Courage in the “Ah-Ha” Moment

The moment when your mind opens, a new idea resonates with you at an emotional frequency you didn’t know you possessed; this is the “A-HA” moment.

Dismissing an idea that doesn’t open your mind, that doesn’t resonate with you at any emotional frequency, actively rejecting the effort of the other party to convince or persuade you; this is a form of hiding.

Chasing the moment when the idea opens your mind, chasing that moment of resonance above all other moments in an interpersonal interaction with a situation you didn’t previously understand; this is a form of hiding.

The people who chase the “A-HA” moment blindly (the dopamine high) or the people who reject the idea that might lead to the “A-HA” moment (the resistance) both need to worry less about thrashing around with dopamine or resistance, and move their emotional energy to courage.

Courage to be open.

Courage to be honest.

Courage to be clear.

Courage to know the “A-HA” moment is there, but not needing the moment to manifest immediately—or desperately.

This courage is in short supply. But it always has been.

Seeking Validation

When someone asks you for validation about their approach to managing a conflict, what they are really asking for is reassurance that they are doing the right thing.

But since validation can only come from gatekeepers, and since gatekeepers have significantly less power in the world now than they ever have before, seeking validation is really an empty pursuit.

And since there is never enough reassurance that the right path has been taken, asking for validation—but really seeking reassurance—is a recipe for hiding from making the decisions that will move a conflict forward toward management and maybe resolution.

Instead of offering validation (or reassurance) offer opportunities and challenges to those who are hiding to have the courage to come out into the light, to make a decision, and to ship a solution that will be good enough for the conflict they are in.

Connection-as-a-Product (CAAP)

If connection is the product of the future, the problem is not going to be connecting; human beings connect naturally–and arbitrarily.

If connection is the product of the future, the problem is not going to be developing the tools and technology to mediate, facilitate, develop and encourage those connections; human innovation is already beginning to drive that development.

If connection is the product of the future, the problem is going to be determining the value of that connection.

The assumptions, decisions, and even the drivers, that encourage the development of markets, regulations, policies, and procedures, at scale are absent in the face of something ephemeral, long-term, relationally based, and seemingly arbitrary from person to person.

Here are a few questions to get you thinking about this differently:

What are we charging our customers and clients for?
What are we paid to do?
What do our clients and customers believe we are paid to do?
What is the value of education about connection to our customers and clients?
What is the value of connection for our customers and clients?
What is the value of the tools around the act of connecting with our clients and customers?
What do our clients think they want from each other?
What is the market value of our network, to our customers and clients?
What is the risk profile of our market, our clients, and our organization?

Answering these questions, along with carefully considering the inherent (and growing) value of storytelling, self-awareness, and conflict management (not resolution—that requires skillsets you might not want to acquire) will open the door to creating a macroculture of connection.

Avoiding these hard questions and hoping that another innovator, entrepreneur, or visionary will come along and create the web of support that the system of connection-as-the-economy requires, is foolhardy and dangerous.

If connection is the product of the future, the problem is going to be answering the questions, in brave ways and then acting on the scary answers.

Dollar Value of Mediation Skills in the Connection Economy

It’s hard to place a dollar value on human-to-human interactions in the current (and growing) connection economy, because connection is about engaging in acts of caring.

And whoever put a dollar value on acts of caring?

But here are a few challenge questions if that’s your attitude:

Whoever put a dollar value on the act of raising crops in an agricultural economy?

Whoever put a dollar value on the act of building a widget in an industrial economy?

Whoever put a dollar value on the act of providing a customer service in the service economy?

Humanity figured out the dollar value inherent in all the economic transitions from hunting and foraging, to agriculture, to industry, to service and created functioning economic systems—from trading and bartering to late stage capitalism. And humanity will figure out the current global transition we are in right now.

The space between the old system and the new system is a space of conflict, anger, incivility, uncertainty, spectacle, entertainment, along with a healthy dose of depression, worry, and anxiety.

This is a space where the skills of mediation (particularly around distraction, diversion, and deflection) can be helpful (and monetized) at scale.

But whoever put a dollar value on the acts of caring?

Change One Percent at a Time if You…

…don’t have the courage to confront the ongoing, unresolved cultural conflicts and frictions in your organization.

…if the resistance to change at scale from the organization and even individuals is too hard to address.

…if your fellow employees who should be your allies, cannot be motivated because of internal, intrinsic factors that you can neither understand nor appreciate.

…if you are struggling with explaining to yourself how you continue to “fit” in the culture you’ve become used .

…if you attend in-person trainings, read books, try new methods and techniques, and still nothing changes.

…if you think that you have been patient long enough for change.

…if you have given up on changes happening and are now comfortable and familiar with the lip service that the overall organizational culture pays to change.

Then, you might be ready to take the courageous, risky step of changing the culture that you are in one percent at a time.

Change, driven internally by friction and conflict, always happens slowly at first (sometimes taking years) but then arrives all at once, to everyone’s surprise in your culture.

Scale Problems

Teutonic organizations believe that size makes up for persuasion.

Small organizations believe that persuasion makes up for size.

The problem in both organizations is scale, not properly understood.

Because your organization, your team, your personality, or your project is large, that doesn’t mean that persuasion is something to be abandoned. Persuasion at scale to get me to follow the rules, be compliant, or go along with the program, must not be abandoned in favor of the use of power and authority.

Because your organization, your team, your personality, or your project is small, that doesn’t mean that persuasion is the only thing to consider. Appealing to power or authority to get me to follow the rules, be compliant, or go along with the program, is sometimes a tool that works to ensure future engagement.

Be sure of three things to determine the balance in your organization:

Be sure of how your size (small or large) is perceived by others in the market.
Be sure of how your persuasion tactics have been effective (or haven’t been effective) in the past.
Be sure of how you have used (or misused or failed to use) power and authority in the past, and in the present, to move the market.

Otherwise, when your organization follows a rule or regulation to the letter, creates a method of persuasion that falls on deaf ears, or makes a move that benefits the organization but not your customers or fans, don’t be surprised when the push back is unexpected.

Core Emotional Alchemy

Do you care?

This is the binary core question that we avoid asking out loud, or ask each other in unclear, murky, nonverbal ways, or just don’t ask at all.

This is the right question to ask before thinking of strategies to engage in the practice of emotional alchemy. The kind of alchemy that transmutes emotional labor into motivation in other people.

Alchemy has long been considered a joke, but in leadership, conflict management, and emotional labor, the placebo effect of emotional alchemy is just beginning to be part of a core conversation about how to motivate others.

But the fact is, no one knows (really) how to extrinsically, or intrinsically, motivate others, render them “unlazy,” or otherwise get them to do the work that matters at the level you would like them to do it.

And any article that proposes to do so, is selling a brand of alchemy all its own.

Captain of the Rescue Boats

The person who walks around while the Titanic is sinking, and calmly begins rearranging the deck chairs, organizing the evacuation, and gets everyone off the ship before it sinks becomes, by default, the future captain of the rescue vessel in the North Atlantic.

That person also becomes a new Noah.

Here is a list of 26 icebergs (non-exhaustive, your list (and mileage) may vary) where, as the Titanic ship of state known as global society collides with them and begins to sink, you can be the default captain of the rescue ships later:

Climate change
Fear of change
Growing use of A.I. based technology
Biodiversity disappearance
Lack of sufficient explanations that people can understand for necessary changes
Financial systems collapse
Refusal to be held accountable
Developing world debt
Connection economy of the Internet
Rethinking of Labor Value
The electrical grid in the postmodern world
Lack of access to creation on the Internet
Lack of courage in individuals to take risks
First world educational system
Scarcity of emotional labor
Child abuse and victimization
Lack of true, courageous statesmanship
Human trafficking
Increased spiritual hopelessness among the old
Increased spiritual hopelessness among the young
Lack of self-efficacy
Growing ability to hide from what matters
Thinking harder about the answers to binary questions
Lack of interest in self-awareness
Lack of ability to emotionally care
The increasingly intractable nature of conflicts

There are other ones out there as well. There’s no lack of icebergs. There is, however a lack of people calmly prepared to be captains in future rescue boats.

Actions That Compose the Work

The work is rarely the most entertaining or compelling, thing.

The result of the work is a lot more compelling—good, bad, ugly, or indifferent.

The process is rarely envied.

The result of the work—the sausage, such as it were—is delicious on the plate, and worthy of being enjoyed. And sometimes, people are envious of the outcome.

The potential to experience emotional pain, public (or private) embarrassment, and even failure is so strong that people seek all kinds of shortcuts to avoid experiencing any of those potential outcomes.

But experiencing those outcomes, many times is the work.

Here is a partial (but not all inclusive) list of actions that compose the work. As in all cases, your mileage (and experiences) may vary:

Patience is work.

Resiliency is work.

Accepting outcomes is work.

Knowing where to put your focus (and why), is work.

Showing up every day, even when you don’t feel like it, is work.

Being responsible when a project, idea, or position you championed doesn’t work, is work.

Ruthlessly eliminating hurry in the short-term, to accomplish larger lifetime goals in the long-term, is work.

Having the courage, clarity, and candor to speak up about what is working and what isn’t, is work.

Engaging with people we don’t personally (or professionally) like without rancor, to accomplish goals greater than ourselves, is work.

Knowing when to quit, what to quit, and how to quit, is work.

Figuring out the right questions to ask, in the right way, to the right people, and then hearing the answers, is work.

Realizing that the work is on the line, but that you as a person are not, is work.

Raising expectations with the idea of fulfilling them, rather than using them as leverage against the other party in a conversation, or conflict, is work.

Seeing the end goal of a project, and realizing that persuasion of other people is the number one thing to accomplish to get there, is work.

Being intentional about your actions, whether in a conflict process, a project process, or a goal oriented process, is work.

Knowing yourself and what you are capable of (and what your limitations are), is work.

Understanding when to stop working, is work.

Doing any, and all, of these things in public, doesn’t make for a compelling or entertaining process to view from the outside.

And in a post-Industrial society, that values entertainment above all else, knowing what’s truly compelling, and talking, writing, and entertaining about that, is work.

Increasingly, it may be part of the only work that matters.

What Are You Paid To Do?

What are you paid to do?

What do you believe you are paid to do?

What does your employer tell you that you are paid to do?

What does your spouse believe that you are paid to do?

What does your family believe that you are paid to do?

What does your supervisor believe you are paid to do?

The systems at work, in the community, and even in the home are structured around the unstated, often unvocalized, answers to these critical questions.

It used to be that larger institutions defined these answers with clarity and provided a sense of reassurance about the answers.

It used to be that people either appealed to the authority of these institutions when their fellow travelers weren’t answering them in pre-approved ways, or when the answers seemed to be getting cloudy for everyone on the team.

It used to be that social norming and group think really kicked in on the answers to these questions, making the answer seem “obvious” and “normal.” So much so, that to even ask the questions out loud would have seemed foolish and blind.

Maybe even rebellious.

But now, with the erosions of power, with authority getting its bluff called everywhere, and with conflict and incivility on the rise because of increased role confusion, asking the questions above—and getting coherent answers to them—for yourself, is the beginning of attaining true wisdom.

Not wisdom based in learning what other people have experienced and then dealing with it, but wisdom based on knowing yourself thoroughly, first.

Not wisdom based in reassurance—because there will never be enough of that—but wisdom based in courage, candor, and clarity.

And then having the courage to ask—and to guide—others through answering the tough questions.