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

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Change is one of those business practices that remain problematic: Can resistance be avoided? Is it possible to acquire buy-in to achieve an easy rollout? Is there a scalable approach for Change Management that works for all industries and initiatives? Can the risks of change be known at the start of a project? Can implementation be trouble-free and sustainable?

Yes, to all. But current approaches begin with “Identify the problem” and overlook the essential earlier steps. Unless all relevant information is gathered from those most familiar with it, it’s not possible to accurately identify a problem. Unless or until

everyone with firsthand knowledge/regular experience of the problem shares their experiences and offers thoughts on possible solutions;
everyone understands and discerns ways to overcome any risks of change;
those who will use the new solution have a say in defining the goals/objectives

implementation, buy-in, resistance and risk problems may endanger success. Indeed, without including the relevant systems, a project might fail.

In this article I’ll lay out why systems are so vital in project/change work and why problems emerge when they’re overlooked. Let’s begin with a definition of systems.

CHANGE MUST BE SYSTEMIC

Since everything exists within a system, they’re the foundational factor in all change.

AI defines systems as a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent parts that function together as a whole to achieve a common purpose or goal, defined by its boundaries, structure, and the relationships between its components. [Italics mine]
I define a system as a group of ‘things’ that include the same rules and norms that have been agreed to.

As ubiquitous components, systems characterize cultures and countries, religions and choices. By defining what we believe, notice, act on, choose and how we behave, they regulate our lives. Families, relationships, egos, clothing and professional choices, how we choose our mates and hobbies – even the way we think and make assumptions – are all dictated by our personal system of beliefs, history, and experience.

An essential component of systems is their need for balance (Systems Congruence). Without stability, a system will be at risk and resist any change. And this is where standard change management and decision-making models fail.

With a focus on changing behaviors and without managing the underlying, normative systems involved, projects face time delays, unknown risks, resistance, and lack of buy-in. Let’s now take a look at how systems show up in companies.

SYSTEMS SEEK STABILITY

Each workplace is a unique representation of its underlying systems that designate

cultural norms and implicit rules,
hiring and management practices,
brand expression,
behavioral and communication standards
policy, expectations, dress codes, environment, and implicit norms.

Each company, each group, each person comprises unique systems, leading to great variety in behaviors, norms, and activities. Here’s an example from my own work history. In the 1980s, after working for years at Merrill Lynch – a staid, conservative international brokerage house – I took a job at a progressive brokerage house on Wall Street (run by the renegade Ray Dirks ) without dress codes. It advertised ‘penny stocks’ globally, taking orders 24/7 in all time zones. Whoever was in the office when a call came in (and LOTS of calls came in!) got the order. The company motto was posted everywhere: “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise”. I once showed up at 2:30 a.m. in my pajamas, SO different from the suits I wore at Merrill. Other brokers had figured out the system and were also there in the middle of the night dressed in various outfits (even a bathing suit once). And we all made a ton of money.

Obviously, the foundational systems define who gets hired, what gets done, and how people behave. And when these are ignored, any change or required implementation will be at risk.

Here’s a video of me teaching a group of System Dynamics folks the importance of helping clients understand and manage their systemic elements as part of an implementation:

WHAT PUTS CHANGE AT RISK?

To fix a problem successfully, to prompt change in a way it’s retained and accepted, it’s necessary to involve the entire system. Too often, leaders seek to gather information about, and focus the change only what they consider to be the problematic behaviors (reorganize, add departments, etc.) causing imbalance and disruption, putting the system at risk.

Indeed, what appears problematic was initially built into the system as a feature and has become habituated. Any attempt to change a problem without including, and getting agreement from the elements in the originating system that triggered it will cause an imbalance – or risk.

Addressing the systemic risk factors in any change initiative or decision is a vital component of success: A system will fight to maintain the status quo rather than face disruption, regardless of the need or the efficacy of the new solution. And the time it takes to manage and determine potential risks in any new decision is the length of time it takes to be successfully implemented.

I’m familiar with a troubled mid-sized media support company that’s closing 50% less than normal from their sales leads. Instead of assembling the sales force to hear their thoughts, problems and needs, the new CEO reorganized sales – new initiatives, payouts, departments, leadership – without including the very salespeople who were experiencing, and had knowledge of, the problem. Obviously, the sales folks rebelled and refused to comply (surprise!) with their new job titles, new reporting structure, new territories. As of this writing, several top producers have quit while most of the rest are seeking new jobs.

ELEMENTS IN SUCCESSFUL CHANGE

I’ve spent much of my working life inventing systemic change models that begin by including everyone’s voice to

share their (often first-hand) knowledge,
offer creative ideas to problem resolution that fit their specific needs,
highlight and brainstorm strategies to avoid risks,
discuss and set possible goals and outcomes

to ensure balance, buy-in, group-wide inclusion, creativity, and implementation.

I’ve developed a Change Facilitation model that uses 13 steps of change and quite different from standard change models, attaining successful results by including all systems elements upfront, assuring a risk-free change, buy-in, and no resistance.

Sample

Here are the main topics of the steps that must occur before goal setting. They must be used in this order, although they may be iterated: [Note: I’m happy to coach you through this on a group coaching call: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Where are you?

People: without including ALL people who touch the current system/problem and are involved with the new, it’s impossible to

gather an accurate fact pattern or front-line/real-time knowledge,
define the current beliefs, norms, assumptions at the root of the problem,
recognize potential risks,
enlist buy-in,
avoid resistance.

If it’s a large company, there are certainly ways to get everyone’s voices represented.

Collaborative leadership: a top-down, leader-led, behavior-change-focused project excludes identifying the foundational beliefs, values, norms that have maintained balance and generated the problems to be solved, leading to resistance and risk.

Information gathering: with all voices included, it’s possible to gather the full fact pattern and engage ideas directly from the source. Otherwise, leaders use partial knowledge and assumptions to set goals without knowing the minefields they’ll find, often causing incongruence and risk.

Recognizing risk: with all data in hand and discussed, risks to the system (jobs, people, relationships etc.) become apparent and can be avoided and supervised beforehand.

What’s missing and why hasn’t it been fixed already?

Joint discussions, brainstorming, idea sharing, decision-making: unless all decent ideas are heard and discussed; unless all voices that touch the problem and are included in gathering, sharing, and developing ideas; until the problematic elements within the system have been identified there’s no way to understand the scope of the solution.

An essential start to any project must include recognizing how it got instigated so the underlying beliefs, policies, activities and assumptions can be reconsidered and reoriented. Example: If the rule is that customer service reps can spend no more than 4 minutes on a call, it’s difficult to reconsider customer services solutions.

What resources do we have to fix this?

Best fixes (workarounds) to avoid disruption: to ensure proposed fixes match the identified systemic factors, available resources must be considered first. It’s only when it’s determined by all that a problem can’t be fixed internally that an external solution (i.e. a purchase, a consultant) will be considered.

What are the risks of change to avoid too much disruption?

Understand and manage the risks of change: All voices of those who will be a part of a new solution must collaborate to understand and agree to the risks of change, understand how much disruption they’ll cause, and know how to mitigate them. Without knowing this in advance the project is likely face delays, garner resistance, and not enlist buy-in.

Problem identification/Goal setting

With everyone’s voices, ideas, information; with risks known and managed; with workarounds tried and rejected; it’s time to set goals (i.e. step 4, rather than step 1).

From here, standard change models can be used.

CONCLUSION

Change is far more complex than merely changing behaviors. After all, behaviors emerge from systems that have defined, approved, and maintained them and must be included for successful change without resistance.

I have invented a Change Facilitation model to ensure systemic buy-in and risk-avoidance. This will ensure projects will be on time and implemented throughout the group/company, with no resistance.

For groups wishing team coaching through the beginning of a project, or need help defining goals or getting buy-in once resistance has set in, let me help. Sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

________________________________

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 May 4th, 2026

Posted In: News

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As managers, professors, speakers, and instructors you’re committed to getting your big ideas across, facilitating decision making, collaborating with students, inspiring creativity and sparking original ideas. But is your audience hearing what you intend to convey?

When I heard two highly intelligent people having a conversation in which neither were directly responding to each other (”Which door at the meeting hall should my friends pick me up?” “There’s parking near the bottom of the hill.”) I became curious. Were they hearing different things that caused disparate responses?

I spent the next 3 years studying how brains listen and writing a book on it (WHAT? Did you really say what I think I heard?). I ended up learning far more than I ever wanted to: like most people, I had assumed that when I carefully listened I could accurately hear someone’s intended message. I was wrong.

Sample

HOW BRAINS LISTEN

Turns out there’s no absolute correlation between what a Speaker says and what a Listener hears – a very unsatisfactory reality when our professions may be based on offering content that is meant to be understood and retained.

Sadly there’s a probability that your Listeners are not taking away what you’re saying. Recent studies have proven that Listeners only accurately hear no more than 35% of what’s been said. And it’s their brain’s fault.

Here’s my definition of listening:

Listening is an automatic, electrochemical, biological, mechanical, and physiological process during which spoken words, as meaningless puffs of air, eventually get translated into meaning by our existing neural circuitry, leaving us to understand some unknown fraction of what’s been said – and even this is biased by our existing knowledge.

In other words, listening is an automatic and mechanical process devoid of meaning – merely a transactional process. We can have no idea how a Listener’s brain has translated our content.

ELEMENTS OF HOW BRAINS ‘HEAR’

In case you want to understand the process, here are the steps brains perform when hearing spoken words.

A message (words, as puffs of air, initially without meaning) gets spoken and received as sound vibrations.
Dopamine, where our beliefs and values are stored, immediately processes incoming sound vibrations, deleting and filtering out some of them according to relevance to the Listener’s mental models.
What’s left gets sent to a CUE which turns the remaining vibrations into electrochemical signals.
The signals then get sent to the Central Executive Network (CEN) where they are dispatched to a ‘similar-enough’ neural circuit (among 100+ billion) for translation into meaning. Note: The preferred neural circuits that receive the signals are those most often used by the Listener, regardless of their precise relevance to what was said.
Upon arrival at these ‘similar-enough’ circuits, the brain discards any overage between the existing circuit and the incoming signals and fills in any perceived holes with ‘other’ signals from neighboring circuits.

What our brain tell us was said, i.e. what we ‘hear’, is a translation of whatever remains. So: several deletions, a few additions, and translation into meaning by circuits that already exist.

In other words, what we think we hear, what our brain tells us was said, is some rendition of what a Speaker intends to convey that gets biased by our own history – what we already know and believe – obviously restricting incoming content to what’s familiar.

The problem shows up in all our conversations but becomes even more challenging when imparting knowledge: neither the Speaker nor the Listener knows the distance between what was said and what was heard. Certainly both assume they’ve heard and been heard accurately.

I lost a business partner who believed I said something I would never have said. He not only didn’t believe me when I told him what I’d actually said, but he didn’t believe his wife who was standing with us at the time (“John. Sharon-Drew’s right! She never said that! I was right next to you!”). “You’re both lying to me! I heard it with my own ears!” and he stomped out of the room, never to speak to me again.

HOW TO CONFIRM OUR AUDIENCE HEARS US

What does that mean for those of us paid to provide information? It means we have no idea if some/all/few of the Listeners hear precisely what we are trying to convey. They might hear something similar or something vastly different. They may hear something quite comfortable or something that offends them. They may misinterpret a homework assignment or a project initiative. It means they may not retain what we’re offering.

To make sure your audience understands what you intend to share, you must take an extra step. Instead of merely assuming your good content or asking inspirational questions are heard as intended, you must assume you don’t know what they’ve heard, regardless of how carefully you’ve worded our message.

To realize what’s been heard and counter any errors I suggest you ask:

Can you each tell me what you heard me say?

You’ll be amazed at what the audience hears! Of course then you’ll be able to correct the errors.

LEARNING FACILITATION™

For those times you seek to impart permanent learning – say, in a training environment – and it’s important that your audience accurately understands and/or learns what you’re saying, I’ve developed a wholly new type of training model.

Learning Facilitation™ works with the brain first to bypass the historic circuits and generate new ones to accurately retrieve and maintain the new data.

It’s great for classroom training and can be amended for management groups and lecture halls.

Call me if you’re interested in learning how to design Learning Facilitation™ programs. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_____________________

Sharon Drew Morgen April 20th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, Listening

As an original thinker, I think in systems or, as some systems thinkers say, ‘thinking in circles’. The main difference between systems thinkers and serial thinkers is the scope of what we notice.

Standard thinking is sequential. One idea follows the next and appears logical as per the person’s knowledge of the situation and similar experiences. It 1. restricts possible choices to the person’s assumptions, history and beliefs; 2. notices what’s deemed relevant; 3. may overlook factors that might enhance understanding or outcomes. Sequential thinkers have a relatively straight path to their outcomes and may not recognize the need to bring in additional data.

Many leaders are sequential (transactional) thinkers. When resolving a problem they may speak only to other leaders; consider actions based on intuition and available information; invite other leaders to create and deploy a solution they’ve developed amongst themselves.

Systems thinking is circular. Systems thinkers hear, think, notice a broad range of factors on many levels – data points, connections, relationships, juxtapositions, patterns, repetitions, gaps – simultaneously, making it possible to compile an expansive data set from a broad array of elements. With more good data to weigh, with more components available, there’s a high probably of more creativity, more choice, less risk, less resistance, more collaboration, more efficiency and a greater possibility of attaining excellence.

A systems thinking (relational) leader seeks out a broad scope of ideas and people to ensure inclusion and maximum understanding and creativity. To assure there’s collaboration, agreement, and acceptance, and to gather the full fact pattern, they assemble (representatives of) all job descriptions touching the problem and the solution; trial several workarounds; lead the group to discern if the risk of change is manageable; promote group buy-in to integrate the new solution.

I’ve developed a 13 Step model that facilitates systemic change and captures the full set of elements necessary for resistance free, easy to implement change.

WHAT SYSTEMS THINKERS DO

People at top of their fields, such as historic geniuses Steve Jobs, Nikola Tesla, Cezanne, incorporate the ‘whole’ – the entire system – within their choices. In modern sports, Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, and LeBron James are systems thinkers as well, employing the same comprehensive practices: They become one with the ball, their implement (racket, club), the court/course, their hands, their legs, their grip, etc. and continually (re)adjust their position according to their opponents. It’s all one system.

When Federer, Woods, James are not ‘one’ with all, they miss the shot. My son, a medaled Olympian at 3 Olympics (Nagano, Salt Lake, and Vancouver), says he excels when he’s ‘one’ with his system: his skis, the snow, the poles, his knees and boots, his arms, the gates, the run, the turns. Without all operating as one, he falls.

Here’s a breakdown of the systems artists think in while making a painting. They simultaneously:

see the paint, the canvas, the brush, the stroke, the color, the mental vision of what they’re painting, the emerging patterns and a shifting minds-eye visual as the picture emerges.
feel the emergence of the vision from their mental picture, the brush, the hardness of softness of how the brush meets the canvas, their hand/arm as they apply color to the canvas.
hear the whisk of the brush on the canvas, the creak of the floor or chair as they move toward and away from the canvas.

I believe that adding systems thinking to transactional activities will make results more efficient and their outcomes more successful, collaborative, and creative without resistance.

HOW DO BRAINS THINK?

Everyone naturally thinks in both systems and sequences at different times and for different reasons. Here’s a simplistic explanation of how we end up doing and thinking as we do.

We’re all restricted by how our brain stores our history. Everything we see, hear, feel is a translation from our existing neural circuitry and, by nature, subjective. In other words, what we understand, act on, notice, and even hear is something we’ve understood, acted on, and heard before. We do what we’ve always done, triggered by our automatic, mechanistic, meaningless, electrochemical brain. [Note: learning has a specific modality to generate wholly new neural circuits with new triggers. I’ve invented a Learning Facilitation™ model that generates new circuits.]

We actually know – and sense, and understand, and intuit – a lot more than we use due to the way our brain stores stuff.

Fun fact: our brains collect millions of bits of information PER HOUR and sends them whizzing around our 100 billion synapses as we make decisions, write reports, and turn on the dishwasher before going to bed!

Our conscious thoughts are a fraction of the full data set we’ve got stored in our unconscious. Sequential thinkers will likely access more of the automatic, habituated superhighways that carry our historic (biased, subjective) expressions. Systems thinkers make decisions from a broader fact pattern from the data stored in several parts of their brain and not automatically accessible, providing more elements and less bias in each decision.

Here’s the problem when we need to make a choice: due to our brain’s laziness, our standard thinking automatically triggers what we already know and what have become our assumptions and biases clearly restricting our choices.

Obviously we’d prefer the broadest range of data for decisions making. How, then, do we access our unconscious to retrieve more of what we’ve got stored? This is the question that has led me to my life’s work: developing models that employ systems as the foundational framing factor.

Using my systems-thinking brain, and with decades of research and study on where/how brains store our knowledge, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and assumptions, I’ve developed decision facilitation models for Sales (Buying Facilitation®), Learning, Change, Leadership, and Coaching that enable Others to get to their trigger points (neural circuits) where their decisions emanate from and from where change must be triggered.

I’ve written a book on how I employ systems in my inventions:

Sample

HOW I THINK

For those interested in how my brain thinks in systems, here’s how I access data beyond my brain’s automatic choices. Maybe you do some of this naturally?

During conversations or when helping someone resolve a problem, several layers of data show up simultaneously as I listen:

I am detached (in Observer/witness/coach) from any outcome, making it possible to notice more and gather a broader scope of data with a minimally-biased brain.
I detect the underlying intent. A speaker initially offers a simplified version of a goal or problem, often unaware of the complete fact pattern. The ultimate goal is often unspoken, unknown, and unconscious until it’s fully uncovered. Too often sequential thinkers assume the initial disclosure is accurate; it’s where I begin accessing patterns.
I hear the underlying message which I call a metamessage. Again, this is largely unspoken – a belief, or bias that isn’t specifically mentioned but rules the entire interaction.
I can detect disparities, incongruences, between the metamessage and the stated (but often incomplete and possibly incongruent) intent. Too often, sequential thinkers only notice incongruences after they’ve become a problem.
I notice patterns, what occurs repeatedly. So if I see someone regularly taking action on a subset of data before uncovering the full data set (i.e. FIRE, excluding the ‘Ready, Aim…’), I assume that’s a typical behavior.
I can hear the underlying systems and assumptions that influence the goal. How did X become the ‘logical’ conclusion? Why is Y the response to Z?
The person’s tone, tempo, pitch, and affect point me to congruence or incongruence in their goal.
I notice word choices. How the chosen words correlate with the stated goals and problems lead me to underlying assumptions and where something’s missing.
I only attend to what’s relevant to understand the system. Neither details nor story line are relevant at the beginning.
I notice if a problem can be fixed from previous successful fixes. Note: among a brain’s 100 trillion synapses there are often existing neural circuits that were used successfully before. I always ask: ‘Have you successfully resolved this before? If so, what’s stopping you from using the same methods now?’ Otherwise I help them generate new neural circuits for a new solution.

Thinking in circles, I hear/notice all this simultaneously. When one of the factors doesn’t match the goal or intent, it lights up in my head telling me there’s an unresolved issue, or a systems problem.

Unfortunately, sequential thinkers often resolve problems in ‘logical’ steps and are surprised when they later discover the goal, as stated, is wrong, or they’ve gathered an incomplete set of problem factors, or not included all necessary stakeholders, or missed vital factors that conclude with failure or resistance.

I believe that anyone can add systems thinking to their standard thinking.

USE YOUR SYSTEMS THINKING

Thinking in systems provides a broader scope with which to think and plan. Beneficial for inspiration, resourcefulness, accuracy, unbiased responses, and creativity, for writers, artists, musicians, inventors and original thinkers to name a few. I also believe that corporate management, healthcare providers, coaches and trainers would benefit from an unbiased, broad, inclusive understanding of the entire scope of a situation. Of course listening without bias and posing non-biased questions are skill sets everyone needs.

For those times you need a bit of inspiration or seek a more complete outcome, it’s possible to add some systems thinking practices. Here’s an exercise to express your systems-thinking brain.

EXERCISE

Remember a time you considered making/creating something. Painting, knitting, whittling, woodworking. Let’s see if you can capture what you did in creation mode to see if any of your actions are worth adding to your current way of thinking. And grab a sheet of paper to write down your answers to the questions below.

To begin your project, you might have had pictures in your mind’s eye as you played with ideas. Maybe you made some sketches. Or just trialed different things knowing you’d fail a few times. You probably sat quietly to think and let your mind explore possibilities from all sides. Is this the right angle? What will adding this color do?

Notice how you’re thinking, how the ideas are emerging. Are they similar to things you’ve done before? Wholly new? Do they have sound? Colors? Can you feel any of them? How many different versions are showing up? How do you know which ideas are ‘good’ or relevant, which won’t work? How many different things did you come up with? How many of these did you try? How did you choose which ones were ‘good’ and which were ‘bad’? How did you notice what you needed to alter – did you feel it? See it? When did you decide you needed some additional research? How did you know you were finished? Did you complete? Why? Why not?

Now, what’s different about the way you thought of those things vs the way you go about resolving a problem? Is there anything you can add to your daily choices that would expand what you notice? What you consider? What you do?

I believe that all of us could benefit from systems thinking for activities that demand we show up with minimal bias. Listening to strangers, or people not in our general life path (i.e. unhoused people; elderly people; disabled people) without bias or judgment. Recognizing a problem that needs resolution. Making life decisions that affect others.

Try it. You’ll expand your world.

____________________

Sharon Drew Morgen April 13th, 2026

Posted In: News

Your important nonprofit or exciting startup will help the world be a better place. But now you’ve got to raise money. You’ve created a terrific pitch deck; have a highly competent management team and terms; have access to good outreach lists; are sending out slick marketing missives that show your professionalism and integrity; and have identified donor prospects with major gift potential. You’ve designed a multi-channel approach to build relationships with small investors and donors to excite them to give more.

Why aren’t you raising all the money you deserve?

It’s not you, your message. or your organization;
It’s not the strength of your relationship or who you ‘know’;
It’s not the market, your competition, your return potential or your marketing materials.

It’s a decision issue. Somehow your investors must choose between giving their money to you or putting it somewhere else that seems equally promising. With a finite amount to invest, they must decide where to put their funds. How will they decide?

CRITERIA VS. CONTENT

Ultimately, people choose to invest based on their own choice criteria and beliefs. While your purpose is undoubtedly important and your pitch deck substantive, unless a startup matches an investor’s criteria and they know the risks involved with investing in you, they will do nothing, regardless of how compelling your goals, marketing, market share, or growth potential.

Funds, after all, are not sitting there waiting for you to show up. You may be requesting money that

competes with other investments in their portfolio;
represents some sort of risk to them;
is earmarked for something/someone else;
needs stakeholder buy-in;
may be outside their stated goals, relationships, strategy, beliefs or agreements.

For the most part, decisions are made unconsciously before content is directly considered, not to mention you have no access to the hidden or historic events, political mind-fields, or unconscious biases that dictate someone’s choice criteria.

By including some new thinking, it’s possible to enable prospective investors to uncover and share their criteria within your session, providing you the opportunity to discuss any objections right away, then offer them the exact pitch to match their needs.

HOW PEOPLE CHOOSE

Sadly, regardless of your worthy cause or important product, people won’t give you money unless it meets their unspoken criteria. It’s here you unwittingly lose investors.

Outsiders (sellers, fundraisers, etc.) can never understand the behind-the-scenes, idiosyncratic criteria used to decide. Each person, each group has their own unique sets of rules, beliefs, values, vision they choose from;
Until the personal choice criteria are factored and resolved, until it’s determined that donating or investing in one group vs another does not put the investor at risk, no decision to invest will be made regardless of the importance of your offering or your marketing or outreach efforts;
Our information is only relevant after it fits into the potential investor’s defined initiatives and parameters. And when you offer it before they’ve recognized their choice criteria. They can’t even hear your pitch accurately.

There’s one more factor to consider: Who decides?

While you won’t have access to anyone’s personal decision-making strategies, it’s obvious that unless it’s a small ask, there’s usually a decision team who decide together – several people or just a spouse – and may not be in the room with you.

These people also have unknown criteria that govern their choices – political, humanitarian, profit, trust, etc.; there are personal standards that must be met; and there’s a risk to each choice that must be ascertained. Content details are only useful once primary choice criteria are met.

FACILITATE CRITERIA DISCOVERY BEFORE PITCHING

Instead of assuming the compelling solution you believe details investors should know and developing pitch decks based on these assumptions, begin by leading people directly to their unconscious choice criteria.

I’ve developed decision facilitation models used by many sales professionals to facilitate buying decisions called Buying Facilitation®. It includes the elements involved in how buyers decide, using a form of question I invented [Facilitative Questions™] that enable unconscious criteria to emerge for discussion. Here’s a few to use for fundraising:

What investment risks do you seek to avoid? How will you know upfront that investing with us would avoid these risks?
How will you choose between causes to give money to? What criteria will you use? What flexibility do you have?
How will you and your decision team decide on the amounts and types of groups or organizations to invest in?
What would you need to see from a group you’re considering investing in to be certain our group meets your criteria?

Sample

These questions make it possible for potential investors to find their unconscious criteria beyond their automatic choices. So if I never contribute to causes that involve for-profit business, if a small software group is fundraising to give their employee’s children better healthcare I might go beyond my unconscious criteria and invest.

At my suggestion, one of my clients posed this Facilitative Question™ as her first statement when seeking Round B funding, before pitching. As a woman, she understood she had less than a 4% chance of getting funded and hoped to trigger the investor’s better angels.

What would you need to know about me, my level of skill and professionalism, and my ability to manage a start-up, to trust that as a woman I was worthy of your investment?

Two of the ten potential investors walked out. The other 8 actually applauded, saying they hadn’t realized they had an unconscious bias against women before they even walked in. She had no problems getting funded.

REPEAT INVESTORS

For people who have donated to you or invested with you previously, begin your meeting with a discussion on how they’ll decide to invest or donate again. These folks seem to be obvious patrons, but unfortunately not all recommit.

While we assume we can encourage them to donate or invest more, we might not know what they need to hear from us to do so: What do they need to know about what we’ve accomplished in the meantime? Are they looking for some sign of ‘success’ or to know if we’ve made the change or addition they were hoping for? Do they still trust us? Again, we can assume, but we don’t know for sure.

Good questions might be something like:

What would you need to see from us to be willing to donate/invest again this year?
Due to the political climate and our dedication to an agenda that supports equality, fairness, and food/shelter for all here in Portland, we are asking our current patrons to increase their contribution this year if possible. How will you know that we will use your funds to meet the goals you espouse?

Ultimately, investors and donors need to know they’re giving money to groups that match their goals and beliefs. Giving money is a choice that involves personal criteria: don’t assume people will invest or donate merely because you’ve got a great idea.

____________

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 April 6th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, News

Our viewpoints, interpretations and assumptions are so unconsciously biased that we unwittingly restrict our ability to accurately understand, or act on, incoming information. Our brains are the culprit, as they construct the way we make sense of the world; we don’t question what our brains tell us.

Responding from historic personal norms and beliefs, we instinctively assume our perceptions, actions, interpretations, are based on reality. But we invent our own reality. As David Eagleman says in The Brain,

“Each of us has our own narrative and we have no reason not to believe it. Our brains are built on electrochemical signals that we interpret as our lives and experience… there’s no single version of reality. Each brain carries its own truth via billions of signals triggering chemical pulses and trillions of connections between neurons.” [pg 73-74]

Our brains actually restrict us to seeing, noticing, hearing, understanding, and learning what we already have circuits to translate – what’s comfortable and acceptable – causing deep seated biases. Our subjectivity maintains us.

Sample

In this article I will explain how our brain biases us and what we can do to override the patterns.

SUBJECTIVITY VS OBJECTIVITY

We live our lives subjectively, based on the way our brains code and retrieve our personal, unique, and idiosyncratic beliefs, assumptions, history and norms. We think we’re making good choices when we choose or consider one thing vs another, when we easily reject something because it makes no sense or annoys us. Or worse, when it’s ‘obvious’ to us that one thing should be valued differently than another.

We like to think we’re objective. But we’re not.

The Wikipedia definition of objectivity is “… the elimination of subjective perspectives and … purely based on hard facts.” And “a lack of bias, judgment, or prejudice.” But is this possible? What are ‘hard facts’ when our brain rejects them as faulty? When our brains determine what ‘reality’ is? I suggest that objectivity is only slightly less biased than subjectivity.

Indeed, it’s pretty impossible to experience or interpret most anything without bias. We act, make decisions and choices, communicate with others, raise children and have friends, all from a small range of favored, habitual mental models and neural circuits that come from oft-used superhighways in our brains that we’ve spent a lifetime culling and assume are accurate.

Regardless of how ‘factual’ it is, when incoming data doesn’t jive with our existing beliefs, our brains ‘do us a favor’ and resist and re-interpret whatever falls outside of what we ‘know’ to be true. Obviously, anything new has a good chance of not being understood accurately. Bias is just cooked in; we don’t even think twice about trusting our intuition or natural reasoning when there’s a good chance we shouldn’t.
Whether we’re in a conversation, listening to media, or even reading, we listen through biased filters, and hear what our brains tell us was said – likely to be X% different from the intended message. Unless we develop new neural pathways for the new incoming data, we will only hear what our brains are already comfortable with.

Indeed, our worlds are very tightly controlled by our unconscious, habituated, and brain-based biases, making it quite difficult to objectively hear or understand anything that is different. It takes quite a bit of work to act beyond our perceptions.

WHY CAN’T WE BE OBJECTIVE?

Each of us interpret incoming messages uniquely. Indeed, objectivity is not, well, objective. Here’s what happens: Sometimes

the way the new information comes in to us – the words used, the setting, the history between the communication partners, the distance between what’s being said and our current beliefs – cause us to unconsciously misinterpret bits of data;
we have no natural way of recognizing an incongruity between the incoming information and our unconscious thoughts;
our brain deletes some of the signals from incoming messages when they are discordant with what we already accept as true, without telling us what we missed (My book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? explains and corrects this problem.);
our beliefs are so strong we react automatically without having enough detachment to notice;
what we think is objective is often merely a habitual choice.

Sample

We each live in worlds of our own making. We choose friends and neighborhoods according to our beliefs and how our ears interpret ‘facts’, choose professions according to our likes and predispositions, raise our kids with the same norms and beliefs that we hold. In other words, we’ve created rather stable – certainly comfortable – worlds for ourselves that we fight to maintain regardless of how our biases may distort.

When communicating with others, ‘objective facts’ might get lost in subjectivity. In business we connect with different viewpoints and attempt to convince other’s of our ‘rightness’, and either they don’t believe us or they feel we’ve made them ‘wrong’. Our children learn stuff in school that we might find objectionable regardless of its veracity, or we might disagree with teachers who have different interpretations of our child’s behavior.

And of course, most scientific facts we deem ‘objective truth’ may just be opinions. Folks like Curie, Einstein, Hawking, and Tesla were considered to be cranks because their ideas flew in the face of objective science that turned out to be nothing more than decades and centuries of perceived wisdom/opinions.

The problem shows up in every aspect of our lives. Sometimes there’s no way to separate out objective fact from subjective belief, regardless of the veracity.

I remember when my teenage son came home with blue hair one day. Thinking of what his teachers would say (This was in 1985!) or his friend’s parents, I wanted to scream. Instead I requested that next time he wanted to do something like that to please discuss it with me first, and then told him it looked great (It actually was a terrific color!). But his father went nuts when he came to pick him up, screaming at both of us (“What kind of a mother lets her son dye his hair blue!!!”), and taking him directly to the barber to shave his head. For me, it was merely hair. We both had different ‘objective realities.’

CASE STUDY IN OBJECTIVITY VS SUBJECTIVITY

I once visited a friend in the hospital where I began a light conversations with the elderly orderly helping her sit up and eat. During our chat, the orderly asked me if I could mentor him. Um… Well, I was busy. Please! he begged. Not knowing what I could add to his life and having a bias that folks who asked me to mentor them just wanted me to give them money, I reluctantly, doubtfully, said ok.

He emailed me and invited me to dinner. Um… well, ok. I’d donate one night. He lived in a tiny room in a senior living center, on the ‘wrong’ side of the tracks. It was very clean and neat, and he had gone out of his way to prepare the best healthy dinner he knew how to offer. Shrimp cocktail. Nice salad. Hamburger and beans. Ice cream. During dinner he played some lovely music. Just lovely. I was transfixed. Who is that playing, I asked.

“It’s me. I wrote that piece, and I’m playing all the instruments. I have several CDs of music I’ve composed and self-produced. Can you help me find someone who might want to hear it and do something with it? I’ve never met anyone who could help me.” I helped him find folks who helped him professionally record at least two of his compositions.

By any ‘objective’ measure, using my own subjective biases and ignoring the objective truth that we’re all equal and everyone is capable of having talent, I didn’t initially consider that someone ‘like that’ (old, black, poor, uneducated) had the enormous talent this man possessed, regardless of my advocacy of non-bias and gender/race equality.

Unwittingly, we seriously restrict our worlds the way we process incoming data. We live subjective lives that restrict us. And as a result, we end up having arguments, misunderstandings, failed initiatives; we end up having a smaller pool of ideas to think with and don’t see a need for further research or checking; we make faulty assumptions about people and ideas that could bring benefits to our lives. I personally believe it’s necessary for us to remove as many restrictions as possible to our pool of knowledge and beliefs.

HOW TO COMPENSATE

To recognize bias and have a new choice, we must first recognize the necessity of noticing when something we believe may not be true, regardless of how strong our conviction otherwise. It’s quite difficult to do using the same biases that caused us to unconsciously bias in the first place.

Here’s a tip to help expand your normalized perception and notice a much broader range of givens, or ‘reality,’ to view an expanded array of options from a Witness or Coach or Observer position on the ceiling:

Sit quietly. Think of a situation that ended with you misinterpreting something and the outcome wasn’t pretty. Replay it through your mind’s eye. Pay particular attention to your feelings as you relive each aspect of the situation. Replay it again.
Notice where your body has pain, discomfort, or annoyance points.
As soon as you notice, intensify the feeling at the site of the discomfort. Then impart a color on it. Make the color throb.
Mentally move that color inside your body to the outer edges of your eyeballs and make the color vibrate in your eyes.
When you mentally notice the color vibration, make sure you sit back in your chair or stand up. Then move your awareness up to the ceiling (i.e. in Witness or Observer position) and look down at yourself. From above you’ll notice an expanded range of data points and options outside your standard ones, causing you to physiologically evade your subjective choices.

Since the difference between subjectivity and objectivity is one of perception, and in general our brains make our determinations unconsciously, we must go to the place in our brains that cause us to perceive, and make it conscious. Only then can we have any objective choice. And next time we think we’re being objective, maybe rethink the situation to consider whether new choices are needed.

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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 March 29th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, Listening, Sales

‘Change is hard,’ says the adage. Well, yes, but there’s a reason: when the potential risk of a change is unknown, it presents a possible disruption to the culture. Indeed, no change will be implemented – regardless of the needs of the group or the efficacy of the solution – if the risk of change might be higher than the risk of staying the same.

Currently, change management models overlook risk management and end up incurring resistance when the people with hands-on or customer-facing jobs – with their pride, egos, relationships, knowledge, habits, daily schedules – are excluded from the process and given activities they weren’t a part of generating.

Indeed, when companies fail to assemble and hear from those who currently touch the problem and will touch the new solution, they end up with two types of risk: an unforeseen and costly problem popping up during a project; a project that doesn’t meet its goals, is over budget, and/or doesn’t get implemented.

In this article I’m going to focus on what I see as the main risk in all projects: overlooking the inclusion of the full team at every stage in the process. When leaders assume they know enough to set objectives for a project, they are at risk of failing on both counts.

SOLUTION DESIGN MUST BE SYSTEMIC

Without including the voices of those who are or will be involved in the problem and/or potential solution, a new initiative is at risk regardless of the problem, the need, or the efficacy of the solution. The full complement of voices are necessary to

gather information and understand the full problem set;
design solutions for the needs and goals of all;
set goals that all agree with and will maintain the change;
recognize and manage the risks of change that must be understood at each level;
design paths forward to implement and maintain the new;
achieve buy-in that all are committed to;
set up a core team to supervise and support the new initiative through time.

Without including these steps, leaders cause their own resistance. When people are told what to do without having been part of the process, they resist. No one likes being told what to do without being part of the decision. Not to mention it’s possible they weren’t hired for the job they’re being asked to do and wouldn’t have chosen to do it.

WE CAUSE OUR OWN RESISTANCE

I believe the job of leadership (corporate, healthcare, coaches, managers) is to facilitate excellence amongst their teams, not the ones who must have the answers and set objectives. Without teammates and management collaborating, sharing ideas for better outcomes and developing new goals together that serve all (including the company), the success of any proposed change will be at risk.

I was recently asked by a group of System Dynamics (SD) practitioners to help them with client implementation. Seems they were paid millions of dollars and spent months developing solutions to large scale problems, only to have these be ignored. What was going on?

When I asked the group who set the goals for the project and who they gathered information from to understand the full scope of the problem, the answer to both was ‘leadership’. And therein lie the problem. Because practitioners set goals and objectives without buy-in, without the full data set, they were at risk of failing right from the start.

Here’s a dialogue I had with a SD practitioner working on a problem for the U.S. Army Corp:

PR: Yesterday I interviewed five Generals!

SD: Did you also interview five Privates? Five Majors?

PR: No. Why would I do that?

SD: It’s the only way you can collect an accurate data set, include the voices and needs of everyone involved in maintaining the problem, and help them set appropriate goals and understand the risks inherent in the solution implementation.

PR: Oh. I assumed whoever set the goals had the full data set. Besides, is it really my responsibility?

SD: It’s only your responsibility if you want them to implement.

Here’s a link to that implementation seminar. It offers a model for change projects that begin by first understanding and managing the risks:

I’m also currently working with a now-demoralized sales team that’s suffering the aftereffects of massive restructuring from a new CEO whose goal is to enhance revenue. He’s reorganizing teams, developing new departments, and changing reporting and commission structures – all without a single conversation with the sales team that faces real – and fixable! – marketplace problems that have nothing to do with any reorganization. It’s like spending resource to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

AVOIDING RISK AND RESISTANCE

I’ve spent my adult life unpacking the 13 steps to change that occur in all decision making/change management processes. Here are some thoughts on understanding risk and avoiding resistance before starting a project:

Everyone who touches the problem and/or solution must be included in information capture and goal setting. Note: there are bottom-line risks if only a subset of necessary information is captured, or projects are set by the goals, assumptions, needs of a small percentage of the representative population.
The risks of change must be enumerated and understood, with policies in place to manage before any implementation begins.

Sometimes it’s less biased if an outside consultant facilitates the change. I’d be happy to coach your company to facilitate any type of change, and ensure all risks are managed, permanent solutions are implemented, and there’s no resistance. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen March 23rd, 2026

Posted In: News

Do you ever wonder why so few prospects close when it’s obvious they need your solution? Why even after meetings (that took untold tries and so much wasted time to set) you close only 5%? The problem is simple: sales is not a prospecting tool.

Sales is a solution-placement model that provides details – features and functions – of your solution so people know how it fits with their needs. I call this the Sell Side. While vital, it doesn’t find, or facilitate buyers. In fact, selling (in and of itself) doesn’t cause buying.

It was initially developed by Dale Carnegie who, in 1937, had many good reasons to seek Others with a need: prospects were neighbors who had few other options and no ways to compare product details; their risks of change were minimal; and they had no ‘buying decision teams’ per se.

SALES DOESN’T FACILITATE THE DECISION PROCESS

While that’s all changed in the past 90 years, the sales model continues to use the same toolkit and goal: sell. But with so many providers offering similar solutions and the technology to compare options; with alternatives (workarounds) to your solution; with unknown decision makers and risks to be managed, the standard sales model doesn’t have the tool kit to facilitate the prospect’s comprehensive decision process.

The time it takes people to assemble the right decision makers, get buy-in, and figure out the elements involved in their risk of change, is the length of the sales cycle. Regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution, a buying decision will not risk disrupting the system. Until or unless the risk of change is less than the risk of bringing in a new solution, they will not buy. A closed sale occurs when all decision makers buy in and risks are known and addressed. This is the Buy Side.

The focus on ‘selling’ puts sellers at a profound disadvantage: since it focuses on placing solutions, and uses ‘need’ as the justification, it can only succeed

with folks who have already done their internal decision making
have gotten buy-in from those involved (i.e. the Buying Decision Team)
recognize the risk of change to be minimal to their culture to bringing in something external.

And the sales model was not developed to do that.

Unfortunately, with only the solution-placement model at hand, sellers are stuck wasting their time trying – and spending vast amounts of resource – looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, using content promotion (marketing), brand placement (advertising), seeking appointments (the decision makers don’t show up and it takes vast amounts of time to get one) and pitching to find those relatively-few folks who have done their internal change/risk management work, and are already ready, willing, and able to make a purchase.

DO YOU WANT TO SELL? OR FACILITATE BUYING?

Of course, sales is a necessary element in a buying decision. But to find and serve folks on route to a buying decision it’s necessary to use a different goal and toolkit to find and facilitate prospects through their messy and over-long decision-making process.

Right now, sellers use their product as the reason to buy, and dangle information, with price as the bait. But entering with product content and a solution-placement goal ensures there’s no way to

generate a real relationship achieved when you facilitate people quickly through their steps of their change/risk decisions;
find people on route to buying but not self-identified as prospects yet;
close more than 5% (those ultimately ready to seek an external solution)
compete against similar products, causing you to compete with price.

It’s like a construction worker with only a hammer. Without the full tool kit, it’s not possible to build a house. The hammer is necessary, but not as the only tool.

TWO BUYING PROCESSES

Obviously, with the ultimate goal to place solutions, it’s necessary to find people ready to buy them. But the sales model falls short and tries to sell to people who aren’t ready when it could be seeking people on route to becoming prospects and lead them through their change issues. They must do this anyway, and we wait – and wait, and offer lower pricing – while they do.

Right now, you’re using a ‘need’ filter to find prospects. But ‘need’ won’t find people already attempting to solve a problem internally (actual prospects) because they start off assuming they can solve their own problem and will ignore your outreach. Remember: external fixes carry the unknown baggage of risk and buy-in issues.

To avoid the pitfalls of wasted time and overlooked (actual) prospects, an additional set of goals and skills are necessary: shift your initial goal to seeking folks in the process of solving a problem your solution can solve, then facilitate them through their change/risk decision issues. I call this the Buy Side. And you’ll close triple what you’re now closing as you’ll be offering real support since all potential buyers must, must do this.

Sample

I’ve invented a decision facilitation/change management model (Buying Facilitation®) that begins by seeking folks already IN their process of trying to solve a problem (i.e. not needs based) your solution can resolve (people not yet self-identified as prospects) and facilitate them through their change/risk management, THEN sells when they’ve gotten buy-in.

Of course, during the facilitation process some people will discover that the risk of change is greater than the risk of staying the same and will never be buyers. Obviously, these folks aren’t your buyers, but you will discover this in minutes, and you will have developed a real servant-leader relationship with a chance they’ll come back later.

But ignoring these folks assures you of overlooking the 80% actual prospects that are on route to becoming prospects. It’s certainly better than filling their spam folder with your ‘reminders’ and pitches or finally getting a meeting with just one or two ‘prospects’ who won’t ever buy.

If your job is to sell, find folks on route to self-identifying as buyers – those who WILL buy instead of those who SHOULD buy. Learn Buying Facilitation® and a new set of skills (Facilitative Questions™, the 13 steps of change etc,) to first assemble and facilitate the Decision Team, then help them find and manage their risks of change to stimulate buy-in for an external solution.

Then, when everyone is ready and in agreement, sell. Just stop using sales as a prospecting tool. It doesn’t work.

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Sharon Drew Morgen March 16th, 2026

Posted In: News

As an inventor of systemic decision-making models, I’ve worked with well-meaning leaders, coaches, sellers, and managers who frequently end up with inadequate decisions and difficult implementations. There are several reasons for this:

Too often incomplete information is collected because leaders define goals without including the voices of those directly involved with the problem/solution, causing incomplete data collection, time delays, resistance, or results that either can’t be implemented or maintained over time.
Sometimes faulty assumptions end up misrepresenting important data sets; risk management is frequently overlooked.
Far too often, standard decision-making processes consider and weigh options too early in the process.

I’d like to share what I think are the often-ignored initial stages of decision making that would make it possible to achieve successful, timely, risk free, and successful outcomes that are implemented easily, with buy-in; evade resistance; and are maintained over time.

STEPS OF DECISION MAKING

Stage One: Assemble or represent (in large organizations, it could be a representative of a group) those currently involved with the problem as well as those who will ‘touch’ the ultimate solution. Excluding any of these folks means

the originating problem cannot be fully defined and incomplete data is collected for goal setting;
ownership (buy-in), creativity, consensus, and a full set of solution ideas won’t be obtained;
resistance, implementation issues, and failure are possibilities;
risks won’t be recognized and addressed in a timely way;
human issues – trust, fear, ego slights – won’t be noticed until too late;
data gathering, research, weighing, and choice will be limited or unreliable;
time delays and inefficiencies become probabilities;
difficulty making accurate, long term decisions that get maintained.

Rule: Buy-in, risk management, and a complete data set is needed to accurately define a problem and set the stage for efficient implementation and maintenance. This requires leaders to begin projects by including, as part of the initial discovery and goal-setting, the full representation of the people who have been part of the problem and will touch the final solution.

Stage One concludes with a complete, accurate, stated goal that includes the values/beliefs of the system, agreement to manage any unforeseen risks that must be managed and buy-in by all who will use the final output.

Stage Two: The system and risks that underlies the problem/solution must be understood and managed by all before going forward toward resolution. Questions to be answered:

Are there alternative solutions that can be tried (workarounds) before anything new is considered?
What has prevented the problem from being resolved until now (current systems, politics, rules, relationships, money, technology)?
What must be managed to set the stage to do something different and ensure buy-in, ownership, creativity, idea generation, and transparency?
Are the full set of the risks of change understood and steps put in place to manage beforehand?
What plans are in place to resolve any obstructions?
Is the system set up for change? What systems are in place for the new solution to be created, implemented, and maintained optimally? Are all representative people included at the time of the goal definition?

Rule: Because outputs are restricted by the input, before the formal change process commences, it’s necessary to manage whatever has kept the problem from being resolved so flawed elements can be reviewed and new systems can be put in place to represent the new solution.

Stage Two concludes with an understanding of, and plans to resolve, the systems that have maintained the problem and replaced with new systems to generate, implement, and maintain the new solution.

Stage Three: Once goals have been set with all representative voices, workarounds have been found insufficient, the risks of change known and managed, and there’s buy-in from all who will touch the new solutions, standard decision-making models and processes take over.

SKILLS FOR STEPS

To accomplish these early-stage decision making steps, you’ll need these skills:

Collaborative leadership skills to ensure all voices are represented and included to avoid restricted goal-setting.
Self/Observer/Choice. The ability to move between Self (our natural, unconscious, automatic, restricted, biased state) and Observer (our on-the-ceiling, dispassionate, rational, conscious viewing of a broad set of possibilities).
Rules of trust agreed upon in group.
Understanding the Steps of Change.
Risks defined and plans to address agreed upon.
Willingness to give up early biases.
Facilitative Questions™ to ensure data gathered is unbiased.
Listening without bias. Natural listening involves distortions, deletions, and biases from our brain causing listeners to hear and interpret incoming data uniquely. Extra steps must be taken to verify accuracy.

Sample

Too many decision-making processes start by being defined by leaders who assume needs and overlook assembling a full representation of stakeholders, causing flawed data collection, no awareness of the risks of change, difficult goal setting, and difficulty implementing, not to mention the probability of resistance and struggle over time.

If you would like help ensuring these early steps get done completely, I’d love to coach you and your team through the process. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen March 9th, 2026

Posted In: News

I recently heard a project manager in a software services company mention a ‘very important’ book on persuasion that she passed on to her team. I was curious why she liked it

S: It’s vital we persuade our clients. My team must learn to use the right words to convince them they’re wrong, and get them to change their thinking so we can do what we need to do.

SD: You convince your clients they’re wrong and want to change their thinking even if they don’t agree? And use persuasion strategies rather than maybe facilitate them through a collaborative decision making process and find ways to meld ideas and agree together?

S: They don’t want to agree and we don’t want them to collaborate. They start off wanting it their way. From years of working with these sorts of problems, we know what they need better than they do. That’s why we need to use the best persuasion techniques to change their minds.

I found the conversation unsettling.

WHAT IS PERSUASION – AND WHY IS IT DISRESPECTFUL?

When I looked up persuasion, seems Aristotle defined it with the terms Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Google defines it as an ‘act of convincing’ ‘to put his/her audience into a state of conflict’. The concept has been around a long time – probably since God persuaded the Serpent to eat the apple.

But I suggest that persuasion tactics do not cause change or facilitate others in making good decisions. Indeed, influencing and attempting to persuade others merely causes resistance: since all change occurs from beliefs, attempts by coaches, leaders, sellers, etc. to do what the practitioner prefers largely fail.

Sales strategies employ persuasion to convince people to buy; doctors and healthcare professionals employ biased stories and facts to encourage patients to act, or behave, in ways the docs consider beneficial; coaches use influencing strategies to persuade clients to make the changes the coach recommends.

But these strategies are largely ineffective: Not only will people not do what the influencer wants them to do, they’ll most likely distrust the influencer even if it turns out the influencer is accurate.

By attempting to persuade another to do what you want them to do (even if in their ‘own best interests’), you’re assuming your ideas are right for them, taking away their agency, their personal power, and usurping it for your own need to be right. Not to mention preventing a more robust, and dare I say more creative, outcome to emerge.

My definition is a bit different: persuasion is an influencer’s attempt to get another person to do what the influencer wants, regardless of its efficacy, regardless of the omission of a potentially more creative solution, and even when it goes against the person’s beliefs and wishes.

In fact, people will only change if their values are incorporated into the change. And if an outsider seeks to prompt action without agreement and values alignment, resistance and sabotage will result.

PERSUASION BREAKS SPIRITUAL LAWS

For me, trying to convince another to do what you want them to do breaks a spiritual law: everyone has the right to their own opinions, beliefs, choices, and actions, and the right to behave according to their own self-interest and values.

I believe it’s disrespectful and an act of hubris, even if I think – especially if I ‘know’! – I’m right. No one, no one, can be ‘right’ for another person. Not to mention being ‘right’ is subjective and not necessarily ‘right’.

I looked up ‘persuasion strategies’ to learn what ‘experts’ suggest. They all include finely honed tactics and subliminal convincer strategies:

* Find common ground! * Use their names often! * Prepare for arguments! * Make it seem beneficial to them! * Be confident! * Flatter them and appeal to their emotions! *Motivate action!

Ploys to manipulate, to influence at all costs.

But what’s the cost? A disgruntled, resentful buyer. A client or patient who won’t use your services again or is resentful. The loss of collaboratively thinking together that can discover an outcome that’s win/win for both and potentially even more effective over time than the influencer’s suggestions.

Regardless of the outcome, win/lose just doesn’t exist. It’s either win/win or lose/lose. If everyone doesn’t win, everyone loses. By using force instead of real power to enable the Other to discover her own route to excellence, you’re disrespecting them.

Why, I ask, would anyone want to persuade another to go beyond their own beliefs, or choices, or intentions? Maybe because it’s the only way they can get what they want? Maybe because they believe the other is harming themselves? Maybe because of a political, or scientific, argument? Whatever the case, persuasion is not only disrespectful, but ineffective.

An ‘I’m right so you should listen to me’ framework operates from win/lose, disrespect, and distrust (‘I obviously know better than you’).
Persuasion uses judgmental language based on an ‘I know/you don’t’ framework, making the other person ‘stupid’ or ‘unaware’ – certainly ‘less-than’.
Persuasion ignores another’s needs, feelings, and considerations, and offers no room for a more robust solution based on the knowledge the Other has of their own environment.
Persuasion assumes only one person understands the full fact pattern of what’s going on, thereby ignoring the Other’s knowledge and reality that can never be fully understood by an outsider. Indeed, the only person who understands the full fact pattern is the Other.

Persuasion is one-sided and makes false assumptions when influencers believe their suggests are the best options; that the internal relationships, politics, values, history, of the Other are not worthy of consideration; that the persuader ‘should’ be heeded because they’re ‘in authority’; or – worse of all – that the person isn’t capable of figuring out their own route forward.

CASE STUDY

My neighbor Maria came to my house crying one day. Her doctor had told her she was borderline diabetic and needed to eat differently. He gave her a printed list of foods to eat and foods to avoid and spent time persuading her to stop eating whatever she was eating because his list of foods was essential to her health.

She told me she’d been trying for months, lost some weight, but finally gave up and went back to her normal eating habits and gained back the weight. But she was fearful of dying from diabetes like her mother did. She’d tried to listen to her doc, she didn’t want to be sick, but she just couldn’t do what the doc requested. She asked if I could help, and I told her I’d lead her through to finding her own answers. Here was our exchange.

SDM: I know your doc wants you to change your eating habits for health reasons. I’ll ask you some questions that might lead you to ways to help you figure out how to eat healthier. I’ll start at the very beginning. Who are you?

Maria: I’m a wife, mother and grandmother.

SDM: As a wife, mother and grandmother, what are your beliefs and values?

Maria: I believe I’m responsible for feeding my family in a way that makes them happy.

SDM: What is it you’re doing now that makes them happy?

Maria: My family all live nearby. Every morning I get up early and make 150 tortillas. When they go to work and school in the morning, they stop by and I hand them out to each for their breakfast and lunch. I always make enough for me and Joe to have for breakfast. The doctor says they’re bad for me with all the lard in them and that I must stop eating them. I’ve tried to stop, but they’re a big part of my diet. When the doctor said to stop eating them, I felt he doesn’t want me to love my family.

SDM: So I hear that tortillas are the way you keep your family happy. Is there any other way you can keep your family happy by feeding them without putting your own health at risk?

Maria: Hmmmm… I could make them enchiladas. They don’t have lard, and my family loves them. And my daughter Sonia makes tortillas almost as good as mine.

Then we figured out a terrific plan. Maria invited her entire family for dinner and presented Sonia with her tortilla pan outfitted with a big red bow. She told her family she couldn’t make tortillas any more due to health reasons, but Sonia, the new “Tortilla Tia,” would make them tortillas every day just like Maria did, and she’d make them enchiladas once a week instead. Maria then proceeded to lose 15 pounds, kept the weight off, and is no longer pre-diabetic.

WHAT PERSUASION MISSES

In this case study, the doctor attempted to persuade Maria to do what he thought best with a conventional one-size-fits-all food plan. Yet with the proper questions, an intent to facilitate collaboration and discovery, he could have led her to figure out for herself how to solve the problem her own way, using her own history and values. The diet the doc gave her went against her lifestyle, but he was so intent on doing what he thought ‘best’ he overlooked Maria’s own power to figure out her own solution. Ultimately, she didn’t need persuasion, she needed a facilitated conversation that enabled Maria to discover her own best choices.

Imagine your job is to facilitate folks through their own route to Excellence.

Persuasion tactics seek to meet the needs of the persuader, without accounting for the Other’s discovery through their personal beliefs and lifestyle realities:

the questions persuaders pose are biased by their own needs and omit/ignore large swathes of potentially applicable, and certainly private, data points that are important to the Other;
listeners interpret what they hear as per historic matches in their brain circuits (see my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) causing a limited and biased understanding, regardless of what influencers are trying to share;
persuaders work from subjective criteria and don’t take into account the values, beliefs, lifestyles, of the Others, unwittingly causing the Other conflict that the persuader cannot know, and overlooks more creative and workable options that they could discover together.

Regardless of how ‘right’ you or your solution might be, if the Other feels like you’re pushing, or forcing, or manipulating; if you’re asking biased questions based on YOUR need to know so you can use it against them; it’s pretty hard to persuade anyone without there being resentment. Not to mention can you truly believe that YOUR way is the BEST way for another person, and they have no agency to figure out their own route?

COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATION

Here are a few tips to guide an unbiased conversation that eventually leads the Other to discovering a path forward using their own values.

Goal: your goal is to help the Other discover their own criteria and actions for change, NOT to get the Other to do what you want!
Intent: your job is to facilitate another through to their own discovery by directing them down their own trajectory of change, not toward the result the influencer seeks.
Understanding: you can never, ever, understand what’s going on for Another. Ever. But you can lead them to understand themselves through facilitated discovery.
Questions: I invented a form of question called a Facilitative Question that walks Others down the trajectory of their own self-discovery with NO bias from you. They are based on the steps people go through when deciding to change and NOT based on your need-to-know, assumptions, or curiosity. Properly formulated, they have no bias but enable bias-free discovery in a way that the Other’s system will not reject.

Instead of trying to persuade, why not try collaborative conversation and facilitated questioning so you both can discover, together, a win/win that serves you both. Instead of it being either/or, why not both/and? Why not trust Others to discover their own answers.

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Sharon Drew Morgen March 2nd, 2026

Posted In: News

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