[Advice] KPIs for Conflict Resolution Skills Training

We talked about KPI’s (key performance indicators) for New Years’ Resolutions toward the end of 2013.

It was pointed out to us at a workshop recently that, while our content was compelling and valuable, there seemed to be no KPI’s or metrics to indicate to the organization (or any organization that would hire us) that our training had any long-term value.

Good point.

As a result, we went back and though about our recent posts on CRaaS (here and here) and how to integrate conflict resolution skills training into the workplace, and came up with some relevant KPI’s and metrics.

Follow along with us:

The primary KPI for conflict resolution training is to measure changes in levels engagement at the supervisory/management level. This can primarily be accomplished through having reports and higher-ups engage in 360 degree evaluations with special emphasis on conversations with impacted employees, with a particular focus on quality, frequency and type.
The second way to measure performance improvement at the entry and mid-level positions, is by tracking reductions in registered complaints and concerns, reductions in reported and perceived conflicts and tracking reductions in sick day/vacation day usage by entry level employees, interns and others who are front facing but rarely receive training or mentorship.
Finally, measuring increases in productivity is hard. However, increased customer engagement, overall employee satisfaction and measuring employee retention, goes a long way toward measuring the efficacy of conflict resolution skills training in your organization.

Of course, if you don't want to measure in these three areas, you could always track reductions in lawsuits and litigation efforts by employees, supervisors, managers, customers and others.

[Advice] How to Reconcile When You Don’t Feel Like It

“I don’t feel like it.”

Actually, we understand that you don’t.

An apology never works when it is given based in coercion, because an apology should be an active, uniting act. However, reconciliation following an apology doesn’t have its basis in feelings.

Don’t get us wrong, the fact of the matter is, reconciliation when you don’t feel like reconciling should not be an option for many parties in conflict, because if either party is unwilling to come to reconciliation circle, then the whole thing falls apart.

Reconciling with another party in good faith, can only happen when engagement with the conflict has happened in good faith by both parties as well. Good faith is something that we talk about in workplace disputes, and we even bring it up in union negotiations, but very rarely in interpersonal conflict spaces. When both parties are committed to the same outcome, regardless of their feelings, their constituencies’ feelings, and changing circumstances, then reconciliation can occur.

The worst deception—most a particularly in workplace conflicts—occurs when one party think they are reconciling in good faith and the other party is merely buying time for the next opportunity to revisit the old conflict pattern, because that’s where they believe their power lies.

Click on the link here and download the FREE HSCT White Paper on FORGIVENESS AND RECONCILIATION TODAY!

-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/

[Strategy] Top 5 Strategies for Forgiveness

The first thing that we have to understand and accept is that forgiveness is an active act, not a passive one.

The common misconception is that if we do nothing, or if we avoid, or if we just give in “a little bit this one time” or we don’t stand up for ourselves, that somehow, conflict situations will just magically resolve themselves.

But, much like being an entrepreneur of any stripe, if you are in conflict and you don’t act to get forgiveness (or to be forgiving), nothing will happen. Conflict events will just unspool towards outcomes and consequences that may not work for you, but may work out quite nicely for the other party.

Because resolution, forgiveness and even mindfulness is so wrapped up with philosophy, theology and spirituality in the West, we often forget that there must be action taken on our part in the physical, material realm to get anything started in the first place.

We have to decide—the first strategy is that we have to make a conscious decision to longer mentally, spiritually, and emotionally carry the baggage of another’s perceptions of us. What happened in the past cannot be undone, and revisiting old conflicts repeatedly in language, stories, narratives and other ways, only serves to allow each conflict participant to hold on.

We have to act –the strategy of action cannot happen before decision, though many people try. The strategy of action is what we teach our children (“Go and say you’re ‘sorry’ to your sister”) when they have wronged each other. Rarely do we tell them that this is the second step. Without deciding to act, the action of seeking resolution, forgiveness, and restoration become hollow exercises that retain as little meaning to the other party as they do for you.

We have to face forward – the strategy of facing forward goes past a lack of empathy (which is focused on others) and goes directly to confronting and giving language to unarticulated fears. This is the hardest thing to do, because human beings are encultured to avoid even talking about their fears aloud in casual conversation. Our modern tendency (in the West) to confuse transparency (“I posted a rant on Facebook and people responded”) with authenticity (“This rant on Facebook reveals what I REALLY think about ‘X’ issue”) is another way for us to hide from what scares us. Before we can seek forgiveness, or pursue it from others, we have to confront what we’re afraid of and articulate our fears.

We have to be empathetic –the strategy of being empathetic is one that also can be perceived as being disingenuous when it’s not performed in concert with these other strategies, which is why many trainers leapfrog over it. Or, we give a head tilt in it’s general direction, and then move on to addressing what we feel are more concrete areas of impact. But empathy is other focused and requires us to put down our selfishness (based in our fear of lack) and really see the other party for who they are. We have to care. And the things is, many of us don’t.

We have to want the forgiveness as badly as we want to attack, avoid, or accommodate the other party in conflict—the strategy of wanting forgiveness and restoration to a new relationship is personal. So personal, in fact, that we almost never say it to the other party. Instead, we many times opt to hoping that the other party will just “get it” from our nonverbal communication and then become frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Or, we don’t want to admit that we want the conflict scenario to continue because of the feelings of power and control that it gives us in the relationship.

All of these strategies are hard, time consuming and might not work. They also have to be employed when you might not feel like employing them, instead desiring to “just do what I’ve always done.” But getting forgiveness (and giving forgiveness) are not actions based in hope.

Click on the link here and download the FREE HSCT White Paper on FORGIVENESS AND RECONCILIATION TODAY!

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principle 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] Content Commitment

The thing that destroys most content creation efforts is not lack of talent, ability, or innate skill.

The thing that destroys most content creation efforts is not lack of resources, lack of time or lack of money.

The thing that destroys most content creation efforts (from live streaming via Periscope and Meerkat all the way to writing a blog on a daily basis) is the lack of a will to consistently commit to a course of action.

Whether it works, or not.

Whether it attracts attention, or not.

Whether it scales, or not.

The lack of a will to commit to the process, regardless of outcome, seems foolish and pointless when stacked against economic metrics that have dominated content production for the last 100 years.

We still run into professionals who either own businesses, who have built projects, and who are accomplished at wringing a profit margin out of the world, who are shocked that we blog every day, or that we have a podcast with only one advertiser–at this point in its development.

Then they are even more shocked that we plan to do more things that do not produce revenue right away.

By doing things that do not produce revenue now, enable us to do all kinds of things that will produce revenues later on.

If more thinkers, builders and doers would adopt this mindset (by the way, it is the only mindset that works in the world of the digital, the automated and the algorithmic) the long tail would become fat, the economic value of consistency and commitment would experience exponential growth, and the level of the quality of content being created would increase.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Access to the Means of Production

There is a growing chorus from the progressive parts of the US economy, concerned that many historically marginalized race and class groups may not be benefiting from the fullness of the revolutions occurring in high technology, economics, and communications.

This chorus centers in the world of high technology startups of Silicon Valley and their media/opinion outlets. Ironically, this call is coming from a world that has historically been dominated by the mostly male, mostly white (or Asian) and the mostly highly educated.

The gender/sexual discrimination case of Ellen Pao and her plight as CEO of Reddit, has brought the issue of “women in technology” to the forefront of tech Twitter. Missing in this discussion (or maybe floating around the edges of it) is the fact that discussions around the core issues of class and racial advancement and economic development continue to employ the language of the past to define problems of the present; and, to frame discussions of the future. This framing (or storytelling, if you will) has to shift in three areas for there to be more participation from those currently existing exclusively in the space of the historically discriminated against:

Access to technology, content creation mechanisms, and the knowledge of how those systems work (and why) needs to be framed as a social justice issue, rather than as a technology/economic issue.

The challenging and uncomfortable question that no one asked (not the NYPD, not the Mayor of New York’s office, not the multiple variations of protestors, not the progressive pundits) about the entire Eric Garner incident is: “Why was Eric Garner on the sidewalk, selling “loosie” cigarettes, and having continuous issues, run-ins and arrests with the NYPD in the first place?”

Think about that question for a moment and then think about this, equally challenging question: “If Eric Garner had sufficient access to technology, content creation mechanisms, and the knowledge of how those systems work, would he have had to be on a sidewalk at all, or could he have fed his family, from his home, by using those mechanisms?”

These are two questions that need answers, advocacy and more noise behind them, because access to the means of production is the social justice issue of the 21^st century—regardless of race, culture, class or creed. And let’s not even get into dissecting the background of other lives and how they could have been positively impacted by a greater knowledge and access to technology that could bring them—at minimum—the beginnings of an income and a better life.

Creating (and co-creating) rather than constantly consuming as a means of understanding how new technological and economic systems will work in the future.

Even with 1.5 million pieces of blog content being created every day and 175 million blogs being out there (along with all the videos on Youtube, live streaming, podcasts and other image based content) there is still a dearth of quality, meaningful content. Particularly, content that reflects the lives that are lived by people other than a thin stratum of wealthy, North American and European peoples.

As the Internet expands globally, many young, African Americans run the risk of being left behind on a global web, full of aggressive, young focused content creators. Understanding the how and why of content production allows people to co-create their lives with others. This is an idea that’s an easy sell when a culture leapfrogs the desktop computer; less so when a subculture is historically marginalized and suffers from the results of educational disparities for a wide variety of reasons.

Changing mindsets around the possibility of owning and building something requires telling a different story about what risks matter—and which risks don’t matter.

As the risks that used to matter begin to matter less and less, appropriate preparation through role modeling and education is important for everybody in the US culture. However, for those people who will be left behind as the perceived security of employment becomes more and more a thing of the past (“In my experience as a black entrepreneur, I saw the majority of my family take the government job route, while I always had the itch to pursue a self-made career.”) there will be no gentle landings as circumstances change. Just sudden, violent bumps.

As the Singularity eventually arrives, the solution is not to ameliorate the impact of these bumps through the creation of Universal Basic Income systems, or micropayments and micro-lending schemes. These are band-aid solutions at worst, and recipes for negative social disruption at scale at best. Instead, the long-term solution is to begin to teach future generations what the real risks are. The mindset and attitude that causes success to have many fathers and failure to be but an orphan, still reigns in many sectors of this economy, but that shouldn’t prevent our society from investing in education about the risks that matter: emotional labor, collaboration, and building credibility and trust through the long tail, rather than relying on the short mass.

In the end, there are disruptions that have to happen in education, economics, finance, real estate, and other areas, not to level the playing field—this is an impossibility—but to create new fields, with new rules for new participants that may have been historically disenfranchised by the past.

Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime. But teach a man to build and sail a boat, and he’ll go to the furthest horizon and teach someone else. Isn’t it time for us to advance the access, technology and discrimination battles past the language of 20^th century battles, and frame them instead in the language of the 21^st century, that we’re already 15 years into?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What’s Underneath All That Risk…

The trouble with most conversation that leads to conflict isn’t that it’s earth shattering or amazing, but that it’s banal and boring.

This is one of the many reason why there will always be more online content consumers than online content creators. It is hard to be interesting to others when you secretly are not that interested in yourself.

This is one of the many reasons why, in the context of conflicts, many participants seek to avoid any type of conversation that could trigger latent, unresolved conflicts; bringing to the surface old issues and never addressed concerns.

Participants, when asked later, will identify their conflict engagement style as being “avoiding” or “accommodating” of the other person, but it’s really a style that is based in the inability to engage in an interesting, high risk conversation. This inability, however, hobbles the potential in participants for learning new skills to manage, engage and resolve the inevitable arrival of the kind of exciting, conflict driven conversations that they seek desperately to avoid.

There are two things to recognize (other than just the banality of many conversations and the ability to avoid) that can help anybody craft a meaningful strategy for talking when the topic is high risk, but the participants are not:

Fear is at the root of avoidance, accommodation and even assertive tactics—At its root, fear of consequences, outcomes we can’t control, the situation, other people, the material facts of the conflict itself, “getting involved” and many other emotional situations, lead to the desire to pursue continuing the status quo. This fear is why a person at work who causes confrontations because they are addicted to the power rush they get from domination behavior, is “allowed” to continue the behavior, while people whisper behind their backs.

Boredom (and the desire for entertainment) is at the root of banality—The corollary to fear is boredom. Boredom happens when a person is surrounded by uninteresting conversations, uninteresting people, or uninteresting situations. The reason for the rise in conflict avoidance tactics as an interpersonal skill set among many individuals is based in the fact that many in-person social interactions are not exactly intellectually stimulating. And when and entertaining (or intellectually stimulating) alternative is offered people will take it. This is not exclusive to the now: there are many artistic representations of people ignoring each other while reading the paper, while crowded around the radio, or while watching the television.

There are arguments to be made for developing resilience, being polite, knowing enough to have a conversation, and being forgiving of people and situations. But when conflicts (particularly around issues that matter) arise, the default is to embrace the banal, continue to be boring, and hope it all blows over.

Such as it ever was…

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Strategic Escalation

Most of the time, in a conflict management scenario, escalation of any kind is viewed as a net negative.

Most trainings—whether corporate, academic, online or in-person—focus on teaching techniques and tactics that will bring the other party from a less defensive emotional position to a more collaborative emotional position.

These are great tactics if each party is emotionally invested in the process and outcome of the conflict, but what happens when the other party is apathetic at best, and disengaged at worst?

Customer center call representatives, from organizations that can’t outsource that service (i.e. local utility companies, local banks/credit unions, bill/debt collectors, etc.), or retail clerks, tend to be emotionally at either one of those two poles: apathetic, or disengaged. Rarely does a employee call a customer’s house, or interact with a customer at a retail store, in a way that reflects emotional engagement and intrinsic care to potentially escalate (even negatively) if the interaction doesn’t go as planned. And the solution to this issue is not more automation, and less human to human interaction, because escalating with a machine is ineffective, time consuming and pointless.

Strategic escalation is the process of positively escalating the other party to a collaborative emotional position, from a net apathetic one. The skills to do this effectively are at the opposite of the skills we all possess (name-calling, judging, moralizing, blaming, threatening, denial, etc.) that we default too naturally if we believe that an interpersonal interaction isn’t going well—and we feel powerless to make it better.

Escalating an interpersonal interaction toward a positive outcome involves:

Complimenting (“You’re doing a good job…”)
Thanking (“Thank you for the help you gave me today…”)
Calling a person by name (“Cindy, that’s great that you got that for me…”)
Taking responsibility for being wrong (“I took the wrong approach to asking for what I wanted…”)
Using positive feedback (“I’m going to tell your manager what a great experience this was…”)

We must shift the ingrained, Industrial Revolution thinking that has us believing that such interactions are meaningless, irrelevant and unimportant, because increasingly, they are the only kind of interactions that matter.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] A Modern History For Labor Day II

There’s a lot of political commentary floating around about the perils of income inequality.

This issue—which can lead to conflicts—is mask for a much larger, more pervasive, and more pernicious kind of inequality though. And this conversation masks discussing the core question, buried deep inside the second type of inequality.

Here’s the question that a conversation around income inequality can‘t touch: Why do some people become “successful” (whatever that means) and other people don’t (whatever that means)?

Labor Day is a day to focus around outcomes and inputs:

Labor is an input. Work is an outcome.
Effort is an input. “Success” is an outcome.
Childhood is an input. Adulthood is an outcome.
Actions are inputs. Consequences are outcomes.

Conflicts come about when there is an avoidance, an accommodation or an attack as an outcome related directly to deeply held perceptions about the nature, range and efficacy of a particular consequence, for a particular action.

Different people respond in a random variety of ways to inputs and outcomes, consequences and conflicts.

Trying to focus on equalizing responses—and thus removing the risk of conflicts related to differing outcomes—is an exercise best left to academics, politicians and political commentators on the news.

The celebration on this day should be about how successful and persuasive efforts have been (inputs) to create different, and materially better, outcomes, rather than continuing to circle the room, searching in vain for better outcomes.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Live Streaming for Peace Sakes!

Live streaming video apps such as Periscope, Meerkat, Blab.im and many others are hot right now.

As part of the long unwinding of television as a content delivery mechanism, they are a way for audiences to feel primacy at a live event as well as to feel as though they are a part of the event.

We quoted Woody Allen in a previous post, who said, “The audience has to know that they are the audience,” but with the advent of streaming and the rise of streaming personalities who blur the line between performer and engager this may no longer be true.

The real core of streaming is co-creation: Streaming video gives the audience the opportunity to create—along with the performer—a shared experience and produce shareable content for a micro audience. This is why sporting events have reflexively banned live streaming apps from their venues (MLB, NHL, US Open, etc.) and why concerts are thinking about it as well.

There are two things for the peacebuilder to consider when using mobile live streaming apps to build their marketing:

Conflict engagement is all about co-creating solutions to the issues, concerns and conflicts at hand with the parties. Many peacebuilders take this to mean that they fade into the background inside of the conflict process itself, allowing the parties the autonomy to do as they will to get to resolution. However, when the peacebuilder (with the participants consent) live streams the proceedings, then everybody involved attains a level of micro-celebrity.
Conflict engagement is also about being open with processes and procedures in order to educate and edify not only the participants, but also the public (the audience) at large. One of the reasons that many peacebuilder’s struggle with marketing and sales, is that both of these areas require openness and transparency around the product—peoples’ problems—in order to get more people into the room to solve their problems. This creates a level of vulnerability in the peacebuilder with which many professionals struggle. Live streaming used as a way to create “scheduled, must see viewing” opportunities (think of Oprah or Dr. Phil) creates more opportunities for vulnerability for the peacebuilder, not less.

Content co-creation with parties, audiences and peacebuilders is one of the many ways that live streaming video applications can advance the fields of peace, and bring more people into the engagement space around conflicts in their lives.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Well, That Was Difficult…

“Well, that was easy.”

Actually, no it wasn’t.

And the expectation that it should be, raises more problems than it solves for many organizations, institutions, and even individuals.

If the resolution to the expectation of how the conflict should proceed, results in an outcome that seemed “easy,” that outcome—and the process to get to that outcome—should be reexamined.

Expectations around finishing—or resolving—a conflict, a pain point, or a problem, are often characterized as needing to be “easy” in order to be sold to the skeptical party on the other side of the negotiation table. But the expectation that resolution shouldn’t require anything of one party (and everything of another party) is a childish assumption that many adults act on in very sophisticated ways.

The expectation of an “easy” resolution to conflict leads to poor organizational storytelling around a conflict narrative (particularly in a customer service complaint context) as well as poor organizational dealings with employees who may (or may not) be “pulling their weight.”
The expectation of an “easy” resolution to conflict leads to policies, procedures and laws that lack common sense, hide devilish details in meaningless language and public pronouncements by organizations that should be trustworthy, but ultimately come off as satirical and farcical.
The expectation of an “easy” resolution to conflict leads to disappointments, which deepens dysfunctionality, creates a cycle of more conflict (not less) and allows individuals to hide behind fear, avoidance of accountability and accommodation of unethical behaviors.

The marketing of the “easy” button was genius from a marketing perspective. However, tangled geopolitics, organizational ethics problems and individual ennui are not resolved with a button.

The expectation of difficulty in resolving both simple and complex conflicts—coupled with the courage to do the difficult thing anyway—leads to long-term resolutions, deeper engagement and real, genuine relationships.

“Well, that was difficult. But it was worth it.”

-Peace Be With You All-