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| Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, March 2019 |
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| Get No-Cost Support and Feedback from Other Social Entrepreneurs
Nicole Dean and I have just launched a Facebook discussion group for marketers involved with social entrepreneurship and/or green business: people who want their businesses to be both world-changing and profitable. It’s a place to get and give advice, bounce ideas around, share news, and help move society to do better. It NOT a place to complain or call names. If you want to be invited, please friend me on Facebook and then send me a direct message. Please say that you saw the newsletter and want an invite to the marketers for social change group.
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| | | This Month’s Tip: When You Can’t Change Bad Rules—Make Them Work for You |
| | As I’m writing this, we have a very interesting situation in the town where I live. A member of the Planning Board, who has interfered with many efforts to make things better for the town’s residents over the years, was caught on camera making racist and wildly inaccurate remarks at a Planning Board meeting about someone who was bringing forward a plan for approval. Several people brought attention to it, and there was a newspaper story later in the week.
This incident has touched a nerve in town. Although the deadline to get on the ballot is past, three different people in this town of about 3300 voters and 5000 residents stepped forward to explore running against him. This in spite of some personal risk, as this man is known as a bully and has made vindictive public or private remarks to many of his enemies and perceived enemies. This same man created national news in May 2016, when from the floor of Town Meeting, he said he’d never been inside a library in his life and didn’t intend to start now. (This was part of his three-year vendetta against plans for a new library and senior center, despite near-unanimous support in town for both projects.)
Usually, it’s very hard to win a write-in campaign, but in this case, it should be easy. Several of the most popular town officials, across wide ideological differences, are eager to see this man out of office. Their combined influence vastly outnumbers his supporters.
But here’s the thing: my town doesn’t have ranked-choice voting. So if three or even two opponents were on the ballot, the chances would be high that the incumbent, despite being widely disliked—he was even removed from a different, more powerful town office by citizen vote several years ago—would actually win even with most people in town voting against him.
There are people in my town, and across the state, working for ranked-choice, which has many advantages. In ranked-choice, if your first choice is eliminated, your vote gets moved to your second and subsequent choices, until one candidate has a majority. But it won’t affect this election, which is less than a month away, and ranked choice probably won’t be in place for several years.
So I and several others took action to make sure we wouldn’t be in that situation. We contacted the candidates and got them to meet together and pick one among them to “carry the banner into battle.” Now, if only all those ideologically similar Democrats running for President would do the same ?.
This is an example of people taking their power to change a result, even if not in the ideal way. Think about how you can take this model into change efforts in your own organization or community.
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| | | | | | | | Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available. |
| | | Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!
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| | | Another Recommended Book: Conflict—The Unexpected Gift: Making the Most of Disputes in Life and Work |
| Conflict—The Unexpected Gift: Making the Most of Disputes in Life and Work by Jack Hamilton and Elisabeth Seaman
Communication skills are essential in any successful business—especially in green/social entrepreneurship businesses, where unfamiliar processes can create conflicts. Conflict management is one of those key communication skills. It’s something I’ve been striving to improve since the 1970s.
Hamilton and Seaman, both professional mediators and conflict resolution trainers, provide a great overview of patterns that interfere with resolving conflicts. Those patterns turn easy conflicts into difficult, relationship-shattering impasses. Often, this is because we’re quick to make judgments without anchoring them in facts. The authors use the metaphor of racing up a “ladder of assumptions” starting on the floor with the setting, and climbing past to facts, interpretations, motives, and generalizations (p. 20).
Rung 1, facts, is necessary—but we tend to assume we have all the facts when we only have a partial understanding. Without the full benefit of all the facts, up the ladder we run, falsely attributing negative motivations and stereotypes as we go.
The authors walk you back down the ladder (p. 31), staying with the setting and facts and not assuming the other person’s motivations. Once you’ve de-escalated yourself, turn toward making sure both parties feel—and are—understood, and then actually solving the conflict. That requires listening skills training (pp. 63-65). The authors also list eight unhelpful responses to avoid (pp. 67-68) and model asking questions sincerely, without defensiveness or attacking/blaming the other person (p. 87). And they have guidelines for resolution, including understanding that an initial agreement is always an experiment, and the parties can modify it as they test it in the real world (p. 159).
It should still be in writing, though, including the procedure for moving forward and any consequences of non-compliance (p. 162). Hamilton and Seaman also include eight factors in regaining trust (pp. 180-181) and the importance of not just forgiving the other party, but also forgiving yourself (pp. 181-183). They say you’ll have the best results when you give the other person the benefit of the doubt: when you expect good intentions and good behavior (p. 196)—and that your own deposits of goodwill should exceed your withdrawals (pp 178-179). Forgiving is NOT condoning the behavior, however (p. 192).
Still, “it is more important to resolve conflicts and restore relationships than it is for one person to be right and the other be wrong” (pp. 242-243)—and that’s easier when you focus on the future, not the past (p. 244).
Two sections that I haven’t seen in other communication skills books are especially worth highlighting: how to do apologies and explanations that don’t feel like excuses but take honest responsibility (excuses make the situation worse)(pp. 146-149) and how to get past a conflict when the other person can’t or won’t participate in the resolution due to death, estrangement, or other factors (pp. 118-127). A useful appendix (pp. 256-257) provides a nice chart of the four components of deep listening.
If they do a fourth edition, I have two suggestions. Before you and your opponent brainstorm solutions that benefit both parties (pp. 158-159), I’ve found it enormously helpful to list each person’s needs—and only then move toward solutions. And I don’t agree with the language suggestion (p. 215) of “I’ll try.” Trying is a license to fail or abandon. I prefer “I’ll do” or “I commit to.” But these are minor quibbles. This book will be enormously useful to pretty much any business owner/manager, negotiator, activist, or parent.
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About Shel
How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).
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Elisabeth Seaman said,
Wrote on March 27, 2019 @ 4:20 am
Just now I saw your March issue with the review of our book – it looks and reads great! Many thanks. I hope your readers will find it valuable. Elisabeth