[Opinion] Who Will Hire the Bigots: Sigma Alpha Epsilon Edition

In a world where proper outward social conformity is often conflated with the presence of internal, moral character, what’s a young man in a fraternity to do?

Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members, who are students at the University of Oklahoma have been either suspended or removed from school, for creating a chant with racist lyrics, and then having it filmed and plopped on the Internet and TV.

These students are about to have their future employment fortunes changed, because, the Internet neither forgets—nor forgives.

Should we be surprised that students in this fraternity seemingly happily chanted along with lyrics that might not have been above board?

No.

Social pressure to conform to group norming is still more powerful at the human, physical, person-to-person, individual level, than Internet shaming ever will be at a larger societal level. And ignorance of history and facts is not merely the provenance of the young and impressionable.

But, here’s the thing: These students have now been impacted far beyond the actual impact of their words and enthusiastic chanting in the video. Yes, it went viral. Yes, many people have played it, talked about it, linked to it, and written about it (heck, even we are). But has anyone asked the larger culture what the societal impact of such an outburst actually was?

No.

No, we haven’t.

Opinion polls are gradually being replaced by instant reactions through immediate outlets (like Twitter, YouTube comments, etc.) to stimulus events. This rarely commented upon cultural shift has created a “firebombing” mentality that has scorched the personal, business, emotional and financial earths of many people, both public personalities and private individuals. All the way from former Mozilla Firefox CEO Brendan Eich and former LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling, to the two police officers who were shot in response to the death of Eric Gardner and shooting of Michael Brown.

Forgiveness and grace are gifts to be given out of a sense of compassion and empathy (are the fraternity members at OSU not human? Do they not bleed?). But the larger social desire for lockstep conformity prohibits this. And when proper outward social conformity is linked exclusively to the assumption of character, forgiveness and grace are hard to come by.

We are sure that the OSU students who have been suspended (or removed from school) as a result of this incident, will attain employment in the future and will move on to living as full lives as they possibly can, but what deeper lessons have they learned from this incident, from culture, society and from institutions of higher learning, about race, character, conscience and forgiveness?

-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

HIT Piece 03.10.2015

The world is full of three things: problems, ideas and people.

The world is not full of three things: value, implementation and character.

One thing I have been struggling with lately is that I see abundance everywhere online. There is so much virtual space on the Internet that it’s almost overwhelming.

But how many people are choosing to build their own platforms in this virtual abundance, versus those people who are hanging out in neighborhoods already designed and built by someone else?

This is not only a social media application question (although the cloistering is most notable there) but also it is a general philosophical question for anyone who’s developing anything on the web.

As I have been thinking more and more about what this project for peace will look like five to ten years out, I have been more and more considering the efficacy of designing on open source platforms, marketing through freemium or low cost channels, the power and exclusivity of paywalls, and how to develop, grow and scale this project without encouraging cloistering, prejudice or assisting, either tacitly or openly, the development of scalable ghettos.

Heavy considerations all.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] 20-80-100

80% of the conflicts in your organization will be solved by 20% of the people in your organization.

And, not all of those people will have positional titles, effective job descriptions, or even work in “traditional” departments that “are supposed to” address conflicts.

Pushing the frontier of who gets what, so that the majority gets more value out of the conflict resolution process, should be the goal of all organizations.

But, there’s a ceiling on that value, generated by competing goals and desires, differing value placed on outcomes and the lack of ability for some in an organization to accept the efficacy of pursuing more than one outcome.

As long as 20% of the people in organization are overcoming 80% of the ceilings in 100% of organizations, the ceiling on claiming value will not move effectively.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 03.03.2015

I am ready.

It’s time to start building something bigger than myself.

The first e-book is coming along, as is the first traditional book, the first leadership program and the first systems design program for organizations.

The first season of the podcast is here, the second season is coming along and the first presentation to a room of over 100 people is coming in the summer.

The first webinar project is coming, the first multiparty project is coming.

And yet…

I have been insecure and lethargic since October. I have been struggling to identify if any of this is working. I don’t know if I am running to avoid failure…or running to embrace it.

What do you think?

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 02.24.2015

I was sitting in a room the other day and heard someone in the room next door talking about launching a “buy-now” button.

They are doing it for their business to continue to remain relevant in the 21^st century with a population of buyers for their products and services, whose perspective has changed on how to buy.

Turns out, that people, and industries, can change.

-Peace Be With You All-

[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/

HIT Piece 02.17.2015

Making a mistake is not that hard.

As a matter of fact, we do it all the time as human beings.

But the importance of mistakes, failures, or only accomplishing part of our goals, is not always acknowledged positively because, we fear vulnerability as adults.

In the business and corporate world, we still give lip service to the idea of the importance of failing, but the majority of us still work in systems, dedicated to the process—and following it to never fail.

I fail all the time.

I am also struggling to be vulnerable and authentic in this blog, when I present and facilitate and when I work through interviews with guests on my podcast.

But I’m not there yet.

And yet, like many of you out there, I am still making mistakes.

-Peace Be With You All-

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-

HIT Piece 1.27.2015

I’m a pusher.

I see everywhere the potential in other people to be greater than the sum of their parts, and I see the possibilities in other people’s situations to improve and advance that they sometimes don’t see themselves.

I want them to be the best that they can be using what God gave them.

Sometimes this is interpreted as me being domineering, controlling, a “Type A,” confrontational or even obsessive.

I get frustrated when I see people, organizations and even communities, not living up to the promise of their talents, abilities and skills.

It breaks my heart—and confounds my mind—to see all the potential in others that they don’t know they have.

It’s been 15 years since I legally became an “adult” and almost 25 years into my Christian walk, and I keep being taught a long, hard lesson.

I think that I’m going to have to keep relearning it until the end of my walk on this Earth.

I’m going to have to evolve into a puller, rather than a pusher.
-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 1.20.2015

Someone told me the other day that I was scaling Human Services Consulting and Training horizontally in a way that has never been seen before.

The projects, the marketing, the sales, the personal relationship building; apparently I’m going in multiple directions at once, spreading the tentacles of my project far and wide.

Just thought I would pass the observation along.

-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/