[Advice] Collaboration and the Commons

The tragedy of the commons is an environmental science concept that cuts to the core of two areas critical to organizational (and personal) conflict management.

The first idea is that there are so many resources available—time, money, talent, etc.—that there will never be a depletion. Until there is.

This conception of material and personnel resource abundance is the reason that black swan events at a macroscale, such as the 2008 economic crash, or at a microscale, such as a wife finding out that her husband is cheating (or vice-versa) hit impacted parties so hard and take such a financial, emotional, psychological and spiritual toll.

The second idea is that once resources are depleted, there is no compelling reason for any one individual to take the blame (or accept the accountability and responsibility) for replenishing them, because “Everybody was taking from it.” In a divorce proceeding (following infidelity), neither party wants to admit guilt—or their own level of responsibility in creating the situation that fostered the infidelity in the first place. After 2008, how many bankers went to jail, globally, in relation to the level of damage their decisions caused?

In an environmental science context, the solution to tragedy of the commons is to fine and otherwise economically penalize people (resource depleters, polluters, etc.) in the belief that a bigger negative downside will lead to greater self-imposed, self-interested, selflessness.

In conflict engagement and conflict management, sometimes it’s best to abandon the commons (the shared relationship, the collaborative enterprise, the cooperative partnership) rather than take on the emotional, psychological and spiritual effort to save the commons.

True emotional labor, however, requires quieting the lizard brain, accepting responsibility for the tragedy (even if there’s no commensurate feeling of a need for the taking of responsibility) and moving forward collaboratively and selflessly with people and organizations that we would really rather not.

Otherwise, who will be left in the emotional commons but the spoilers, the discontented and the selfish?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Sorting Emotional Intelligence

In a physical emergency, triage is the best way to address issues.

Originating during the Napoleonic Wars, triage divides wounded people into three categories:

Those who are likely to live, regardless of what care they receive;
Those who are likely to die, regardless of what care they receive;
Those for whom immediate care might make a positive difference in outcome.

In a conflict, confrontation or difficulty, people often have no trouble dividing their approaches to relationships in the exact same manner:

Those situations that are not likely to become conflicts, no matter what I do;
Those situations that are likely to become conflicts, no matter what I do;
Those situations that are likely to have a positive outcome if I address them as best I can right now.

Many people in their individual lives triage situations, relationships and other people, and mistakenly believe that they are acting with the best interests of other people in mind, and that they are acting within the bounds of emotional intelligence.

When asked, they will swear up and down that they are good at reading other people and examining what conflicts to engage in, what conflicts to avoid, and what conflicts to be neutral about.

Unfortunately, true emotional intelligence takes years of self-examination to master. Somewhere around 10,000 hours. The true test of developing emotional intelligence is moving the inner space from concerns about self (“I triage this situation with these people really well!”) to concerns about self and the other person (“How are we going to triage this situation together?”).

Some people like conflict, confrontation and the feeling of powerfulness that such ability to trigger a conflict or confrontation in others’ produces.

Some people don’t like conflict and will run away at the first hint of even a little difficulty.

Some people are neutral on all of this and genuinely have the ability to triage effectively.

However, in the complex business and social worlds that we inhabit (with complexity increasing rather than decreasing every day); people can rarely afford to avoid, attack or remain neutral when the opportunity for greater, deeper and more meaningful engagement presents itself.

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

[Strategy] Managing Muscular Development

Here’s a simple calculation:

Managing yourself + managing other people = a full time job.

Don’t let people fool you. There’s plenty of full-time work out there. But there’s no pay. And the cost for failing at it is high.

We underestimate the power of disputes (as a part of the conflict process) to go viral, through the stories that we tell other people about the conflicts we are embroiled in.

Conflict engagement requires that we understand our own inner lives, and move from being selfish (inwardly focused) to being self-aware (knowing what’s going on with us internally, without becoming overwhelmed and focused on it). This is the core of the first part of the equation.

Conflict management requires that we understand (or at least acknowledge) the presence of emotions and the depth of their impact, on other people in with whom we are in dispute. This is the core of the second part of the equation.

Conflict as a full time job is requires us to recognize that conflict sometimes serves the other person and their motives, sometimes it serves us and our motives, and sometimes it serves nobody at all. Conflict will never go away, and sometimes the management of the process requires us to be tuned in (almost to have a sixth sense) about how power, story and emotions wind around issues of advocacy, policy and process.

There’s plenty of full time work out here. But too many people would rather defer the hard work of figuring out the parts of the above equation today, in the hope that tomorrow will just be a slightly better version of the past they just left.

This is neither engagement, nor management. It is mere avoidance.

And mere avoidance atrophies our emotional muscles as surely as a lack of exercise atrophies the physical muscles.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtrainining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[E-Book] The Savvy Peace Builder

There are savvy peace builders all over the place.

Unfortunately, sometimes it is difficult to talk with people who understand what is going on, with you, your business, or even your approach to peace.

There are attorneys who mediate and volunteers who have dreams. There are professionals in the social work space who want to make a difference, but don’t always know how. And there are nonprofit community mediation executive directors who constantly feel overwhelmed and underfunded.

But, how is this any different than usual?

Well, the tool to create a new and different world surround us every day. There are savvy people and organizations building projects in all manner of areas and they are using mobile phones, laptops and social media platforms. They are creating applications and computer programs.

But, at the end of the day, when the rubber meets the road, sometimes talking to another person is what the savvy peace builder needs.

The Savvy Peace Builder E-Book is a collection of 32 posts, over 40+ pages, written over the last year, chronicling the best advice that I have actually lived, and expereinced, day-to-day, in and out, while building every aspect of my project, Human Services Consulting and Training.

After downloading this e-book, you will:

Find out what to do when it all doesn’t work…
How to talk to people who don’t matter, and how to talk to the people who do matter…
How to balance your work and life…

And much, much more!

I hope that you take the time to download the book.
I hope that you take the time to read the book.

But even more, I hope that you take the time to apply, and act on, the lived lessons listed and written about, and apply them to building your next peace building project.

Because I believe in you and I know you can do it.

[download id=”3014″]

-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] Cultural Competency

The following meme is shared around LinkedIn and it goes something like this:

“The worst phrase in business is ‘We’ve always done it this way.’”

This has to come from somewhere. Not the meme, but the sentiment behind the meme.

The sentiment has to do with three areas that are critical to people becoming (and remaining) culturally competent in their organizations:

The presence of social proof: Whenever people get together, they begin to form tribes, cliques and in/out groupings. We can’t help it. Social proof allows some people to be “let in” to a culture, a way of doing things, or even a language–and encourages others to leave or get pushed out. Social proof is so strong, that when an individual violates it (either through ignorance or malfeasance), people in a group are more likely than not going to avoid confronting the behavior and wait for someone else to do something. This is why we have police officer and the Bystander Effect.

The need to be liked: Whenever people get together, there is an instant “shaking out” of the pecking order. Who is up, who is down and inside of those constructs, who is in and who is out. When people in the group don’t have an internal need to be liked by other members of the group, the group either ostracizes them or shames them into submitting to the group. This is why pre-school, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and Dr. Seuss matter between the ages of 4 and 6, and standardized curriculum, rigid conformity and social norming don’t.

The desire to obey authority: Whenever people get together, they automatically seek to assign power to one (or several) members of the group. In smaller groups, this may be based on skillsets, acquired knowledge, or even personal, physical power. In large groups, this desire to obey will be conveyed to people with titles, degrees, certificates and other pieces of paper that have been deemed to have social worth (there’s that proofing thing again). This is why a car mechanic has more authority carrying a clean overcoat and clipboard, than a car mechanic does with grease all over their hands and in their hair.

So what does all this have to with organizational culture?

Well, since culture in established organizations is driven by inertia and supported by social proof (“there’s evidence everywhere that the culture is working…we all still have jobs”), the need to be liked (“the culture can’t change because that would require someone to stand up and not be liked”) and the presence of an authority figure (“that guy over there in the suit and tie says ‘no’ so we’ve gotta follow him”), the idea that “we’ve always done ‘X’ this way…and we aren’t changing because that’s the culture” is a logical, rational, emotional statement.

But, it’s not an innovative one.

And it’s not a statement that’s going to disappear any time soon.

Better to distribute the meme around LinkedIn that goes something like this:

“The best phrase in business is ‘That person was a rebel, took a risk, changed things, and got fired for it.’”

Would that fit on a shirt?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] The Wider World

“How are you planning to scale?”

“You’ve gotta have a plan to grow this thing.”

“I don’t see that as a viable business model.”

“You can’t scale that.”

“Consulting never scales.”

The savvy peace builder will have to get used to hearing all of these statements (and multiple other variations) when they take their project to the wider world, for three reasons:

The wider world tends to understand and accept things that relate to the experiences, thoughts, feelings and dreams that already experienced or that are already known quantities.
The wider world tends to be skeptical of progress, differentiation and innovative thinking, because the human brain favors the safety of the status quo, the known, the shortcut and the predictable.
The wider world isn’t always against the savvy peace builder (though it may feel like it). But they are sometimes lacking self-awareness while at the same time being incredibly self-focused.

The savvy peace builder has to build their “no” muscle. This is the muscle that comes into play, every time such statements (and many, many others) that reflect doubt, disbelief, or a lack of understanding about the project they have begun to build.

Using this muscle builds determination, persistence, grit and resiliency in the face of trial, error and even failure.

The wider world only understands what it already knows. It is up to the savvy peace builder to commit to doing the hard work of changing the frames and perspectives, so that something new can be seen.

Scaling is not the be all and end all. And once the savvy peace builder’s “no” muscle is strong, she will be able to answer the underlying, unstated doubts, concerns and critiques in order to truly bring her product to center stage when she is ready.

And not a moment before.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] The Line From Emotional Awareness

Lines are everywhere.

They denote boundaries and connote separation. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The shortest distance between two points is a man and his money. The lines are on the map.

Redlining was the process by which people were segregated from each other in urban (and rural) areas in order to prevent (or expand) access to resources. Gerrymandering is the process by which boundaries are eliminated (or created) to get political parties in power.

Lines are everywhere.

They are inside of us. They are metaphorical, but when people decide to avoid a conflict, or suppress an emotion, they are either cleaving to lines already created for them, or they are creating their own lines.

Emotional competency begins with the awareness of these lines inside of us. It begins when we look at the lines and actively decide to take our emotional well-being into our own hands. This is tough, and tenuous and it is not guaranteed.

Here are three things to consider on your way to emotional competency:

Gain emotional awareness—many people in organizations are aware that they have emotions; they are people after all. However, they sometimes lack the courage to assess their own internal lives. People in organizations where we have done corporate training have often approached us afterwards and said “I knew I should have done (X) differently, but I had no idea what was going on with me.”
Develop emotional intelligence—many people underestimate the importance of stories that they tell themselves, the role of fear of failure and the importance of framing and emotions. Without understanding these areas (and taking the time to engage with them) gaining emotional intelligence can seem like a lifetime long, twilight struggle.
Attain emotional competency—many people confuse competency with intelligence or awareness. Many people in organizations (some in the C-Suite) would rather pay for intelligence and awareness, rather than competency. But emotional competency matters more than even talent or skill. In an organization, the people who advance the furthest are those who are the most emotionally competent in the end.

Lines are everywhere.

But they don’t have to be in you, your organization or even your life.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Justice Is Blind

Justice is blind.

Or so it is said in Western culture.

The issue with justice is not the fact of justice, which is applied through law, morals, appeals to theology and philosophy. The issue with justice is that the narratives around it are often confused with several other things.

Desire for vengeance. Dissatisfaction with outcomes. Disappointment at a lack of desired consequences.

Crime victim families walk before cameras and state: “We came here for justice and justice was done.” Or, “We came here for justice, but there was no justice today.”

A character in a movie once stated that, “Karma is justice without the satisfaction. I don’t believe in justice.” Another character infamously intoned in another film “For justice, we will go to Don Corleone!” We should remember that Lady Justice carries both scales–and a sword.

Many people scream loudly for a narrative that includes and envelops justice. They even make signs and placards with the phrase, “no justice, no peace” emblazoned upon them, but what they are really seeking is karmic retribution.

Retribution, vengeance, revenge; wrongs righted with immediacy and swift, unambivalent consequences. Punishment, meted out by at the highest order, in the fastest way, with as few innocent people harmed as possible.

There is a revolution underway in both the Western world and at a larger, global level. Societies, groups, cultures and even individuals are confusing the results of that revolution with their own desires for karmic retribution. The karmic retribution narrative begins something like this:

“Never before in the history of world, do we (typically meaning “I” or “my in-group”) have access to more information, more money and more power to transform the world in ways reflecting how we would like it to be, rather than the frustrating, unjust ways that it has always been. No longer will we (typically meaning “I” or “my in-group”) wander the world, merely satisfied with outcomes formerly guaranteed to us by ‘people in power.’ We want more. And if we don’t receive the more we are guaranteed, then we will either move on those in power to get it. Or we will call for justice until we get the material outcomes we seek.”

This narrative underlies many current calls for justice, with the immediacy of the narrative being employed, following ever newly discovered injustices, as wave after wave of more access, more mobility and more individualized power seems to wash over the societies and cultures we inhabit.

But so what, right? Under a Rawlian (or even a Lockean) philosophical world view, why shouldn’t narratives be reframed and cries for justice recried?

Well, conflicts occur when narratives differ, when perceptions of justice don’t match and whenever disruptions happen. Conflicts happen when narratives of injustices (and perceived narratives of injustice) rub up against each other.

And when the only resolutions come in the form of power transfers and shifts, conflicts escalate quickly to violence. And, while this is nothing new (see Don Corleone) one need only look at incidents around the United States (and the world) last year to see the evidence of the conflicts and how quickly and irrevocably they can escalate.

What are we to do?

What is the balance between justice, vengeance, and the more revolution that we are experiencing worldwide?

What is the most unambiguous way for all people (even those who have chosen not to participate due to inability, lack of ability or lact of interest) to benefit from the new largesse that our recent scientific/moral/ethical/legal revolutions promise to provide?

What are societies and cultures to do, even as the center disintegrates and the power holders in culture, media, journalism and on and on, lose out in the shifting narratives of our times?

Who gets to choose?

Who gets to make the world?

We don’t know the answers to any of these questions.

But far more energy should be spent on discussing and solving those questions and advancing the narrative of peace. Much less energy should be spent on advancing narratives that cry out for karmic vengeance, too often framed in the language of justice, while always proclaiming that fairness and equitable treatment are the ultimate goals.

-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] Which Way to the Champagne Room?

We’ve talked about the savvy peace builder working on their project and about how to measure the value and worth of applause.

We’ve talked about the people that matter when building your project and how to consider their contributions, versus the contributions of those who don’t matter.

And how to negotiate the difference.

We’ve even talked about the importance of business mentors and how they can provide both overall, and project-by-project clarity, as well as guidance from an emotionless perspective.

But the area that we haven’t really touched on is partnerships. Every project, the savvy peace builder can’t birth on his own, and thus, there is the need to partner with other people. There are two kinds of project partners:

Those who bring expertise

And

Those who bring money.

Everybody else may call themselves a partner (and sometimes there are those people who come to the table with both expertise and money, but unless the savvy peace builder is willing to exit from their own project, these people are best viewed the same way that VC’s are viewed) but, they really aren’t.

Choosing a partner should take a long time, and the character of the potential partner (or partners) should be considered carefully. The pros and cons of the relationship should be weighed, because, at the end of the project, the savvy peace builder would rather have a successful project, than a bitter taste in the mouth.

Think of partnerships in the same light that one thinks of marriages: Date a long time first, gauge the temperature of the individual (or individuals), then go to an engagement, and then get hitched. Then (for the sake of this metaphor) head to the marital bed.

As in personal relationships, the savvy peace builder knows that jumping into bed with a partner right away, can lead to bad consequences in the end, once the initial excitement wears off.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] You May Have Already Won – Part Two

The future isn’t guaranteed to anyone.

There are so many industries, assumptions and pieces of our culture that are being disrupted by software applications and technology, that it feels like a whirlwind. But there is a growing problem.

In the world of technology, minorities, women and other underrepresented individuals and groups in the old economy are even more underrepresented in the new economy.

The future isn’t guaranteed to anyone.

The problem is not the wealth gap, or the inequality gap, or even the person gap. The problem is threefold:

Access—this is becoming the driving issue of the 21^st century. People who will have access to technology and the ability to access understanding about advancements in technology, (regardless of group affiliation, economic level, gender or nationality) will have access to the virtual/physical integration that mobile technologies and the internet represent. They will also have access to the financial, spiritual and emotional rewards that will flow from this access, first in a trickle, then in a stream, and finally an endless flood. People who won’t have access will be effectively “locked out” of opportunity and advancement and will (to use the line from Braveheart) “scramble for the scraps from Longshank’s table.”
Understanding—there are many people (regardless of race) who have no idea, who, what or how the world that is coming is being built. Case in point: We recently had a conversation with a 20 year old the other day who had no idea that the content he consumes on YouTube was actually created by someone. We had to show him some of the behind the scenes stuff that goes on around here at HSCT in order to make all of this happen. Suddenly, he was able to make the connection between “boring” writing and studying classes and developing the discipline to write, research and publish every day.
Identity—many people have voted with their feet (and their wallets) in this new economic situation. They use Air BnB, Uber, Yelp, and pay attention to Amazon.com reviews. They book tickets to the movies through Fandango, they use Urban Spoon or Open Table to book a restaurant, and they have multiple applications on their smart phones and move with ease through the neighborhoods that each application represents in the community of the internet. However, there are also still people who shop at Wal-mart and won’t buy an I-phone until it shows up there. Marketers call these people lat adopters, but their identities are wrapped up (their stories, if you will) in being late adopters. Identity still is a driver for a lot of issues.

The future isn’t guaranteed to anyone.

Yes, there are many people who “Just want it to work,” no matter what it is—the economy, their family, their job, their car or their house. They don’t want to wrestle with questions about access, have to get more education to interface with new technology or worry about what their mobile phone choices say about them as a consumer/person. They just want things to work in their lives so that they can interact with a scary, chaotic and disquieting modern world with a measure of control, safety, security and reasonable level of prosperity.

These are the people for whom the future is not guaranteed.

Mediators, social workers, conflict specialists, lawyers, and social scientists have a responsibility to act as ambassadors between these two groups, advocate for the groups that are having identity, access and education issues and make the argument to the technical folks that are building our new economy and new world, that there are people being left behind.

-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/