Sharon Drew Morgen – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

I used to live in Taos, New Mexico, where I bought everything I ate from a small grocery called Cid’s Market. Run by Cid and Betty Backer, they always offered fresh organic produce, freshly cooked healthy meals, and a health/vitamin section that had everything I wanted. The store environment was happy and very obviously committed to the Taos community. It felt like MY STORE each time I went in. Any question I had was answered; anything I needed was procured, even if it meant they went out and bought me the item at a different store! I was a rabid fan.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who loved them. In the 11 years I lived there (1989-2000) I watched as they grew from a small store to a three story building taking up half a city block. Their service to customers was exceptional. Every morning as the store opened, Cid held a brief meeting with the entire team. “Who pays your salary?” he’d ask. They’d respond “The Customer!” And then they’d start their day.

Everyone’s job was to take care of customers, whatever that entailed. They didn’t need to ‘follow the rules’: that WAS the rule. And creativity and service ensued: In the health department, the manager created free evening community programs for different groups – diabetes sufferers, parents with kids who wouldn’t eat veggies; the produce manager created free cooking classes and lessons on growing organic veggies. Everyone was trusted to make their best decisions and the customers felt their commitment and respect. And in 1993 that was unusual.

One year, on a plane to Mexico to give a keynote address about Servant Leadership, I noticed Cid and Betty.

“Are you going on vacation?” I asked?

“No. We’re going to a conference on Servant Leadership.”

“Oh. I didn’t think a grocery store would seek out that sort of thing.”

“We’re going mostly to learn what we need to learn to serve our employees. If we can’t give them the respect they deserve, and create an environment in which they thrive, we can’t run a business that will also serve our customers. We go to one conference a year to learn all the tools we can so we all have the best knowledge available to serve with.”

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They understood that their success came from serving people, community, customers and staff. And they actively made it a priority.

WHAT ARE OUR JOBS?

When corporations consider what their jobs are, they sometimes think Profits, or Products, or Shareholders. But I think it’s something else. Think about it: there’s no job that doesn’t include serving:

Sell more? Serve customers.
Grow the business, be respected in the industry, and retain clients? Serve the company.
Retain and inspire good people with tools to inspire creativity? Serve employees.
Maintain optimal skills and health? Serve ourselves.
Maintain communication skills? Serve each other.

Without hiring and retaining good people that know how to lead collaboratively; without the skills to help managers, sales folks, team leaders, facilitate buy-in; without the creativity from an entire group that, working together, can develop top notch solutions that produce competitive and imaginative solutions; none of us are in business. No matter what our jobs, our core business is to serve.

Unfortunately, too many of us unwittingly follow trends that take us away from our core business of serving. For example, too many companies have chosen the trend of using their websites to collect names. They embed pop ups to retrieve email addresses, making it impossible to find answers to questions and rendering the site unusable (unless you agree to the cookies) and annoying folks with real interest who might even be customers.

Obviously they’re putting their own goals before those of a possible customer. Why would a company do that? Especially the smaller companies who truly depend on offering information as a sales strategy. Is acquiring my name to push out marketing materials that important? Don’t they know I’ll leave the site rather than agree to accept more spam? That they’ll lose my business because I don’t want my name captured? Those companies have lost their way: they are only serving themselves.

OUR JOBS ARE TO SERVE

What if our real jobs weren’t only to collect data, or create content, or push products? What if our jobs were merely to serve? That requires a new skill set, a different viewpoint that produces very different results:

Leaders wouldn’t be getting resistance because they’d attain buy-in and work collaboratively to engage all voices before making change.
Sellers would only pitch to those ready to buy, and use the bulk of their now-wasted time to facilitate people them through their buying decision path as they figured out how to achieve their own type of excellence (and possibly buy solutions).
Managers would hire people whose goal was to serve and retain them because the company’s practices facilitated their excellence.
Coaches would use Facilitative Questions to guide folks to their own answers, trusting each person had their own type of excellence to achieve without the biases of an outsider.
Tech folks would save a great deal of time on projects because they’d be curious without bias, gathering the most accurate data the first time and avoiding biased assumptions that caused flawed results and user complaints.
Companies would be aware of the environment, the role they play in it, and factor in climate issues as a way to serve the planet while serving customers.
Senior Management would dictate that each employee, as well as customers, be cared for respectfully. When an employee isn’t happy, it’s difficult for them to care about customers.

By maintaining focus on ourselves, on our individual needs, we miss the larger picture. By using our jobs and companies as the vehicle to serve others and the planet, we will all live in an excellent world.

__________________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen September 16th, 2024

Posted In: News

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How do original thinkers, folks with exceptional, trademarked IP, handle plagiarism and misrepresentation? How can we ensure our work gets in the world without it being misdefined, misused, or pirated? And what do we do when the misrepresentation and pirating harms others?

In the age of artificial intelligence, many of us are at risk of losing our cutting-edge ideas to the melting pot of mediocrity. How we handle it is an open question.

MY IP HAS BEEN MISAPPROPRIATED

I’ve recently gotten several calls from clients of Jeff Molander at Spark Selling Academy divulging his misuse and plagiarism of one of my inventions, Facilitative Questions™ (FQs), and sending me copies of the articles, videos, guides, and courses that directly lift my words from my books and articles with no attribution. Worse, the material is presented out of context, with inaccurate use and definition.

Without proper training or licensing, without understanding the material and with no attribution, with the actual paperwork in hand from his clients, I see that Molander is training and coaching my FQs out of context as manipulation devices, wholly outside their intended use.

Molander and I have history. Years ago, I discovered the first of Molander’s articles titled ‘Facilitative Questions’. It contained content taken directly from my books and articles without attribution, and wholly misrepresented my work. He took it down.

But the problem continued: each time I discovered his articles misrepresenting my work I offered to train and license him so he’d learn/understand/use the material accurately. Each time he refused but agreed to take the faulty content down. I kept believing him. I shouldn’t have.

I now have actual proof that Molander continues to pirate exact words directly from my writings but with the wrong explanations and intent, and gets paid to teach it. To sum it up, Molander is using FQs as the “foundational” skill offered at the Academy in his videos, coaching, user materials, and workshops

without attribution,
without training or licensing,
without using them accurately or as intended.

Sadly, folks studying with Molander are learning distorted fragments of FQs as manipulation tools (he uses them to provoke curiosity) instead of the Servant Leader, ethical tools, that lead folks efficiently through their values-based, unbiased decision making (in this case, buying decisions).

His misinterpretation of my work not only harms his clients but also harms my brand that I’ve worked hard to build and sustain for 40 years. And the only ethical solution I can think of is to find the folks he’s trained so I can offer them free, accurate training.

WHO AM I?

I should probably tell you who I am. I’m an original thinker and inventor of systemic brain change models, that enable folks to get to the relevant neural circuits for change and decision making. One of my inventions is Buying Facilitation®, a model that finds and leads would-be prospects through the Pre-Sales, change management steps they must take on route to self-identifying as buyers.

To say it simply, in the area of sales, I help people figure out the decisions they need to make in their unique situations before they can buy anything – a front-end to sales.

Some of you may know me from my New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity. But how I got here was circuitous.

In 1983, after years of being a successful sales person, I started up a tech company where I was hit upside the head with the problem I’d had with prospects not buying: as an entrepreneur, before the team could consider buying anything, we first tried to fix our problems ourselves. If we couldn’t, we then needed to understand our risk of change. Before deciding to buy anything we had to know for sure that the risk of bringing in something new was not greater than the risk of staying the same.

So different from the sales model that only addresses assumed needs and a seller’s solution placement issues, not the internal decision issues folks had to discern before making a buying decision. Sales actually starts at the end of the buying decision path.

When I realized this I began my decades-long focus (inventing tools, writing books/articles, doing global training) on developing ethical tools to facilitate buying decisions as an adjunct to selling.

FACILITATIVE QUESTIONS™

Knowing my own questions to prospects had bias, and now realizing that prospects lived in unique environments that required buy-in and risk management before buying, I wondered if there was a way to help prospects efficiently figure out the decision path they had to traverse before they could buy.

Enter Facilitative Questions™. Different from standard questions, they use a new form of listening, specific words in specific sequences, and traverse a stepped pathway to personal decision-making, helping prospects and first contacts quickly figure out their Pre-Sales decision issues that then lead to them buying.

Facilitative Questions™

To learn Facilitative Questions™

Not just for sales, FQs are extremely effective at enabling very quick values-based decisions – great for docs to help patients change habits, for sellers to help prospects take action, and for coaches to help clients make permanent change. They require days of training and months of practice. In the wrong hands, with the wrong intent, FQs become highly effective manipulation tools.

BEYOND PLAGIARISM

Unfortunately, over the years, several folks have plagiarized FQs from my books and articles. They all removed the offending materials eventually. But Molander plans to continue, saying that because he allegedly shared an online course with a buddy and read some of my books, because my work is in the public domain, he’s entitled to it.

Worse, the materials I have from Spark reveal he’s taken it beyond plagiarism: he’s also defining FQs inaccurately and twisting their use to manipulate selling – the precise opposite of the reason I spent 10 years inventing them. Certainly they’re not being used to facilitate the precise steps of off-line risk management and decision making.

It’s currently unclear if Molander will ever stop without going to court. But in the meantime, I want to find folks who have been misled and train them properly. My email: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Managing plagiarism and misuse is a problem we all face these days and as yet there are no standards to follow. I’d love to start a dialogue with other original thinkers having similar issues.

____________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen September 9th, 2024

Posted In: News

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During a day we make innumerable decisions. What should I eat for lunch? When should I go to the store? Should I complete this paperwork now? Or wait until after the meeting? We make these simple decisions quickly, effortlessly, using top-of- mind answers. But sometimes we must make consequential decisions that need some pondering.

Whatever we go through to get to our final end point, the process is often fraught with confusion, time delays, and unknown risk. To help you minimize these downsides when making important decisions, here are a few foundational elements:

Perspective: Have you collected the full data set necessary for resolution?
Criteria: What are the norms and values you must consider?
Goal: What is the specific goal you seek to achieve?
Risks: What are the threats to specific choices?
Steps: A replicable route to practical decision making.

I’ll take them one at a time.

PERSPECTIVE

One of the problems with decision making is the way your brain presents you with habituated responses. Like when you decide to go on a diet and unconsciously duplicate the patterns you used in previous (failed) diets, or when you stop at the same point when trying to learn a new hobby – again. So much of how we decide is ruled by our brain’s historic biases and restrictions.

To have as broad a range of options as possible with a minimum of bias and restriction, it’s necessary to consider the problem from different perspectives.

Ordinarily we automatically think our standard, familiar thoughts and unconsciously pose our standard, familiar questions to ourselves. I call this perspective Self. Self is our natural state, a largely unconscious idiosyncratic mix of physical, mental, emotional, unconscious and comfortable reactions and ideas. In Self we are the fish in the water.

From Self your decisions are based on your immediate world view – restricted by your momentary feelings, what’s going on in your life, and your history of managing similar issues.This is perfect for daily living. But for making consequential decisions it’s good to have as broad, and unbiased viewpoint as possible. For this you’ll need an expansive perspective that I call Observer/Witness.

Being in Observer offers more a conscious choice with a broader perspective and far less bias. You already do this, albeit unconsciously: the quick intake of breath telling you to be more alert and consider a new choice; that it’s time to go beyond your natural reaction, your standard thoughts and feelings.

You use Observer when raising children, like when your 2-year-old so creatively crayons the wall and you gently guide her to the coloring book but really want to scream ‘I JUST PAINTED THAT WALL!!!’. It’s when you’re fighting with a partner and take a step back to say, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s chill.’

In Observer, you notice a broader range of choices that weren’t visible from Self. They were always there, but not habituated like the more-used options. My book HOW? teaches how to do this.

Rule #1: Make important decisions from Observer to perceive a broad range of choices.

Sample

CRITERIA

Values and Beliefs – the basis of any decision making criteria – are the primary determinants for making important decisions as they defend and maintain who you are and what you stand for. Indeed, people often delay making a decision because they fear they’ll overlook something significant, because they don’t know the full set of risks involved.

From Observer you can consider the underlying values that must be maintained in the new decision. They’re often personal, although in team decision making the group must collaboratively agree to the values they want to maintain.

Here’s a personal tale of how my switch from Self to Observer converted my criteria to more authentic, less reactive values and a positive outcome.

A mythic row with a dear friend ended our relationship. He betrayed me! He lied! He broke my values-based criteria of honesty, of my ‘right to be respected!’ But as time passed I began to get a different perspective: I must love with ‘Ands’ not ‘Buts’. That meant (to me) I had to find a way to be in relationship. So I shifted my criteria (and Self perspective) from honesty and ‘right to be respected’ to my Observer perspective: ‘How do we love each other AND be respectful and honest?’ With this new criteria our relationship had a way forward.

Rule #2: Know the criteria you want to meet for your decision and write down some thoughts on what it will look like when it’s met.

GOALS

Goals often include specific target actions and a time limit for completion, and require a well-worded goal. So “I want to go on a diet to lose weight” becomes “I will do the research to find the best foods for my body to find and maintain its best weight.”

Goals must include details that can be evaluated or you run the risk of failure. The more specificity, the higher the possibility of success.

Rule #3: Set a goal using very specific words and expected results.

RISKS

All decisions carry some sort of risk. What risk are you willing to take? Are you willing to switch values? Are you willing to let go of people in your life? Relationships? Money?

Before making a final decision it’s important to know the risks involved in the change caused by the final outcome. Ask the people in any way involved in the final decision what the upsides/downsides are for them. Make sure you pose questions from Observer so you instill as little bias as possible. I’ve invented Facilitative Questions™ that lead to unconscious circuits where decision criteria are stored. Again, I teach them in HOW?.

Your final decision may not be able to address all risks but knowing them in advance is valuable for goal setting. Where there’s a chance the risks won’t be fully addressed, do as much advance work as possible to reduce the fallout.

Rule #4: before making a final decision, know the risks involved for the people, policies, values, etc.

STEPS

Often people begin seeking information too soon. I suggest you wait until you’ve determined the goals, risks, and criteria so you’ll have a more accurate foundation. Then:

Assemble all the elements involved: Know the goals, criteria, people and fall-out from each. Include gathering data (from Observer, to minimize bias) from the people who will be touched by your decision. While you might not be able to meet their criteria, you’ll at least have an idea of the risks.
Determine and manage the risks: Fully understand the distance between where you are now and where you will be once the decision is made. Will the same values prevail? Will jobs or situations be changed? How will this affect the status quo? How will you deal with any fallout?
Gather data: Once you know the risks, goals and criteria involved, gather supporting data (both internal and external) that ensures you’ve got the important elements covered and the risks managed best you can.
Weight the options: You’ll now have the information you need to understand the types of choices and risks. Go back to the drawing board. Get into Observer. Write down a hierarchy of criteria to meet and see how/where they match the options. Weight them according to risks and values. Know precisely the fallout.
Carry out the decision: make sure to personally manage any fallout.

And good luck! Should you require some team coaching to facilitate an important decision, please contact me: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_____________

Sharon Drew Morgen September 2nd, 2024

Posted In: Change Management, Communication

I’m curious why so many professionals are satisfied using change and support practices knowing the fail rates in their industry: change management has a 97% fail rate as do all Behavior Modification practices; coaching and training have a 90% fail rate; and sales a 95% fail rate.

A leader in the Change Management field complained of persistent resistance during a recent call, showing me the model he was using that had ‘connect with/convince people’ at Step 6. I suggested the problem might be he brought people in too late to gather the full fact pattern of the underlying problem making goal-setting certain to be flawed, and setting up resistance when solutions are thrust on folks without their input.

Why, I wondered, had he kept using a change model that regularly got resistance rather than do something different? “What else can I do? There’s nothing else to use.”

Sales is also based on a flawed premise, starting with a desire to place solutions and prospecting for folks with a ‘need’ by posing biased questions they can then sell into. But with a 5% close rate, ‘need’ may not be the reason people buy.

Coaching has a similar problem. Coaches assume they must ‘understand’ the client’s problem by posing questions meant to either gather data or lead to problem solving. And yet clients often don’t find a permanent solutions.

WHY YOU CAN’T CHANGE OTHER’S BEHAVIORS

I’ve developed new models that increase successful permanent change, and enable efficient values-based decision making that use different intent and tools. But I’d like to first offer you some of my Morgenisms:

You can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior;
Selling doesn’t cause buying;
The time it takes people to understand their risk of change is the length of the change/sales cycle;
Brains hear as per a Listener’s existing (historic, biased) neural circuits that translate the incoming sound vibrations/signals (i.e. words) into meaning, very often quite different than the intent of the Speaker.
Questions are posed using the Asker’s wording, intent, needs and goals, and as such, are biased by the assumptions of the Asker, which may not be aligned with the needs, goals of the Receiver.

In other words, using conventional practices (questions, stories, examples, explanations, information sharing) influencers may not be able to persuade Others to act on their suggestions as there’s a strong possibility they won’t accurately hear/interpret what’s been said. As I’ll explain, there’s a way to help folks make necessary changes directly in their brains.

WHERE DOES CHANGE COME FROM?

Any change, any decision, any willingness to do, know, be something different requires different actions in the brain. Standard models attempt to change behaviors by trying to change behaviors! Not possible, regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution presented: behaviors are outputs from specific prompts in the brain, not changeable without changing the original neural programming that triggered them.

Change is a brain thing. The dilemma for influencers is that due to the way brains listen and store history, information provided may not reach the specific circuits that triggered the problematic action. Just because we lead others through what seems like a rational change or decision-making process, or try to convince folks to eat healthy or pitch them a great solution, doesn’t mean our words will change the place in the brain where their problem initiated.

What is we give influencers the job of changing brains rather than behaviors, so the client can then make their necessary behavior changes from within.

Sample

NOT VENUS RISING

Behaviors are the result, the outputs, of meaningless electrochemical computations in the brain; they do not arise like Venus from the sea.

When we try to change behaviors without changing the circuits that triggered them, it’s like telling a forward moving robot to move backwards by explaining why it should, or showing it a video of other backwards robots, or telling it a story of the benefits of flexibility. You must go back to the original programming and reprogram. And the job of influencing change is both a listening problem and a questioning problem.

THE LISTENING PROBLEM

I’ll explain the issues that make change a problem for outside influencers. To begin with, it’s a listening problem. Brains don’t hear incoming words as per the meaning the Speaker intended.

Incoming sound vibrations (words, or ‘meaningless puffs of air’ as neuroscience calls them) get translated according to the existing neural circuits in the brain of the Listener (i.e. biased, restricted), circuits that may have no relation at all to what was said or how distant it is from the original intent. It’s automatic, meaningless, and electrochemical.

Indeed, there’s a good chance something said will be misinterpreted by the Listener. It’s all unconscious and electrochemical. Think motherboard.

It becomes a multifaceted problem: Speakers may misunderstand Responders, Responders may misunderstand Speakers. And no one knows how their intended message was received or if what they think they heard is accurate.

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Obviously this gives leaders, docs, coaches, and sellers dilemmas when they offer what they consider necessary information (no matter how relevant).

That’s the first hurdle. The next is the questions we ask.

THE QUESTION PROBLEM

Leaders, coaches, sellers, and doctors try to pose ‘right’ questions to discover the Other’s problem or to gather data to understand. This is problematic in many ways:

Both Speaker or Listener may inaccurately hear what the other intends to convey, possibly misinterpreting what was said without being aware they’re doing so;
The question may not be worded in a way that the Listener hears what’s intended and may unconsciously go against the values of the Listener causing resistance.

To address these problems I spent 10 years inventing a wholly new form of question [Facilitative Question], and 13 steps of change that enable Listeners to accurately hear the incoming message and leads them to the relevant brain circuits where the initiating triggers reside for discovery and change.

In other words, Influencers unwittingly use questions that may not 1. gather accurate data, 2. be heard accurately, 3. enable the Responder to reprogram their brain to make change possible. Hence you end up with change initiatives that

face resistance and sabotage,
fail to collect the full data set and face faulty goals, time delays, and resistance,
are based on the viewpoints of a small group who seem to believe they can speak for the entire group
fly in the face of the beliefs and values of the underlying system,
assume Listeners will make permanent change based on direction from a seller, healthcare provider, leaders, or coach,
don’t trust that Others have their own answers or routes to permanent change.

But it’s possible to facilitate Others through to permanent brain change. My book HOW? teaches Change Facilitation to accomplish this, including traversing the steps of change, formulating Facilitative Questions, changing perspectives, shifting hierarchies of beliefs, and listening without bias. Additionally, I coach and train folks to enable influencers to facilitate permanent, congruent change directly from the appropriate neural circuits.

I recognize this isn’t standard thinking yet. But my Change Facilitation model has been successfully trained to 100,000 sales folks and leaders globally. Contact me and I can coach or train you.

_______________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen August 26th, 2024

Posted In: Sales

Change gets a bad rap. Confusion, time delays, resistance, goal resets. We keep trying new approaches to change management, but none of them seem to work. The reason? We’re not addressing the underlying, systemic issues that create and maintain them. Once we know and execute the steps to congruent change, the problems fall away.

My orientation around change originates in my profession: I invent systemic brain change models for sales, leadership, coaching, change management, and training, all presuming that change is systemic, with lots of moving parts that must collaborate for a successful outcome.

Currently, change agents merely attempt to change the outcomes, the activities they want fixed. But behaviors are outputs, end results. It seems obvious to me that you can’t change anything by starting at the end. Change must be initiated from the source, by reprogramming the input.

Trying to change a behavior by merely trying to change a behavior is like trying to change a table (output) into a chair (output) without going back to the initial programming that generated the chair to begin with.

Sample

My latest book lays out specifically HOW to get into the unconscious to find the right circuits for change and decision making and HOW to generate new circuits for learning and change.

THE STEPS OF CHANGE

Both the change process and decision making have specific steps that must be addressed sequentially (and this can be iterative), starting at the very beginning.

1. Full data set: to understand, quantify and assess the problem, to end up with congruent, systemic change, it’s necessary to assemble and analyze the full set of ‘givens’. This sounds easier than it is. Since change is systemic it’s necessary that all elements that have caused and maintained the problem be included from the very beginning. Without the complete data set it’s impossible to fully grasp the problem, let alone understand the needs or goals change would address.

Obviously you can’t know the full data set of a problem until you’ve assembled and gotten feedback from the people and job descriptions who touch the current problem and will be involved in the ultimate solution. I’m always surprised when I hear leaders say they’ve omitted gathering data from front line workers or middle managers. This fact alone causes resistance and time delays!

Rule: to understand or define a problem and design a specific outcome, wait until you have the full data set of how it was created and maintained.

2. Workarounds: Once the problem is fully defined and all who touch the problem and solution are engaged, it’s necessary to ascertain if it’s possible to fix it by trialing solutions that are available and familiar. Often this involves brainstorming and taking time away to ponder. I have my clients tell their folks to go away for a week, have small group meetings in which they think and brainstorm before coming back with the group’s thoughts.

To maintain Systems Congruence, any change must be congruent with the beliefs, rules and norms of the system. Again, this means the full complement of job descriptions, etc. must be involved. Overlooking them means resistance.

A good way to avoid this is to first try known resources (familiar consultants, expanded versions of current software, etc.) that adhere to the same beliefs, norms and rules.

Rule: Once a problem is correctly defined, first trial solutions among known/familiar resources.

3. Risk Management: If there are no available known resources, the next step involves the biggest issue: risk. Until the risk of change is understood and found manageable by the folks who will be affected by it, there will be no decision to change (or at least major resistance).

Rule: if the risk of change is higher than maintaining the status quo, no change will be made. Any proposed change must carry the same or a lower risk than the initial problem.

4. Buy-in for change: If there’s no known solution that will resolve the problem, and everyone agrees the risk is manageable, an external solution – a consultant, a piece of software, a training program, a product purchase – can be sought with everyone’s approval.

Rule: whatever is brought in must match the norms, beliefs, rules of the system, and everyone who will touch the new solution must buy-in.

Sample

Here’s my book that details the 13 steps of change. While seeming to be a book for sales, it’s a deep dive into the specific steps people make during decision making.

LEADERSHIP MUST FACILITATE

From what I’ve experienced with my clients, change is too often approached as merely a behavior change activity with leaders defining the problem with less-than accurate, or incomplete, data, assumptions, and almost always without the right complement of people included.

In other words, the problem gets mis-defined, people’s beliefs and egos get out of whack, a full complement of creative and needed suggestions get overlooked, and resistance rears its ugly head.

I’ve got some questions to help you think this through:

What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to give up the control you prefer and not determine any outcomes or make any assumptions until you’ve assembled the full complement of people to provide the full data set?
How will you all know to assess the risk? Whose voices must be included? What does risk look like?
What will you need to do differently to step back from any control you’re accustomed to having during a project?

I hope this has helped you create change management projects devoid of problems. If you need to talk the issues through or need help designing a project with no resistance and less time wastage, I’d be glad to help. Sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_______________________

Sharon Drew Morgen August 19th, 2024

Posted In: Change Management

From Facebook Aug. 2024

For those of you who watched any of the Olympics, you might have seen Snoop Dogg swimming with Michael Phelps (“Will someone please get me some oxygen!”), or holding the Olympic Torch, or trying to throw a javelin. Snoop Dogg, you see, was the NBC Goodwill Ambassador to the Games. What fun he seemed to be having! What fun to watch Snoop in his authentic merriment.

He said, “I had fun just being Snoop Dogg. That’s what I know how to do best. I got paid [$499,000 per day] for being me.”

Hmmmm. That caused me to wonder how many of us only seek out jobs that pay us for being who we are, for being treated with kindness and respect, and jobs that help us enrich our creativity.

Thankfully there were decades when teaching my own inventions (Buying Facilitation®, Facilitative Questions™, the HOW of change) that I earned money for being me, times I lived anxiety-free, filled with the joy of sharing all that I am, being highly creative, and being respected for my input and ideas. In fact, the more I represented the real ‘me’, the more money I made.

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But in much of my earlier life I got paid for being someone others needed me to be, or what was expected of me; times I gave up my values to earn money because I needed to feed a family. Whenever I did so I felt dirty and disrespected myself. I certainly wasn’t being creative, or the inventor of brain-change models that I morphed into when being my best self.

MY CLIENT CURED ME

My breakthrough came when I agreed to train groups in Sydney and Paris for a large sum of money. Didn’t take me long to realize how demanding and disrespectful my client Jim was. Often I would get off the phone and scream from anger and hurt. Afraid to rock the boat too much, I managed to occasionally say “You know, Jim, sometimes when you say things like that it hurts me.” Sorry, he’d say. And do it again the next week. I hated us both.

It came to a head on a conference call with one of his vendors, something I did not want to do because these folks used a mainstream sales model and would resent being asked to change. “Please,” he said. “As a favor to me. I want them to learn Buying Facilitation® with the rest of us so we’re all using the same tools.”

I went into the call with the best intentions. It didn’t take long before they realized I was offering something different from what they were doing and became mean and confrontational. I kept making light of it, telling them I heard them, and yes, it was different. But this only upped their disrespect. Jim watched as they attacked me and said nothing. Personally, I would never have continued a call like this, but I stayed on because it was a high-income job, and I’d promised. And I kept expecting him to intervene.

Eventually I began crying. Jim said nothing, then said he had to go, leaving me on Zoom with these abusers. Shortly after he left the call I told them I felt disrespected and had to get off. I immediately emailed Jim to call me, telling him I was hurt and angry. “You’ll get over it,” he replied. He never called.

And then I knew: my well-being, my self-respect, my values and identity, were worth more than the big bucks he was paying me. I quit the job with him, and never again worked for anyone who disrespected me. I didn’t get a new client for a while, but I used that time to write a new book – something that gave me joy, that I wouldn’t have had time to do while working for Jim; something I wouldn’t have had the clarity to create while not being my best self.

WHAT IS OUR BOTTOM LINE?

The question for us all is how long we put something else – money, ego, social status – above our own self-respect. When I did work for KPMG years ago, the partners would often work through the night. When colleagues came in the next morning they’d say: “You must have worked all night. You’re wearing the same clothes.” And the groggy guy would proudly say, “Yup!” It was a status thing. They all did it. And almost every one of them was on their second marriage at least, half of them on their third.

I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve trained who secretly share how unhappy they are in their jobs. I did a survey for a large pharmaceutical company recently to find out why they had high numbers of resignations. I interviewed 30 middle managers; many of whom cried during the interview:

“I used to bring them well-conceived and presented ideas and innovative solutions to fix some of the problems. I was given 5 minutes and a Thank You! I did this 3 times before I realized they did nothing with my ideas. I stopped caring. I now come in exactly on time instead of early like I used to, and leave exactly on time, not stay late when I should. If they weren’t paying me so much more than the rest of the industry pays, I would have left long ago. I’m miserable, and certainly not giving them my best self because they don’t want it. I’m happy to say I’m getting good results while job hunting now. I won’t earn as much money, but I’ll have my self-respect.”

I wrote this up in my report to them and offered my own personal viewpoints on steps they could take to address this. Last I heard, they had done nothing with the ideas in the report. The employees continue to quit.

Certainly sometimes it’s imperative to work in bad situations, like those nasty jobs I took while working my way through college, or when I needed money and worked two low-paying jobs to feed my young family.

But I deeply believe, when possible, we must take jobs that maintain our self-respect or we lose the only thing we have: ourselves. (Frankly, I find it appalling that employers don’t respect their employees, don’t cherish their ideas or maintain safe learning environments.)

So Snoop Dogg is my hero. He gets paid for being who he is. May we all do the same.

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen August 12th, 2024

Posted In: News

Is your team communicating effectively? Do you reach goals on time and without resistance? Are all voices included during brainstorming to assure the full fact pattern is collected that will inspire a set of agreeable possibilities? How are communication breakdowns handled?

I thought of these questions during a recent client chat that prompted me to remember a situation I had with Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico some years back. While the tale is a bit outdated, it will serve as a starting point for my belief that team miscommunication is costly for both productivity and people, and happening more often these days with new-forming teams, remote relationships, and distance meetings.

Here’s my Los Alamos Labs case study that might provide a few thoughts. I’ll follow it with ideas and suggestions.

LOS ALAMOS LABS

Case study

In the 1990s, Los Alamos Labs had a mailroom [Yes! We used snail mail in those days!] that sorted and delivered incoming mail – contracts, client letters, invoices, etc. It took them 6 days (6 days!) to distribute it; leadership wanted it done in one.

After months of failing to shorten the time line, leadership decided to contract out the work and fire the 26-person mailroom team. Before they took that drastic step, they brought me in to see if I could solve the problem with a team-building training program.

Speaking only to the client who hired me (Big mistake, it turned out) I created a nifty program. I arrived at the client site an hour early to observe the team in action before delivering the training. I immediately noticed much larger problems than merely team issues.

To begin with, the racial disparity was glaring: as the company was in New Mexico (a largely Hispanic population), there were 24 Hispanic (LatinX) people and two Anglos (White); it was quite obvious they didn’t speak to or listen to each other. The two Anglos stayed to themselves, never connecting in any way with the other 24 in the hour I watched them.

Next, there were cliques that operated in sort of a ballet, speaking, connecting, moving within their small groups with none of them going outside their cliques for questions, discussions, or sharing. So either their jobs were unique to each person, or there was massive inefficiency.

Didn’t seem like my team building program was an answer. I promptly threw away the program, went into the assigned training room down the hall, and put two facing chairs in the middle of the room with the rest of the chairs in a circle facing the two middle ones.

When the group came in, I told them I noticed some communication issues that I found disturbing, so before we did the real ‘training’ I wanted any personal issues resolved.

I invited whoever was having a personal issue – a grudge, an annoyance, a distrust – to sit in one of the middle chairs and invite their colleague to sit in the other and discuss the problem. I sat on the floor between the two chairs as the interpreter.

Nothing happened for 15 minutes. Silence. Then I stood up and announced I’d sit there all day if need be, but maybe the manager should begin. Surely he was annoyed with someone!

Roberto reluctantly came and sat on one of the chairs and said that instead of sharing his annoyances, he invited anyone annoyed with him to sit across from him and share their feelings.

After a few minutes, a young Hispanic woman came and sat down.

Theresa: I thought so hard about the delivery problems we were having and came up with what I thought was a great idea. But you gave me five minutes and basically didn’t listen. This has happened before when I’ve brought you new ideas. I’ll never bring in any new ideas again. And now we might all get fired because nothing has changed. I tried.

Roberto: I was annoyed too because I thought you were complaining about…

I stopped him so I could translate what she was actually saying:

SD: I heard Theresa say she’s having trust issues because she spent time and care presenting ways to try to resolve the problem and felt you ignored her. As the manager your job is not only to make sure your folks trust you but acquire as many ideas from your team as possible. Try a different response.

Roberto: OK! Um. Theresa: I’m so sorry I didn’t hear you as you deserved to be heard. And I’m sad I’ve not heard your ideas. I’m sure all of your ideas are certainly worth discussing. I sometimes am focused on other issues and don’t listen properly. What can I do to regain your trust? And can we set a time later this week to discuss any ideas you have that might help the group be more efficient?

After Theresa came one of the two Anglo people saying he felt the group had a racial bias against him. (Note: racial bias in New Mexico was a long-term cultural issue that affected everyone. I lived in Taos for 11 years and bear the scars.) Again, Roberto started off defending himself, but with my intervention opened up a race-based dialogue that continued within the group most of the day.

Turned out, most of the team members had grievances they shared. By the time everyone was finished discussing angers, annoyances and biases, it was 11:30 at night.

To their credit, there was great authenticity, honesty, and quite a few tears and hugs. Ideas were shared, brainstormed, listened to by all. When there were misunderstandings people were asked to clarify. Ideas seemed to have wings, flying around the room. Everyone was listening attentively and respectfully. We even had a few laughs (A few in-jokes of course, but mostly I was the ‘butt’ of the jokes for sitting so long on the floor. No idea why I didn’t sit on a chair for god’s sakes!).

On Day Two, I led the newly-formed collaboratory through ideas and plans for better communication, more productivity, sharing, and task efficiency. Within days after our time together they brought the 6-day delivery time down to one day and kept their jobs. Problem solved.

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One more thing: following our program, the team took those 2 chairs and put them outside their manager’s office. Every time there was a confusion or disagreement, the people involved went to the chairs: “Let’s discuss this. Meet you at the chairs at 2:00.” The next year they sent me a photo of all of them next to the chairs. On one of the chairs sat a Malcolm Baldrige Excellence Award. They were holding a banner that said, “THANK YOU SHARON-DREW!”

Ahhhhh. I love my job. Although next time I used that strategy I did sit on a chair. 😊

Take Aways

I’d like to think that the skills involved with the final excellence were ones any team could adopt.

Willingness to be honest and authentic regardless of the ‘politically correct’ rules of social conversation.
Willingness to be vulnerable, admit wrong-doing and apologize.
Willingness to be honest about racial issues and hold Truth above feelings or fears.
Willingness to look at the problem and recognize what was working, what responsibilities they had to take to make it right, and willingness to fix it.
The necessity of the whole team being present as witness and judge, through discomfort and exhaustion. There was no place to hide – everyone knew the truth, and it had to be spoken for the greater good, separate from roles or personalities.
Patience to sit for whatever time it takes to resolve all the issues.

The role I played as translator was also vital. Not only did I provide safety and listen from a Witness (i.e. non-judgmental) place, safety, but it took the sting out of any blame and played a role in a meta understanding, away from unconscious human/racial biases or personal traits. Because I didn’t know any of these folks, I was not tangled in any past relationship, role, or status issues. I suspect that another outsider, from another department maybe, could have done the job. But bringing in a consultant isn’t a bad idea when an impartial eye/ear is needed.

SELF-CORRECTING TEAMS

This team was so comfortable with their long-standing cultural norms that their communication problems were endemic and led to ineffective work habits.

How many companies face the same problem? How many groups just keep on keepin’ on in ignorance or denial, making excuses and playing the blame-game with their resultant failures? How many groups only collect data from a chosen few and omit the entire population that would yield imaginative ideas that conventional leadership seems to ignore? How many important, creative, and valid ideas get ignored because of gender or race or sexual preference issues?

The cost of doing nothing is high:

1. A minimization of good ideas. Client-facing employees are often omitted from company change and problem-solving because they’re not ‘on the leadership team.’ Yet they have great ideas that leadership doesn’t think of. Use these folks. You hired them each for a reason. Put their ideas into action. Your employees are your competitive edge.
2. A minimization of collaboration and job effectiveness. With cliques, lack of diversity, teams bound by job descriptions and hierarchies, there’s no opportunity to pollinate new ideas, try new actions, make new norms. And without these, the company dies from its core.
3. A continuation and exacerbation of problems. Accepted communication practices get factored in to the culture and become built in forever, taking failure along for the ride and causing fall-out to become normative. A well-known global software company I worked with saw no problem with treating staff and clients from a win/lose position. “I need to have control and make people do what I want. I was told to do this on my first day here.” It was endemic. Brought in to get the leadership team to work from integrity, I mentioned that Win/Win was the goal. They were confused when I said Win/Lose equaled Lose/Lose, which cost them trust and creativity and ultimately business. “But what do I need Win/Win for? I’m the one in control. They have to do what I say regardless”. Hmm. How’s that working for you?
4. A colossal time waste. I recently went through a State Tax Review that prompted an enormous overcharging due to a glitch in the system from 1994. There were 6 departments involved, and none of them spoke to the others. If I didn’t call the other 5 when something occurred, I got caught up in the lag between departments, dates, paperwork. By the time we were done we all hated each other. They asked what the rush was, that it usually took 6 months not 6 weeks (I bet!) and I just didn’t understand their system. Nope. I did not. Talk to each other! Make sure there are systems set up so everyone has the same data at the same time. In 2022 that’s simple, no?
5. Unnecessary resistance: Without everyone’s buy-in, without everyone who touches the proposed solution having a say in the outcome, there will be resistance that costs unknown time, money, personal fallout. With proper communication up front, everyone is on board and has a stake in the success of the project. There is absolutely no need for resistance. If you’re getting resistance, you’re doing it wrong.
6. Dimished results. Until or unless
7. the full set of facts are known and gathered from the full spectrum of resources,
8. the full complement of possible ideas are tried,
9. the downsides are factored in before completion,

a project will not be successful. Nothing else to say.

THE TOOLS YOU NEED

Here are the necessary skill sets for effective team communication:

Unbiased Listening. This sounds much easier to do than it is. Let me start by saying that nothing has meaning – no words, no dialogues, no sounds – until our brains translate it. Like the earth has no color – color is a function of the rods and cones in our eyes translating incoming vibrations – words have no meaning until the incoming sound vibrations get translated within our neural circuitry (I wrote a book on this: What? Did you really say what I think I heard?).

In other words, we only understand what someone says according to our existing brain circuits. Listening is a neural/brain thing: we can’t hear others without bias.

For those who are curious, sound enters our ears as vibrations without meaning (i.e. not words!). They become signals that seek out ‘close enough’ circuits already existing in our brains from some prior experience and get translated accordingly.

In other words, everything we hear gets translated by our subjective experience. Sad but true. And we think we listen attentively, but can only hear/understand what our brains listen for. Obviously this is where misunderstanding and miscommunication come from. People DO listen. They just hear what their brains interpret for them according to their historic, subjective beliefs.

The easiest way to fix this problem is to say during a conversation:

I want to make sure I understood what you said. I will say what I think I heard, and ask that you please correct me so I can get it right.

This way you can take away an accurate understanding without guesswork, even if you initially thought what you heard was accurate.

Gather data from every person or you’ll not have the full fact pattern. Too often we gather data from the folks we consider ‘obvious’. not necessarily the full set of stakeholders who are part of the problem and hold some very necessary data.

So many customer service initiatives are developed without the input of the customer facing folks and omit addressing real customer needs. How many times are HR folks omitted because, well, why use HR (except that the initiative will transfer, fire, reorganize people)? Think of everyone who will be touched by the final solution and bring them in at the start.

Ask the right questions. This one is a head scratcher because conventional questions are meant to gather data biased by the needs, language choices, and goals of the Asker and which subsequently gather very restricted data from the Receiver. Obviously, the odds are good that the question will be misinterpreted. So using conventional questions will only discover some percentage of an answer.

To manage this problem, I’ve invented a new form of question (took me 10 years!) I call a Facilitative Question. Different from a conventional question that seeks answers for the Asker, FQs lead Others into their brains to discover a much, much broader set of possibilities beyond the biases of the Asker. After all, retrieving good data is a mind-brain issue. It takes a while to learn to formulate as specific words in specific sequences are used so the brain peruses its unconscious. But once you learn how it changes the arc of all conversations.

Do a congruence check. Are all team members contributing? If not, there’s a reason. Are they feeling unheard, that their ideas aren’t ‘big’ enough? Do they feel powerless? Do they feel any gender, race, or ability bias?

All voices are necessary. Bring them in or you risk restricting all that’s possible, not to mention setting up the initiative for failure and resistance.

Only hold meetings if ALL members are present! Do not hold a meeting if someone is ill or can’t make it. It biases the outcome, causes resistance, and leaves out important ideas.

IS YOUR COMMUNICATION WORKING?

I have some questions for teams to consider:

1. - Is your team is functioning optimally? What would suboptimal communication look/sound/act like?
  - Do you have any vehicle in place to take a meta stance and discover problems without biases or defense?
  - What do you have in place to ensure you’re not operating with any racial, gender, or ability prejudice? It’s inherent and unconscious. How do you test it?
  - Do you regularly get resistance – either from your own team or during client initiatives? What are you willing to do to develop strategies that enable group buy-in from the full set of stakeholders (i.e. including ‘Joe in accounting’)?
  - If you regularly notice dysfunction, during an initiative or with less-than-steller results, what are you doing about it?

I believe this is a problem that needs focus, especially with so much change occurring in our organizations now. Make it a priority. Your productivity, creativity, stability and integrity depend on it. And if you’re seeking a consultant or coach to facilitate your meetings, please contact me at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

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Sharon Drew Morgen August 5th, 2024

Posted In: Communication

As a preamble to a discussion about failing, I’d like to retell a story. Many years ago Xerox was beta testing a then new-type digital printer. The testers sent back complaints: it was hard to figure out how to work the damn thing, and the user guide was confusing. Obviously, User Error, the designers concluded. Yup. More stupid users. So an internal focus group was set up by senior management to test what exactly was happening.

They brought in three middle managers, put them in a room with the new printer and user guide, and from the one-way mirror watched while mayhem ensued. The designers watched as the managers spent literally hours arguing amongst themselves trying to figure out what the directions meant and pressing the wrong buttons, finally giving up – never getting it to work.

User Error, the designers again said. Obviously, went the thinking, the managers weren’t smart or savvy enough to understand simple directions. Except they didn’t know a trick had been played on them: the testers were actually PhD computer scientists. Oops. It wasn’t User Error at all. They had failed to design a machine and a user guide that had clear user interfaces. So while the printer itself might have been a marvel of machinery for its day, it couldn’t be used. It was a failure. Or was it?

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WHAT IS FAILURE

I contend that until every ‘failed’ step was taken, and every ‘failed’ assumption made, there was no way to know exactly what problems needed to be fixed or if indeed the printer was a success. The failure was part of the march to success.

We call it failure when we don’t achieve a goal we’ve set out to accomplish, whether it’s starting up a company, reaching a job goal, learning something new, or starting a new diet. I think that as humans we strive to succeed, to be seen as competent, to be ‘better than’, even if we’re only in competition with ourselves. It’s natural to want our products, our teams, our families, our competitive activities, to reap success. To be The Best. And we plot and envision how to make it happen.

But the road to success isn’t straight; sometimes we face disappointment, shame, and self-judgment along the route. We get annoyed with ourselves when results don’t seem to comply with our mental images, and tell ourselves maybe we didn’t follow the original plan, or didn’t plan well enough, or maybe we’re self-sabotaging. We blame teammates or vendors, spouses or neighbors.

I’m here to tell you that failure is a necessary part of success. It’s built in to learning and succeeding, actually a natural part of the process of change and accomplishment. Before we win we gotta fail. Tiger Woods didn’t wake up the best in the world. Neither did Pavarotti or Steve Jobs.

For anyone to get to the top, to achieve success in any industry, any endeavor, any sport, it’s necessary to fail over and over. How surprising that no one teaches us how to fail consciously. I suggest we develop conscious failing strategies that become built in to our success procedures.

WHAT IS OUR STATUS QUO? AND WHY IS IT SO STUBBORN?

Getting to success is a sequential process that includes trial and error – i.e. winning and losing are both part of the same process, and each adding a piece of the puzzle. Of course there’s no way to know what we don’t know before we start – no way to even be fully curious, or ask the right questions because we don’t know what we don’t know. And unfortunately, part of the process is internal, unconscious, and systemic.

Change – and all success and failure is really a form of changing our status quo – has a very large unconscious component, and when we only try to add new behaviors we miss the unconscious elements that will rear their ugly heads: you can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior. It just doesn’t work that way.

Let me explain a few things about how your brain works in the area of change. To begin, all change is systemic. Anything new you want to do, anything new that requires, ultimately, new behaviors, or added beliefs or life changes, requires buy-in from what already exists in your make up – your status quo.

Indeed, as the repository of your history, values, and norms, your status quo will reject anything new, regardless of how necessary it is, unless the new has been properly vetted by the originating system. In other words, until your system accepts the new choices, it will reject whatever you try to change, regardless of its efficacy.

Setting a goal that’s behavior-based without agreement from the system, without incorporating steps for buy in assures resistance. Sure, we lay out the trajectory, attempt to make one good decision at a time, and use every feeling, hope, data point, guess, to take next steps.

But when we don’t take into account the way our brains unconsciously process incoming content, we may end up not achieving our goals as the new gets rejected, forgotten, or ignored. But there’s a way to manage our activities to take into account what a brain needs for congruent change and a successful outcome.

THE STEPS TO FAILING CONSCIOUSLY

In my work on how brains facilitate change I’ve developed ways to create new synapses and neural pathways that lead to new behaviors. Here are the steps I’ve developed during a change process to avoid large-scale malfunction:

The Beginning: to start the process toward succeeding at a goal, you need:

Include all (all) stakeholders (including Joe in accounting) and all who will touch the final solution;
Agree upon the wording for the final goal, including specifics of new behavioral elements, rules, politics, outcomes – i.e. what, exactly, will be different;
Write up a ‘guess list’ of problems that might occur (failures) to the status quo as a result: what they might look like, as well as possible workarounds;
An agreement clause from all stakeholders to act when something is going off course. Note: listening without bias is urgently needed here;
Consider possible ways your starting goals may shift the status quo and make sure it’s tenable;
Know how the new outcome will be maintained over time (including the people, rules, norms, changes, that will be involved) and what else has to buy in to maintenance;
State potential, detailed steps toward achievement that are agreeable to all stakeholders;
Agreement to reconsider all previous steps if the problems that show up cause new considerations.

The Middle: to make changes, add new knowledge to trial, get continuous buy in, you need:

Re write the original goals, with delineated outcomes for each;
Notice how the new is disrupting the status quo. Is it necessary to amend the new plans to ensure Systems Congruence? Is the cost of the new lower than the cost of the original? There must be a cost-effective decision made;
Find ways to acquire the right knowledge to learn from;
Check on the ways you’re failing. Were they expected? Do they conform to your goals? Do you need to shift anything?
Agreement to develop new choices where current ones aren’t working as per plan.

The End: making sure the outcome is congruent with the original goal:

Go through the Beginning steps and check they’ve been accomplished;
Compare end result with original goal;
Make sure there is congruent integration with the thinking, beliefs, values of the original;
Make sure the status quo is functioning without disruption and the system ends up congruent with its mental models and belief systems.

Here are more specifics to help you integrate the necessary failure, and avoid guesswork and reactions to what might seem inconsistent with your goals:

Lay out specifics for each step you’re considering to your goal. Include timelines, parameters, and consequences of results, specific elements of what success for that step should look like, and what possible failure might look like. Of course, you can’t truly know the answers until they occur, but make your best guess. It’s important to notice something new happening when it’s happening.
If something unplanned or feared occurs (i.e. failure), annotate the details. What exactly is happening? What elements worked and what didn’t, and how did they work or not work – what/who was involved, how did the result differ from the expectations? What does the failure tell you – what IS succeeding instead of what you wish for? How does the remedy for the problem influence the next step? How long should you allot for each occurrence before determining whether it’s failure, or just part of the success trajectory you weren’t aware of?
Are all stakeholders involved and shared their input? Do you need to bring in more stakeholders?
Notice the consequences of the outcomes for each: employees, clients, hiring, firing, quitting, vendors, competition, state of the industry and your place in it. What comes into play with these factors when considering if you want to continue down one trajectory rather than designing a new one? What will it look like to decide to change course? How will your decisions effect your vision of an outcome? How are the stakeholders affected by each choice?
How much failure are you willing to risk before you determine that either your outcome is untenable, or you need to make structural changes? What part does ego and denial play? Does everyone agree what constitutes failure? Success?
What will you notice when your trajectory to success is negatively effecting your baseline givens? What are you willing to change, or accept, to reach your goal?
What will it look like, specifically, when you’ve concluded your efforts? Will parts of the failure be factored in as success? Do all stakeholders buy in to the end result? If not, what remains unresolved? And how will you bring this forward?

Of course there’s no way to know before you start what any specific stage will look like. But using the steps, the thinking, above, you’ll be able to get a handle on it. And by including the failure, you’ll have a far better chance of succeeding.

For some reason, as leaders or individuals, companies or small businesses, we shame ourselves when we don’t achieve what we set out to achieve during our change processes. I contend we must think of each step as an integral part of the process of getting where we want to be. As they say in NLP, there’s no failure, only feedback.

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Sharon Drew Morgen July 29th, 2024

Posted In: Change Management, Communication

Do you need to lose 10 pounds? Are you exercising as much as you need to? What about your eating habits – should you be eating healthier?

I bet there are several things you need to do to be healthier that you’re not doing. Is it because you don’t have a need? Nope. It’s because ‘need’ is not your criteria. It might be a time issue, or a priority issue. You might be in denial. Maybe it’s because you need agreement from a spouse.

Let’s take this thinking to sales. Sales professionals search for folks with a ‘need’ to sell their solution to, yet their closing rates are low. When I began training sales folks in 1987 the close rate was 8%. Now it’s between 4-5%. One of the reasons for the failure is the belief that someone with a need is a prospect. Sellers are seeking out the wrong people.

This focus on ‘need’ was initiated by Dale Carnegie – in 1937. And yes, sadly, much of modern sales is based on the same precepts Carnegie espoused in How to Make Friends and Influence People. Find folks with a need. Establish a relationship. Then sell them what (you think) they need. In 1937, people needed sales folks to help them explain how to resolve problems and they were a respected, necessary profession.

But with the internet providing content and solutions, with global communications now possible so an entire team can be involved with decision making regardless of their location, it’s time for some new thinking. A buying decision is no longer as simple as finding someone with a need: it’s a risk management problem before it’s a solution choice issue. ‘Need’ is not the reason people buy. Risk is.

THE RISK OF CHANGE

The biggest reason folks don’t change or do something different is risk. Unless people fully understand the risk involved with a possible change, or the downsides it might cause to their stability, they will maintain their status quo. After all, it’s been ‘good-enough’ until now.

I’ve spent decades unpacking decision making and change and developing change models for sales, coaching, leadership, and healthcare. What I’ve discovered is change isn’t as simple as merely doing something different. To actually resolve a problem and do something different several things musts occur:

All information about the problem must be gathered and assessed. Unless everyone and everything that’s caused and maintains a problem provides input does it even get defined as a problem.
Once identified as a problem, people try to fix the problem using workarounds or known resources. They do not begin by going ‘outside’ for a fix as that would bring unknowns into the equation and cause unknowable risk.
Only after a workaround proves unworkable are outside fixes considered. But these are also problematic as the risk of using anything outside the system is unknowable. Everyone must gather to assess the risk of fixing the problem with an external resource. If the cost of the fix is deemed higher than maintaining the status quo, the problem will be maintained.

It’s only when it’s understood that the risk of bringing in something new won’t break the system, and there’s buy-in for specific fixes, does everyone agree to look outside for a solution and self-identify as buyers and become prospects.

Sample

The same applies with buyers. People only make a purchase when they understand and can manage their risk of change, regardless of need. No sales person – or coach, or leader – can understand that risk as it’s unique and idiosyncratic to a specific situation. The question then becomes: how can sellers facilitate a buying decision when much of it involves off-line decisions that must be made before people even self-identify as buyers?

WHEN DO PEOPLE BECOME BUYERS?

There are 13 steps in a buying decision; in only the last 4 of them (10-13) do people consider themselves prospects. Before that they’re merely people seeking to solve an internal problem; they can’t even know the extent of their need until they finish assessing the people, change elements, buy-in problems and possibilities, and know their risk of change. Not to mention they start off believing they can solve their own problem and haven’t yet determined they have any need at all. Sadly, even when our solution might obviously serve them, they won’t notice until then.

If you begin by seeking out folks with need you will

pose biased questions to provide you enough content to pose more biased questions that produce biased answers;
listen for a hint that folks ‘need’ your solution so you believe you’ve got a real prospect (hence your pipeline is filled with folks who will never buy);
pitch according to what you think you heard and you think they need, a push strategy which may turn not-ready-to-buy people off – people in their early stages of discovery but who WILL become good prospects once they’ve gone through their steps and understood their risk;
overlook folks who really may become buyers once they’ve traversed their steps of change.

And the time it takes them to figure out their risk is the length of the sales cycle. They will do this with you or without you. Right now they’re doing it without you, and you’re closing only those who have finally figured it out.

But by seeking out people who are already in the process of trying to solve a problem your solution can resolve you can quickly and efficiently facilitate them through to a decision and create trust.

By restricting your prospecting to folks with ‘need’, you’re seeking people who either don’t know they need you (and you must convince them you’re right), don’t recognize a problem at all (and you must convince them you know more than they do), or are in the process of solving their problem and haven’t yet determined their risk (great prospects who haven’t yet self-identified as buyers).

So your choices are: wait (and keep calling, lowering your price, keep them in your pipeline, waste time on them, etc.); or help them figure out their risk (and sales is not involved here).

TIME FOR NEW THINKING

With a known 5% close rate, it’s time for some new thinking. I’ve got a question, and it’s not a simple one to answer: Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different processes: the buying decision process on the Buy Side, or the selling process on the Sell Side.

By focusing only on the Sell Side, you either keep prospecting until you find those who have figured out their risk already and self-identify as ‘buyers’ (5%) or keep them in your pipeline, waste a lot of time chasing them, and never close.

I invented Buying Facilitation® (BF) for sellers to find prospects in the process of trying to solve a problem they can resolve – those who WILL buy once they understand their risk – and facilitate them down their 13 steps of change and decision making to the point where they self-identify as buyers. It involves

listening for systems (to avoid the bias in standard questions and to hear the underlying issues conventional listening may not pick up);
use Facilitative Questions (a new form of question I invented that lead people down their steps of change to their decision making criteria with no bias from the Asker);
use Presumptive Summaries (so they recognize what they’re missing in their thinking);
traverse the 13 steps (to ensure people assemble all the right people and search out proper workarounds. It might lead them to possible competitors. But they’d do this anyway. Might as well serve them and engender trust.).

Once people recognize they have a problem, know precisely how to define it, can’t find an easy fix within their sphere, and understand their risk of change, THEN self-identify as buyers and trust you. They won’t buy from anyone else, the process has taken you a quarter of the time a normal prospecting engagement would have taken, and you’ve got a competitive edge.

Seeking out people with a ‘need’ leads to low close rates and a lot of wasted time running after people in your pipeline that either aren’t ready or won’t ever be buyers. The question is: Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy. Your choice.

_______________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen July 22nd, 2024

Posted In: Change Management

Leaders, consultants, coaches, sales and healthcare professionals often use influencing strategies to lead their patients, teammates, prospects and clients to action. But is there fallout from the influencing strategies? Do they lead to resistance? How do the clients and prospects, the teams and patients, experience being influenced? How often do the strategies themselves cause an irreparable relationship fissure? And is it possible to facilitate permanent change without using influencing strategies?

I recently presented my <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/learning-facilitation” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>new training model</a> (an instructional design that generates new neural circuits in a Learner’s brain to store, understand, and retain the new content) at the Learning Ideas Conference where I met dozens of trainers and instructional designers, all kind folks seeking the best approaches to training. When I asked many of them how their Learners were storing and retaining the new skills, they looked at me blankly. Some shrugged, some were troubled that they hadn’t thought of it. None of them had a clue: they only considered the advocate side.

But it’s not just the training model that only considers one side of the equation: Do docs know how patients are hearing them – or if their suggestions collided against the patient’s beliefs? Do coaches know how clients understand their questions and stories? I’ve trained 100,000 sales professionals and not one of them understood how their buyers buy. Do any professionals know, or consider, how their approaches affect the recipients?

We know how to pitch, tell, prove, advise, inform, teach, enlighten, guilt, align as we work at getting our message heard. But what is occurring on the other side? Is our message perceived as intended? And how do we create messages that will not only be accepted, but be respectful to our clients, teammates and patients?

INFLUENCER VS INFLUENCEE

Many books and programs are dedicated to influencing. But they fail to mention the possible downsides. What happens for the influencEE while we’re influencING? How many clients don’t accurately hear/understand what’s been suggested (a standard problem because brains don’t <a href=”http://didihearyou.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>translate incoming words</a> according to a Speaker’s intended meaning)? Or achieve the opposite results because they convert what they think they’ve heard into reasons to maintain existing habits? Do influencERs know who hears the new ideas as oppositional and set up an immediate resistance to our input? A resistance to our relationship? How many clients do we lose? How many change projects meet resistance? How many patients maintain their problematic behaviors?

Given the failure rates of many professions (90% failure to retain in training; 95% failure to close in sales; 97% failure to adopt to change in healthcare and change management or any <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/behavior-modification-doesnt-modify-behaviors-an-essay-on-why-it-fails-and-what-to-use” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Behavior Mod</a> activity) there’s obviously a problem not being addressed.

In many instances, influencERs believe they’re working from the influencEEs best intentions. Is it possible influencERs are merely trying to get others to do what they want them to do?

Conventional influencing strategies use psychological principles to produce agreement, using tactics to inspire people to change their behaviors (voting or buying or donating or change) according to the needs of the influencER. Here’s Bob Cialdini (author of Influence: the psychology of persuasion) explaining why generating a ‘relationship’ is a successful influencing strategy:
“I describe how individuals who can be convinced that a communicator shares a meaningful personal or social identity with them become remarkably more susceptible to the communicator’s persuasive appeals.” (Robert Cialdini, Comment on This Edition of Influence, pg 5) (Italics mine)
Over the years, psychological principles have emerged to garner compliance. Cialdini says there are seven ways to ‘get in’ to someone’s confidence so they’re willing to comply: reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, commitment, consistency, and unity. He says that by doing these things it’s possible to produce ‘a kind of automatic, mindless compliance…a willingness to say yes without thinking first.” (Robert Cialdini, Comment on This Edition of Influence, pg 7)

It’s a science: by using someone’s ‘trigger features’ and ‘action patterns’ to hack into precise places in the influencEEs brain to prompt – say ‘yes’ to – an action, influencERs work at getting someone to submit to their goal: one person (influencER) attempting to cause another (influencEE) to act according to the influencERs needs.

THE OTHER SIDE

Some influencERs believe their attempts to influence decisions are merited because they’re doing ‘good’. Years ago Stephen Covey (author of the renown Seven Habits of Highly Successful People) hired me to train <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/what-is-buying-facilitation-what-sales-problem-does-it-solve” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Buying Facilitation®</a> to the sales folks at his Leadership Center because he recognized it as an <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/sales-as-a-spiritual-practice-3″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>ethical selling model</a>. His folks were the most manipulative group I’d ever trained. When I asked them if they’d be willing to learn to sell by <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/how-why-and-when-buyers-buy-2″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>facilitating buying</a> instead of manipulating, they said, “But why? We’re entitled to manipulate! We’ve got an important model that everyone needs to learn!”

Do influencERs ever wonder what’s going on with influencEEs? Do they know if there’s fallout to the relationship? Or if trust is affected? Is the downside worth it? Sadly, many influencERs overlook what the influencEE may be experiencing as a result of their persuasion tactics:
<ul>
<li>Distrust</li>
<li>Manipulation</li>
<li>Judgment</li>
<li>Reduced self-esteem</li>
<li>Feeling less-than</li>
<li>Powerlessness</li>
<li>Anger, annoyance, disrespect</li>
<li>Loss of agency</li>
<li>Loss of relationship</li>
</ul>
I realize that some professions – sales, marketing – work with strangers and, sadly, feel they’ve got less of a stake in negative outcomes. But some professions, like coaching, leadership, healthcare, have ongoing relationships with their influencEEs that may be irreparably damaged.

I believe there are better ways to serve clients and patients that don’t involve any form of control and are even more successful.

I’ve been <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>developing and training facilitation models</a> that enable Others to generate their own change based on a Servant Leader model that eschews manipulation and influencing strategies.
<a href=”https://mind-brainconnection.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”><img class=”fusionResponsiveImage aligncenter” src=”https://staticapp.icpsc.com/icp/resources/mogile/193273/dfe67cd4e9ce7d9d4d9e657a3fc42f93.jpeg” alt=”” width=”108″ height=”auto” /></a><a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Sample</a>
Here are the principles I work from:
1. Everyone has their own answer. It will not be the same answer you’ve come up with but it might be close enough to make your solution viable for them AND eschew manipulation. By helping them discover how (not why!) they do what they do and finding it incongruent with their beliefs, by leading them to <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/you-cant-change-a-behavior-by-trying-to-change-a-behavior” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>use their own values</a> and mental models to develop their own new choices, they will change, feel good about themselves, trust you as a facilitator for your guidance, and end up changing, adopting, or buying from you – with integrity.
2. Develop trust. Recognize that your goal may be directly opposed to the Other’s. Spend collaborative time uncovering each other’s goals and negotiating a way forward that is win/win for all.
3. Avoid resistance entirely by collaborating. Are you both working with the same fact pattern? From the same beliefs and goals? What needs to happen to get on the same page toward a goal agreeable to both? What actions do you both agree need to be taken? Resistance is the output of an influencER pushing an agenda that an influencEE hasn’t agreed with.
4. Encourage self-esteem and agency. By facilitating Others through to their own ability to make their own changes, you’re encouraging trust and moving your relationship forward toward loyalty over time. Plus providing them with confidence, and acting with Servant-Leader values.
My win/win <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/how-the-mind-brain-connection-generates-change-and-decision-making” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Change Facilitation</a> model uses a <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/facilitative-questions-questions-that-facilitate-change-with-integrity” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>unique form of question</a> and a <a href=”https://sharon-drew.com/the-13-steps-of-change” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>13 step</a> process mirroring how change happens in the brain to facilitate Others – buyers, teams, coaching clients, patients, teenagers – through to permanent change and good results. By leading Others through their own, personal, steps of belief-based change, they can discover problems they want to fix that they might not have otherwise discovered. So the influencER becomes a real leader without manipulating, seeking compliance, or hacking into Another’s patterns to get your own needs met.

I work with teams, sellers, and coaches to enable permanent, integrity-based change. If you’re seeking to facilitate better results while inspiring folks on your team, your practice, to generate their own solutions, I look forward to speaking. <a href=”mailto:sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com</a>
__________________________
Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor<a href=”https://buyingfacilitation.com/blog/buying-facilitation-new-way-sell-influences-expands-decisions/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> Buying Facilitation®</a>, listening/communication (<a href=”https://didihearyou.com/read” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>What? Did you really say what I think I heard?</a>), change management (<a href=”https://sharondrewmorgen.com/the-how-of-change/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>The How of Change™</a>), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book <a href=”https://mind-brainconnection.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>HOW?</a><a href=”https://mind-brainconnection.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making</a>, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and<a href=”https://dirtylittlesecretsbook.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> </a><a href=”https://dirtylittlesecretsbook.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell</a>). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. <a href=”https://www.sharon-drew.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>www.sharon-drew.com</a> She can be reached at <a href=”mailto:sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com</a>.

Sharon Drew Morgen July 15th, 2024

Posted In: Change Management

What If Our Jobs Were To Serve?

Beyond Plagiarism, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Making Important Decisions, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Dear Sales People (and Leaders, Coaches, and Doctors): We have new information, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Change Isn’t as Hard as You Think, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Snoop Dogg is My Hero, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

What’s the Cost of Team Miscommunication?

Failing is a Necessary Part of Success, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Buyers Don’t Buy Based on Need, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

The Other Side of Influencing