Loose Lips Sink Workplace Ships

Loose talk is everywhere at work, and it doesn’t matter whether you work in

an open office space
a coworking space
a “traditional” cubical environment

a widely geographically distributed, online, team space,

gossip, rumor, innuendo, and storytelling remain ingrained social traits of human beings.

They appear whenever two or more human beings gather together, and because they are such effective tools for passing information, maintaining the status quo and determining who’s in and who’s out, they are here to stay.

And not just for a minute or a day.

So, in workspaces of the future, expect that the gossip that used to happen face-to-face, to happen much more often via social media, messaging apps and wearable technologies.

Of course, with this change, there will be policy changes and consequences, and more opportunities for those of us who offer the tools to manage and reduce this storytelling and rumor mongering.

Particularly if it comes with a 140 character limit.

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

When Isn’t It About YOU!

This isn’t about me. It’s about YOU.

But then again, when ISN’T it about YOU!

Look, you see yourself one way. The world sees you another way. Very rarely do you have an opportunity to look at yourself through the eyes of the world.

It starts with YOU. It ends with YOU.

Intrigued yet?

Branding expert and leading authority on the science of fascination, Sally Hogshead (@SallyHogshead), is launching her new book How the World Sees You on July 1.

To celebrate all of the new insights she’s learned over the past decade of research, she has started Project Fascination, with a goal to show 100,000 people how their personalities add value.

To do this, she’s given me a special code BL-JSorrells79 to give the first 100 people who use it her Fascination Advantage® assessment for free! This has never been done before, and will only last until July 25!

And the best part is – they want this to be a chain reaction. So when you take the assessment using BL-JSorrells79, you’ll receive 100 assessments to share with your circle for free too! That’s $3700 of free market research at your fingertips!

So how do you take the assessment? Simple.

Go to www.HowTheWorldSeesYou.com/You and use code BL-JSorrells79.
Once you’ve taken the assessment, Sally’s team will load 100 assessments into your new account. Rinse and repeat.

That’s it.

Now you’re ready to discover how your personality is custom built for certain situations, and which situations you should learn to avoid.

And it only takes 5 minutes (you can even do it on your phone).

28 questions. 5 minutes. A whole new way to communicate.

Remember, the best way to empower someone is to show them their own highest value.

Our goal together is to show people the very best of themselves – the qualities that makes them more successful, more authentic, and more fascinating.

Remember that your code will expire July 25. Don’t let this $3700 value go to waste. Take the assessment today and encourage your friends and followers to do the same to do the same.

Your Fascination Advantage Report is the first big step into knowing how your personality can be heard and remembered in an overcrowded market. And sharing the assessment will help others do the same. Find everything you need to put this knowledge into practice with your co-workers, close friends and significant other in Sally’s new book, How the World Sees You.

-Peace Be With You All-

Top 3 Tactics for Avoiding Performance Improvement

We are sure that we aren’t the first corporate training firm working in the area of conflict resolution to hear either one–or all three–of the following statements:

Multiple Symbols

“The people who really need this information to have better approaches, won’t be attending these sessions.”

“The people who are causing all the problems and could use this workshop to improve aren’t going to come.”

“The people who could support us up the chain in changing our approaches, can’t come to the workshops due to scheduling issues.”

Just in case you’ve ever said any one—or any combination of the three—above statements, we here at HSCT have a few suggestions to get “buy-in” from the people who aren’t showing up, learning, or otherwise growing in your organization.

For the people occupying positions above your position, find out if they like to look good. Attending a conflict resolution workshop will make them look good to their bosses. It will also help them save money on recruiting and retention.
For the people occupying position parallel to your position, find out if they want to get promoted. Attending a conflict resolution workshop will make them promotable. Which means more money for them.
For the people in conflict with you, or those creating conflict in your organization, find out how they view the organization and their place in it. Once you do that, then you can tap into their inner work based ego.

Which we’ll cover the work based ego in another blog post later this year, but we have covered emotional illiteracy, workplace anger, being concerned about employees, and the depth of the “conflict question” all of which relate directly to using these tricks.

Employ the above tactics and the next time we’re invited into your organization, you’ll come up with a different statement for us.

-Peace Be With You All-

3 Ways to Address Anger in the Workplace

Don’t drive angry.

Don’t tweet angry.

But going to work angry…well…that’s just the way of the world.

Fear of Unemployment

Right?

With the number of “disengaged” employees in the workplace at 26%, according to a recent Dale Carnegie study, it’s no wonder that people may occasionally show up to work:

Pissed off
Peeved
Slightly miffed

Or any of the other amorphous euphemisms that we use to say “angry.”

The key to creating and retaining engaged employees is to actually engage with them.

And, according to the same study, “the number one factor [] cited influencing engagement and disengagement was “relationship with immediate supervisor.”

We wrote a couple of weeks ago about emotional intelligence and emotional illiteracy.

Too many organizations still prefer to have disengaged staff and team members who are coming to work to grind through their eight to twelve hour days and then go home. Underneath the watchful eyes of supervisors and managers that they do not respect, appreciate or even remotely like.

What’s the solution?

Training supervisors, managers and others in how to engage in empathy, even when it appears to be immediately unproductive;

Developing organizational cultures that truly allow caring and inclusion to be active values, not just ones that appear on the masthead or at the company party;

Encouraging C-suite and above individuals who set the corporate tone to seek out developmental coaching and therapy to understand why they tick.

Otherwise, coming to work angry will keep happening.

And it’s not that hard to imagine a future where violence mars the workplace in the same ways that it does our schools.

-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/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com

3 Organizations Operating on Scarcity

Some companies don’t believe that they will be impacted by the sharing economy. Hey Im at a Call Center

Some organizations and associations believe that they will continually be allowed to “skate by” operating with a scarcity based model.

Some of these organizations exist in the area of public utilities (i.e. gas, electric, water, etc.), public governance (i.e. state and local governments) and big brands (i.e. hotels, car dealers, certain media companies).

They believe that their large size will insulate them from the disruptions that the Internet and that social media have already created in other areas of the economy.

Public utilities believe that they will be saved by government regulation from having to collaborate and connect with customers on prices, processes, accessibility, affordability, etc.
Public governance believes that since they have everyone’s tax dollars, they will be insulated as they have been under the old rules of an industrial economy, from competitive market forces.
Big brands believe that their lobbying, cash and influence will allow them to buy, bribe or force out the smaller, swifter competitors and keep the market positions that they have had for the last century.

They are all wrong.

We are in the midst of a cultural, social, political and economic evolution.

We are reverting back to the time of tribal connections, based on Twitter and Instagram and collaborative problem solving through openness, transparency and authenticity.

This is a golden opportunity to explore the conflicts between the old and the new and to help resolve them in favor of everybody.

So…who’s going to step up? I’m already doing my part…

-Peace Be With You All-

Well That Went Viral

Well, that went viral.

How often do we note that now, in the post-social environment that we all now inhabit?

Going viral can be a good thing for an idea, a change or a movement.

Going viral can be a bad idea for a team conflict, poisonous personalities and bad ideas.

Unfortunately, when the negatives “go viral,” they can kill the body in which they live, unless stopped by a trained professional.

A “Doctor” of conflict, if you will.

Because, by the time the interventions occur, an outside expert may be needed in order to ascertain the cause of the negativity in a clear headed fashion.

And in start-ups, small businesses and partnerships, a viral conflict among passionate people can cause major damage.

-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/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com

A Bon Mot

Imagine if the entire Internet were encased inside the boundaries of the United States.

Now imagine that all the original search engines, the ones that were around before the dotcom bubble, are in an area the size of the original 13 colonies, arrayed along a watery coastline.

Now imagine further, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Foursquare, Instagram, YouTube and all the rest, a geographical states, crammed in between the original 13 and the “Appalachian Mountains.”

Now imagine the rest of the country of the United States before the Louisiana Purchase being totally empty and wild.

THAT’S what the entire Internet is right now.

And instead of it being crammed into the boundaries of the continental United States, the virtual real estate of the Internet goes on infinitely.

So, go West.

Be crazy.

Build something—an idea, a strategy, a platform, a city—out there, that all the folks “back East” will marvel at.

-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] Caucusing Arete

Caucusing in a mediation happens when a mediator takes each party aside and talks to them privately about issues and concerns that the other party may not be open to hearing.

In a divorce mediation, it could be about issues of infidelity, emotional abuse or unresolved anger.
In an organizational mediation, it could be about issues of pay structure, proprietary information, or that there’s a personal problem with the other party.
In a church mediation, it could be a about an interpretation of Scripture or a moment of clarity.

No matter what it is, however, the phrase heard most often within a caucus is “I don’t want [insert name of party here] to know this, but…”

A mediator’s virtue then shows, because she has a choice about addressing the opposite party with a concern that could tip the mediation one way—or another.

Arête is the Greek word for the idea of living up to your potential with excellence. And when a mediator navigates a caucus with arête, it can make all the difference.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

Email: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

What Are You Doing Next Saturday?

6th Annual Conference on Applied Ethics:

Technology and Ethics

April 4-5 2014 at SUNY Broome Community College

What are the ethics of data mining, genetic screening and hydrofracking?
What is the significance and future of neuroethics?
Can there be ethical guidelines for the production and use of chimeras?
Is there a right to technological connectivity?

Keynote speaker for this year’s conference will be Dr. David Sloan Wilson, Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is a prolific author and frequent speaker at conferences around the world. His address on Friday, April 4th at 7pm will be on, “Ethics, Technology and Evolution.”

[Opinion] Trapped on the LIE

Imagine if when people were in conflict, they were transformed by changing their minds and approaches to conflicts, rather than conforming to “the way things have always worked?” (Romans 12:2). Applying principles expounded by the Gallup Organization, people can be transformed, but many prefer to conform to patterns and behaviors that stem from three areas:

Lies that they tell themselves about the nature and type of conflicts in which they are involved,
Attitudes that have been “wired” into them through past experiences, traumas, stresses and difficulties,
Insecurities that they have that bind them to their traditional attitudes and thought processes

Now, we shouldn’t be deceived (and I’m not the first one to point this out) but whatever we create in a conflict from whatever basis we create it, we are going to get back in return (Galatians 6:7).

So, shouldn’t we be acting from our best selves, based on our strengths and what we’re really good at, to respond to conflicts in our lives, rather than reacting based upon lies, insecurities and falsehoods?

[Thanks to Pastors Dawn & Joe Coudriet for pointing these ones out to me]

-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/