[Advice] The Most Perfect Gift

What is the most perfect gift that you can give?

During the holiday season, particularly around Christmas, the societal stress level in the West, increases as people pursue purchasing the “perfect gift.” The inherent, human tendency to have “stuff,” pushed by marketers, advertisers and other consumers, is hyped through Black Friday sales and “deep discounts.”

Also, fear is pushed that a holiday celebration will be “ruined” without the attainment and giving of that “perfect gift” to that person in your life.

If we stop however, and remember that the point of Thanksgiving is to be reflective, and that the point of Christmas is to focus on redemption, then the hard part is not slogging through the mall, stressing over an online purchase or crowding into a retail space at the “last minute.”

The real hard work between Thanksgiving and the New Year is focusing on the active act of engaging in reconciliation and forgiveness with those whom we have harmed, and who have harmed us during the past year.

Financial outlay then falls to the bottom of the list and the true cost—in time, energy, emotional effort and spiritual development—stands revealed.

-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/

[Opinion] Generous Polluters

In an abundance economy, there is one polluting element that is produced.

It’s more toxic than carbon dioxide and more damaging to the environment than the plastic bag island floating out somewhere in the Pacific.

It’s more damaging to the body politic than a disease epidemic. It corrodes and destroys as surely as acid does.

This pollution destroys access, ownership and privacy. It overrides the values that a connection economy is based upon, including honesty, transparency, clarity, motivation, courage, self-awareness, focus, discipline and empathy.

It turns adventure into obligation and has its own properties.

It is colorless, odorless and tasteless.

We’ve even written about it here in this space before.

Fear is the most abundant, most toxic, most polluting element generated in an abundance economy:

Conflicts arise in the abundance economy from a fear of a future that is likely (rather than preparation for the future that is desired), a perceived (or actual) scarcity of material resources and a lack of patience.

Mediators, lawyers, counselors, theologians, therapists and others in the helping professions are going to become more middle class (and in some cases, wealthier) in the developing connection economy, because fear is not disappearing. As a matter of a fact, fear is growing and expanding as the disruptions generated by the inexorable rise of an abundance based economy, become more and more acute.

The lizard brain has been with us too long.

However, there is one antidote—one environmental scrubber—for the pollutant of fear. Plus, it’s the final leg on the three-legged stool of the connection, abundance based economy of both now and the next 100 years:

Cooperation.

-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/

Towards A More Thankful Union

We here at the HSCT Communication Blog are all thankful this day for many things:
The country where we live,
The family that we have,
The connections we are about to make,
The business that we are growing,
The tools that we have to explore the world,
The intellect and science behind them,
The religiousity that allowed people to develop ideas,
The advancements in the world that feed more people well,
The times that are a changin’,
The peace we have an opportunity to build,
The relationships we have had a chance to build,
The connections that we have made,
The critics, naysayers and disbelievers that we have,
The “no’s,”
The “yes’s,”
The “maybe laters,”
The incredulity,
The pain
…and the promise…

-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/

Quality is Job One

Trust is evident when a company, organization, association or individual promotes themselves, their ideas, their products or their services online, either via social media or via search.

Trust works in a social sense (again, both on and off line) because without a relationship, even if it’s a tangential one, connection cannot happen and then referrals cannot happen and cash—revenue—cannot change hands.

Trust is the only thing that works to facilitate this transaction.

Trust works when something—a product, service or idea—is given generously, and nothing is expected in return. This is something new in our industrial based, “let’s all make a better widget the next time around,” process that has dominated the Western world for the last 80 years.

Trust worked then as well, but it worked more as trust in an industrial based, quality driven process, rather than people.

Trust got us more stuff, because the corollary to trusting in the industrial process, was trusting that the industrial employer would provide a safe job, for life, with safe working conditions: Same thing with government promises based on social programs, social safety and social/business regulation, both local and national.

Process, quality and precision came first, safety, security and high pay came second, people, relationships and “giving it away for free” came third—if they made the list at all.

Remember the old Ford ad tagline from the 90’s: “Quality is job ONE.”

Even the Bible, in Psalm 115, the exhortation to trust is evident in verse 11 which states that you who fear the Lord (where “fear “means to stand in awe, to be afraid or to have reverence for a superior being) trust in the Lord, for He is their help and their shield.

Why belabor this point?

Well, there are 20,000 volunteer mediators working in dispute resolution centers, court rooms and law offices around the country right now. And if you are a mediator or a conflict professional, trying to make a living—or make a little revenue—doing this work, then you are in a tough bind.

This is because so many folks who could be your target market for trust, connection, referral and revenue are already knee deep in trusting that a non-fee based relationship will endlessly provide for all of their needs.

Mediation is about connection and relationship. Mostly, it’s also about trust: Trusting the mediator to get out of the way; trusting the other party to deal fairly; trusting the process of mediation to produce whatever outcomes are desired by the two parties in conflict.

How does an enterprising professional then, transform freely given trust into paying revenue?

Well, that’s the real question for this week, isn’t it?

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

Why So “Serious?”

Amid the theater and drama surrounding the very real conflict around the 2013 government shutdown, the Affordable Health Care Act implementation and other events in Washington DC, we are a little surprised here at HSCT to hear one word fall consistently from our government leaders’ lips:

“Serious.”

As in, “I won’t negotiate without serious reform on the table.”

“I won’t talk to [Insert name of politician/political party here] until they make a serious offer for change.”

Now, part of our role here at HSCT is to teach people how to negotiate. We teach how to navigate stonewalling, interests, judgments about the future, risk tolerance, and time preference. In addition, we cover lessons around framing, communication and the use of deceptive tactics.

We’re also not naïve to the whims and modes of American political history and realize that there have been “budget battles” in Washington DC that looked intractable, but that eventually produced workable compromises between governing parties.

However, nowhere in our training or in our experiences, were we ever taught to not negotiate until the other party became “serious” and made an offer we could live with before beginning the bargaining process.

This all kind of puts us in mind of The Joker in The Dark Night .

He didn’t want to negotiate until Batman was “serious” either. And yet, somehow, negotiations (such as it were in the film) moved forward anyway.

And that’s what has us so surprised.

After all of the bluffing, deception, and everything else, we are absolutely sure that the debt ceiling, the government shutdown and the Affordable Health Care Act implementation will be resolved one way or another.

But, when people in power harden their positions—as do their followers, the pundits and the casual observers—the chances that, to paraphrase from The Joker “everything burns,” become that much more possible.

Why then, is there such emphasis on “serious?”

-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/

Don’t Take on a Client Who Can’t Answer These 7 Questions

As a conflict consultant, mediator, conflict coach or a motivational speaker, are you continually frustrated when you arrive at a clients’ business and they immediately hit you with a problem that they want solved cheaply, immediately and permanently?

They want you to come in, put on a Band-Aid and then leave, but not before answering these questions laid out here http://tinyurl.com/q9ef9no.and if you can’t, then getting thrown out of the door. Or never getting a callback on a project that you know your skills would be perfect for.

And if you can’t answer them to the client’s satisfaction, then you risk getting thrown out of the door.

Or never getting a callback on a project that you know your skills would be perfect for.

Meanwhile, as a professional with years of, not only academic experience, but also practical experience, you can tell from the decision maker’s, or gatekeeper’s, immediate description of the conflict or issue, that the problem is so much deeper. And that a cosmetic solution is not going to work.

And that a cosmetic solution is not going to work.

Here are seven questions to ask they about their business that will help you weed through the clients who are seriously committed to changing their organizational cultures from those who are only committed to the now, the immediate and the solution that will keep them out of litigation.

What kind of conflicts do you have in your business right now? Every business has conflicts: Between managers and managers, between employees and managers and between executives and management. If the client isn’t self-aware enough to acknowledge that honestly, then that’s a problem.

How are your responses to conflicts living up to the core values of your business? Punting (avoidance), false empowerment of employees and managers (accommodation) or going to legal and then firing somebody (attack) are all responses to conflicts. Sometimes the responses are representative of true core values, not the ones published on the masthead.

Have you ever failed personally at resolving a business conflict? Again, the decision maker or gatekeeper should have a certain level of self-awareness and accountability around all their business decisions: from the fun financial ones to the difficult personnel ones.

What non-HR, non-legal related systems do you have in place currently to manage employee-employee and employee-supervisor conflicts? HR exists to understand laws and regulations, to engage in on-boarding new employees and to retain older employees. Legal exists to litigate, purely and simply. Neither of these departments in an organization are always useful for dealing with behavioral, cognitive based conflicts in a business.

How do you let people go? Organizational cultures grow up around three areas: recruiting and hiring, training and retaining and firing and laying off employees. How the last area is addressed is key to understanding how deep organizational dysfunction goes.

When was the last time you examined how you deal with conflicts in your business personally?This reads like a therapeutic question, but decision makers and gatekeepers are people first before anything else. And everybody learns how to address difficulty starting at home as a child.

We have been talking for 45 minutes now, describe for me how you see me challenging your business culture to evolve and grow? Resolving conflicts, teaching new skills to employees and managers and addressing engagement requires businesses to evolve in their business models.

This is inherently a challenge, but such radical growth allows a company to shift in an economy increasingly built on a model of not only clients but also employees, acting as brand ambassadors on social media, word-of-mouth and in a collaborative economy.

And really, all of these questions, for you as a conflict resolution professional, should serve to provide you understanding and to answer the real question: Are the clients open to the hard, disruptive challenge of true, meaningful and lasting change, or do they just want a cosmetic, Band-Aid application?

-Peace Be With You All-

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

On Liberty, Wikileaks and Sullen Paranoia

“We in this country, in this generation, are — by destiny rather than choice — the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.” John F. Kennedy
In America, we pride ourselves on freedom, first amendment rights and the ability to have extensive privacy protection.

Yet, Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Big Data and other intersections between the government and corporations sharing information to either get us to buy more, spend more, or to just watch us more, has put to lie some of these freedoms.

Enough Americans still see this country as the “Home of the Brave,” but less and less so over the last few years.

However, there is nothing that couldn’t be recaptured about the freedom to be left alone, inherent in our American freedoms, by replacing a few legislative leaders and by rethinking how we look at the cultural and social implications of privacy.

Two articles, one from Jules Polonetsky and one from Peggy Noonan make the point that, while personal-public behavior may change in the short-term, due to surveillance and monitoring, in the long term, such efforts serve to create a nation of, in essence, sullen, paranoid, people: Angry and pessimistic at being watched constantly, but unable to stop it and believing that it is everywhere.

The balance between the result of every click, search and posting being held against me and government and corporations being able to interrupt me constantly with marketing and appeals to buy or support more and more stuff, has not been worked out fully in the American public sphere yet.

Fortunately for all of us, the American public will figure out how to resolve the tensions in this conflict, long before the laggards and late-majority in governments—local, state and federal—will.

-Peace Be With You All-

On Leads, Or How to Sell What Clients and Organizations Don’t Think They Need

No one needs help resolving conflicts.

People need help communicating. People need help leading and figuring out leadership. People need help managing other people. People need help with figuring out “how to talk to annoying Aunt Janet and Uncle Mike.”

But no one needs help resolving conflicts.

When put on the spot, 9 times out of 10, people will be unable to identify a conflict they are having in their life, that is impacting them at a level where they may need conflict engagement skills services.

However, the person standing next to them—wife, husband, friend, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew—will be able to zero in on where the person is deficient in their approach to a conflict.

But, it’s not the person standing next to the person who can’t think of a conflict they need help with that’s the problem: The problem is that the dysfunction of unresolved conflicts is so normalized that it’s no longer seen as a problem.

Case in point:

Him: “So, what’s your business?”

Me: “I’m a professional conflict engagement consultant. I help small businesses, higher education organizations and churches engage with the conflicts in their lives.”

Him: “So, can I get your card?”

Me: “Sure.”

Him: “So, I guess I would bring you in say if I had problems managing the 40 or so staff members that work for me?”

Me: “That’s precisely where I would be the most help for you.”

Wife: “Hey!” “He could help you out with the argument you had with your daughter this morning!”

Him: “What am I gonna do, huh!? She’s gotta come into work at least once a week. I understand that she’s got an issue, but c’mon already!”

They both laugh. The wife rolls her eyes. They walk back into the restaurant.

No one needs conflict resolved in their lives. Until they actually do.

-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/

[Advice] On Grit

“I hear that he is a man with true GRIT.” – Mattie Ross, True Grit, 1969

Grit doesn’t get talked a lot about in a society that prizes the easy and the compromising.

It is tough to be uncompromising in such a societal structure.

However, to paraphrase from the film Braveheart, it is easy to admire uncompromising men, without actually doing the hard work of joining them in their pursuit of doing the hard thing.

The definition of grit is clear:

Sand, gravel
A hard sharp granule (as of sand); also :material (as many abrasives) composed of such granules
Any of several sandstones the structure of a stone that adapts it to grinding
The size of abrasive particles usually expressed as their mesh
Firmness of mind or spirit: unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger
Capitalized: a Liberal in Canadian politics

The fourth definition is the clearest one for our purposes here.

Grit has come to the forefront in the last few years as the idea of inherent talent has begun to take a beating from the likes of evolutionary biologists and post-post-modern philosophers.

In its clearest form, grit becomes a holdover from a simpler time, when talent was not as valued in the Western world. Instead, traits such as perseverance, persistence, courage and spirit were once lauded as virtues.

As the 20th century rolled on by, and as we entered the vaunted “Atomic Age,” grit became valued less and less.

And, with the rise in the latter part of the 20th century, of computing, analytics, the Internet, and other faster and faster methods of accomplishing what used to be slow, and grinding (like an abrasive piece of…well…gravel) grit was less and less talked considered as an important character trait.

But, my how the worm turns: As the holes in our education system have become more and more exposed in the opening years of the new Millennium, grit has made a comeback–becoming a touchstone for encouraging children to develop perseverance, resilience, persistence and to avoid quitting early.

But grit is still scary. Deep in our heart of hearts, we would rather succeed through ease of talent versus the scary, hard thing of work, taking hits and developing a thick skin.

The story we consistently tell ourselves about resiliency, persistence and grit is one of no fun, delayed glory and little riches.

In a world of instant connections and instant gratification, who wouldn’t quit and avoid conflicts in their lives if that were the alternative?

But maybe, that’s the only alternative that matters. Maybe the only alternative is to pick a position, be uncompromising, and grind it out.

Maybe the only alternative is to be a person with true grit.

-Peace Be With You All-

Guest Blogger Joe Coudriet: Combating Negative Communication, Part II

In the continuing effort to add the most value to your life that we possibly can here at Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT), we are bringing back Pastor Joe Coudriet of Southern Tier Family Life Church (STFLC) based out of Binghamton, NY.

This is the second part of his blog post (interrupted last week by our observations and reactions from volunteering in the OKC area) focusing on negative communication patterns.

And, as our national holiday of July 4th approaches, family, friends and others will be communicating, hopefully with positive communication patterns.

But if not, well…here’s Pastor Joe…

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Last time, I talked about facing the negative patterns of communication that effect our relationships by first being true to them; meaning owning them. It can be tough and it can hurt, but like the words of the song says, it can ‘hurt so good’ if we’ll deal with them straight up.

I want to move in the direction of replacing the negative with the positive but before we can we have to see what needs corrected.

How do we deal with anger and negative emotions.

First of all, anger is not a thing, it’s a feeling. Anger has no power in and of itself unless you bring action to it; to get ‘angry.’ Getting ‘angry’ can happen in our heads or manifest through our actions and when they do, we likely hurt ourselves and others. And, who wants that?

So, when you are feeling ‘anger’ or experiencing negative emotions, learn to do the following things:

1-Wait 3 minutes and do nothing. This can give the mind, and the spirit, time to kick in to bring clarity.

2-Link your desire to respond with a thought about what that ‘action’ would bring about (more anger, hurt to you or others) and,

3-Combat the thought, immediately or after the 3 minute wait, by speaking something positive; a blessing, an observation, whatever.

Just because you get angry, or experience negative emotions, doesn’t mean that you have to empower those feelings.

Face them, consider the consequences of acting on them and replace them.

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Check out the STLFC website at www.stflc.org and their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/STFLC?fref=pb&hc_location=profile_browser.

Or, if you’re in the Southern Tier Area on a Sunday morning from 10am-12pm, stop by the Boys and Girls Club of Binghamton, NY, and attend service.

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-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

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