[Opinion] On Fences, Boundaries and Good Neighbors

Does the admonition my mother gave me during my childhood still ring true in an era of refugees, immigration and fears?

Natural boundaries have existed since the dawn of human existence to separate “them” from “us” and, once Dunbar’s Number kicked in at scale, political boundaries existed as stories that developed into myths designed to separate “us” from “them.”

In the 21^st century though, the illusion of noise as communication has convinced many people that boundaries (natural and otherwise) are the provenance of a time long past, and a people long dead.

The ability to erect an artificial barrier(anyone remember the Maginot Line) or to manipulate a natural one (“Don’t bring troops across the Rubicon River…”) has always acted as a trigger in the human psyche to the prelude for greater conflict. This is not necessarily always cast in military or political terms but, as human beings are conflict prone and naturally political, it often comes across in such ways.

And then we throw race, gender, national origin and culture into the mix and things get really dicey.

Which leads me back to my mother. When I was a child and my two sisters and I would have a conflict, unless we could work it out between ourselves (most often we could) my mother would separate us with the admonition that “Good fences make good neighbors,” and would put use each in our rooms—with the doors closed. This would precipitate a “cooling off” period before the real negotiation/resolution would begin.

Political boundaries existed as symbols, designed to protect and grow cultural stories around “us” and “them” and to allow people in charge to manipulate power, create conflicts, control resources and at the furthest end, start larger conflicts.

This all seems so illusory in an era of the 24/7/365 news cycle and the false dichotomies of conflicts. But in the world that average people live in, fences, borders and boundaries are still fiercely enforced, from families to neighborhoods and even at scale. And without such stories—which is all that those political boundaries really are—the chances of conflicts arising and becoming more virulent as those stories change and grow due to the reactions to the human choices to make war, migrate, emigrate or to have fears, is more and more likely.

-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 Mediate – Building Credibility

The fact of the matter is, credibility for the mediator is either eroded or strengthened in two spaces:

At the table

In a caucus

At the table, the mediator can establish credibility early, by being on time, looking prepared and professional and by demonstrating knowledge, empathy, active listening skills and by avoiding incendiary language or insinuations. The table is the second hardest place to establish credibility with disputants, who may have either begrudgingly agreed to attend mediation, or who have agreed to attend with their lawyers present, not understanding the nature and process of mediation. The table is also the riskiest place to maintain credibility, because it can be scuttled in an instant—by something the mediator says (or does), the lawyer says (or does), or either of the two parties say (or do).

This is just introductory credibility.

The stronger the mediator can make their own credibility at the table, the deeper the relationship between themselves and the parties in conflict will grow, based in reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proofing and liking.

Which leads us to the caucus.

In a caucus, the mediator can either wreck the credibility they have established at the table (which has led them to a private caucus in the first place) or they can use the caucus to deepen the credibility and add a layer of authority on top of it. Now, the trouble with the caucus is that this a place where a mediator’s neutrality, or their desire to see a “fair” outcome, often clash with a disputants desire to “win” the mediation. Caucuses are places where the mediator can erode credibility by playing into the hands of the party who called the caucus, or they can grow credibility by continuing to behave neutrally, or they can gain authority by overriding client self-determination and making a “suggestion” for moving forward.

This last act then moves the caucus into a space of conflict coaching (nothing wrong with that, but not in the context of a mediation) rather than keeping it corralled.

Here are some strategies for at the table and in the caucus:

Avoid the appearance of being “the authority”—Unlike arbitration, mediators are not called to render a decision, and unlike negotiation, mediators are not called to “just focus on interests.” Emotional appeals can sway a mediator toward acting as an authority and destroying credibility.
Navigate the caucus with caution—Preserve client self-determination, be aware of power plays (lies, deceits, misdirection, etc.) by either party and do enough back research on the parties and the material issues in conflict, so that whatever is revealed in the caucus never comes as a surprise to the mediator.
Own/disown the table—This should not be confused with appearing powerful or in control, but preparation, controlling nonverbals, engaging with emotional intelligence, and asking balanced questions, allows the mediator to shift ownership of the results of the mediation process to the parties and ownership of the mediation platform to the mediator. This is hard and it happens subtly, but the savvy peace builder will recognize it and be able to “hold on loosely” so as to let go of the process when necessary.

Establishing and maintaining credibility is the jujitsu of mediation. And just like the art of using an opponents’ weight and momentum against them, it can be tricky to understand, and take years to master.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Building a Real Relationship…

There’s not an “access to skills” deficit in resolving conflicts.

The access to learning, cutting edge developments, and research around engaged communication, emotional intelligence, active listening, body language cueing, and other areas is available virtually everywhere, whether through a trip to the library, your local bookstore or via a Google search.

The understanding that treating people in a civil manner, using power collaboratively rather than in a domineering fashion, and that “sharing is caring” is still taught in the kindergarten years.

The courage of people who have cared enough to take a risk to reach out, show vulnerability and work towards resolutions with other parties in conflicts (personal and professional) is evident all around us, from quiet ways in our families, to our neighborhoods and even the workplace.

And yet, many still believe that the tools for engaging with conflicts in a healthy, growth oriented way, rather than attacking, avoiding or accommodating conflict is somehow an esoteric and mysterious skill, available only to the select few.

Acting upon this belief gives our families, communities and workplaces more conflicts, more disputes, more misunderstandings and more problems.

Acting upon this belief in overt (and covert) ways tills the ground for the planting of the seeds of dysfunction that render our organizations incapable of change, our communities unable to confront hard decisions, and our governments paralyzed and impotent in the face of crises of our own making.

There are reams of paper and thousands of bytes of words expended on the “how-to” of resolving conflicts, and even more spilled on the benefits of the “why” of resolving conflicts. And yet, much of the resistance to taking (and implementing) the ideas of resolving conflicts proactively and in a healthy manner, is rooted in fear.

There’s not a skills problem for resolving conflicts. There’s a fear problem at the core of continued conflicts in our lives, our families, our workplaces and our neighborhoods.

The only way to overcome this fear is through engaging with something as equally as “unsexy” as engaging with conflict effectively: Building real relationships with people.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] How to Mediate – Establish Rapport with Disputants

The fact is, they both might like the conflict more that they want to get to resolution.
The fact is, they both might be feeling alternatively powerful and powerless in the conflict and may not want to break out of that cycle.
The fact is, they both might like the relationship that they have built with each other, over time around the conflict.
The fact is, they may not see resolution as a way to “win” and instead are focused on just maintaining forward motion in the conflict.
The fact is, the conflict may have begun around a material issue, but has now transformed into a conflict around values, using the language of principles, to describe positions.
The fact is, they may not understand how resolution as a process works, and may mistrust the process and the person advocating for it.
The fact is, they may not be exhausted enough yet to get to resolution—or to try resolving the conflict—and may have enough energy to continue the conflict, but not enough energy to expend on resolving the conflict.
The fact is, they may be surrounded by other players, third party individuals and others who are encouraging them, behind the scenes and away from the negotiation table, to continue the conflict.
The fact is, they may just not be “ready” for resolution.

When tasked with mediating a conflict, whether between two parties at work, or between two parties at home, many people don’t take into consideration the above list (not exhaustive) of factors that influence the lack of ability by disputants to “get to the table.” Instead, many non-professional mediators spend an inordinate amount of time convincing the conflicting parties that the mediation process is a good idea, rather than doing the other things with each of the parties that allow space for mediation as an option, to grow.

Establishing rapport with parties in conflict involves planning strategically and behaving tactically in three areas:

Building the relationship with both parties—The relationship is everything. If there is a pre-established relationship (for instance, between neighbors, family members, or even work colleagues) the relationship building goes faster, but if there’s no relationship, then empathy, active listening and engaging emotionally are a good beginning.

Establishing trust and credibility—Remember, there’s not a skills problem to resolving conflict, there’s a trust problem. Parties in conflict, for all of the reasons listed above and a laundry list more, trust each other collectively in a conflict scenario, because the other party seems predictable, more than they trust a third party individually. This seems wrong and counterintuitive, but think of how many conflicts you’ve let drag on endlessly, without resolution, and were offered the services of a third party.

Understanding each party, but not being driven by either of them—This last piece is the province of the professional mediator, but many people—from supervisors to pastors to therapists—are called to render a neutral decision on conflict questions, with little pomp and circumstance. The ability to be neutral may be held in suspicion by some parties, but third parties who can behave neutrally through nonverbal and other forms of communication, stand a better chance of building rapport with both parties before an option for resolution is even offered.

The path to resolution is carved through rapport, built on relationship, cemented through trust and credibility, and “locked-in” through understanding. Without those three areas, all the factors for not getting to table may render more weight with each party than the process of resolution ever will.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Perceptions of Power

There are conflicts everywhere.

From wars to rumors of wars, people, nation-states, corporations, organizations and many other individual and corporatized entities, are locked in conflicts, rooted in two factors: perceptions of reality and perceptions of power.

Perceptions of reality:

This one is the hardest to address, because from every person to every organization, perception is based on past experiences, contextual clues, and even the psychological and emotional make-up of people. No one agrees on the nature of reality, because, very few can agree (with 100% certain) on the nature of objective truth and facts. Both of which are mixed up with emotions when defining reality. Which lead to differences in perceptions, and ultimately create the spark that causes conflicts to rage like wildfires.

Perceptions of power:

Power is an interesting phenomenon, because everyone “knows” what “it” is—the ability to influence others to do your will—but no one can put a finger on where “it” shows up in the world. People, organizations and even nation-states, equate all kinds of material, psychological and even emotional “goods” with power. They make the same correlation with the trappings of power, or even the results of wielding power. But, no one can tell anyone what power actually is.

Perceptions of power and perceptions of reality both spring from the seeds of fear. Fear as an emotional driver motivates and animates most conflict scenarios. Whether a person is an employee at work, or the Pope in Rome, everyone fears something (an outcome) or someone (a person) and this fear drives the lust for power, the inability to establish a shared reality structure, and the desire for conflict.

On this Veterans’ Day in the United States of America (and Armistice Day, everywhere else in the world), we think on the ramifications of the impacts of reality and power and reflect on how much blood (both literal and metaphorical) has been spilled, in how much mud (both literal and metaphorical), since the dawn of mankind.

And how much blood (both literal and metaphorical) has yet to be spilled.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] BATNA-WATNA 2

In any negotiation scenario, there are three possible outcomes:

An agreement

This is what happens when every party gets an agreement they can live with and one that meets, not only their own needs, but also the needs of other parties not present at the bargaining table.

A best alternative to a negotiated agreement

The BATNA is what one party has in their back pocket that will allow them the “freedom” to walk away from the table without negotiating an outcome. The term has the word “best” in it, and represents what the party who has come up with it, thinks is the best. One party may look at (or hear about) the other party’s BATNA and think privately (or say out loud) “I’d never go for that outcome.”

A worst alternative to a negotiated agreement

The WATNA is what one party has in their back pocket that binds them to the table with the other party, whether an outcome is negotiated or not. The term has the word “worst” in it, and represents what the party who has developed it, believes is the “worst possible outcome, in spite of all other outcomes.” One party may look at (or hear about) the other party’s WATNA and think privately (or say out loud) “That alternative outcome isn’t so bad. What’s the problem?”

In a negotiation, because human beings have to be prompted to act altruistically, parties often overlook BATNAs and WATNAs. Even worse, the negotiating parties often overlook BATNAs and WATNAs, until either a stalemate is reached, or a checkmate situation looms on the horizon. The term “alternative” is often emphasized in discussions of BATNAs and WATNAs because human being like the idea of having access to alternatives in a negotiation scenario with a party they don’t trust, but actually accessing and developing those scenarios, requires expending emotional energy.

And many parties would really prefer to “win” the negotiation rather than to take the time to develop alternatives, and to map out possible scenarios, if things go sour at the bargaining table.

There are three ways to limit the power of this tendency to go for the “win” at the expense of developing alternative scenarios to a “win”:

Recognize that the other party is often dominated by factors they don’t bring to the table. For instance, if an employee is negotiating a raise with their boss, they should keep in mind that the boss reports to other people as well. Then they must ask the question “How would my boss, giving me the raise I deserve, make my boss look good?”
Recognize that you are dominated by factors that you may not want to have the other party bring to the table. In the example, the employee may need the raise in order to care for a sick child, or to meet an emergency expense. The boss in that scenario might want to ask himself or herself “What are the motivating factors behind this person asking for a raise?”
Recognize that agreement doesn’t always have to be the ultimate outcome. Both parties can always separate and come back, while they develop BATNAs and WATNAs. This feels counterintuitive, but the best diplomats never try to close a deal immediately. And the best negotiators open soft, give the other party time to think the process over, and always follow up promptly. The caveat to this is that timeline will vary per the context of the negotiation. A police hostage negotiator may have minutes to get to agreement, a diplomat may have weeks, months or even years, but an employee may have days.

Expending emotional energy to develop negotiation alternatives (both “best” and “worst”) can help a negotiator move from someone who merely pursues short-term gains to one who develops long-term engagement with the other party.

-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] Voting on Conflict

Every day is Election Day, when you are making choices about how you respond (or don’t) to a conflict or dispute.

Avoidance means you’re voting with your emotional feet to keep going and not confront.
Attack means you’re voting with your emotional feet to engage the other party in a way that makes you feel comfortable, but which may do nothing to alleviate or change the process.
Accommodate means you’re voting with your emotional feet to “go along to get along” as either part of a larger strategy, or just because you don’t have the energy to confront, don’t think that it’s worth it, or don’t want to be involved with the conflict process at all.

There are many societal and cultural messages about voting on Election Day in the United States. Many of them focus on words like duty, responsibility and accountability and equate voting for a person with meaning and mattering in a civic sense.

In a democracy (or a republic) voting matters for many reasons, but the words that we use to get across the message that going to perform a public act privately one day every two to four years, could also be applied to educating ourselves about the ways we vote with our emotional feet.

Otherwise, why make a choice (about a candidate, or a conflict) at all?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] The Productivity of White Space

The human eye is a powerful bundle of tissues, nerves and liquid.

As the most complicated mechanism (short of the brain) in the human body, the human eye can see, take in information and transmit that information for interpretation in the brain.

One of the first things that a practicing artist must learn while still a student, is the value of white space: Those places in the piece of art where there is “nothing,” instead of “something.” The artist must dismiss her natural tendecy to trust what her eyes—that confuse the crowded appearance of the world, with meaning—see is “there,” and search diligently for what is not.

There are a lot articles on the Internet, which fall into the genre of the “new self-help.” These articles focus around “hacking” your life to become more “productive.” Some of them offer valuable information in the form of listicles, without much explanatory content, research based findings, or even a really good argument about how to implement all of the tips at a practical level. This species of article has become so rampant in parts of the Internet, that they are approaching the level of pornography in their ubiquity.

But what do the human eye, seeing, art production, and the “new self-help” all have in common?

The lack of—or the crowding out of—white space in the world.

The human mind has a limited attention span.

And the messages from various signal bearers (i.e. family members, neighbors, co-workers, etc.) tend to “crowd into” the human mind, creating distractions that cause a loss of focus, a loss of clarity, and sometimes, a loss of personal purpose. The solution to this limited attention span problem (or limited bandwidth problem) is not to read another productivity hack article on the Internet and then to vainly attempt to apply its proscriptions.

The solution is to focus ruthlessly on carving out more white space.

More absence of messages that don’t matter, in order to catch the signal of messages that do matter. In principle, this just reads like another “new self-help” proscription with no basis in practical fact, so here are three initial questions to ask yourself before carving out more white space in your personal interactions, your personal productivity, and even in your personal perspective on the world:

Is this action I’m taking right now (or think about taking later) going to give me the highest value beyond just this moment (or the next)?

Am I providing value to someone else by having this interaction with them, or am I not?

Am I playing the long game, the short game, or not playing a “game” at all by having/not having this interaction, taking on this task, or engaging with this person?

Through discipline and with an understanding of the power of absence, your human attention span can focus on the things that matter, and be more productive.

-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 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-