[Opinion] “It’s Too Hard”

“It’s too hard.”

Yep.

It’s supposed to be.

At work, it’s difficult to start becoming competent at a new way of approaching conflict (say switching from avoiding to engaging) and to have success at it immediately. When employees, managers, and supervisors are challenged to switch approaches (either through feedback, evaluation, or training) they respond by rejecting the premise of the challenge entirely and returning to their old ways.

When we consciously realize that we are unskilled, we have the opportunity to go toward initial ineptness, and forge a new path toward competency. However, many of us at work, when faced with conflict scenarios, challenges, disagreements, fights, and other disputes, default to what we know rather than pursuing new knowledge. This tendency is based in fear and the overwhelming human need for reassurance in the face of risk.

In our post-industrialized work culture, reassurance, avoidance of risk, hiding from outcomes, and fear of taking a chance to make a change in the ways that we respond to each other when we don’t, can’t or won’t get along will have fewer and fewer outsized rewards attached to it. Being consciously emotionally uncomfortable to gain competencies in a different way is the emotional labor of the 21^st century. In an organizational context, the way to ensure that employees, managers, and supervisors follow through on their challenges is to provide three consistent supports: encouragement, positive feedback, and monitoring of implementation of the new way.

The worst part of the hangover that organizations are suffering from the end of the heady days of the Industrial Revolution, is that the inner, emotional, response that we believed did not matter that much, matter now more than ever. And empowering, encouraging, and developing consciously skilled employees, managers, and supervisors in their approach to conflicts in organizations, is the only way to end the hangover.

-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] The Dysfunction in Your Workplace

In any discussion of conflict competence in the workplace, damaging communication patterns come up as an issue. Damaging communication is preceded by its forefather, dysfunctional communication. Dysfunction leads to damage as surely as water makes things wet. And at work, dysfunctional communications typically begin through “the grapevine” and come about in five different forms:

Gossip—includes idle talk or rumor, especially about personal or private affairs of other employees, co-workers, customers, etc.

Rumor—involves some kind of a statement whose veracity is not quickly, or ever, confirmed. Depending on the organizational structure and history, and where rumors originate in the hierarchy, rumors spread intentionally can serve as propaganda to manipulate employees or teams.

Innuendo—an innuendo is an insinuation or intimation about a person or thing, especially of a disparaging or a derogatory nature. Most innuendo’s start as “innocent” jokes, and tend to fall in the gap between what people think about other people’s behavior, and the reality of that behavior.

Tall Tales—a tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. In the workplace, tall tales almost always involve whispers and can seem like rumor, but usually they are driven by external factors or pressures on the organization.

Myth—a myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind assumed their present form, although, in a very broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story. Myths are at the bottom of many organizational models and serve to explain occurrences that people otherwise think they have no explanation for. The fact is, myths do the most long-term damage to an organization, because of their corrosive nature on innovation and through creating stubborn resistance to change.

When people become engaged in any of the above communication styles at work, they may interfere (innuendo) or damage (rumor, gossip) relationships, stymie innovation (myths) and creating situations ripe for lawsuits (innuendo) without being aware of it. In essence, when employees, managers, and others are unconsciously, unskilled at communicating effectively, they are displaying competency (at the novice level in most cases) at passive-aggressively creating conflict.

There are a few ways out of this:

The way to get out of this is to role model the behavior that you would like to see in other people at work, particularly if you are a boss, manager, or supervisor.
The other way out of this is to monitor your communication style to determine if you’re engaging in any of the five forms.
The last way out of this is to build a culture on open communication, getting information right the first time, and trusting adults to behave in a mature fashion—and removing those who don’t (or can’t) from positions in the organization quickly.

However, if your organization can’t do the steps above, then the only other solution is to train the people that you already have.

H/T to David Burkus on this one.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] The Future Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We have nothing to fear but, fear itself.”

“I have a dream.”

“We do these things because they are hard.”

One of the more terrible losses in our contemporary age is the loss of soaring rhetoric, with allusions to classical Western literature (e.g. Shakespeare, Greek and Roman texts, the Bible, etc.), appeals to the common good, and an unwavering belief that Americans, together, can just “do” things.

[Opinion] The Future Martin Luther King, Jr.

This Image Does Not Belong to Us

This contemporary loss due to three things:

Americans no longer share a common language around problems because of the fracturing of the media environment, with a million tiny voices crowding out one large voice. There is no longer a single voice of authority, such as a Cronkite, a Vidal, or a Buckley. Instead there are multiple voices whose sources believe they are competing for authority, but in reality they are competing for attention.
Americans are no longer commonly educated in the writings of the past, partially because the Western literature canon has fallen to the wiles of multiculturalism, social engineering, and the desire to see education as a technical good, rather than as a way to link current generations to past meaning. In our efforts to replace the technical efficiency that used to be valued when we were a manufacturing country, we have moved to making education serve technology rather than wisdom.
Americans have blown up the tendency that we always had, toward being independent individualists (“get in your Conestoga Wagon and go West”), and have fetishized it to a degree never before attained by a population in human history. Since the Myth of the West has collapsed, we see this tendency most visibly in the retreat to individualized, mobile experiences, the popularity of streaming shows on Netflix, complaints about Academy Award film selections, and the overwhelming silence from populations in the center of the country who are never questioned except once every four years during elections.

The reason I’m bringing all of this up today, on Martin Luther King day, is that from Franklin Roosevelt (and earlier) all the way through Ronald Reagan, presidents, statesmen, politicians, and social leaders at least shared a common education, language, and a tendency toward a collective sense of commonality with the American people they were looking to persuade. They used that sense to make appeals to a higher good, all the while acknowledging that not everybody, including them, would make it to the end, but the journey would be glorious anyway.

This is not to say that there wasn’t separation, there wasn’t strife, and that there weren’t two views of America. If you think that the current age of fracturing is new, then take a look at newspaper headlines, political advertisements and rhetoric from the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th century. There was far blunter commentary, outright conflict, and rhetorical viciousness than would be allowed today in our tamped down rhetorical climate.

What is new is the lack of common language and the results of that lack have served to create deeper political, social, and cultural fault lines, all the while, playing on the natural American tendency toward liberation, freedom, and autonomy.

Appeals of “We’re gonna’ go get ‘em,” or “Hope and change,” or whatever the catch phrase was of the eight years of the Clinton Administration (“I did not have sex with that woman…Ms. Lewinsky”) don’t ring out quite as commonly. They don’t appeal to the better nature of our common American experiences. They are not as fluid, nor will they be remembered by history when certain proscriptive policies and efforts fail (or succeed), except as punchlines in YouTube videos, with a trail of bitter comments in the threads below the video.

On this day, I wonder what Martin Luther King, Jr., a preacher who read Greek, studied the Bible closely, and who knew all about the moving power of common rhetoric designed to unite people (both white and black), would think about the current restless mire America is in?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What Collaboration Would Look Like in Your Organization

In the workplace, employees, managers, and supervisor all say they desire more collaboration overall, but in particular when conflicts arise. The desire for greater collaboration is often conflated with more teamwork, or strong team bonding, or building better teams at work, but collaboration is not any of these things. And, much of this stated desire is based in generating more productivity per person in order to generate larger bottom line profits.

The other drawback to collaboration is that the rewards for engaging in it (in the majority of organizations) are not outsized, but the losses in the event of failure are. Collaboration is still viewed by many organizations as The Alamo; that is, the place to make an organizational “last stand” when the resources run out.

However, when what matters is internal (employee) and external (customer) organizational trust, workplaces would be well advised to consider collaboration as a key metric of moving an organization forward and past conflicts and disagreements. This metric becomes even more of the platinum standard when an organization is in an industry space of rapid change and uncertain outcomes. Both of these factors create stressors on internal and external constituents and can lead to conflicts—places where collaboration actually is a useful tool.

We have an idea of what the collaboration mode should look like in actual practice, but as a behavioral choice in conflict, here are some high points:

The novice collaboration mode is marked by initial mistrust of other parties in the conflict (based on past relationships, current secondary conflict issues, the nature and content of the conflict at hand, etc.); but, is also based in the strong desire to work with the other party to get to resolution for the self, rather than the organization.
The advanced beginner collaboration mode is marked by growing trust and belief in the efficacy of individual personal emotional strengths in addressing the conflict scenario. This mode is also marked by growing resiliency and confidence in the resolution process itself (negotiation, mediation, arbitration, etc.).
The competent collaboration mode is marked by a desire to grow other parties in the conflict to the level of collaboration that this mode has already achieved. This mode of competency is also marked by frustration when parties refuse (or are incapable) of growing out of their own modes and toward collaboration.
The proficient performer collaboration mode is marked by a determination to allow other parties in conflict the autonomy to choose whatever mode they would like to choose to get to resolution (e.g. assertiveness, avoidance, accommodation, competing/controlling, etc.) but to not get “caught up” in those modes. Other party self-determination (and preserving that self-determination) becomes key at the proficiency stage.
The expert collaboration mode is marked by open communication, authenticity, honesty, as well as positivity and patience. This mode allows for other parties in the conflict to determine their own path through the conflict, but also advocates for collaboration as the ultimate mode of addressing issues.

In the workplace, collaboration is rarely seen, and is mostly associated with individuals who have attained emeritus status in an organization. Freed from the daily competition based in an organizational cultural perception of resource lack, those individuals become organizational ambassadors and diplomates in this mode.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What Competing-Controlling Looks Like in Your Organization

The entire history of humanity shows that responding to a complex conflict environment with the competition/controlling mode generates outsized rewards, and little downside, to the individuals who choose it as a mode of addressing conflict.

Wars, battles, fights, riots, pogroms, demonstrations, marches—all are forms, shades, and methods of competing with other people and groups and “winning” control over resources that may have been scarce in the past, but may be more abundant now.

In workplaces, competency at controlling other people, the space of conflicts, and even the resources that go into conflicts, generates outsized rewards in status, money, and position for individuals. In workplaces, competition is fostered (either through overt messaging or through covert cultural conditioning) as a way to separate “winners” from “losers” or “A” players from “everyone else.” The rewards for engaging in these types of competitions are outsized, as are the losses—of face, reputation, authority, and status.

Many of the other responses to conflict scenarios that people are competent at—including accommodating, passive-aggressiveness, assertiveness, and avoiding—are, at their root, responses to organizational work cultures that value competition and controlling in a conflict scenario over other potential responses. Those other responses are deemed organizationally useful as downsides, for situations where “everyone else” fights over the leftovers from the “A” players’ tables.

We all know what competency at controlling and competing looks like, but here are some behavioral high points:

The novice competitor/controller mode focuses on hiding competitive desires and manipulates behind the scenes. Sometimes this behavior will be confused with passive-aggressiveness, or hostility.
The advanced beginner competitor/controller mode focuses on developing elaborate plans to deceive other parties in conflict, and even to involve other people who have little to nothing to do with the actual conflict itself, but who have access to outsized resources.
The competent competitor/controller mode manipulates parties in conflict at a high level, and can also mask intentions through avoiding direct confrontation, using others to accomplish goals, and spread gossip and rumors without accountability.
The proficient performer competitor/controller mode advances through an organization by engaging in ignoring and minimizing past mistakes when confronted with them and removing people from positions that could report previous poor performance, bad judgment, or choices.
The expert competitor/controller mode attains outsized rewards, (i.e. personal, financial, organizational, etc.) but role models this behavior as a cultural response to conflicts in the organization, thus setting the table for future repeating of the same behavior.

If this all reads like the HBO show Game of Thrones to you (or a description of the political process in many contemporary countries) you would be correct. However over time, many organizations have developed crisis and resource poverty mindset-based cultures, focused around varied degrees of competition/controlling when faced with conflict scenarios, and many more will be focused in that way in the future, as communication and information increases transparency globally.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #1- Travis Maus & Ryan Berkeley

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #1 – Travis Maus and Ryan Berkeley, Entrepreneurs, Cutting Edge Financial Planners, Trailblazers for Your Money

[powerpress]

People often remark that money makes people act funny. And not in the “haha,” Heath Ledger Joker way either. We talked about charging people for art last season in our ninth episode conversation with Nicholas Jackson, and we talked about charging people because art is valuable.

But what about managing money?

Nobody gets excited when you are talking about managing money.

As a matter of fact, eyes roll into the back of heads and people gradually slump down in chairs until their heads are the merest slivers above a table.

Then there’s the common situation where two adults hang out at the kitchen table talking about family budgeting every month…or they don’t

And then there’s the fact that there isn’t much education in school around the topic of money, money management of financial matters. And no, studying macroeconomics doesn’t count…

Case in point: My son was asking me about credit card use during the summer. He was on the cusp of turning 18 and wanted to know about credit scores, building a financial background and what the penalties and pitfalls would be with taking on more than he could handle.

After a 30-minute period where I laid out everything that I know about the wide world of credit creation, money management and fiscal sanity, he flopped onto the ottoman, held the cat in his hands, and asked:

Why don’t they teach us this stuff in school?

Why indeed…

In the kick-off to our third season of The Earbud_U Podcast, we talked with Ryan Berkeley and Travis Maus, partners and co-founders of SEED Planning Group, based in Binghamton, NY.

They are no-nonsense when it comes to managing your money, but they were plenty animated when it came to discussing why you should seed your financial strategies and goals with them, for both the long-term viability of your financial health, and for the long-term viability of the financial services industry.

So take a listen to Travis and Ryan, and take a little knowledge from our talk.

Check out all the ways below that you can connect with Travis and Ryan and S.E.E.D!

S.E.E.D Planning Group website: http://www.seedpg.com/

S.E.E.D Planning Group on Twitter: https://twitter.com/seedgroup

S.E.E.D Planning Group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SEED-Financial-Strategies-288049794685377/

S.E.E.D Planning Group on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seed-planning-group-62410167

Travis Maus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-maus-15aa2429

Ryan Berkeley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanberkeley

[Opinion] The Down-Sides of Assertiveness in the Workplace

When there is a confrontation at work, the competency type we most envision others being in (and ourselves) is that of the assertive type.

People who demonstrate assertiveness advocate for what they want, look out for other people on the team, and are aware, but are not bound by, the restrictions of the organization. They are perceived as honest brokers, and sharp communicators who can get what they want, when they want it, how they want it, while also recognizing the reactions and responses of other people.

Assertiveness in response to conflicts at work is viewed as a net plus overall (there’s even assertiveness training on the market), in the face of the other types we’ve explored for the competency model. This type is celebrated and most written business advice is provided for the perspective and growth of the assertive type rather than the other types.

Of course, there are three down-sides to this way of thinking:

People are rarely assertive all the time, whether in their daily communication or in their approach to workplace conflicts and issues
People who communicate indirectly are sometimes not perceived by direct communicators as being assertive, ever though they really are—but just from behind the scenes.
People who demonstrate assertiveness sometimes give the impression of being bullies, manipulative, or even being controlling, to other competency types who would prefer to either avoid conflict entirely, or to accommodate it and move on.

Healthy, positive assertiveness in the workplace is a tactic, not a strategy, for overcoming workplace conflicts and can be dynamite when used sparingly. However, in the hard charging, profit driven world of business, a lack of assertiveness is interpreted by others as being weakness.

In the conflict competency model of the 21^st century, assertiveness will matter both more and less than it did before.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] A New Model For Conflict Competency

There are few subjects more boring to read about online than how to attain competentcy in any area, from leadership to instructions on plumbing. And it doesn’t matter if that reading is directly from an organizational HR manual, or from the very informative HBR.org website.

Reading about watching paint dry might rank higher.

Typically, such articles are drily written and are rarely brought to life in any way that’s going to help you in a “real life” scenario.

Or, the advice contained in them comes off as “pie in the sky.”

Part of that is the way that these articles are written.

The other part is that you make a choice about what to remember and what to forget after about 8 seconds when you skim an online article or blog post.

So do I. So does that guy over there.

The real issue with such writing is not lack of reader understanding about the levels of competency or the modes of conflict. It’s not even the epidemiology of conflict, the fact that your boss may be a conflict incompetent, or even that there are really very few tangible KPI’s for reducing conflict in the workplace, other than emotional ones (and emotion in the workplace is a “no-no” as “everybody” knows).

The real issue is that there is very little robust measuring or tracking of the links from competency in any given situation to addressing how people actually behave when placed in a situation they find to be uncomfortable, distracting, irrelevant to accomplishing their goals, or that they have no interest in. There’s also very little robust descriptions of such situations to buoy the writing along.

Competency is the combination of observable and measurable knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes. Competencies are demonstrated by real people, who are able to recognize hazards associated with a particular task, and have the ability to mitigate those hazards witin a set of defined standards, consistently and over time in an organizational setting, from their home to their workplace.

This definition is so narrow and specific (and dry), that OSHA requires jobsites to designate a person on the site as the individual who is competent enough to perform safety tasks in a suitably repetitive manner. And by the way, merely appearing to be competent isn’t good enough when OSHA shows up on a jobsite.

Imagine if such thing were required in every workplace?

There are five levels of competency: the novices, the advanced beginners, the competent practitioners, the proficient performers and the experts. Competency used to be sexy and interesting in an Industrial Era focused on the metric of maximum production out of the maximum number of people, but that has shifted as fewer people can do more work. And in the Information Economy, even at the highest levels of many industries, competency (whether HR defined or emotional) is still confused with expertise—and rewarded.

So, it seems as though it is time to propose a new model for the workplace; or at the very least, initiate a mash-up of several research areas and to explain why a new direction is needed.

Who’s the “designated competent person” in your workplace?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Conflict Management Style

From the boardroom to the bedroom, assertiveness as a mode of approaching all conflict situations, is valued above all other choices in America.

But, what is lauded in a competitive business landscape, driven by media, and advertised to a distracted public by marketers, does not represent lived reality. Reality is messy, unmeasurable down to the final metric, and unknowable all the way up to the point that we are allowed to enter someone else’s headspace.

And even then, we don’t really know anything. We just can measure outcomes.

And the reality is, many people would rather practice avoidance, accommodation or just compromise in a fight, a disagreement, or a dispute, rather than practice any variation of assertiveness.

But if assertiveness is promoted as the “be all and end all” of all possible conflict approaches; and, collaboration is confused with weakness; accommodation is seen as charitable and kind (but not effective); avoidance is paired with fear of conflict itself; and, compromising is too often framed as losing, what is the average person to do?

Well, the fact is that, many people—from the boardroom to the bedroom—rotate through all four styles depending upon the situation, or context, in which they find themselves and the goals they are pursuing within that context.

And while assertiveness may be fine when negotiating a conflict solution across the table from a manager or supervisor, it may not be as appropriate a style to adopt when negotiating a candy exchange with a five-year-old.

But with the pressures and stresses of life compounding, rather than reducing, and with conflicts over resources growing exponentially over time, the value of being able to make healthy, conscious decisions to switch from one style to another—and to let the others around you know that this is happening—is the ultimate goal.

Because in a world where the technologists are here and building a world where human agency will be reduced to a mere shadow of its former glory, in pursuit of brave, new outcomes, the human touch to approaching conflict wisely is the only result that will matter.

-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] Does Your Manager Think Managing Conflict is Important

The most often repeated piece of feedback is “The people who should be here in this training/presentation/speaking engagement are not here.”

What does that mean though, other than as a piece of feedback?

Typically, it means that the people in the hierarchical chain above the people attending the training are seen as part of the problem, rather than as part of the solution, by the people in the room.

It also means that the people in the hierarchical chain above the people attending the training are interested in maintaining the organizational “status quo” and not really moving forward to become part of the solution; by role modeling what the future might be like for the people in the room.

Either way, this piece of feedback is indicative of the appearance of members of management not really believing that conflicts, disputes, disagreements, or even fights in the workplace are all that important to deal with at the root.

This feedback also indicates that the attendees will probably continue to experience frustration in the organization; even as they implement all of their newly attained knowledge of how to engage with conflicts better.

And then, as the frustration mounts and the cognitive dissonance really kicks in, employees will either become more disengaged in the workplace—or leave the workplace altogether; creating a cycle of people who arrive, then get trained, get disillusioned and then leave.

Managers, supervisors, and others up in the hierarchical chain, can thwart all of this, but it requires an investment in finding the time many claim not to have in the short term, to play the long game in building an organization doing work that matters, in the long term.

-Peace Be With You All-