The Shifting Social Contract

Privacy, the law and the social contract is breaking down.

People want to access the internet and be social privately, secretly and anonymously, but the NSA reads our emails and may soon have access to the data that all the devices in our home will be sharing with each other.

The Lockian social contract is breaking down with technology that Locke could never have anticipated, in an effort to create a Rousseauian-libertine future with no responsibility for what we say and do.

And that’s at a macro level.

Then there is bullying and social break down in social media. Children push each other to suicide. People are redefining the workplace and griping about it on social media. People are making individual economic choices at a rational (and emotional) level to pick streaming over subscription packages.

And that’s at the micro level

So…what does all of this have to do with mediators and conflict?

At the intersection of macro and micro concerns regarding privacy, trust, secrecy, confidentiality and the breakdown of the general social contract, lies a place for peacemakers with skills and talents to train, advise, coach and mentor those for whom active listening, empathy and civil liberties seem to be quaint holdovers from an era of powdered wigs and wine snobs.

-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/

The Longest Good-bye

Future historians looking at the sports marketing history of the United States will be puzzled by the rise and fall of American Baseball.

They will note that it mirrored the loss of attention span in the overall culture, the need for greater and more brutal spectacle (see the fall of boxing and the rise of MMA for more of this) and the rise of American Football.

American Baseball’s long goodbye also follows closely with the fracturing of media markets and the loss of patience for the long themes inherent in long form journalism.

No event marks this more starkly than the swan song of Derek Jeter. Here is a player that–if he had come along 75 years ago–might not have been as honored because of the statistics, but would have been valued even more because of his heart.

Unfortunately, he came to athletic prominence in a time of dwindling respect for athletes as people and potential role models and a rise in overall cultural coarseness, disinterest and, of course the decline in interest around of his chosen game.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells
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/

The Truth in All of Us

Honesty is such an ugly word, everyone is so untrue.

Except that while people may be untrue, they are often also unreliable, full of mixed motives and notoriously prone to following their own emotions and senses, rather than inclined provide the truth.

How do we provide the truth to others in love?

Well, there’s no easy way to tell the truth in love.

Major philosophies, major religious figures and even major political and social leaders have gone to their deaths either from telling the hard truth in love, or from not telling the truth at all.

Maybe the real key is to focus less on our struggles against what we think resides in other people’s heads and hearts, and to instead begin focusing on our own internal struggles with our own stuff.

And, the truth, once crushed to earth, will rise again.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] 3 Truths of Innovation for Human Failures

Working in the space of forgiveness and reconciliation has exposed us to some unusual truths, that people and organizations experiencing conflict situations in the more “concrete” segments of our world–such as the workplace, or the school–would rather ignore.

The first truth is that people in conflict are truly people and bring all the dimensions of people, including spiritual ones, to bear in a conflict, no matter the location of that conflict situation.
The second truth is that many segments, organizations, and profit-centers in our Western culture would prefer to ignore those spiritual dimensions and how they play into conflicts spirals.

This is based upon the mistaken belief that spirituality only occurs between 9am and noon on Sunday mornings.

Or not at all.

Ever.

The third truth is that high conflict people have a spiritual dimension that rules their behavior, based in deep seated beliefs, past experiences, and deep seated traumas and that no one engagement–or workshop attendance–and learning of new skills will “fix.”

Our “move fast and break things” approach to innovation and disruption is fine in the world of physical objects such as technology, but falls miserably short when addressing the issues that real people bring to the table when they are organized into groups of larger than three to accomplish a task.

There’s no app, or cybernetic/Internet of things, revolution that’s going to address these three truths.

The only way to get there is to delve deeply, truthfully and uncompromisingly, into the human heart.

Download the new FREE eBook courtesy of Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT), on Forgiveness and Reconciliation by clicking the link here.

-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/

Arbitrary Colors

Railroad engineers decided in the 1830’s that red meant “stop,” white meant “go” and that green meant “caution.”

Now, the idea of red indicating danger goes backward in history, beyond the Roman Empire itself and no one is really sure whether natural or social evolution is the driver here.

So, it’s arbitrary. We could just as easily have decided that green meant danger.

Well, wait a minute:

When we are angry we talk about “seeing red.”
When we are talking about conflicts we sometimes use the term “blood on our hands.”
When we talk about war, the banners of war tend to be the color red.

Even our blood is red.

Humanity has embraced the color red in an arbitrary manner that is indicative of how we embrace conflict. It is no coincidence that our language around conflict is colored red.

Marketing is the most arbitrary practice in any organization, though the outcomes can be objectively measured through analytics and metrics.

Just as the metrics of stoplights and “go” lights can be measured in the reduction of traffic accidents at a particular intersection.

Conflict communication management—and it’s unmentioned cousin, reconciliation—is considered equally arbitrary, but the outcomes of training, workshops, interventions, discussions and feedback, can be objectively measured through sophisticated analytics and metrics.

But, too many organizations would still rather arbitrarily pick a color for a stop light at the intersection of their workplace conflicts, rather than purposefully pick a series of solutions based on measurable, agreeable outcomes.

The hard work in an organization is not picking a stop light color. The hard work is agreeing that there should be a color for the light at the intersection in the first place.

-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/

[Advice] Networking, Word-Of-Mouth and Marketing You Can Afford

For the consultant the three most valuable forms of marketing are as follows:

Networking
Word-of-Mouth
and Referral.

Let’s break those three down from the most valuable form of marketing to the least valuable, because we approach them a little differently than many other consultants operating in this same space, no matter what the field.

Everything is networking, from the sales funnel conversations to any random email, we approach every opportunity to connect with somebody—client, customer, fan or follower—as a potential networking opportunity.

Does this mean that every contact will give us cash in exchange for services?

Absolutely not.

As a matter of fact, 95% of all of our networking never ends in a sale.

Disheartening? Maybe. But it’s our most valuable form of marketing, because the more people we get in front of the better the exposure we have and the stronger our story becomes.

Then there’s number two:

Word of mouth is possibly the least sexy way to make a sale.

After all, no film or television show ever popularizes the interaction where a person states that, “Oh yeah, Susan is a great person. You should work with her.”

But, word-of-mouth comes about because of a job well done, a client well satisfied, a blog post well written, a networking conversation well handled or an “I don’t know” honestly said.

You know. The really unsexy stuff that happens in between the cracks of the business.

Finally, referrals are great, but here at HSCT we don’t chase them as a primary marketing driver.

They are very hard to get and are based on trust, time and relationship.

They don’t come because of a blithe turn of phrase or a perspective well stated.

Referrals as a marketing tool are the furthest down the funnel, because they are the most expensive to buy and are the least easy to afford.

Networking is the most valuable form of marketing that a consultant has when building a business. Word of mouth can only come after networking and thus becomes the second most valuable form of marketing. Finally, referral is the least valuable form of marketing, not because it can’t be mastered, but because it tends to be promoted as the easiest one, and is really the one based on years and years of the other two.

-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/

HIT Piece 09.02.2014

I have a problem with gatekeepers.

But they aren’t going anywhere.

I have a problem with organizational structure based on warped economies of scale.

But that isn’t going anywhere either—yet.

So, I have to make a decision everyday:

How big a dent do I want to make in the universe?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] ABC for the Consultant

If you’re a consultant, you’re going to want to know the difference between selling and marketing.

So, let’s be clear here at HSCT.

Selling for the consultant is what happens when the client calls you back, signs the check and you deposit it.

Marketing for the consultant is what happens at every step before and after those three moments.

Now, some will say that you are always closing, in the manner of Glengarry/Glen Ross, but we here at HSCT would argue that you as the consultant are always marketing.

-Peace Be With You All-

Failure is Not an Option

It turns out that the most important trait for success for children is conscientiousness.

Conscientiousness now has become the third positive character trait for success in life along with grit and empathy.

Empathy is a core trait of emotional intelligence, in that it requires us to abandon self to try to get into the skin of others.

Raising children who are conscientious—even in this world—and who will find a way through failure without damaging others, is the only way to bring about the next great moon shot.

You know that place where failure is not an option.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 08.26.2014

Faith has to be the driver.

If you are building something, after doing everything that you can do, with all the resources that you have available to yourself, then all that you have left, should be faith.

But, have I done everything that I can do in my power to build my idea?

Or have I stopped short, expecting faith to close the gap.

I know that work without faith is worthless, but work without effort (smoke without fire) makes faith look foolish.

Where do you think I am at?

-Peace Be With You All-