[Strategy] Change Frames

When two parties negotiate around things that matter, changing frames is the ultimate collaborative goal.

People are stimulated by various outside forces, and then parties go ahead and begin to construct impenetrable frames.

In a negotiation, those frames are subjective, particularly when based on stimuli that come from their emotions. And emotions can distort parties’ predispositions based upon needs, desires, motivations and personal experiences.

The hard work between two parties comes in holding hands across the negotiation table, with parties that we don’t like, and breaking frames focused around:

Objectives
Expectations and
Preferences

Because remember, in a negotiation the problem will always be there tomorrow, but the relationship with the other party, may not be.

-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/

[Infographic] A Guide to Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence has been a researched concept for many years, but with the authoring of books like Mindsight by Daniel J. Siegel and Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, E/I has been reintroduced for a new generation.

Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence served as the basis for a lot of the information in this infographic. And with the advent of advances in nueroscience, more and more of what he talked about in he 1990’s has been proven to be true. We would encourage you to check out his book and add it to your personal—and organizational—conflict library.

(c) 2015, Human Services Consultign andTraining, All Rights Reserved

To join our email list (and get more of these snazzy infographics), head on over to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/hsct-offers page and sign up today.

After you do that, download our two FREE offers: Fear White Paper and Forgiveness White Paper.

-Peace 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/

The Roots of Conflict – Biblical Edition

Conflict is a process that allows for changes to happen. It is inevitable because our world has a sin problem from which all our other problems flow like water from the rock.

Conflict grows because we are different and we view our differences through a frame—or prism—of selfishness, rather than selflessness and with a lack of self-awareness of the needs of others.

We see this illustrated in the Bible in several places, most notably, in John 16:33, Acts 15:36-41, Philippians 4 and James 4:1-3.

Between Christians, conflict can be managed, but not necessarily resolved, because conflict is normal and will never go away. There are other people in the world , with their own deeply held philosophies, baked in personalities, and rock ribbed interpretations of the way the world should work. And that will always separate us at a fleshly level.

There are a few things that we can do to manage conflicts better:

Separate people from positions: People are not the problem. The emotions that we have around them are the problem. The position that another individual holds about the problem can be addressed separately from the person. Remember that emotions around the problem and the position that the other person has taken about the problem cause disputes to grow in our hearts.
Use “I” statements: “I” feel, “I” want, “I” am…any sentences that begin with “I” statement perform two critical actions: They diffuse the problem and expose the emotions under the problem. “I” statements also create ownership of your emotions around the problem.
Engage with empathy: When you work from the neck up, you miss a lot. Tactics and strategy to approach another person in conflict are laid out in Matthew 18:15-17 are logical. Emotions are messier and more difficult to address. Empathy requires dealing with our own emotions and being tuned into what is going on inside of us, and also focusing on what’s going on with the other person.

God requires us to be “other-centered.” And in a fallen, self-centered world, it is difficult to operate in grace, forgiveness and with self-awareness.

But at no other time in the history of the world has there ever been a better time to start.

-Peace Be With You All-

On a War Mentality for Peace

Peace (and peacemaking) isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t move the meter of the nightly news or go viral in social media.

Long form presentations about the nature of human beings, the integration of peace into lives, or the hard work of making the hard decisions, to change destructive behavior to proactive behavior, doesn’t make for very good entertainment.

Or so we collectively assert as a society and a culture, by the nature of what we show each other on traditional media, social media and what gets the attention of the seven second attention span.

Conflict and drama are exciting and get the endorphins flowing, but peace and the pursuit of innovative change is only interesting to an elite cadre of therapists, conflict consultants, social workers, lawyers and others.

Right?

Going to peace is just as compelling as going to war. People die, people fail. People succeed and people struggle. So do organizations and nations.

It’s long form drama. But with seven second attentions spans, and the reduction in intellectual understanding to the seventh grade level, how can we expect audiences to be drawn into the obvious drama of making peace?

Education can get us there, but moving the meter on the human heart takes a bit longer.

-Peace Be With You All-

On a Peace Mentality for War

Nations, organizations, and individuals lionize war because it represents the baser human emotions, and cuts through the fog of the everyday and the mundane, making choices black and white in a world of grey.

Nations and organizations mount up and prepare for war through moving troops around, creating new agreements and pacts of protection and creating safe and secure supply lines.

Nations also prepare their populations for the act of warfare through psychological and emotional reinforcement of the reasons for going to war through the use of propaganda, opinion journalism and rousing public speeches.

The war mentality is so ingrained in a population that the positions normally associated with peace—collaboration, cooperation, abundance, and on and on—become twisted to represent other things.

The way to appropriately apply the peace mentality to war, is to use the same steps that countries—and organizations—use to go to war:

Preparation
Relationship building
Information gathering
Information using
Bidding
Closing the deal
Implementing the agreement

But how many organizations, or nations for that matter, end up getting stuck on one of those steps and then throwing the whole process out, and moving into the preparations for war, in spite of “best intentions?”

-Peace Be With You All-

‘All right. All right. All right.’

We laugh at movies featuring the 35 or 40 year old who won’t leave the parents’ house and get a life.

We believe that the current Best Actor recipient once starred in a movie centering around such an animating theme.

But failing to launch (or even failing to recognize the oncoming signs of failing to launch) is not just the provenance of Hollywood scriptwriters and actors, it is a real occurrence in the real world of corporate boardrooms and small business back rooms.

Typically, this failure coalesces around an idea, an innovation or a project that doesn’t get enough organizational political support, organizational money or organizational time. This most obvious failure to launch shows up on the cover of the industry magazine, or as a hit piece on a blog or social media.

But failure to launch also happens quietly, under the radar, lurking like a submarine beneath the conflicts between people in the workplace. And it’s a moment that is so fleeting—so ephemeral—that it’s missed almost all the time.

The failure goes something like this:

Sharon and Bill have a disagreement about a project in which they are both invested. Sharon can’t see Bill’s point of view. Bill thinks Sharon is being obstructionist on purpose. But before Sharon and Bill can really get into it, they both pause—maybe at the water cooler in a conversation with another person, maybe in traffic on the way home—and they have a moment where the thought “Maybe I’m wrong here,” flits across their minds.

Like gossamer.

And just like that, it’s gone. Along with the twinge of regret and disappointment—as well as an oncoming sigh—accompanied by each parties’ resolve, hardening to “Do what is right. For the company.”

The question that makes consultants uncomfortable to ask—and employees and employers uncomfortable to ponder—is the question that on the face seems confrontational and too direct, but underneath is probing. Aiming at the dark heart of what happens in—and out—of the cubicle:

“Have you ever failed personally at resolving a business conflict?”

Or put another way, “When was the last time you failed to launch?”

-Peace Be With You All-

We’re Going To Win

Nonviolent resistance is fetishized through cultural memory as being easy, but it’s really not.

There’s a story in Malcolm Galdwell’s book David and Goliath that he takes from Diane McWhorter’s book Carry Me Home, where a man is giving a speech and he is attacked. The crowd at the speech at first believes that the attack is part of the speech, but quickly realizes that it is not.

The man giving the speech, instead of responding with violence toward his attacker as a form of defense, became his assailant’s protector, singing him songs and wrapping him in an embrace. Eventually, the attacker is introduced to the crowd as a guest.

The man whispers to his attacker before introducing him to the crowd “We’re going to win.”

How many times in our lives do we respond to an attack with aggression, passive resistance, apathy or even outright violence?

Responding to an attack with nonviolence—and following that response all the way to its logical conclusion, which may involve the potential for death—is the single most courageous act David can perform against Goliath.

“We are going to win.” But, Martin Luther King knew that nonviolence unto death was the only courageous way to accomplish that win.

-Peace Be With You All-

Conflict Engagement Systems Design: Real Innovation for Your Organization

Innovation is the “hot” word among all the business thought leaders as we kick off 2015…

There’s “dark-side” innovation, “game changing” innovation and even “shark jumping” innovation, as a recent search of LinkedIn thought influencer posts recently revealed.

But there’s very little talk about organizational innovation focused on the greatest—and most taken for granted resource—that and organization has: its people.

Now, as companies are emerging from the trance of Frederick Wilson Taylor, they are still continuing to treat employees and others as disposable widgets. The current pressure on Marissa Mayer and Yahoo is just a recent high profile example of this.

But, organizations are more than short term ROI and their daily stock ticker price.

Something has to give, if innovation is the key to moving forward in a business environment that is increasingly unstable and unpredictable.

It’s time to hack at the organizational culture that underlies preconceived notions of productivity, innovation and even people.

Conflicts are part of the innovation process and disputes are the result of that process.

Conflict also brings change and can serve as a driver for innovation in even the most entrenched organizational culture.

It’s time to hack a new system. It’s time for conflict engagement systems design for the 21^st century.

-Peace Be With You All-

Conflict Engagement Systems Design: Why Its Past Time

In the 21^st century, the innovative difference between organizations that succeed, and organizations that fail, will be in how they address disputes between their employees.

As an employer, are you agnostic on this? Well, consider the following statistics:

So, here’s the question, if employees are increasingly disengaged and losing productivity, but innovation is expected to increase in 2015, where is the breaking point?

We have blogged before about conflict competence, Conflict Resolution-as-a-Service and even how HR can be used to innovate with people. But this is not enough.

The fact of the matter is, it’s time for all of us to get busy, designing new systems and process that exist, both outside and inside current and future, legal and ethical frameworks, that will protect employee self-determination and employer innovation, in a dispute scenario.

Disputes are the natural outcome of a conflict process. Employer responses to those outcomes have been broken for many years. It’s time to innovate a different way in 2015.

-Peace Be With You All-

Systems of the 21st Century

For many organizations, the 21^st century has proven to be pretty much the same as the 20^th century.

People still get hired and fired in much the same ways that they did 20 years ago.

Organizations and businesses still do the core processes of their businesses—sales, finance, marketing, accounting—in the same way that they did—with some minor cosmetic changes—30 years ago.

And, unfortunately, organizations and businesses still handle conflict in the same way that they did 30 years ago. They still view conflict as a process rather than as a product.

They still view the resolution of conflicts—however they are resolved—as “the way we do things around here.” This is reflected in either the avoidance of the process, the accommodation of the tradition of the process, or the attacking of outside interveners with new ideas as “not understanding how we do things here.”

Many organizations still pay outside consultants or have internal offices and departments, designed to “handle” conflicts in the ways that the organization sees as comfortable and preserving the status quo.

In order to do the brave work of the 21^st century, peacemakers must become more and more involved in developing bleeding edge systems for organizations, because the changes to systems that on the surface appear cosmetic, will have deep ramifications for the future.

-Peace Be With You All-