactic, but in many cases, conflicts are rooted in a lack of reframing, and many parties never do it at all, even while claiming understanding and appreciation for a viewpoint that may differ from theirs.

Here are the three steps to reframing:

Actively listen—Not just for the content that you hear on the surface from the other party—the content that generates a reaction from you because you’ve stopped listening and are now forming arguments about how and why they are wrong—but the content that isn’t stated. This, the unstated content, is the content that needs to be addressed.

Avoid reacting—When we hear something we don’t like, we tend to lash out, lambast the other party, strafe the room with the gunfire of our rhetorical position, and then move on, justified in the feeling that we “won” they “lost” and “all is right with the world.” This is the pattern of the mob. Reacting is not the way to reframing, but it is the way to escalating.

Actually think—To reframe successfully, the party who is listening must absorb—and think about—what the other party says, stop (or pause) to absorb the information, and then respond by restating what has already been said in the form of a question. Many people—in the race to the bottom of escalation—miss the pausing before speaking part of reframing.

If reframing were easy, everyone would do it. And the core of the art of reframing is the pause, the dip in the conversation, between the two parties.

Your conversational dip will vary, but without one, you are well on your way to escalation, defensiveness, reaction and conflict.

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-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Getting Resolution to Conflict When the Other Party Would Rather Not

There are always two sides to every conflict.

There is always a third side to every conflict as well.

But each party (or sometimes all parties) have little to no interest in getting to that third side. They like the feelings that being in conflict gives them—righteousness, powerfulness, attention and validation.

The party who moves past these desires and feelings and who longs for resolution may never achieve it with the other party. This can lead to feelings of frustration and sometimes even giving up altogether on the process of resolving the conflict.

There are a few things for the party that’s ready to remember, when addressing a party who’s not ready:

Forcing the conflict towards resolution disempowers the party who’s ready and empowers the party who’s not. It’s the same concept as the one behind forcing a screw into a hole where it doesn’t belong. The screw doesn’t fit, the person who’s forcing it gets more frustrated, the hole gets stripped (or broken) and nothing changes.
Before being at peace with the other party (the one who’s no ready) be at peace with yourself. Self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and spiritual growth are all required for the next step.
Be patient. The most unused resource in our world today is rock-ribbed patience. Ghandi had it, his followers didn’t. Jesus had it, his followers didn’t. Those are just two examples, but the point is, sometimes waiting on the other party to change involves just that—doing what you need to do to attain peace with yourself first and letting the other party do whatever it is that they are going to do.

Empowerment through patience, wisdom and personal diligence does not come overnight, nor is it a “get resolution quick” scheme. But it’s rewarding and life affirming, whether or not the resolution that comes about is the one that either party expected.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] We Built This City

There are systems in place inside of corporations, nonprofits and even families to manage everything, from the finances to the logistics of getting groceries.

Human beings create systems, in response to growing external complexity, which creates conflicts, friction and disputes. Think of Dunbar’s number, or the number of people you actually interact with on Facebook.

As the Internet has exploded all around us, the demand for a digital solution to almost every problem has increased, accompanied by the promise of decreased complexity, chaos, friction and disputes.

But this promise is a misnomer at best and a lie at worst, because the solutions to most conflicts lies in gaining greater awareness of self, moving past the need to rely on a system to solve complexity, and moving toward doing the hard work of discovering something about other people inside of ourselves.

There’s no digital solution for human problems, and with complexity of systems increasing, and with human beings outsourcing more and more of that complexity to algorithms in exchange for the ease of leisure, we have no choice but to start down the road of learning about ourselves.

Or else, the interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts between and within people will only grow more pronounced as man’s search for meaning and mattering becomes more and more acute, inside of the systems we’ve built.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] How to Deal with Less

When organizations want to justify budget cuts, workforce reductions, or a freeze on hiring, they often use the shopworn sentence “Well, we’re going to have to do more with less.”

At which point, in any organization, be it a nonprofit, a corporation, a small business, or even a church, the remaining employees, volunteers or members may feel as though they have one of two choices:

Leave

Stay and do more with less.

The fear and desperation that builds in these situations, serves to highlight, exacerbate or create, conflict scenarios. This is the exact opposite of what happens when an organization is doing “more with more” and everything is papered over “because everybody is getting ‘rich’,” or at the least, doing well.

Personal and professional reactions replace responses and when there is an environment of “doing more with less,” the set-up is perfect for conflicts, stress and disruption.

Compare this to something—a project, an idea, an organization—that is starting out. Much of the time at the beginning, the mantra “doing more with less” is really “doing more, creatively with what we have.” This is a much easier sell to employees, volunteers and members in the start-up stage than it is at any point in the life cycle of an organization, because starting is sexy and exciting.

But going through the middle with no more than what you started with–or less than that–can be disheartening, disempowering and disenchanting.

What’s the solution?

Abandon the “doing more with less” management mantra. Instead, switch to the truth. Whatever that may be about people, money, or other resources. This allows for creativity in the face of reality, rather than fear based responses.
Remember that fear, withdrawal and “hunkering down to weather it out” doesn’t engender confidence, creativity or faith in the organization, the mission, the values or the goals. Instead, erosion from the outside and corrosion from the inside will begin to destroy the organizational fabric.
Empower the people that care. These are not typically shareholders, external stakeholders or other individuals watching from the sidelines in the Coliseum, clapping, booing or calling for blood. The people who care are the people who have been in an organization since the beginning. They deserve to have their faith and hard work rewarded.

No one enjoys the fear, anger, frustration and resentment that can develop when having to do “more with less,” whether in a family, or a corporation.

But how we respond to the bad news of events that are out of our control, contributes more to the overall long-term viability of an organization, than doing the same thing that’s always been done, by everybody else.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] An Antifragile Future

The future conflicts we can’t predict, the ones that come out of the sky and surprises us, are the easiest to prepare for. But we have to work at it.

Interpersonal conflicts come from both places: the places we can predict (that family member who’s “always been a problem,” or that co-worker who “just doesn’t get it…and never has”) and the places we can’t predict (“he was so normal,” or “she never said anything about it before”).

We don’t prepare for the unpredictable for two, major reasons:

It will never happen to me: Actually in the realm of all mathematical, probabilistic calculations, the likelihood that someone getting into a conflict with you whom you did not expect to is pretty high.

I’m already prepared in case it happens: Well, think about the last unpredictable event (for you) that happened? How did you respond to a flat tire in the middle of road? A screaming adult? A disappointed boss or co-worker who had never said anything previously?

We respond with the patterns comfortable to us, to conflicts and stimulus that are unpredictable, because we don’t think about, plan for, or even consider the fact that the unpredictable might actually happen.

This is why we’re always surprised by future outcomes, conflicts and situations, even as we look for patterns in the past, and assign blame or credit, in order to make order, out of the chaos that unpredictability represents.

There are a few ways out of this, none of them comfortable:

Think about future conflicts “tabula rasa”: Begin by thinking about conflicts that could arise with a blank slate, or tabula rasa. Think of the future—and conflicts that could arise in it—as unexplored territory.
Do not look to the past for solutions: The past is exactly that, the past. And it’s not a good predictor of future behavior, actions or choices. The past is merely history. Or, perhaps nostalgia. And sometimes nostalgia can be poison.
Be open to possibility: This one is really hard if people are not comfortable with change and require stability and predictability—or at least the story of stability and predictability—in order to go about their day. Being open to the possibility for conflict opens the doors to being creative in your reactions, and responses to it.
Creativity is the key: Many people struggle with creative ways to explore, challenge and respond to conflict prone situations. This is why the standard responses to receiving a divorce decree is to just accept it and get a lawyer. However, many conflict scenarios—both interpersonal and intrapersonal—can be resolved, accommodated, or even avoided, in a myriad of creative ways. And, depending upon the type of response you’d like to encourage in the other party, responding creatively is better than using past patterns of behavioral responses—and expecting a different result.

Employing some, or all, of these strategies leads to creating systems in families, churches and civic organizations that can be antifragile, rather than collapsing due to fragility, or overcompensating due to a robustness of robustness.

-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] Don’t Wallow in the Gap

Our heads are the most dangerous place to be in conflict.

We tell ourselves a story about the nature of the conflict, who’s at fault (and who isn’t) and what the solution should be (preferably one that benefits us and makes the other person the enemy).

We then plunge forward, tackling the conflict with the tools that got us into the conflict in the first place: we don’t actively listen, we don’t engage emotionally with the other person’s content around and within the conflict, and we engage (happily or miserably) in the gamification of the conflict process.

We temporarily pause the conflict (sometimes for hours, days, weeks, months, years or decades) and call that pause resolution—when in reality that pause represents a “lull” in the conflict conversation, where more content floods the gap.

And after all of those steps, we look around an wonder why our workplaces, our families, our schools and our churches are not “doing what they should be doing.”

This is not a condemnation, or castigation. We have engaged in all of these steps as well, with conflicts between us and other people in our own life. We engage in some of these ways even still.

But there is a way out of the narrative trap:

Break the language: Language = Thought and thought = language. Take a pause and review the words that you use to talk about yourself, about the other party in conflict and about the content of the conflict scenario. Words give meaning and set up paradigms for future behavior and decisions.
Break the trap of decisions: What got you here to conflict isn’t going to get you there to resolution. The decisions, patterns, and behaviors that got you into the conflict you’re in today (and the ones you’ll be in tomorrow) have to be broken through self-examination.
Break the gap: Being intentional about the outcomes you want to achieve through avoidance, accommodation, assertive confrontation, or any of the other choices for responses that you have in a conflict, is critical to avoiding the gap. That temporary pause, or “lull” in the conflict flow.

These tips seem obvious and easy, but if they were, we would be collectively performing them all the time, rather than stumbling through the narratives we’ve built. Ultimately, the way out of the narrative trap of conflict, takes having courage to take the steps in the first place.

-Peace Be With You All-