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

With untold millions of sales professionals in the world, sellers play a role in any economy. As the intermediary between clients and providers, sales can be a spiritual practice, with sellers becoming true facilitators and Servant Leaders (and close more sales).

The current sales model, directed at placing solutions and seeking folks with ‘need’, closes 5% – only those ready to buy at point of contact. Sadly, this ignores the possibility of facilitating and serving the 80% of folks on route to becoming buyers and not yet ready.

Until people have assembled all relevant stakeholders and discussed their issues, tried, and failed, to fix their problem themselves, understood and managed the risk and disruption that a new solution might cause their environment, they aren’t buyers. It’s only when they:

know how to manage the risk of bringing in something new,
can’t fix the problem themselves,
get buy-in from whomever will touch the final solution,
understand that the cost of bringing in something new is lower than the cost of maintaining the status quo,

will they self-identify as buyers and be ready to buy. Until then they will avoid our calls/emails and ignore our marketing as they believe they can fix the problem internally. And when we try to sell to them by telling them we have their answers, we get ignored, regardless of whether our solution could help.

Indeed: buying is a risk/change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue, regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. All potential buyers must go through this process anyway – and the sales model doesn’t help them as sellers wait (and wait) for them to show up and buy.

But sellers can be facilitating the Pre-Sales buying decision process to make the process much quicker and more efficient.

WHY PEOPLE BUY

People don’t start off wanting to buy anything; they merely seek to resolve a problem at the least ‘cost’ (risk) to their system. Even if folks eventually need a seller’s solution, until they understand how to manage the change a new solution would generate, they won’t heed our outreach, regardless of their need or the efficacy of the solution. As a result, sellers with worthwhile solutions end up wasting a helluva lot of time being ignored and rejected.

Selling doesn’t cause buying. Sales focuses on only the final steps of a buying decision and overlooks the high percentage of would-be prospects who WILL become buyers once they’ve addressed their possible risk issues and managed their internal change. After all, until they’ve recognized that the risk of the new is less than the risk of staying the same they won’t do anything different.

Their need isn’t the problem. It’s the sales model’s singular focus of pushing solutions before first helping those who will become buyers facilitate their necessary change process. Instead of a transactional process, sales can be an expansive, collaborative experience between seller and buyer.

Sample

As a result, sellers end up finding and closing only those ready to buy at the point of contact – unwittingly ignoring others who aren’t ready yet, may need our solutions, and just need to get their ducks in a row before they’re prepared to make a decision.

Imagine having a product-needs discussion about moving an iceberg and discussing only the tip. That’s sales; it doesn’t facilitate the entire range of hidden, unique change issues buyers must consider – having nothing to do with solutions – before they could buy anything. Failure is built in.

But when sellers redirect their focus from seeking folks with ‘need’ to those considering change and lead them through their change management process before selling, they can facilitate them through the issues they must resolve (politics, relationships, resource, budget, time), help them assemble the right stakeholders from the start, and help them figure out how to address the disruption of bringing in a new solution. Then sellers become true servant leaders, inspire trust, become a respected resource and close more sales.

WHY SALES FAILS

Seller’s restricted focus on placing solutions, and listening for needs (which cannot be fully known until the change management process is complete) all but insures a one-sided communication based on the needs of the seller:

Prospecting/cold calling – sellers pose biased questions as an excuse to offer solution details omitting those who will buy – real buyers! – once they’re ready. Wholly seller-centric.
Content marketing – driven by the seller to push the ‘right’ data but really only a push into the unknown and a hope for action. Wholly seller-centric.
Deals, cold-call pushes, negotiation, objection-handling, closing techniques, getting to ‘the’ decision maker, price-reductions – all assuming buyers would buy if they understood their need/the solution/their problem, all overlooking the real connection and service capability of addressing the person’s most pressing change issues. Wholly seller-centric.

To become a spiritual practice, sellers must use their expertise to become true facilitators that become necessary components in all buying decisions. Indeed, the job of ‘sales’ as merely a solution-placement vehicle is short-sighted.

Buyers can find products online. They don’t need sellers to understand the features and benefits.
Choosing a solution isn’t the problem. It’s the time it takes to manage the risk. – it’s the buyer’s behind-the-scenes timing, buy-in from those who will touch the solution, and change management process that gums up the works.
The lion’s share of the buying decision (9 out of a 13 step decision path) involves buyers traversing internal change with no thoughts of buying. They don’t even self-identify as buyers until they understand their risk of change.

Since the 1980s, I’ve been an author, seller, trainer, consultant, and sales coach of the Buying Facilitation® model. And though I’ve trained 100,000 sales professionals, and wrote the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, sales continues to be solution-placement driven. By ignoring a large population of potential buyers who merely aren’t ready (but willing!) sales unwittingly ignores the real problem: it’s in the buying, not the selling.

SERVE PROSPECTS, CLOSE MORE SALES

It’s possible to truly serve clients AND close more sales.

Aspiring to a win-win

Win-win means both sides get what they need. Sellers believe that placing product that resolves a problem offers an automatic win-win. But that’s not wholly accurate. Buying isn’t as simple as choosing a solution. The very last thing people want is to buy anything, regardless of their apparent need.

As outsiders sellers can’t know the tangles of people and policies that hold a problem/need in place. The time it takes them to design a congruent solution that includes buy-in and change management is the length of their sales cycle. Buyers need to do this anyway; it’s the length of the sales cycle.

If sellers begin by finding those on route to buying and help them efficiently traverse their internal struggles, sellers can help them get to the ‘need/purchase’ decision more quickly and be part of the solution – win-win. No more chasing those who will never close; no more turning off those who will eventually seek our solution; no more gathering incomplete data from one person with partial answers.

Sellers can find and enable those who can/should buy to buy in half the time and sell more product – and very quickly know the difference between them and those who can never buy.

Once buyers figure out their congruent route to change, they won’t have objections, will close themselves, and there’s no competition: sellers facilitate change management first and then sell once everything is in place. No call backs and follow up and ignored calls. And trust is immediate: a seller becomes a necessary partner to the buying decision process.

No one has anyone else’s answer

By adding Buying Facilitation™, collaborative decisions get made that will serve everyone.

Let’s change the focus: instead relegating sales to merely a product/solution placement endeavor, let’s add the job of facilitation to first find people en route to becoming buyers, lead them through to their internal change process first, and then using the sales model when they’ve become buyers.

We can help people self-identify as buyers quickly, with fewer tire-kickers, better differentiation, no competition, and sales close in half the time.

BUYING FACILITATION®

As a seller and an entrepreneur (I founded a tech company in London, Hamburg, and Stuttgart in 1983), I realized that sales ignored the buying decision problem and developed Buying Facilitation® to add to sales as a Pre-Sales tool.

Buyers get to their answers eventually; the time this takes is the length of the sales cycle, and selling doesn’t cause buying. Once I developed this model for my sellers to use, we made their process far more efficient with an 8x increase in sales – a number consistently reproduced against control groups with my global training clients over the following decades.

Buying Facilitation® adds a new capability and level of expertise and becomes a part of the decision process from the first call. It is NOT a sales model, nor does it focus on placing solutions or introducing products. It’s merely a change facilitation model that enables prospects to manage the internal risk/change decisions necessary before they can self-identify as buyers. Make money and make nice.

Sellers no longer need to lose prospects because the prospect isn’t ready, or cognizant of their need. They can become intermediaries between their clients and their companies; use their positions to efficiently help buyers manage internal change congruently, without manipulation; use their time to serve those who WILL buy – and know this on the first contact – and stop wasting time on those who will never buy. It’s time for sellers to use their knowledge and care to serve buyers and their companies in a win-win. Let’s make sales a spiritual practice.

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If you’re enjoying these Monday Articles, please subscribe to make sure you get them delivered to your inbox on Monday morning. I use no cookies, they’re free, and I never use the database to market. As an original thinker I offer these to share out-of-the-box ideas as part of my life’s work. And I’m always eager to hear your thoughts and start a conversation: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. Enjoy.

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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 October 19th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, Listening, Sales

230 Comments

Decades ago I had an idea that questions could be vehicles to facilitate change in addition to eliciting answers. Convention went against me: the accepted use of questions as information gathering devices is built into our culture. But overlooked is their ability, if used differently, to facilitate congruent change.

WHAT IS A QUESTION?

Standard questions gather information at the behest of an Asker and as such are biased by their words, goals, assumptions and intent actually restricting our Communication Partner’s responses:

Need to Know Askers pose questions as per their own ‘need to know’, data collection, or curiosity.

These questions risk overlooking more relevant, accurate, and criteria-based answers that are stored in a Responder’s brain beyond the parameters of the question posed.

Why did you do X? vs How did you decide that X was your best option?

Manipulate agreement/response Questions often direct the Responder to respond in a way that fits the needs and expectations of the Asker.

These questions restrict possibility, cause resistance, create distrust, and encourage lying.

Can you see how doing Y would have been better? vs What would you need to consider to broaden your scope of consideration next time?

Doubt Directive These questions, sometimes called ‘leading questions’ are designed to cause Responders to doubt their own effectiveness, in order to create an opening for the Asker.

These narrow the range of possible responses, often creating some form of resistance or defensive lies; they certainly cause defensiveness and distrust.

Don’t you think you should consider doing X? vs Have you ever thought of alternate ways of achieving X?

Data gathering When worded badly, these questions limit the possible answers and overlook more accurate data.

What were the results of your search for Z? vs How did you choose the range of items to search for, and what results did you get?

Standard questions restrict responses to the Asker’s parameters, regardless of their intent or the influencer’s level of professionalism, care, or knowledge. Potentially important, accurate data – not to mention the real possibility of facilitating change – is left on the table and instead may promote distrust, bad data collection, and delayed success.

Decision Scientists end up gathering incomplete data that creates implementation issues; leaders and coaches push clients toward the change they perceive is needed and often miss the real change needed. The fields of sales and coaching are particularly egregious. The cost of bias and restriction is unimaginable.

Sample

WHAT IS AN ANSWER?

Used to elicit or push data, the very formulation of conventional questions restricts answers. If I ask ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ you cannot reply ‘I went to the gym yesterday.’ Every answer is restricted by the biases within the question.

Because we enter conversations with an agenda, intuition, directive, etc., the answers we receive are partial at best, inaccurate at worst, and potentially cause resistance, sabotage, and disregard.
There are unknown facts, feelings, historic data, goals, etc. that lie within the Responder’s unconscious that hold real answers and cannot be found using merely the Asker’s assumptions or curiosity.
By approaching situations with the natural biases inherent in standard questions, Askers only obtain good data from Responder’s with similar backgrounds and thought processes.
Because influencers are unaware of how their particular bias restricts an answer, how much they are leaving ‘on the table’, or how their questions have skewered potential, they have no concept if there are different answers possible, and often move forward with bad data.

So why does it matter if we’re biasing our questions? It matters because we don’t get accurate answers; it matters because our questions instill resistance; it matters because we’re missing opportunities to serve and support change.

Imagine if we could reconfigure questions to elicit accurate data for researchers or marcom folks; or enable buyers to take quick action from ads, cold calls or large purchases; or help coaching clients change behaviors congruently, permanently, and quickly; or encourage buy-in during software implementations. I’m suggesting questions can facilitate real change.

WHAT IS CHANGE?

Our brain stores data rather haphazardly in our brain making it difficult sometimes to find the right answer when we need it, especially relevant when we want to make new choices.

Over the last decades, I have mapped the sequence of systemic change and designed a way to use questions as directional devices to pull relevant data in the proper sequence so influencers can lead Responders through their own change process without resistance.

This decision facilitation process enables quicker decisions and buy-in – not to mention truly offer a Servant Leader, win/win communication. To manage congruent change, and enable the steps to achieve buy-in, I’ve developed Facilitative Questions™ that work comfortably with conventional questions and lead Responders to

find their own answers hidden within their unconscious,
retrieve complete, relevant, accurate answers at the right time, in the right order to
traverse the sequenced steps to congruent, systemic change/excellence, while
avoiding restriction and resistance and
include their own values and subjective experience.

It’s possible to help folks make internal changes and find their own brand of excellence.

FACILITATIVE QUESTIONS™

Using specific words, in a very specific sequence, it’s possible to pose questions that are free of bias, need or manipulation and guide congruent change.

Facilitative Question™ Not information gathering, pull, or manipulative, FQs are guiding/directional tools, like a GPS system and lead Responders congruently, without any bias, down their unique steps of change to Excellence. How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle? Or What has stopped you from adding ‘x’ to your current skill set until now?

When used with coaching clients, buyers, negotiation partners, advertisements, or even teenagers, these questions create action within the Responder, causing them to recognize internal incongruences and deficiencies, and be guided through their own options. (Because these questions aren’t natural to us, I’ve designed a tool and program to teach the ‘How’ of formulating them.).

The responses to FQs are quite different from conventional questions. They cause the Responder to expand their perspective and recognize a broad swath of possible answers.

Instead of pulling data, you’re directing the Responder’s unconscious to where their answers are stored. For change to occur, people must go through change anyway; we’re just making it more efficient for them as we connect through our desire to truly Serve. We can assist, or wait to find those who have already completed the journey. They must do it anyway: it might as well be with us.

I welcome opportunities to put Facilitative Questions™ into the world. Formulating them requires a new skill set that avoids any bias (Listening for Systems, for example). But they add an extra dimension to helping us all serve each other. For those wishing to learn how to formulate them, please contact me. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen October 12th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, Listening

7 Comments

I used to assume that what I hear someone say is an accurate interpretation of what they mean. My assumption was wrong; what I think I hear has a good chance of being inaccurate, regardless of how intently I listen. But it’s not my fault.

During the years I spent reading, thinking, and researching for my book (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I was quite surprised to learn how little of what I think I hear is unbiased, or even accurate. Listening, it turns out, is a brain thing and has little to do with words or intent.

Link to Purchase and Sample

HOW BRAIN’S ‘LISTEN’

When we listen to others, we’re not directly hearing their words or intent but an interpretation of a set of meaningless, automatic neurological activities in our brain that have little-to-no relationship with what’s been said. As I’ll explain, our brain translates what was said according to what we’ve heard before.

What we think we hear is wholly determined by our historic life experiences (education, family, values, Beliefs, mental models) that have been stored in our brain and filter all incoming words:what we hear someone say has been translated by what we’ve heard before, creating biases and assumptions that keep us from translating incoming messages accurately.

Generally speaking, our brain determines what we hear. And it’s not objective. Here’s what happens:

Words are merely puffs of air that emerge from our lungs, formed by our mouth and tongue – meaningless sound vibrations – that enter a Listener’s brain and get made into signals that get sent to ‘similar-enough’, existing brain circuits for translation. In other words, there’s a high probability Listeners can’t accurately understand what’s been said because their brain has translated what’s been said by what they’ve heard before.
A Listener’s ears

– capture some portion of incoming sound vibrations,

– conducts them through historic filters (Beliefs, mental models, etc.)

– translate the remaining vibrations into signals that get sent to

– match ‘similar-enough’ existing circuits, which

– discard what doesn’t match.

The remainder – with an undetermined relationship to what was intended is – what we think we ‘hear’.

Listeners have no idea what has been discarded in the process of hearing/translating what’s been said. Statistically, we accurately hear no more than 35% of what’s been said.
Both Speakers and Listeners have no idea how a Listener’s brain has interpreted or biased what been said or how close to accurate it’s been received. We all assume what we think we hear is accurate, although it rarely is.
We speak in run-on sentences, not individual words, and a Listener’s brain must make sense of the variations in vibrations of each word.
People speak for approximately 600 milliseconds; Listeners begin formulating their response in 200 milliseconds. Approximately two thirds of what’s been said is not even heard.

What we think we hear is some version of our history of hearing something similar. With people we’re in regular contact with and already have circuits to translate, it can be pretty accurate. With others not so much.

DIAGRAM OF HOW BRAINS ‘LISTEN’

Herein lie the gap between what’s said and what’s heard: we all make inaccurate assumptions of what we think we hear, causing us to respond and choose actions from a restricted or flawed knowledge base. Of course, it’s not done purposefully, but it sure plays havoc with communication and relationships.

I once lost a business partner because he misinterpreted something he thought I said, even though his wife told him he had misheard. His comment: “I heard it with my own ears! Are you both telling me I’m crazy??” and stormed out, never to speak to me again.

Unfortunately, and different from perceived wisdom, brains don’t allow us to ‘actively listen’ as neither Speaker or Listener can accurately translate the incoming words/sound vibrations.

Sure, Active Listening allows us to ‘hear’ the words spoken but doesn’t capture the intent, the underlying meaning. And given our neurological hearing processes are automatic, mechanical, and thoughtless, we’re stuck with what we think we hear. Here’s a simplified diagram of the process of listening:

Incoming sound vibrations as electrochemical signals get distorted and deleted through the brain’s filtering and transmission processes, eventually getting translated by ‘similar-enough’ existing neural circuits causing us to hear some rendition of what we’ve heard historically. There’s little chance any of us can understand a Speaker’s intended meaning accurately.

GUIDELINES TO MAXIMIZE UNDERSTANDING IN DIALOGUE

Given how vital listening is to our lives, for those times we want to make sure we understand and get on the same page with a Communication Partner (CP) to reach consensus, here are some guidelines:

Get agreement for a dialogue: Often, Communication Partners have different life experiences and, potentially different goals – many of which might be unconscious. Begin by agreeing to find common ground.

“I wonder if we can find common goals so we might find agreement to work from. I’m happy to share my goals with you; I’d like to hear yours as well.”

Set the frame for common values: At a global level, we all have similar foundational values, hopes and fears – for family, food, shelter, health. Start by ‘chunking up’ to find areas of agreement.

“I’d like to find a way to communicate that might help us find a common values so we can begin determining if we share areas of agreement. Any thoughts on how you’d like to proceed?”

Get agreement on the topics in the conversation: One step at a time; make sure CPs agree to each item and skip the ones (for now) where there’s no agreement. (Put them in a Parking Lot for your next conversation.) Work with ‘what is’ instead of ‘what should be.’

Enter without bias: Unintentionally our historic, unconscious beliefs restrict our search for commonality. Replace emotions and blame with a new bias for this conversation: the ‘bias’ of collaboration.

“I’d like to tell you what I think I heard. Please correct what I’ve gotten wrong.”

Summarize regularly: Because the odds are bad that you’ll accurately hear what your CP means to convey, summarize what you think you heard after every exchange:

“Sounds to me like you said, “XX”. Is that correct? What would you like me to understand that I didn’t understand or that I misheard?”

“I’ statements: Stay away from ‘You’ if possible. Try to work from the understanding that you’re standing in different shoes and there is no way either of you can see the other’s landscape.

“When I hear you say X it sounds to me like you are telling me that YY. Is that true?”

“When I hear you mention Y, I feel like Z and it makes me want to get up from the table as I feel you really aren’t willing to hear me. How can we handle this so we can move forward together?”

Get buy-in each step of the way: keep checking in, even if it seems obvious that you’re on the same page. It’s really easy to mistranslate what’s been said when the listening filters are different.

“Seems to me like we’re on the same page here. I think we’re both saying X. Is that true? What am I missing?”

“What should I add to my thinking that I’m avoiding or not understanding the same way you are? Is there a way you want me to experience what it looks like from your shoes that I don’t currently know how to experience? Can you help me understand?”

Get agreement on action items: Simple steps for forward actions will become obvious; make sure you both work on action items together.

Get a time on the calendar for the next meeting: Make sure you discuss who else needs to be brought into the conversation, end up with goals you can all agree on and walk away with an accurate understanding of what’s been said and what’s expected.

COMPASSION, EMPATHY, AND RESPECT

By learning how to hear each other with compassion and empathy, by closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, our conversations can begin. We must be willing to start sharing our Truth and our hearts and find a way to join with another’s Truth and heart. By hearing each other accurately, it’s the best start we can make.

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Sharon Drew Morgen October 5th, 2026

Posted In: Listening

Direct Route to Communication Part 1 includes Listening, Brains/Change, Assumptions, and Risk.

QUESTIONS

For those who use questions as part of the Helping process, your questions may not be gleaning a full, or accurate, data set.

Many of us use questions to gather complete or accurate data, assuming

we formulate unbiased, targeted questions that will be heard as intended and provide good information;
our questions extract the information necessary for assessment and mutual comprehension or cause introspection;
Helper and client can accurately hear what the other says and means;
we need information to facilitate a client’s change;
clients need us to guide them when they’re stuck;
we’re not causing any risk to the client.

Like everything we say, standard questions are formulated and biased by the needs, goals, and assumptions of the Asker, making the above assumptions flawed:

standard questions are biased by our assumptions and goals and may not be heard as intended;
standard questions may not extract accurate or complete information;
standard questions get to the conscious mind, not to the unconscious, electrochemical neural circuits where values-based criteria are stored and where change/decision making are triggered;
neither Helper nor client can accurately hear/understand each other;
information doesn’t reorient a client’s unconscious;
because the presenting problematic issues come from the unconscious brain, neither client nor Helper know what’s at risk initially.

I’ve invented a wholly new form of question (Facilitative Question™) that alleviates these issues and are formulated in a very specific way to reach the specific neural circuits that hold the elements that will trigger the preferred change. They’re used with a 13 Step Change model that consciously gets to the unconscious for permanent change. I call them ‘brain directional’,

designed to find underlying systems, not gather information;
causing Listeners to get into a witness/meta state;
are posed using specific types of words and phrases in very specific sequences;
require a goal of discovery rather than assessment or understanding.

Here’s a simple comparison between a standard information gathering question:

Why do you wear your hair like that?

and one that leads the Listener to unconscious discovery:

How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle?

This Facilitative Question™ (FQ) might begin a sequence that leads the Listener to several neural circuits that encapsulate the systemic elements in a change decision. The FQ above captures elements in of the Listener’s system that must be included if they were to, say, have trouble deciding on a new ‘look’ – in this case, time, historic comparators, willingness to change, and a change in mental perspective.

While a simple example, it gives you an appreciation of the difference in skills needed to help clients get to their unconscious triggers: it overrides the conscious biases and gets directly to the unconscious.

My book HOW? has a 100-page chapter on how to formulate the FQs, or you can purchase a Learning Accelerator. Both will teach you how to switch Perceptual Positions, listen in Observer, understand the sequence brains take when generating activity and how to ensure the questions are formulated to match the sequence. They cut through bias and enable the brain to find the right circuits necessary to maintain Systems Congruence and achieve systemic buy-in for a new decision.

Sample

THE OLD AND THE NEW

When clients approach us to help them get unstuck , we assume

1. we must gather information to ’assess’ and understand their current situation. That’s certainly true when diagnosing illness or a car breakdown, or to identify a misunderstanding, for example. But

a. neither Helper nor client accurately hear each other,

b. standard questions can’t extract unbiased or complete information,

c. Information is the last thing needed in decision making,

d. clients don’t need us to understand their specific story details in order to make a change.

Clients have the elements necessary for new solutions stored amidst trillions of neural circuits in their brain and only need help finding them.

e. because we each have unique mental models (subjective) and listen through our brain’s subjectivity, outsiders cannot fully understand what’s going on as we can’t understand each other.

2. we have the tools, mindset, experience, and care to help clients resolve problems once we understand the goals and problems involved. Clients can understand their own issues, make their own assessments, and plan their own strategies when they find the values-based circuits that triggered their situation.

It’s possible to lead clients to the origination points in their brain that triggered the current problems and from which they can generate new values-based solutions.

3. our curiosity, expertise, and assumptions can uncover the issues causing the problem. Our queries and data gathering are directed at the conscious mind where information is stored and don’t get to the neural circuits in the unconscious where decision criteria reside.

All outputs (behaviors, choices) arise from neural circuits in the unconscious where our values-based criteria are stored, and not readily available to respond to direct questions that seek to extract historic information stored in the mind – and may not even be heard as intended.

4. our ultimate job is to facilitate permanent behavior change or congruent decision making in alignment with the client’s beliefs and values. We can’t help clients change their behaviors permanently by merely trying to help them change the outputs. We must help them generate new circuits that trigger new behaviors and contain the systemic elements to maintain Systems Congruence.

Once the origination points are discovered and modified, or new circuits generated, new behaviors emerge automatically.

Using this thinking our job transitions from understanding, assessing, assuming, or guiding to being real facilitators that lead clients to their unconscious circuits where the offending behaviors and choice originate so they can discover and design their own answers from the source.

HELP CLIENTS FIND THEIR ANSWERS

While I passionately believe it’s vital for clients to share thoughts, unwrap feelings and get feedback (Full disclosure: I spent 12 years in talk therapy, 15 years in group therapy, and have three NLP degrees – Practitioner, Master Prac, and Beyond) I now believe the portion of the change process dependent upon unconscious change can be shortened.

I suggest we need new tools: to listen differently (for systems, metamessages, patterns instead of information) to hear/recognize metamessages and the client’s systems, and new bias-free questions that and lead clients directly to their unconscious drivers (rather than remain in their conscious story-lines).

One of the most important elements necessary to facilitate change: choice in Perceptual Positions.

To accurately listen for metamessages and patterns, to avoid bias and restriction, to know where to place and formulate a question, we must move beyond our natural curiosity or assumptions.

A simple way to achieve this is to shift Perceptual Positions (moving between different viewpoints) from listen-for-understanding position to a coach/witness/meta position that offers a neutral, detached, less biased perspective. And I’ll stop here for a moment: I’m aware that different practices define ‘Self’ differently than I do. For this paper, I define Self as being in your natural, automatic, instinctive, unconscious viewpoint (Self), where we reside most of the time.

The Self viewpoint is where we hold our unconscious biases.

Self: subjective, automatic, natural, instinctive, unconscious, restricted, detailed, out-of-choice, (re)action/emotional, mind-based, content.

Sometimes we need a neutral way to listen that provides a offers a broader range of choice and options and makes conscious choice possible. If you’ve ever been with a small child who’s writing on a wall, you’ve made an automatic, unconscious, quick mental switch – from screaming (Self) to a more thoughtful (Observer) choice that would subvert the toddler to paper coloring instead of walls. I call this change of perceptual stance the Observer position. We all do it unconsciously, but I suggest it must be a conscious choice when working with clients. So:

Observer: objective, witness, broad range, rational, brain-based, minimal emotion, conscious choice, voluntary, meta, unbiased, neutral.

Listening from Observer seems to go around normal listening biases, and more accurately hear your client’s intended message. It also provides a broad, neutral view. And no, you won’t hear many details (from Observer you’re not listening for details/content anyway) but you’ll hear patterns, metamessages, underlying beliefs and assumptions where you both can recognize the where current choices were made and the underlying values necessary for proposed change.

I work with all of my clients and students while in the Observer position to avoid bias. Try it.

CONCLUSION

As you can see, our general Helping practices may not facilitate clients through to lasting change due to the way our brains process information:

We can’t understand each other and can only accurately hear a maximum of 35% of what’s said.
Our questions are biased by our own assumptions and goals and can’t extract accurate information.
We seek information from a client’s mind, and their change capability is in their brain.
It’s not possible to change behaviors by trying to change behaviors. For permanent behavior change, it’s necessary to generate new neural circuits in the brain.

While it’s possible our current models may eventually trigger new neural circuits, it’s not a certainty, it’s inefficient and it might be risky for them unconsciously.

For times when you are helping Others reach their best decisions or need help changing patterns, assume they have their own answers that are merely difficult to find amidst 100 trillion neural circuits where they’re currently stored. It’s far more effective to help folks find these circuits rather than conventional helping, or coaching techniques dependent on gathering, assessing, brainstorming information that has a high probability of being misinterpreted.

I teach skill sets for Helpers to lead clients to their offending neural circuits or generate new ones for permanent change. For those who merely want a quick fix, use these questions below – a mix of standard and Facilitative Questions™, as a guide.

Listen for systems, patterns, beliefs.
Listen from Observer.
Ask the following questions, in this specific sequence (although they may iterate):

a.  Where are you now?
b.  What’s stopping you from X?
c.   What would you need to know or believe differently to do X instead of Y?
d.  How would you know when it’s time to X?

Once clients have discovered where their presenting problems came from, they will need you to extract specific information as to what else is needed, brainstorm from the new revelations, deliver additional information and create an action plan. But by then, the client has already discovered their answers.

For those who want more detailed information or learn how to facilitate change from the unconscious triggers in the neural circuits, email me to either get more complete answers or take training. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. For those of you who want to learn it on your own, get my book HOW? as it teaches how, specifically, to generate new circuits.

Remember: clients already have their own answers stored in difficult to find circuits among the 100 trillion in their brain. Your job is to help your clients find them. What would you need to believe differently to be willing to facilitate/enable an Other to define and discover the criteria they’d need to match to make a good decision?

For those interested in seeing this model in action, I presented a paper at the Columbia University Learning Ideas conference in 2024. Enjoy. https://tinyurl.com/45tsf

Part 1 includes Listening, Brains/Change, Assumptions, and Risk.

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Sharon Drew Morgen September 28th, 2026

Posted In: News

Those of us in the helping professions often provide services to clients (patients, coachees, etc.) when they’re stuck during life or business decisions, need different perspectives for decision making or to stop harmful habits. We ‘actively listen’ and pose questions to assess their situation, understand their goals, and guide them to what seems like their own answers.

But what if our exchanges contain biases that prevent them from finding their best solutions? Or unwittingly lead clients to flawed conclusions or personal risk? What if

we can’t understand each other due to the way brains process incoming words?
our questions are biased by our own assumptions and can’t get accurate information?
we’re seeking information from a client’s mind and their change capability is in their brain?
it’s not possible to change behaviors by trying to change behaviors?
we don’t need to gather information or assess a client’s needs/problems to lead them to their own best answers?

What if there’s a more direct, unbiased, and precise route to helping clients discover and accomplish their ideal solution that avoids these pitfalls?

What if clients (and patients, and buyers, etc.) only need help finding where their answers/solutions are already stored in their unconscious and your intervention could lead them to it?

For those of you who like new ideas and don’t mind a bit of complexity, who work with consulting, OD, and counseling models that use verbal interactions as part of their process, I’ve written a Thought Paper to introduce a new way to think about change and discovery. Note: for Helpers working with non-conscious states, body-centered therapy, or mindfulness models that don’t use questions, I suggest the information on how brains listen, decide, and enable change will be helpful. If you’re interested in a more detailed discussion, email me at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

OVERVIEW

We each make sense of the world and our lives through our unique mental models (beliefs, values, norms, assumptions, history) which form the basis of our decisions and life choices, restricting what we do, notice, think and hear.

As Helpers we’re especially affected: due to the way brains

store and process our history and values-based criteria,
form the choices that govern our lives,
determine what we think was said,

there’s a high probability our natural biases and unconscious subjectivity will unwittingly get in the way of us accurately hearing each other, or noticing the client’s historic triggers to be considered.

WHAT THIS PAPER WILL DO

For times it’s important to hear and be heard without bias, there’s a direct route to change and decision making: lead clients to the unconscious choices where their current problems have been triggered and generate new ones for new outcomes. In other words, instead of understanding or assessing their problems, change your ultimate focus and merely lead them to their unconscious triggers for change.

At this point, it might be important for you to know who I am as my concepts don’t fit standard models. I’m an original thinker and have Asperger’s Syndrome. Like most folks ‘on the Spectrum’, I naturally think in systems – interconnected elements in the Status Quo that have agreed to the same rules, and work hard to maintain balance (Systems Congruence).

My lifelong topic has been discovering the elements involved in getting to the unconscious for conscious choice, and developing tools and models (Learning Facilitation, Buying Facilitation®, Change Facilitation, Facilitative Questions™) that enable permanent change at the source. I’ve successfully taught these globally to 100,000 sellers, leaders, coaches, and healthcare practitioners for over 40 years, and written a book on generating new circuits for behavior change a decision making (HOW?).

In this Paper, I’ll explain why current helping models (coaching, consulting, leadership, healthcare, etc.) often fail to produce permanent change and introduce an approach that’s more direct and long lasting. For those of you interested in learning any of the models, please contact me as it’s impossible to delve deeply into specifics in this paper. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Let me start by defining what I mean by change.

CHANGE

Most of us have our own definitions of change. Mine comes from my work with systems and neural connections:

Change represents a modification to a unique system that holds existing choices in place.
Any proposed change must maintain the core identity and beliefs of the larger system (the Status Quo) to maintain balance and Systems Congruence.
Be it behavior-based or interior feelings, change emerges from the unconscious, physiologic, chemical, automatic, and meaningless neural activity that trigger our choices into conscious actions.

Currently, Helping professionals are taught to enable behavior change but fail to include and get buy-in from the client’s often-unconscious system that produced the offending behaviors to begin with. Note:

until or unless all the elements that created and maintained the presenting problem, and those that will be affected by the new choices, agree to do something different, the system will feel at risk and will resist any change regardless of the problem.

Permanent, congruent change requires:

identification, assessment and agreement of the problem by the systemic, underlying elements that hold the Status Quo in place;
buy-in from the system – the new must match the core beliefs, values, and norms (Systems Congruence) that represent the Status Quo;
risk management – the system must understand, and consider solutions, for any potential risks before any changes occur.

Indeed, all change is systemic and must

Maintain Functional Stability. Any change initiative must maintain the foundational balance of the original system. Change is not so simple as replacing one behavior with another.
Achieve Buy-In. For a system to be willing to change successfully and avoid resistance, a system must
understand and the risk of change;
recognize exactly what fallout will occur when anything is added;
know how each affected element must modify to maintain the integrity of the system.
Maintain Underlying Rules and Beliefs. Great data or solutions, important needs or dangerous consequences do not influence change if they run counter to the system’s beliefs and rules, overt or covert.
Avoid Risk. Risk can only be recognized by all who touch the status quo/system. Then it must be determined the magnitude of the risk. If it is seen to be less than any proposed change, it will be accepted. If the risk is greater than the proposed change, it will be resisted.

Here’s a rule I consider sacrosanct:

regardless of how extensive the problem or necessary the change, permanent change cannot occur if the system believes it’s at risk and may face major disruption.

There’s a way to get directly to the neural circuits that triggered the offending choices to enable permanent change. But first, let me explain why our current models are problematic.

YOU CAN’T CHANGE A BEHAVIOR BY TRYING TO CHANGE A BEHAVIOR

Unfortunately, today’s standard practices for change management as well as standard Behavior Modification practices ignore the brain change element and focus on attempting to modify the habits, the behaviors, decisions, actions etc. AFTER they’ve been generated. But by then it’s too late.

So what’s a behavior? Behaviors are merely outputs, expressions of our values and beliefs that announce to others who we are and what we stand for. They reside in neural circuits in our brain that trigger them when instructed to do so.

Every behavior is a symbol of who we are – a representation of our personal system. Every behavior is a belief in action, a statement of our values and beliefs, and a representation of our internal unconscious system.

Any proposed alteration to a behavior (or habit, or choice, or…) potentially represents a risk to the current system. When we attempt to make a change without modifying the neural circuits that triggered the problem, our lazy, habituated brain resists, preferring the originating pathways that maintain Systems Congruence. After all, it’s been working ‘fine’ for some time and habituated into daily norms and routines.

Sadly, behaviors can’t simply change themselves because we want to make a change. After all, our personal system must remain balanced (Systems Congruence). Therefore, permanent change must incorporate the underlying system of beliefs, norms, history, culture, and assumptions that form of the foundation of the offending actions.

When we merely try to change offending behaviors and overlook changing the origination points that triggered them we unwittingly cause imbalance, which results in resistance and non-compliance (the downside of current change models) as the system attempts to return to its normalized routines.

Indeed, it’s not possible to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior. This is the reason behavior-change models often fail to cause permanent change: permanent change requires reprogramming a new input message into the client’s unconscious. Once the new input (new message, new instructions) is accepted, it will automatically trigger a new output. Trying to change a behavior once it’s already an output is akin to putting toothpaste back in the tube.

BRAINS – WHERE SYSTEMIC, CONGRUENT ANSWERS COME FROM

Since I refer so often to neural circuits, let me simplistically explain the role the brain plays.

All our actions, what we see, hear, think and do, what we’re curious about and what we notice, our history and our values, originate in the unconscious as part of what makes us each unique: meaningless, automatic electrochemical signals brain, making connections between our 100 trillion neural circuits that each hold unique values-based criteria (beliefs, norms, history, etc.) that form and trigger our choices.

When the brain receives an input (some form of instruction sent via an electrochemical signal) it collates the appropriate circuits and triggers a new output/behavior.

According to Bing,

Electrochemical signals are the fundamental basis of how neural circuits are informed, formed, and operated. Incoming content (triggers) flows through the nervous system via a continuous loop of electrical impulses moving within individual neurons and chemical messages passing between them.

It goes on to explain how values-based decision making is stored in our circuits in the form of dopamine:

Dopamine is a key chemical messenger that operates within specific neural circuits in the brain. It acts as a neurotransmitter, allowing nerve cells to communicate and shape activity across large-scale pathways linked to movement, reward, and thought. Dopamine tags cues in the environment with importance (criteria), driving attention and action toward things the brain deems worth pursuing.

Current helping models don’t purposely reach the neural circuits (in the unconscious brain) where a client’s change criteria originate, necessary to generate new choices.

HOW BRAIN’S LISTEN

One of the unspoken problems Helpers face is ensuring all communication partners accurately understand each other. We can’t. And it’s our brain’s fault.

Since birth, we’ve naturally listened for content, for details, for the story line. This is useful when discussing facts or making plans or sharing life stories that come from the conscious brain. Also, we naturally assume when we speak or pose a question we’ll be understood accurately and, in turn, understand our partner’s responses. Neither are probable.

Due to the way the ‘listening’ process takes place in the brain, we can’t hear each other very well. While we can ‘hear’ words (called ‘puffs of air’ by neuroscientists) accurately, our brain doesn’t translate them according to a speaker’s intent. In other words, it’s likely neither Helper or client can accurately translate what the other has said.

Due to the several distortion and deletion processes involved when the Listener’s brain ultimately translates incoming words, we end up accurately understanding less than 35% of a Speaker’s intended message. I’ve written a book explaining this if you’re interested:

Sample

To make it worse, incoming/spoken words are ultimately translated by existing (historic) neural circuits, making it probable we end up ‘hearing’ some rendition of what we’ve heard before, potentially causing flawed understanding and misguided assessments.

In other words, both Helper and client unwittingly mishear, mistranslate or misunderstand the Other regardless of intent or skill level. With potentially flawed understanding, Helpers and client make assumptions based on what we think we heard. An easy mind hack for this is to say “What did you hear me say?” or “I’d like to tell you what I think I heard to make sure I’ve understood you correctly” during important meetings.

This completes Part 1 of A DIRECT ROUTE TO FACILITATING PERMANENT CHANGE. Part 2 will be published next week and includes: Questions, Perceptual Positions, Mind Hacks, Model in Action.

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Sharon Drew Morgen September 21st, 2026

Posted In: Change Management, Communication

AI has become integrated into our lives. I’m sure we will continue discussing whether it’s constructive or destructive for quite some time. Certainly it’s been a boon to science and medicine. But does AI squelch creativity? Plagiarize? Important discussions to have. Surely we’ve all benefited.

But to date, AI doesn’t enable a user’s brain to discover and apply their core values for personal decision making.

HOW VALUES-BASED DECISIONS ARE MADE

When people ask AI for advice, they’re largely provided with amalgams of historic information. But this doesn’t enable the neurochemical, very complex, values-based and largely unconscious decision process that would guide users to the:

- core values-criteria in their brain that
- form the unique, unconscious, and subjective outputs (actions, decisions, behaviors) that
- emerge when a mixture of the brain’s limbic system, prefrontal cortex, and dopamine
- cull choice criteria from the decision maker’s personal decision making that includes

o history

o mental models

o personal beliefs

o time comparators

o private assumptions

o norms/culture

- and represent the neural activities
- beyond external sources.

In other words, there’s a whole lotta neural processing that must occur before a personal change decision can be reached. For personal decisions such as

“Should I put my mom into a memory care center now?”

“My girlfriend lives near me so maybe I should choose a college near home, but the college I want to attend is across the country. How do I decide where to go to school?”

information doesn’t help, making generative AI a poor choice to facilitate a user’s subjective decision making.

In this paper I’ll simplistically lay out the explanations and elements needed for someone to make a values-based decision – a complex range of circuits and signals, history and processing, that reside within the unconscious and not dependent on information. This will explain the route AI would need to follow to develop a decision facilitation capability. This will explain the route AI would need to follow to develop a decision facilitation capability.

INFORMATION DOESN’T GENERATE PERSONAL DECISIONS

Simplistically, AI uses question prompts to extract information from LLMs. But information is needed in personal decision making only after the criterial portion of the decision is reached.

Don’t get me wrong. Information is vital once values-based criteria are in place. But providing information (from the conscious mind) before the neural work (in the unconscious brain) has been completed causes resistance – the reason sales pitches, leadership requests, coaching interactions face so much opposition: unless the Other’s beliefs, norms, history, assumptions are included, there’s a high probability the Other will resist change.

Decision making is largely unconscious and uniquely personal – a complex, systemic process that involves much neural organization. Until

the system (the full set of foundational elements – beliefs and mental models – that created and maintain the status quo) understands and agrees to the risk of doing/thinking anything different;
the system understands the full set of foundational elements that have mitigated the status quo and must be shifted;
the system understands its risk of change and knows how to manage it with minimal disruption;
the new is congruent with the core beliefs and values of the system;

no values-based decision will be made regardless of the need or the efficacy of the information. And the time it takes the decision maker to figure all this out is the length of time it takes to “come to a decision”.

To make a personal decision, people must align the presenting facts against their values-based criteria, biases, assumptions, emotions, reasoning approach, future needs, hopes and fears, then understand and manage risks, all before choosing the actions to take. Here’s my book on how to do this for coaching and change management situations.

Sample

WHAT IS A DECISION?

To choose a new action, to ensure any decision is congruent with the system and won’t cause disruption, personal and neural elements at the core of all values-based decisions must be managed:

Mind/brain: AI largely focuses on manipulating information for use in the conscious mind. But the brain (the unconscious) is where decision criteria are stored.

Misinterpreting incoming content: Due to the way brains ‘listen’, people only accurately understand 10-35% of the information offered. I wrote a book on this.

Managing the status quo: We are each comprised of several systems administered by our mechanical brain processes. New decisions threaten the status quo and must be approved by the system so it doesn’t feel at risk.

Repositioning/reevaluating belief hierarchy: Making a final decision involves a process of weighting values, history, assumptions, and cultural norms and comparing them against future gains/losses…a process unique to each individual and largely unconscious.

Comparators: All change/values-based decisions require comparing historic activity and the decisions that led to the status quo.

Once these have been addressed, the risk of change is deemed manageable, and the system feels congruent with the change, users are ready to make a decision and information is needed to provide details.

AI doesn’t address this yet.

A NEW FORM OF QUESTION

AI requires prompts to trigger answers. But the questions currently used prompt historic, amalgamated information and most likely don’t get to the unconscious elements in a user’s brain necessary for values-based decision making.

Although generative AI is set up to manipulate LLMs, it certainly could have a function that sequences and simulates neural processing and actually make values-based decisions quick and efficient for coaching, personal decision-making, customer support. AL Would need a rules-based capability that would lead users through their own neural circuitry.

In 1988, I read Roger Schank’s book Tell Me a Story that said the only way to find an answer that was tucked away in the brain was to pose a good question. But he never explained what a ‘good question’ was.

I had already recognized that questions are biased and assumptive and couldn’t understand how it could discover bias-free answers. I became intrigued by the possibility of generating a question that

had no biases, assumptions, or principles that would prejudice the answers;
would get to the specific, unconscious, neural circuits where values-based answers are stored.

As an original thinker, I then spent 10 years figuring out the elements involved to ensure personal decisions could be easily made:

the need for Responders to shift perceptual positions to minimize unconscious bias;
the sequence necessary for the Responder to discover their existing values, patterns, specific reference points;
the route to the specific neural circuits that held the values-based criteria to match a congruent answer;
the specific words, sequences, and sentence structures that would get to the specific neural circuits where values-based choice criteria could be found and managed for congruent, systemic change;
the ability to hear/recognize the next question to formulate to enable the listener’s (user’s) brain to take the next step in the multi-step decision-making sequence;
the specific hierarchy of decision criteria that lead to a values-based decision;

I eventually invented a new form of question (Facilitative Questions™ FQs) that is brain-directional and leads the Other, using specific words in specific sequences, to the specific neural circuits necessary to capture their personal, values-based decision criteria and cause congruent change and values-based decisions.

For AI to facilitate personal decisions, a rules-based FacilitationAI could prompt sequences of self-generated FQs. FacilitationAI can provide new capability for AI in:

sales
life/personal coaching;
personal/team decision making;
customer feedback.

I’m happy to discuss and provide examples in detail and discuss possibilities with interested AI developers. Please contact me to discuss. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen September 14th, 2026

Posted In: Communication

When I begin an on-site training program I start by saying:

“Hi everyone. I’m so happy we’re together! I’d like to begin with a warning: I use confusion as a teaching tool. Confusion is merely your brain not finding an existing circuit to accept new information. During the first day I will be keeping you in confusion a lot to make sure there’s a way to retain new knowledge to supplement what you already know. So when you’re confused, I’m SO happy!”

The participants laugh uncomfortably. But then it becomes a sort of gentle contest – who can be the MOST confused. Invariably someone says

“Sharon-Drew, you’ll be SO proud of me! I’m SOOOO confused!”

And everyone laughs together and claps in knowing agreement.

WHY IS CONFUSION DEEMED BAD?

I wonder why confusion is something to be avoided. Why do we all have to ‘know’ everything? Why can’t we delight in the mystery, the jumble, the dark moving spaces that bring that slight bit of discomfort, a touch of fear and dollop of curiosity?

When we think we ‘know’ something, it’s because we’re using circuits that already exist in our brains. Sadly, we assume what we ‘know’ is accurate, even if it ends up being inaccurate or biased; even if it means we dismiss new content that might be more accurate; even if it means we restrict learning anything new.

Old beliefs, previous knowledge, habits and assumptions become concretized over time, and new ideas become suspect because there’s no precedent for them even if the new ideas are more cogent. Our brains just love our status quo. Simple. Stable. Quick. Reality? No such thing.

How do new ideas get into the world when they’re contrary to existing myths and norms? Why isn’t ok to be confused and then curious to research, think, debate new ideas?

Entire fields remain committed to researching within the confines of perceived wisdom, even when they suspect, or when they’re known to be ineffective. How does something new enter if confusion, or the ‘unknown’, isn’t considered?

Remember flat earthers? What about radio waves? Did you know only a few of Cezanne’s paintings were purchased during his life? Or that it took 40 years after the invention of the telephone to begin broad use – using Morse Code instead? Are you aware that initially Bill Gates told his team that he wasn’t convinced the internet had value? Seriously.

LISTENING IS PART OF THE PROBLEM

One of the initiators of our confusion is the way words enter our brains to get translated. You see, when we hear someone speak, our brains don’t accurately translate what the speaker intends to communicate!

In fact, we end up accurately hearing a maximum of 35% of what a speaker intends, causing us to unwittingly revert to what we’ve heard before, making learning and retaining something new quite difficult. When we feel confusion, it’s an indication that our brain is having difficulty translating the incoming content. So confusion is a great indication we’re trying to learn.

Sample

I adore confusion. It means I’m creating new circuits. It means I’m learning!

WE COULD ALL USE A BIT OF CONFUSION

Our brains are the problem. Indeed, because of the way we subjectively interpret new ideas we end up restricting our lives. Indeed, everything, regardless of what science thinks, or what our spouses or bosses want us to believe is true, is a subjective interpretation!

What we read or enjoy; the colors we see and the words we hear; the friends and jobs and neighborhoods we choose; are restricted to the circuits that already exist in our brains – what we agree with and the worlds our brain circuits have created for us – obviously a carefully calibrated world view; obviously restricting a whole lotta world out there we don’t recognize or enjoy or share. We could all use a little confusion now and again.

To reconsider confusion, to learn, change, and be enriched, here are some questions:

What would you need to believe differently to be willing to rid yourself from some of your biases? Do you know which ones you’d be willing to part with? How do you know your answer isn’t biased?
How would you know that any confusion is worth the cost of ‘not knowing’ and being uncomfortable?
What issues come up for you when you face the prospect of being confused in an area you’re expert in?
Are there any areas of your life or work knowledge that you protect, that you prefer not to feel confusion around because you believe you have all the knowledge you need – and it’s accurate? Would you be willing to examine these to see if there is anything new to learn? Any areas for you to rethink?
Think of a topic, an idea that runs counter to your beliefs and spend time with it. No, really. Spend enough time to understand it, and know precisely how it differs from your beliefs. See if you can find any fragment in there that confuses you that you’d be willing to think about for a day or two.

We live our lives, work our jobs, vote and go to neighborhood meetings, accustomed to having an automatic answer, knowledge at the ready that has been vetted by our brains, accepted and comfortable. But to gain new knowledge, reconsider old opinions, mature your beliefs and self-asessments, you can create new circuits, and then have a whole new knowledge set.

All you need is some curiosity and the willingness to be confused for a bit of time. You’re worth it, no?
_______________________

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Sharon Drew Morgen August 31st, 2026

Posted In: News

Before you close a sale, your prospect has work to do: before they self-identify as a buyer, or close a deal, they must figure out their risk of change and get buy-in from their stakeholders.

Unfortunately for sellers, because these tasks are cultural and idiosyncratic, they have nothing to do with selling per se, and aren’t affected in any way by the sales process. Sellers need a different goal and new facilitation tools to find and connect with potential prospects going through their Pre-Sales decisions that are beyond the scope of sales.

Indeed, the Buy Side and Sell Side are wholly different: one manages risk and change; one sells solutions.

Buying is a change/risk management problem (Buy Side) before it’s a solution choice (Sell Side) issue. By overlooking the (Buy Side) Buying Process and narrowing the search for buyers to those who’ll listen to product details or seem to have a ‘need’ (the Sell Side); by ignoring the necessary risks and change management that all potential buyers must address on the Buy Side; the sales industry overlooks the 80% of potential buyers who could use help managing their internal issues during their risk management and buy-in processes.

As a result, sales closes a small fraction of possible buyers, not to mention having a longer-than-necessary sales cycle the sales model overlooks the skills needed to facilitate the Buy Side, leaving as prospects address their internal issues privately.

I believe the field is using the wrong metric and chasing the wrong target (‘Need’). Not to mention missing the unique skills necessary to facilitate change.

Read Sample

LOOKING FOR PROSPECTS IN THE WRONG PLACE

People become buyers when they can’t resolve their own problems AND have buy-in for change AND can tolerate the risk of doing something different (a purchase); if the disruption, the change involved with bringing in something new/different is too high they’ll stay the same regardless of need or the efficacy of your solution..

People don’t want to buy anything, merely resolve a problem at the least risk to the system.

A ‘NEED’ FOCUS CAUSES FAILURE

A major problem for sellers is the criteria used to define a prospect: Need. But need is a flawed indicator. People buy when

stakeholders agree there’s a problem that needs resolving;
they’ve tried to resolve it and nothing worked;
they fully understand the risks – the cost – to the system and find them manageable;
everyone who will touch the final solution buys in.

Not only is it impossible for prospects to understand their full set of needs unless all of the above are completed, people can’t buy unless they understand the risk of change. Buying is not about their problem or the efficacy of your solution. Until or unless they’ve gone through all their change management st eps they are not buyers, regardless of what you think they need.

Remember: Selling doesn’t cause buying.

STEPS TO BUYING ARE CHANGE MANAGEMENT BASED

Until they realize they cannot fix the problem themselves AND everyone recognizes that the cost of the fix is less than the cost of staying the same, people will not buy. And when you don’t hear back, they’re not facing indecision: they’re merely involved in their change management process and not yet buyers.

Sellers can help would-be buyers traverse their Buy Side Buying Process before trying to sell. Otherwise you’re selling to the low hanging fruit, the 5% who have completed their internal process, rather than actively facilitating the 80% who need help managing their Buy Side process.

I’ve invented a Pre-Sales decision facilitation model called Buying Facilitation® that first seeks out folks on route to solving a problem my solution can resolve, facilitates them through assembling stakeholders, understanding risk and getting buy-in, and then uses the sales model to sell my solution. It’s an add-on to sales, and enables a 40% close rate instead of 5%.

Below I’ve included a few articles I’ve written on the subject. Go to www.sharon-drew.com, read the section Helping Buyers Buy, and go to the categories Sales, Buying Facilitation® in my blog section and start reading. Then contact me with questions: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. I’ll teach you.

‘No Decision’ is not Indecision

What is Buying Facilitation® and What Sales Problem Does it Solve

The Real Buyer’s Journey: the reason selling doesn’t cause buying

How, Why, and When Buyers Buy

A View from the Buy Side

For those teams or individuals wishing to discuss Buying Facilitation® training, contact Sharon-Drew at: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen August 24th, 2026

Posted In: News

Neurodiversity is now considered a variation of human experience rather than a disability. Indeed, 20% of the workforce is neurodiverse including 50% of sales and technology professionals. That means there’s a good chance there are neurodivergent (ND) employees working in your company. But you may not know who they are: 75% of ND employees avoid disclosure.

CREATING A SAFE PLACE FOR NEURODIVERSE EMPLOYEES

Historically, diversity, generally confined to as race and gender diversity and included in most hiring practices these days. Recently, standard practice is to specify inclusive hiring practices for neurodiverse people in their job specs and include requests for applicants to state their needs for the interviewing process.

But companies without specific neurodiversity hiring practices may not know the ND employees already working for them, making the problem of self-disclosure and individual support a big one for both the company and the employee: ND folks are often afraid of losing their jobs or facing discrimination if they self-disclose and, because there’s no structure for it, may not get the services they need to be as successful as they otherwise might be.

To find and serve these highly creative, hard-working individuals, to ensure they’re accepted and integrated, your company culture must embody inclusion so they’re accepted and integrated onto teams; given work that matches their unique skills; and get supervised by managers who know how to communicate with them – all areas fraught with obstacles unless there are accepted practices in place.

The question for the HR professional is: are you willing to create an inclusive workplace environment – a culture – that offer unique hiring methods? In which NDs are offered supervision or needed allowances? Can choose to self-disclose? In which communication practices are shared and discussed? Where everyone can learn from each other and thrive?

CULTURE CHANGE

ND people think, understand, act, and communicate differently from their neurotypical (NT) colleagues. And because they are in the minority it’s been left up to them to fit in – challenging since their needs may defy standard practices.

Creating a culture in which neurodiverse employees not only fit in but are active, successful, accepted members of the community takes work. It’s not merely doing a few things differently but having a commitment to an inclusive workplace where everyone thrives, welcomes diversity, and collaborates. It means a culture change.

TO DO’S

Here are some specific suggestions if you currently have no dedicated plan (or want to add to what you’re already doing):

Rethink hiring practices. Some neurodiverse people may be overwhelmed during standard interviews. Ask applicants to provide examples of their work on email; ask them how they’d like to communicate with interviewers.
Discover the barriers to inclusion within the company. You can use confidential surveys, questionnaires, suggestion boxes to gather information and suggestions from current ND employees, including what they would need from HR or their managers to have a safer, more comfortable situation so they can succeed. It’s a good idea to use a consultant to assist you with these as they know the best vocabulary and topics to include.

Doing this puts out a clear message to all employees that you’re taking ‘workplace inclusion’ seriously. And don’t forget to publish the findings from this outreach so everyone is working from the same fact pattern.

Inclusive communications. Employee communiques must be written clearly and directly with a visual component if possible. In written communiques there is sometimes a note at the bottom that invites anyone seeking clarification to contact the sender.
Internal campaigns: Begin running internal campaigns targeted to inclusion: stories from leaders about how they learned to be better at providing directions for their ND team members or what they learned from their ND employees; great ways to manage problems that might arise; or stories from disclosed NDs themselves on best practices for collaborating with colleagues. This not only provides stories for other leaders and folks with neurodiversity but plainly affirms the company’s dedication to inclusion.
Questionnaires: Send out questionnaires that request employees share what they need from management to be even more successful. Make sure they’re unmarked and unnamed so undisclosed NDs can respond without fear of discrimination.
Management training: bring in consulting firms (Orchvate https://www.orchvate.com/) that specialize in best practices (integration, sensitization, awareness) on communicating with NDs. These could also be taught by ND employees who have disclosed and are willing to share their personal knowledge. Btw the secondary gain here is that all your employees will communicate – collaborate, ideate, work – more successfully.
Time management training programs for all employees. This will naturally include ND folks but would be useful for all. ND folks have strict time issues – always on time, very organized to get stuff done on time, etc.
Physical issues: Neurodiverse people have a greater sensitivity to their surroundings – overhead lights, noise – than neurotypical folks and may have physical challenges that require flexible work arrangements and accommodations. Provide Quiet Spaces for anyone who needs them.
Advertise inclusive job opportunities in other departments: i.e.’ Seeking folks with strong pattern recognition, or great job for people who enjoy hyper focusing.’
Hold frequent discussions via intranet, bulletins, house organs written by NT staff about their resolved work challenges or great conversations.
Peer coaching: where possible, set up peer coaching relationships between self-disclosed ND folks and those who have not yet self-disclosed, or between managers who have ND employees and want to support and learn from each other, or…
Publish corporate guidelines on inclusion: by clearly stating in all corporate communiques that the company has a culture of inclusion, it becomes obvious to employees and potential hires that all are welcome, regardless of difference.

NDs may be overlooked and burned out – certainly not contributing fully. Doing this lets all employees know they must be more accepting and learn new skills.

These practices will generate trust: trust that the culture has changed; trust for NDs to self-disclose without discrimination; trust that the company values their input; trust that any existing problems will be resolved.

CONCLUSION

Neurodiverse employees offer great advantages. In addition to being loyal, hardworking, relentless, creative, and honest, they bring new points of view otherwise not considered that stimulate creative solutions and outside-the-box thinking,

Create a culture in which they want to work, and once employed, to thrive. Find those in your company and serve them. Generate a culture of inclusion and acceptance. Design hiring and outreach procedures that find people who would not only fit but be an asset.

_______________________

Sharon Drew Morgen August 17th, 2026

Posted In: Communication

We often make assumptions during our conversations about the meaning of what’s been said or sharing our best responses. But how accurate are they? I used to think that if I listened carefully I would accurately understand what was being said. I was wrong.

While researching my book What? I discovered that there’s a high probability we aren’t accurately understanding what we think we heard: due to the way ears ‘hear’ (not very well) we only accurately understand less than 35% of what’s been said.

Since our listening is subjective, and there’s a high probability we’ve misunderstood what’s been said, any assumptions we make must be subject to self-doubt.

Sample

Listening is a brain thing. Turns out we don’t have choice over how our brain (mis)translates incoming words:

We only retain words we hear for approximately 3 seconds, and since spoken words have no spaces between them, our brains must also listen for breaks in breath, tone, and rhythm to differentiate words and meaning.
Spoken words, as sound vibrations, go through several rounds of deletions and distortions on route to being translated into meaning in a neural circuit, causing a maximum of 35% accuracy in understanding what was intended.
Spoken words get translated by already-existing circuits for translation ensuring we ‘hear’ what we’ve already heard before, most likely misinterpreting the new content.

A simple example of this just happened today when I was introduced to someone:

Joe: Hey V. I’d like you to meet my friend Sharon-Drew.

V: Hi Sharon.

SDM: Actually, my first name is Sharon-Drew and I always use both names.

V: Oh. I don’t know anyone who calls themselves by their first name AND last name.

SDM: Neither do I.

V: But you just told me that’s how you refer to yourself!

Because she had no existing circuits for my double first name, her brain used an existing pathway and misinterpreted my name. Her assumptions overrode both Joe’s introduction and my correction.

This type of thing happens daily. We believe what our brain tells us, make follow-on assumptions then act on them, and never doubt ourselves. Unfortunately, because what we think we’ve heard may not be the Speaker’s intended message and our interpretation is inaccurate, we often assume we’re ‘right’ and end up being wrong.

ASSUMPTIONS RESTRICT AUTHENTIC COMMUNICATION

Brains are set up to routinize and habituate most of what we do and hear. It makes the flow of our daily activities and relationships easy.

But there is a downside: because our brain is mechanical, electrical, meaningless, unconscious and automatic, it doesn’t consider ‘meaning’ during the electrochemical process between a Speaker’s words and a Listener’s understanding and we end up making faulty assumptions.

Years ago, when I asked a magazine editor to correct the name Charlotte Morgan that appeared under my photo instead of my actual name, he replied (and I can’t make this stuff up!): “I didn’t get it wrong. You must have sent it to me wrong.” True story: he’d rather assume he got it right and I sent him an incorrect name instead of my actual name!

THE COST OF ASSUMING

Assumptions are a natural part of how we think. But especially in leadership situations, they can cause harm:

Sellers assume prospects are buyers when they ‘hear’ a ‘need’ based on their biased questions and end up wasting a huge amount of time chasing prospects who will never buy;
Consultants assume they know what a client needs from discussions with only a few top decision makers causing resistance to change when they implemented to people not included.
Decision scientists assume they gather accurate data from the people that hired them and discount important data held by employees lower down the management chain, inadvertently skewering the results and making implementation difficult;
Doctors, lawyers, dentists sometimes make flawed assumptions when they hear issues similar to other patients they’ve had potentially causing harm – especially when these assumptions keep them from finding out the real problems. They also offer important advice that clients/patients don’t heed when the patients themselves hear inaccurately;
Coaches assume clients mean something they are not really saying or skewering the focus of the conversation, ending up biasing the outcome by leading clients away from the real issues that never get resolved;
Influencers and leaders offer their solutions then blame the Other for resisting, ignoring, or sabotaging, when the assumed solution procures resistance.

To have more personal choice around when, how, if you make assumptions, ask yourself:

How do I know if my assumptions are accurate? And if they’re inaccurate, how will I know?
What would I need to believe differently to ‘assume’ I might not be correct, and be willing to ask clarifying questions to elicit accurate data?
What is making inaccurate assumptions costing me or those I’m speaking with?

Assumptions are costly when they’re inaccurate. How will you know the difference between accurate ones and faulty ones?

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen August 10th, 2026

Posted In: Listening

Sales as a Spiritual Practice

Questioning Questions, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Bridging the Gap between What’s Said and What’s Heard, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

A Direct Route to Facilitating Permanent Change: a new approach to helping clients find their answers – Part Two, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

A Direct Route to Facilitating Permanent Change – Part One, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

AI’s Missing Piece: personal decision making is beyond information, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

The Importance of Confusion, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

The Two Buying Processes: the Buy Side and the Sell Side, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Are you supporting the Neurodiverse Employees in Your Workplace? by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Assumptions: Why being right may be wrong, by Sharon-Drew Morgen