Navigating the Employer Market

Due to wage and price controls instituted in the 1930’s and 1940’s, employer sponsored health benefits (and other “bonuses”) became popular as a way to guarantee full-time labor force participation and employee loyalty.

Now, however, the option of offering “healthcare as a benefit” has been effectively removed from the employer/employee discussion.

Plus, work has changed dramatically with the rise of temporary work, part-time work, and—of course—the ever expanding internship.

If you’re an employer of any kind, the question becomes:

“How much should I invest in my part-time workforce?”

Traditionally, the answer to that question has been:

“Minimal to nothing.”

The real question for the remainder of this century should be:

“How do I—as an employer—engender loyalty and work ethic in my part-time, side hustling, web connected, virtual currency using, workforce of the future?”

Or…

Employers can continue to believe that an “employer’s market” will somehow, Frederick W. Taylor-like, continue on.

-Peace Be With You All-

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

Change The World

The greatest gift you can give someone is to show them their own highest value.

I’m going to give that to you. Use the code BL-JSorrells79 to take Sally Hogshead’s Fascination Advantage Assessment ($37 value) for free!

This is a special, limited-time promotion for her new book How the World Sees You (which dropped a couple of weeks ago, by the way).

When you take the assessment using BL-JSorrells79, you’ll get a unique code to share with your audience as well!

Offer only lasts till July 25. Act now!

-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/

The Reason for Workplace Pathologies

There are conflicts everywhere, but the ones at work leave some of the deepest marks, because we spend, on average 40 to 60 hours a week with people we did not choose.

The common response to most work conflicts—from uninvolved employees to supervisors—sometimes ranges from “It’s not my problem,” to “I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me.”

There’s also a version of the Bystander Effect—where everyone stands around waiting for someone else to take a stand against a situation rather than themselves doing anything.

When conflict occurs between co-workers, apathy and fear of reprisal or negative consequences resulting from taking an action, paralyze fellow coworkers in the escalation cycle of conflict.

In contrast, when conflict occurs between supervisors and employees, grumbling, gossip, and other expressions of powerlessness become evident.

The escalation cycle continues, but is slows down, sometimes allowing the conflict to fester for years and transform into other cultural workplace pathologies.

-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

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 Work on Your “Infinite Game”

We here at Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT) love the old school E.F. Hutton commercials (link here http://youtu.be/sc2GpmLx82k).

The tagline, which our parents always used on us, of “when EF Hutton talks, people listen,” seems not to apply in the noisy media world in which we live.

But, when you’re developing a business with the anticipation of long-term equity, how do you cut through the noise so that at the key moment, as in the iconic commercials, people immediately stop—and listen.

Now there are three strategies that can help you work toward attaining your own voice:

Be consistent—even in a world of social media, the “Impermanent Web,” and Snapchat for business, nothing beats creating a voice by showing up, day after day, on a blog, on Twitter or on your website. Nothing.
Be bold—there are so many ways to spin a phrase that boldness in speaking, delivery and tone can be achieved through the use of a thesaurus, a dictionary and by molding an idea. And, really, if you’re controversial, what are “they” gonna do? Snoop on your emails?
Be quality—it’s hard to be a noun so often used as an adjective, but the fact is, quality counts. When developing a voice, quality is a hard target to hit, seeing as how people are often playing the “short game,” rarely ever playing the “long game” and almost never playing the “infinite game.”

In a world of impermanency, untrustworthiness and fly by night claims, implementing consistent, bold, quality strategies to develop your voice is the only pathway to success.

[Thanks to Seth Godin for bringing these distinctions to our attention.]

-Peace Be With You All-

The Raindrop Delusion

Conflicts come about from differences people have about what matters and what doesn’t.

What matters and what doesn’t can cover areas such as:

Resources
Emotions
Situations with other people

When people work 40-80 hours a week with people that they did not pick, hire or choose to associate with, there are going to be conflicts and disagreements circling around the three above areas.

By the way, we recently heard this statement:

“I worked for 35 years in the corporate world and I never had any of the problems with other people that you talk about solving.”

This statement, while one which we here commonly, is a sign that either:

The person making the statement causes most conflict in their lives and is unaware of it,

The person making the statement tends to avoid or accommodate others in conflict situations and is therefore unaware of conflict,

The person is hopelessly delusional.

Now, the great Zig Ziglar once noted that “no one raindrop blames itself for the flood.” We here at HSCT would add that conflicts tend to arise after a deluge of raindrops has fallen.

In the workplace, the deluge can seem overwhelming to those trapped in conflicts in employment situations not of their making.

-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

Would You Rather Be Right or Be Reconciled?

A Christian approach to peacemaking revolves around three behavioral encouragements that are very simple to talk and to write about, by very hard to practically accomplish.

Believers are encouraged to confront first one at a time, then in two’s, then in the sight of the church.
Believers are encouraged to confront in love and to seek understanding first, rather than judgment.
Believers are encouraged to avoid confronting in the law first (via litigation) and to instead confront in the Spirit.

Think about how often we get into conflicts—in the workplace, in our families, even in our churches—and how rarely we exercise the first step of positive confrontation.

The initial step is hard, confrontation, because we would sometimes rather be right, than be reconciled.

But when we favor “rightness” over reconciliation, we do not allow the better angels of our nature to truly work on our hearts.

Would you rather be right, or be reconciled?

[See: KJV Matthew 5:21-26; Luke 17:3-4; Romans 12:18; Matthew 18:15-17]

-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

[Opinion] 3 Routes to Get on The Cover of Fast Company

In our entrepreneurial journey we have found that there are only three kinds of entrepreneurs:

Those that have money
Those that have no money
Those that have more guts than money.

If you are in the third category, and you self-identify as a member of a minority group in this country, and you don’t see anyone who looks like you gracing the covers of Fast Company or Inc., then you owe it to yourself to try building something that you own yourself.

Look, an entrepreneur is a person who sees and established model, builds a better model, hustles tirelessly to break the old model with the new model, and then, once the new model is built up, moves onto break another model.

In the high tech start-up world, this is cleverly called “disrupting.”

And if the “traditional” minority success model you’re breaking involves acting/singing/ dancing/sports or any of the “traditional” models to minority success, then breaking that model might be the greatest social entrepreneurship ever.

After all, we started (and we continue) with more guts than money.

-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] Google’s Glass Problem is Your Problem Too

There’s currently no compelling reason for us to buy Google Glass.

There’s also no compelling reason (beyond the SEO game) for us to be involved in Google+.

There’s no compelling reason because the guys out at Mountain View haven’t given us one, other than the fact that they currently own all of Internet search worth talking about.

But, as the attention of the world shifts to mobile phone use, apps matter more than search, and Google will have one less compelling reason for us to be involved with them.

The utility of search, mobile, and even wearables is based upon the idea of resolving a need or a want that the customer has and then making the solution so attractive that we can’t help but use it.

However, as the web has matured, Google hasn’t and the utility of wearables really comes down to third party data gathering about users’ behaviors, antics and actions.

The much more compelling reason for us to buy Google Glass—or any other wearable—will be answered, not by Google, or Yahoo, or even Facebook, but by Big Data advocates and privacy hawks.

-Peace Be With You All-

Dear Graduates of High School & College – 2014 –

Dear Graduates of High School & College-

You have been told a lot of things by a lot of well meaning individuals on the way to the end at which you find yourself. You have been told things by your parents, your teachers, your counselors, your professors and even your crazy Aunt Ida.

But now, I’m going to tell you something that none of them may have had either the wherewithal or the gumption to mention. I’m going to try to do it gently, but, as a famous man once said “The Truth isn’t mean, it’s just the Truth.”

So….here we go…

Life is hard. Your grades, those letters that you spent a lot of time, sweat and—in some cases—blood, to get don’t matter a hill of beans to anybody outside of this institution from which you find yourself escaping.

Those little letters (and numbers in some cases) actually serve to hobble you and handicap you in venues outside of here.

The attainment of them has twisted your thinking into believing that there is only one way of doing, thinking, and being, when, in actuality, there are an infinite number of ways of thinking, doing, and being and no one can tell you which one is the best.

This realization is the chief thing that makes life hard for the first five years after you leave here. There are right and wrong decisions, but there are no definite decisions.

Employers don’t care about how smart you are.

You are the smartest generation to ever graduate from educational institutions that haven’t changed their approach to education significantly since World War 2 (it was something that happened in between the end of the Great Depression and the end of Jim Crow. Google it.) and no one outside of these walls cares about your level of intellectual intelligence. Unless you’re a doctor or engineer.

Employers only care about you showing up, doing the work, not complaining or bad mouthing them either in person or online, and then taking their check and going home to your one-bedroom, badly light and poorly heated apartment.

They don’t care about your student loan debt.
They don’t care that you fed kids in Kenya last year.
They don’t care that you have an active Youtube.com channel with 30,000 hits.

Employers are really…really…really…narrowly focused.

They only care about how much your work adds to their bottom line. In business speak, this is called “added value.”

And most of your bosses, i.e. employers, supervisors, managers and others above you, who will hire you, are people that never graduated college and couldn’t wait to get away from high school, or who drank their way through college and ten years later made anywhere between $250,000 and $1,000,000.

And all your intellectual capacity won’t matter a hill of beans to them.

Develop something, anything that you own.

Look, social media is great for Snap Chatting to your friends, knocking other people on Twitter or getting all hot and bothered about the Ukraine or social justice on Facebook, but these platforms can also be used to build a project, an idea or—even a business—that YOU care about.

This road, the road through entrepreneurship—is hard, heartbreaking, long, and lonely and will not be materially fulfilling for the first ten years that you are doing it.

Almost everyone will tell you that you’re crazy.
Almost everyone will silently cheer for your failure.
Almost everyone will tell you about their half-baked ideas.

But if you can survive all of that, you can have something that no one in any previous generation has had for a very long time: Positional financial security.

Or, you’ll crash and burn and fail.

But, at least you won’t have another $150,000 of student loans in your life, chipping away at your financial, emotional, marital (some of you out here WILL get married) and psychological health.

I will not close with the maxim that many do to “follow your passion.” The reason I won’t is because the Greek root of the work passion really means to “work unceasing.”

I will close by encouraging you to work.

Work unceasingly.

So…go do that.

Go to work.

Thank you.

-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/