[Strategy] The Trust Deficit

Losing trust and getting it back—always a hard process—has become that much harder because of how we have changed socially in reaction to the presence of our new digital communication tools.

Credibility used to come from the work you performed, and from showing up every day, like clockwork. In the world of work, our workplaces, and in the world of communication, when everyone can show up, credibility is lost when consistency is abandoned. Just look at the world of lifestyle coaching, blogging, podcasting, and even the early days of adoption of streaming video platforms such as Meerkat, Periscope, and Blab. Credibility used to be built by sticking around after the “newness” of something wore off. Now, in the constant, impatient chase to pursue the new, credibility takes a hit.

Transparency used to not even be a consideration in public communication. The public was happy not knowing the details of the lives of those considered to be “famous.” Affairs, cheating, fraud, abuse, addiction, moral failings: all of these used to be fodder for the arena occupied by scandal rags, “yellow” journalism, and gossip columnists—and dismissed, or viewed as scandalous in and off themselves, by “decent” people. But now, all of that has gone mainstream. And while there are a few people still around who value the old ethic of the personal and the private not being public, many individuals choose to transparently video stream, Tweet, Facebook update, and otherwise expose their reality to the world. We are arcing over to a time when how much you have been transparent matters more than what you have been transparent about. A place where the act of participating matters more for your credibility than the content you are sharing.

Authenticity used to be about the soundness of moral (or ethical) character, in the face of tough decisions no matter their impact. Sayings such as “He (or she) is bona fide” speak to the idea that being authentic was once about character—which no longer often gets commented on. This is not to say that character no longer counts, but the shared moral and ethical framework that undergirded much of societal cueing about who had character—and who didn’t—has gradually eroded away. Now the way we determine authenticity has become individualized, rather than corporately shared, and authenticity is simultaneously about ourselves (“I need to be free to be who I genuinely am”) and about negating a previously publicly shared moral and ethical framework (“Don’t judge me”).

Establishing, building, and maintaining trust in an environment of tools that reward impatience and a lack of focus, where the act of being transparent matters more than what we are being transparent about, and where authenticity has become personal rather than shared, has become infinitely more difficult.

But not impossible.

The way out of all of this is to hearken back to some older truths:

Credibility is about commitment and consistency, rather than about the shiny, the new, or the tool. Judgement about credibility should come from looking at a track record, rather than a snapshot, moment-in-time event.

Transparency has to revert back to being a sacred part of a two-way relationship, rather than either a selfish one-way act (“I broadcast to you.”) or a selfish two-way act (“We broadcast—or share—only with each other and our narrow band of ‘friends’.”).

Authenticity is the sacrifice that the libertine makes on the altar of the public good, rather than seeking to hold onto it all the time at the expense of the public. Shakespeare had it right about Julius Caesar: The sacrifice of being “on” all the time in public and in private is the ultimate trust building tool.

But all of this is hard.

And without getting our arms wrapped around these three areas as leaders, employees, and even individuals, trust will become yet another sacrifice made on the altar of our post-modern communication tools.

-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] On Non-Defensive Listening

Defensiveness.

Stonewalling.

Denial.

Silence.

These are all aspects of defensive listening. This is the listening that involves argumentation. This is the listening that involves a lack of focus on the other party. This is the listening that involves pushing your “I’m right” on someone who doesn’t believe, want to hear about, or care about your “I’m right.” They believe in their own “I’m right.”

All of the aspects on defensive listening are most often cued to others, not through speaking (although vocal inflections, tones, and word usage do play a part) but instead through the nonverbal communication of body language, facial expression, and onomatopoeia (sounds that when written convert to imagery (and sounds) in our minds).

Non-defensive listening is about the opposite of all of this. Non-defensive listening—above all else, even above non-defensive responding—is about focusing on the other person’s communication in order to understand, get clarity, and respond, rather than react, appropriately.

Without all the stonewalling.

To effectively engage with non-defensive listening, there are three things to do right away:

Focus on what the other person is saying, doing, and communicating in an interaction. Fear modulation is huge in this area.

Engage with a response that will address what the other person actually communicated, rather than what you think they communicated, what you think they meant to communicate, or even what you wanted them to communicate.

Be silent as a way to cause separation in your own head for thoughts to come to your mind clearly. This is practicing silence as a form of mindfulness, rather than using silence as a method of escape from the conversation, or interaction.

Above all else, being intentional—as if you were a brand advertising a car in Times Square—is the number one way to engage effectively with non-defensive listening.

Otherwise, there’s going to continue to be a lot of “coulda,” “woulda,” “shoulda” in your communication.

[Opinion] Listening When You Don’t Care

Listening when you don’t care is hard, because of four reasons:

We want things to be easy—The word “easy” just means that, on our terms, the interaction of listening, requires nothing of us—or the minimal amount of emotional labor possible.

We want things to be our way—we are selfish. There’s nothing surprising about this. But what is surprising is the number of different covers we place on top of our selfish tendencies, in an attempt to conform to whatever behavior the social group demands.

We want interactions to be friction-free—this just means that, the more direct the communication—or the more direct we think the communication is—the easier it seems for us to engage in. And by the way, this also means that, as long as people agree with us, and things are our way, we have stasis and security.

We want to be right—this is the other part of selfishness in our communications, and like most parts of our interpersonal communications, it’s deeply internal.

Then there’re the adoption curve:

On any distribution for anything in the material world, or in the human experience, there are people who are early adopters (easily understood and understanding) there are people who are late adopters (barely understood, and barely understanding) and then there’s the vast bulge of people in the middle.

The people in the middle are those people who don’t really care if things are easy to understand, or hard to understand, they just want the communication to work, preferably for them, or their situation.

The trouble with the middle is that it’s where everyone believes that they are. In reality the bulge is heavy at the left side of the curve. Many of us are not really listening at all, because we’re not really caring at all…

At the heart of listening—rather than not listening, or only listening long enough to find out when we can jump in to refute whatever is being said—is emotional labor: caring unselfishly, delaying the gratification that comes from stating our point, engaging with the friction rather than seeking to reduce it, and abandoning the impulse to be right.

-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/

[Opinion] The Infrastructure of Our Assumptions

The infrastructure underlying our assumptions about work, the material world, and the digital world, and even how people get paid for work, have to change.

One assumption people still struggle with accepting is: If it’s not physical, then it’s not worth paying for.

Another assumption people struggle to change is: If I can’t see you physically doing the work, you must not be actually creating anything of value.

And yet another assumption people struggle to change in the face of shifting technology is: If it’s in the digital world (work, products, infrastructure, etc.) then there must be a physical corollary or else it’s not “real.”

All of these assumptions are being upended, moment-by-moment, bit-by-bit, by software companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) product companies (Tesla Motors), and digital goods companies (Amazon, Zappos, Netflix, etc.) and there are no signs of slowing down. Meanwhile, in the “real” world, the debates that rage in our public discourse are over basic income, wealth distribution, race and gender, and the nature of public policy, regulation, and laws in the face of rapid change.

We insist on using 20^th century language and 20^th century approaches to resolve 21^st century problems. The solution to this is not to slow down, change, or push back machine learning, software development, or even physical and digital integration. Instead, the solution to this comes right out of the world of conflict resolution: Developing and sustaining the environments that will allow people to be creative, be generous, be courageous, and be truthful in a world that will increasingly reward by revenues of connection, referral, and relationship, those people who can successfully relationally connect with other people.

Rebuilding and reimagining the educational, social, and community infrastructures that will empower people to be their best, most ethical selves over the long stretch of their lives and creating and sustaining the systems to reward that growth—that’s the hard work.

Assumptions undergird work and the value of human labor. Assumptions undergird emotional labor and the value of that labor. Assumptions undergird adoption of technology, systems, and even the design of physical infrastructures.

But, the thing about assumptions is that human being make them.

Which means, with courage, and without apathy or defeatism, they can be unmade.

Even in the face of conflicts over change.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Philosophical, Strategic, Practical

There are three conversations that you can have at any given time.

Philosophical—This is the 50,000-foot, “big idea” conversation. Not many people are capable of connecting together big ideas. Nor is everybody capable of (or interested in) exploring the ramifications of the implementation of those big ideas to their lives, either at work or at home. Many people would rather not think (or talk) in 50,000-foot terms and instead would rather seal off the considerations, thoughts, and even ideas, that a 50,000-foot philosophical conversation brings up, and never think about them ever again.

Strategic—These are the 10,000-foot conversations that occur every day between members of middle management inside of organizations. These are the conversations people think they are having inside of brainstorming sessions at work. These conversations are about ideas (ostensibly) but they quickly move to being about people (gossip) or about repeating a personal story as if it were a public truism (storytelling). Many people like the feel and the tenor of a strategic conversation, because conversations like these usually wind up with someone else doing the hard work of formulating a plan, developing next steps, and implementing a policy or a change.

Practical—These are the “How do I deal with what’s 5 inches in front of my face?” conversations. Practical conversations are about getting to the point, getting past the “fluff,” disengaging with emotion (if at all possible) and making a point forcefully and persuasively. Practical conversations don’t typically involve discussing facts—just impressions that the facts left behind as they floated up into the strategic conversation realm. Most people enjoy practical conversations because they allow for a focus on “getting things done.”

The three conversations—just like the three feedback conversations—happen almost simultaneously in meetings, face-to-face interactions, and most notably, in conflict communication scenarios.

If you want to communicate beautifully, know which conversation you’re having with which audience.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #6 – Mitch Mitchell

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #6 – Mitch Mitchell, Health Care Revenue Cycle and Management Consultant, Diverse Tweeter, Prolific Blogger

[powerpress]

Leadership and self-deception around diversity and social justice is at the event horizon for most organizations, but Lawrence Fishburne isn’t there to help them to the other side.

Although, our guest today is there on the other side of the event horizon. But he’s not Lawrence Fishburne at all.

Last year, Black Lives Matter rocked the social media world and served as one of those rare social media movements that actually crossed over into real life, really lived, and was talked about among real people.

But a year later, as the presidential election heats up and as the strains of the candidates fill our airwaves, our collective inability to focus on one thing as a nation, one again rears its ugly head.

And Garry Shandling is dead too.

Privacy, security, healthcare, advertising, your private data and making money all link up in this space as well. But I can’t think of how all that collapses together.

Leadership is the core thing that ties all of these disparate areas together: Leadership on the issues of privacy and security is critical for continued success in this country. Leadership in the space of healthcare is the only thing that is going to keep us all going even as getting healthcare changes gigantically in the future.

And leadership is the thing that is going to give people the freedom to engage in emotional labor in a future where more and more people may wind up doing less and less work.

This interview with Mitch is much more “ground level” than the interview that we did with David Burkus. It’s also more focused on leadership directly—but also indirectly—than the interview that we did with Ruth Henneman.

But it’s all leadership.

And that’s part of the problem, right?

Check out all the places you can connect with Mitch below:

Mitch’s Website: http://www.ttmitchellconsulting.com/

Mitch’s Blog: http://www.ttmitchellconsulting.com/Mitchblog/

Mitch’s “Other” Blog: http://www.imjustsharing.com/

Mitch’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYMVX_ehmfnV_BhvTOj-5_w

Mitch’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mitch_M

Mitch’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mitch.mitchell1

Mitch’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ttmitchell

[Advice] Getting Everyone On Board

When the internal marketing organizational change efforts doesn’t match either the lived organizational culture, or the culture that happens to be stated in quotes on the wall (or the masthead) you’ve got a problem.

The issue isn’t that executives and middle management don’t see eye-to-eye. That will happen in any organization where goals are not transparently shared. The issue isn’t that entry level/front line employees are asked to do more with less. That will happen in tough economic times, particularly if your organization is a nonprofit, or it has been a bad quarter. The issue isn’t that middle managers feel as though they are placed in positions of authority where they can always say “no” but where they can rarely say “yes.” This has been happening ever since the time of Hammurabi.

The issue is your organizational culture, your internal marketing structure (or lack thererof), and the fact that your executives are not operating inside a metric of trust and openness, but instead are measuring success one quarter at a time.

There are just as many ways out of this as there are into this bind, but here are three from a conflict engagement/management perspective that could be helpful:

Your organizational culture needs to change intentionally—I don’t hold to the idea that culture is fine and that products, services, or processes just need to be overhauled. The culture of the organization is either fragile (but believes that it is robust), is robust (but has elements of fragility in it), or is antifragile (with no elements of fragility or desire to go toward robustness). The fact of the matter is, when the culture that’s lived deviates too much from the culture on the masthead, or in the external marketing, the gap between lived reality and fantasy gets filled with competition, low morale, low motivation, high conflict, and constant storming. All of which lead to an eroding culture, as surely as rain washes away the sand.

Your internal marketing structure needs to change intentionally—How you market change efforts to the people being impacted most directly by those efforts (i.e. the employees) matters more than the efforts themselves. Without buy-in, the outside trainer, or consultant, comes in, makes recommendations for changes, and works closely with the people and hears “We don’t have the power to implement that change here.” Or, “The people who should be hearing this information and getting these recommendations are not in the room—and we can’t talk to them.” Internally marketing organizational change to the people being impacted by that change, has to go beyond a Friday afternoon/Monday morning notification email, followed up by a supervisory conversation whose tone and direction is that of a mandate.

Your executives need to “buy-in.”—Optics matters more than employees, managers, supervisors, and even executives think that it does. Role modeling may be the foundational aspect of all leadership, but if the people with positional authority aren’t actually engaging in role modeling the discrete and obvious, changes they desire to see in the people tasked with responding and reacting to their authority, then all the change talk is merely that. Talk. People follow who they see leading.

When middle managers are driven to tears, frustration, thoughts of quitting, and even more, because they feel powerless to implement the changes they can observe are desperately needed, organizations need to change their cultures, not by changing who is in positions, but by challenging the organizational process that got them to that point in the first place.

Accomplishing this takes open communication with courage, curiosity, and compassion. And those traits are what fill the gap between what’s on the masthead and what’s lived in reality.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] “Why” is the New Black

“Why” is the new black.

I keep saying this, in trainings mostly, and what it means is that–what lies at the core of most problems, disputes, disagreements, frustrations, and “differences of opinion” in the workplace—is the inability of adults to ask other adults the question “Why?”

The reasons for not engaging in this way are numerous, but the largest on is that supervisors, managers, and even fellow employees, have been trained subtly through the power of social proofing and liking—along with groupthink— to believe that asking “why” as a way to explore motivations (either intrinsic or extrinsic) is the province better-trained, more highly compensated “others” higher up the hierarchical ladder.

Supervisors, managers, and employees also want the reassurance that if they ask exploratory questions in a Socratic manner, that such questioning will lead to resolution in their favor and against the other party. This is, of course, an unknowable outcome, and so it’s just easier to avoid the whole thing and adopt a “Do as I say because I told you to” position. One that leans on authority and extrinsic motivators.

Unfortunately, (or if you are a person of courage, fortunately) the Industrial Revolution is over. The era of supervisors, managers, and leaders merely leaning on authority to get widgets made faster and cheaper has passed as well. And the era of calling everyone’s bluff is now upon us.

Increasingly, people are returning to the idea (that was rampant in the world before the Industrial Revolution brought prosperity to the masses) that labor has to matter. Jobs, work, and labor are all discretely different and we have spent 150 years muddling the boundaries. But, in a 21^st century where more and more people who would have been tagged as merely “employees” are asking “Why?” to get to the meaning and mattering behind widget based tasks, the boundaries are only going to become sharper.

For supervisors, managers, and employees struggling within the transition from the brave, old, familiar world to the brave, new, unfamiliar world, getting rid of the desire for reassurance, developing patience, and exploring motivation Socratically by asking “Why?” is the only way forward.

Otherwise, a lot of middle management in a lot of organizations will be hollowed out and replaced, because performing emotional labor will become secondary in value to the immediate revenues that lower paid, more compliant people, algorithms, or robotics can provide.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 3.22.2016

Three benefits accrue to you (or me, or anybody else) when you show up and guest lecture at a college or high school class.

Prestige—I get to show up and talk with (or to) people who are there to hear knowledge and already mentally prepped with the idea that I’m the “expert.” I might not be the “expert” and I might not set myself up as the “expert” but the person (typically the instructor) introducing me to the class has more clout than I do. They set the table and they follow-up.

Accountability—I’m always accountable to other people for everything that I say, that I do, and that I write. But when I guest lecture, there’s almost no feeling of immediate accountability. Which means I have a choice to be accountable, or to be not accountable. Being accountable—and choosing to follow-up and answer questions from participants either in person or via email later—is the prize that participants get when they listen to me ramble on for an hour.

Responsibility—There’s always a measure of responsibility for the outcomes of any speech that accrue to the sender and the receiver. The receiver has a responsibility to actually do something with the information that they receive. But, since there’s rarely any penalty for not taking action (or at least, no immediate penalty) the intrinsic motivation to act must be energized by the sender of the message. The sender’s responsibility is two-fold: To be empathetic and accountable, and to be extrinsically and intrinsically motivating to the attendees.

The benefits may not be apparent immediately to you the guest lecturer, but they are there.

-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/

[Advice] The Things That Are Unpleasant

There are things that are hard, things that are easy, and things that are unpleasant.

This is similar to the differences between events that are difficulties, events that are confrontational, and events that are conflicts.

The things that are easy are the ones that don’t require a whole lot of hard work, that we enjoy, that make us feel good, and that make other people feel good. The things that are hard are the exact opposite: these are the things that require a lot of hard work, that we don’t enjoy, that don’t make us feel good, and that usually make other people feel “not good” as well.

The things that are unpleasant are things that might be difficult, but are often necessary to do, in order for another, easy thing, to happen. The things that are unpleasant generally involve difficulty, confrontation, and sometimes conflicts with other people. The things that are unpleasant are often unpredictable (you don’t know what the other person is going to do) and we often avoid the unpleasant things, in favor of doing the things that get us the dopamine hit.

The things that are unpleasant are often confused with things that are hard: Engaging with a new conflict engagement skill, applying new knowledge, and even establishing a healthy exercise routine may be unpleasant; but too often, we use the term “hard” to describe breaking a pattern that was pleasant for us in the past, but is untenable now in the face of current events.

The things that are unpleasant and the things that are hard, should be front-loaded in any situation, before focusing on the things that are easy, or else we run the risk of never doing those things at all.

-Peace Be With You All-