Questions Aren’t All They’re Cracked Up To Be

Ask more questions! sellers are admonished. Ask better questions! leaders and coaches are reminded. Questions seem to be a prompt in many fields, from medicine to parenting. But why?

There’s a universal assumption that questions will yield Truth, generate ‘real’ discussion topics or realizations, or uncover hidden gems of information or important details. Good questions can even inspire clarity. Right?

I’d like to offer a different point of view on what questions really are and how they function. See, I find questions terribly subjective, don’t enable Responders to find their real answers, and often don’t get to the Truth. But, it’s quite possible to use questions in a way that enables Others to discover their own, often hidden and unconscious, answers.

WHAT IS A QUESTION?

Let me start with Google’s definition of ‘question’: a grouping of words posed to elicit data. Hmmmm…. But they don’t often elicit accurate data. Here’s my definition. Questions are:

• posed according to the needs, curiosity, goals, and intent of the Asker;
• interpreted uniquely and unconsciously, according to a Responder’s world view;
• potentially ignore more important information outside the Asker’s purview.

And, to make it worse, our normal processes get in the way:

1. Language: Questions are posed using words and languaging unique to the Asker. Using their own (subjective) intent and goals, their own idioms and word choices, Askers assume Responders will accurately interpret them and respond along expected lines. This expectation is most easily met between folks who are familiar with each other, but less successfully with those outside the Asker’s sphere of influence. Too often Responders interpret a query quite differently than intended, offering responses far afield from the Asker’s intent.
2. Listening/brain: All incoming words enter our ears as meaningless sound vibrations (see my book WHAT? on this topic), “puffs of air” that eventually get translated according to historic circuits based on our mental models that have been set during our lifetimes. In other words, and similar with the language problem, Responders may not accurately translate incoming questions according to the intent of the Asker. The way Responders hear and interpret the question is at the mercy of the Responder’s brain circuits.
3. Curiosity: Often an Asker seeks data, thoughts, according to his/her desire for knowledge. It might be for research, interest, or ego – to exhibit their intelligence or prove their commitment. Yet given the way information is stored and retrieved in the brain, the question may capture some degree of applicable data, or a whole lotta subjective, unconscious thoughts that may or may not be relevant.

As you can see, questions posed to extract useful, relevant data have a reasonable chance of failure: with an outcome biased by the needs and subjectivity of the Asker, with Responders listening through brain circuits that delete incoming sound vibrations and only translate incoming words according to what’s been heard before, it’s likely that standard questions won’t gather the full set of information as intended.

TYPES OF QUESTIONS

Here’s my opinion on a few different forms of question:

Open question: To me, open questions are great in social discussions but there’s no way to get precise data from them. What would you like for dinner? will prompt an enormous variety of choices. But if the fridge only has leftovers, an open question won’t work, and a closed question “Would you like me to heat up last night’s dinner or Monday night’s dinner?” would. Open questions cause brains to do a transderivational search that may unearth responses far afield from the Asker’s intent and the Asker is out of control.

Closed question: I love these. They are perfect when a specific response is needed. What time is dinner? Should we send answers now or wait until our meeting? Of course they can also be highly manipulative when only limited responses are offered for potentially broad possibilities.

Leading question: Don’t you think you rely on conventional questions too much? That’s a leading question. Manipulative. Disrespectful. Hate them.

Probing question: Meant to gather data, these questions face the same problem I’ve mentioned: using the goal, intent, and words of the Asker, they will be interpreted uniquely as per the Responder’s historic stored content, and extract some fraction of the full data set possible.

Given the above, I invented a new form of question!

FACILITATIVE QUESTION

When I began developing my brain change models decades ago, I realized that conventional questions would most likely not get to the most appropriate circuits in someone’s brain that hold their best answers.

Knowing that our brain’s unconscious search for answers (in 5 one-hundredths of a second) leads to subjective, historic, and limited responses along one of the brain’s neural superhighways, I spent 10 years figuring out how to use questions to help people find where their unbiased (and unconscious) answers reside.

One of the main problems I had to resolve was how to circumvent a brain’s automatic and unconscious preferences to make it possible to notice the broadest view of choices.

            Language to avoid bias and promote objectivity

Since questions (as words) are automatically sent down specific neural routes, I had to figure out a way to use language to broaden the routes the brain could choose from, expand possibility, and circumvent bias as much as possible – a difficult one as our natural listening is unwittingly biased.

Incoming words get translated according to our existing superhighways that offer habitual responses. To redirect listening to where foundational answers are stored, I figured it might be possible to use questions to override and redirect the normal routes to find the specific cell assemblies where value-based answers are stored and not always retrieved by information gathering questions! That led me to a model to use specific words in a specific order so the brain would be led to find the best existing circuits.

To accomplish this, my Facilitative Questions are brain-change based, and save information gathering until the very end of the questioning process when the proper circuits have been engaged.

            Getting into Observer

To make sure Responders are in as neutral and unbiased a place as possible, avoid the standard approach of attempting to understand, and have a chance of listening without misunderstanding, Facilitative Questions are formulated in a way that puts Responders in Observer, a meta/witness position that overrides normalized neural circuitry. They are not information gathering and use the mind-body connection to direct incoming messages to where accurate answers exist that often are not noticed via conventional questions.

Let me show you how to put yourself into an Observer, coach/witness position – the stance you want your Responders to listen from – so you can see how effective it is at going beyond bias. You’ll notice how an objective viewpoint differs from a subjective one and why it’s preferred for decision making. Indeed, it’s a good place to listen from so you can hear responses without your own biases.

Here’s an exercise: See yourself having dinner with one other person. Notice the other person across from you (Self, natural, unconscious, subjective viewpoint). Then mentally put yourself up on the ceiling and see both of you (Observer, conscious, objective, intentional viewpoint).

If you’re having an argument with your dinner partner, where would you rather be – ceiling or across the table – to understand the full data set of what was going on so you could make personal adjustments?

On the ceiling, where you’d see both of you. From this meta position, you’d be objective, free from the feelings and biases that guided the argument along historic circuits. From Observer you’d have the best chance to make choices that might resolve your problem. Try it for yourself! Don’t forget to go back down to Self to communicate warmly. My clients walk around saying ‘Decide from Observer, Deliver from Self.’

So when developing Facilitative Questions, I had to put listeners into Observer. I played with words and found that these cause Responders to unconsciously step back (i.e. meta) to look into neural circuits with an unbiased, less subjective, and broader view.

• how would you know if…
• what would you need to understand differently…

Notice they immediately cause the Responder to ‘observe’ their brain; they do NOT gather data or cause ‘understanding’ in the Asker. The intent is to have the Responder begin to look into their brains to discover answers stored outside the automatic circuitry.

            Change the goal

I also had to change the goal of a question, from my own curiosity and need to elicit data to helping the Other discover their own answers. Instead of seeking to understand, have the goal of facilitating Responders to their own data sets stored in different places in their brains, places not accessible to Askers using conventional questions. After all, their systems are so unique that an outsider couldn’t know the answers anyway.

Here’s an example of a standard question, biased by the needs of the Asker:

        “Why do you wear your hair like that?”

puts the Responder directly into Self and their automatic, historic, unconscious responses, while

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

is a Facilitative Question that uses specific words that cause the Responder to step back, look into their full circuitry involving hair (How would you know), consider current and past hairstyles (if it were time), note their situation to see if it merits change (reconsider), and have a more complete data/criterion set with which to possibly make a change – or not.

Note: because some questions are interpreted in a way that (unwittingly) causes Responders to distrust you, Facilitative Questions not only promote an expanded set of unbiased possibilities, but encourages trust between Asker and Responder and doesn’t push a response.

            Questions follow steps to change

The biggest element I had to figure out was the sequence. I figured out 13 sequential steps to all change and decision making and I pose the Facilitative Questions down the sequence. Here are the main categories:

• Where are you and what’s missing? Responder begins by discovering their full set of givens, some of which are unconscious.
• How can you fix the problem yourself? Systems don’t seek change, merely to resolve a problem at the least ‘cost’ to the system. To minimize any ‘cost’ involved, it’s best to begin by trying to fix the problem with what’s familiar.
• How can you manage change without disruption and with buy-in? Until it’s known what the fallout of the ‘new’ will be, and there’s agreement, no change will occur.

WHEN TO FACILITATE UNBIASED DISCOVERY?

Facilitative Questions are especially helpful in

• data gathering to discover a more expanded range of choices,
• decision making to uncover each element of consideration as matched with values and outcomes,
• habit/behavior when seeking to understand and modify the patterns and neural circuitry underlying the current behaviors,
• leadership, sales, coaching when leading others to discover routes to new choices.

I’ve trained these questions globally for sales folks learning my Buying Facilitation® model to help prospects become buyers, and for coaches and leaders to help followers discover their own best answers.

If your job is to serve, the best thing you can offer others is a commitment to help them help themselves. Facilitative Questions can be used in any industry, from business to healthcare, from parenting to relationships as tools to enable discovery, change, and health.

It takes a bit of practice to create these questions as they aren’t natural or curiosity based, but the coaches, sellers, doctors, and leaders I’ve taught them to use them to help Others discover their own excellence, avoid resistance, and maintain trust between the Asker and Responder. I encourage you to consider learning them. And I’m happy to discuss and share what I know. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com My hope is that you’ll begin to think about questions differently.

___________________________

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 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 June 5th, 2023

Posted In: News

Influencers Must Change Brains, not Minds: why information, persuasion, and motivation don’t cause change

As an influencer, how often do say to yourself “Why doesn’t she understand me?” or “If he understood me better this decision would be a no-brainer.” It’s natural to assume Others will understand – and comply with – your suggestions. Have you ever wondered what’s happening when they don’t?

As an influencer, part of your job is to facilitate change. But how? In general, you’ve likely used great rationale, logic, and leadership, data sharing, or just plain directives. But what if your Communication Partner’s brain isn’t set up to hear you accurately? What if your words are misinterpreted, or not understood? You naturally assume your words carry the meaning you intend to convey. But do they?

Sometimes people misinterpret you and your audience is unintentionally restricted to only those who naturally understand your message. Sometimes people ignore you, regardless of how important your message, how engagingly you deliver it, or how badly they need it.

What if ‘changing minds’ is the wrong way to think about it, and if your real job is to ‘change brains’? What if the Other’s brain, it’s neural circuitry, was in charge and your job was to facilitate the way it went about decision making?

OUR BRAINS ARE THE CULPRIT

Thinking about using any form of content-based sharing as a persuasion strategy, let me share a confounding concept: words have no meaning until our brain interprets them. According to John Colapinto in his fascinating book This is the Voice,

Speech is a connected flow of ever-changing, harmonically rich musical pitches determined by the rate at which the phonating chords vibrate, the complex overtone spectrum is filtered by the rapidly changing length and shape of the mouth, and lips, interspersed with bursts of noise…It is our brain that turns this incoming stream of sonic air disturbances into something meaningful. (pg 54)

Seems to parallel how we ‘see’ color. We don’t, exactly. Light vibrations enter our eyes and get translated into color by our rods and cones. Otherwise, the world is gray! Indeed, both what we see and what we hear are largely out of our control, influencing what we notice (or not), how we decide (or not), what we think and hear and are curious about (We can’t be curious unless we have the circuitry to think with!).

Here’s a greatly simplified explanation of how brains translate incoming words (or sounds, or…) as I learned when researching my book WHAT?: Spoken words, like all sounds, are merely meaningless electrochemical vibrations that enter our ears as ‘puffs of air’, as many neuroscientists call the vibrations, that get filtered, then automatically dispatched as signals to what our brain considers a ‘similar-enough’ circuit (one among 100 trillion) for translation. And where the signals don’t match, a Listener’s brain kindly discards the difference!

People understand us according to how the selected circuits translate these signals, regardless of how different they are from the intended message.

In other words, people don’t hear us according to what we say but by how their historic circuitry interprets it. To me this is quite annoying and hard to address: not only does that restrict incoming content to what’s already familiar to us, there’s a chance that what we think was said is only some fraction of what was intended.

Unfortunately, neither the Speaker or Listener understands how far from accurate the translation is. Listeners assume their brains tell them exactly what’s been said; Speakers assume they’ve been heard accurately. Turns out these assumptions are both false; communication potentially ends up biased, restricted, and subjective.

THE BRAIN/INFORMATION PROBLEM

The misinterpretation problem gets exacerbated when words get sent down circuits that unwittingly incur resistance, as Others ‘hear’ something that goes against their beliefs. If my brain tells me you said ABL it’s hard to convince me you said ABC. I’ve lost friends and partners that way and didn’t understand why until my book research. And sadly, it all takes place outside of conscious awareness.

This is especially problematic when there’s a new project to be completed, supervision to correct a problem, or Business Process Management to be organized. It’s a problem between parents and teenagers and a curse in negotiations. As leaders, without knowing how accurately we’re heard, we have no idea if our directives or information sharing is being received as we intend.

This possibility of misinterpreting incoming words makes the case for providing information when it can be most accurately translated: when the Listener knows exactly what they are listening for, the brain has a more direct route to the appropriate circuits to interpret them.

In other words, instead of starting with goals or solutions for Others, we need their direct buy-in first. To invoke change, help Others figure out what they need from you then supply content that will be applied accurately. In other words, instead of shooting an arrow to hit a bullseye, first shoot the arrow then draw the bullseye where the arrow lands!

INFORMATION IS LAST

After 60 years of studying, and developing models for, systemic brain change and decision making, I’ve realized that offering ideas, directives, suggestions, or information is the very last thing anyone needs when considering doing something different (i.e. buying, changing habits, etc.). And yes, it goes against most conventional thinking. But hang with me.

As a kid, my then-undiagnosed Asperger’s caused me to act differently than people around me. I was in trouble often and never understood why. I began reading voraciously on how to change my behaviors: how to visualize, to motivate myself, be disciplined. But they were all based on trying to fix my seemingly automatic actions, to change my behaviors. And I failed repeatedly to make any of the changes permanent.

I finally acknowledged it’s not possible to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior, my brain was the culprit. I then began developing neural workarounds to:

• create new brain pathways to new behaviors,
• consciously change the circuits causing my behaviors,
• enhance my ability to translate incoming words accurately.

I know, I know. It’s odd, and there was lots of trial-and-error. But eventually I figured it out and dedicated the rest of my life to developing, writing about, and teaching systemic brain change models for conscious behavior change.

Thankfully, my concepts caught on in sales, coaching, leadership, and change management: my facilitation models help people orchestrate their own change based on their own internal norms, values, and criteria: in sales, my Buying Facilitation® model teaches people on route to fixing a problem how to become buyers. In coaching and change management, I provide the skill sets to enable people to discover, and act on, their own unique criteria and avoid resistence.

CHANGE FACILITATION

For those of you whose job is to get Others to do something you want them to do, let’s look at it from the side of the people you seek to change.

In order for change to occur, people must understand the difference between their status quo (their problem) and the new activity you want them to do. Below are all the specific factors they must address to be ready, willing, and able to change:

Conform to norms: Change is more than doing something different; it demands a reconfiguration of the brain circuitry. And it’s only when an incongruence is noticed that something different is required. By first facilitating people through their discovery – by leading them to the underlying beliefs and values that created the circuits that caused the problem – they can discover an incongruence and be willing to change. It’s got nothing to do with new content or imposed regulations, regardless how important they are. I created a new form of brain-directive question (i.e. not information gathering) called a Facilitative Question that’s quite effective at leading others to their own, often unconscious, answers.

Cost: It’s not until the ‘cost’ (resource, results, disruption) of a fix is identified and agreed to by all stakeholders (including mental models and beliefs) that it’s possible to know if a problem is worth fixing. No one naturally seeks out change if all seems fine, regardless of the problem or the efficacy of the solution.

Disruption: Because our internal systems seek balance (homeostasis), we avoid disruption. And the time it takes us to find a route through to a change that matches our values and avoids risk is the length of the change cycle. If new behaviors are required that cause someone to be out of balance, they will be resisted.

Personal: When change is sought, people must discover their own route to change that match their values and maintains homeostasis. And outsiders can ever understand someone’s history, values, norms, or neural configurations.

EACH PERSON MUST DESIGN THEIR OWN CHANGE

To facilitate change efficiently, we need a shift in thinking. Instead of trying to have the answers for Others, first focus on the goal of helping Others discover how to handle their own change issues; enable them to discover their own incongruences. Then they’ll know exactly where they need to add or subtract something to fix it, and the influencer can supply the information to complete the process.

Here’s a situation where I used a carefully crafted sentence to direct a friend’s thinking to where her choice points lie.

I have a lovely young friend who, to me, had serious energy problems. Some days she had difficulty getting out of bed, even with 5 children. Some days she didn’t have the energy to cook or work. And she’d been having this issue for decades. After knowing her a year I finally said, “If the time ever comes that you wish for additional choices around your store of energy to be more available for your kids, I have a thought.”

By shifting the context to her children, by giving her control over her choices and not trying to change her, by leading her to each of her decision points, her system didn’t feel threatened. She welcomed my thoughts, got help (My naturopath discovered she was actually dying from a critical lack of vitamin B12.) and now is awake daily at 5:30 a.m. with endless amounts of energy.

No matter what the problem or solution may be, unless someone understands that change won’t cause major disruption, unless the new fits with their values and criteria, unless all the people involved agree to change, they won’t consider doing anything different. So how can we help Others find their own excellence?

13 STEPS TO CHANGE

You must begin by trusting Others have their own criteria for change. Instead of starting with answers or goals, lead them down their unique path through to discovery, to notice any incongruences they can’t resolve on their own. Then they’ll know exactly what they need from you and be ready to hear your information. And as you’ve already helped them help themselves, they’ll come to you for their needs and trust has been established when you offer them new ideas.

The facilitation model I developed leads buyers, teams, coaching clients through to discovery. It involves 13 specific steps that follow the sequence all brain change takes as a precursor to behavior change, providing the tools to help the Other figure out their own path. By then they’ll need your information. To address change congruently, people must first:

• recognize the full set of givens involved;
• identify and include all stakeholders, beliefs, criteria, and norms;
• try workarounds to fix the problem internally if possible;
• understand and accept the risk of change;
• get buy-in to adopt the new.

It’s not so simple as an outsider gathering or sharing information or posing questions to help the influencer understand. Because until they know that the cost change will be equal to or less than their status quo, they will not take action.

Historically, I’ve taught this facilitation process successfully to 100,000 sales professionals and coaches. But with the new technology, it’s quite possible to use it in marketing for Deal Rooms, ABM discussions, and Sales Enablement.

So as you consider delaying your storytelling or pitching until you’ve facilitated change, ask yourself:

• Would you rather speak or be heard?
• What is your job – to serve Others through to their own form of excellence or get your point across to anyone who can listen?
• Do you seek a quick hit or a long-term relationship?
• Would you rather be a servant leader or an information hawker?

You decide. It’s possible to serve Others and be available with information when and as they need. Sellers can first facilitate buying, coaches and facilitate permanent change, and marketers can develop content that leads people through to brain change. I’m here if you have questions. Or go to www.sharon-drew.com to learn about my facilitation and brain change models.

_______________________

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 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 8th, 2023

Posted In: News

Thank You. We Appreciate You: a case study in caring for employees

Early this morning I went to my favorite ‘big box’ supermarket, WinCo. If you’re not in one of the 5 states where it operates (Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, and Oregon), you may not be familiar with it and I’d like to introduce you. WinCo is an employee-owned food-supply chain that cares as much for its employees as it does for its customers. As a result, the customer service and store care is exceptional: the stores are spotless, well-stocked, and employees are easy to find if you have a question, not to mention always kind, informed, and personal. And it’s always a surprise to find items I purchase in more specialty stores – even Amazon! – at least 40% cheaper! Who knew my favorite Roasted Salsa Verde (Herdez) was available at half the price! I love this store and am willing to drive out of my way to shop there. As I was walking down an aisle I noticed a tall woman and young man walk over to a much older man as he was cleaning the floors:

Woman: We’d like to give you a gift (She handed him an envelope – I assume it was a check.) for all the hard work you do and how well you take care of us all. You always go the extra step to make this store even better. We deeply appreciate you and all do you for us. We all thank you.

I must admit I stopped in my tracks and began crying a bit. I had never heard this in any store, nor have I been aware of supermarkets gifting and thanking employees for their service. I sought the woman (his manager?) out.

SD: Do you choose an ‘employee of the month’ each month and hand out checks to the winners?

Woman: No. It’s on an individual basis. Sometimes we hand out a few in one month, sometimes only a few a year. It depends. When we notice someone doing a great job we reward them and let them know they’re important to us. It’s pretty simple. We take care of each other and show our appreciation when one of us shines.

‘We take care of each other’. So simple! When was the last time you let an employee, one of your staff or team, know how much they were appreciated? Went out of your way to take care of them? OUR EMPLOYEES ARE OUR FIRST CUSTOMERS When I started up my tech company in 1983 in London I had never run a business before. But even without knowing ‘the rules’ I knew it was as important to care for my team as well as I cared for clients. To that end I put in place some initiatives to make sure they felt taken care of. Every year I gave the management team a fully paid week off and a $3,000 check for tuition and travel to take any type of course they wanted (Photography? Pottery?), even if the subject matter had nothing to do with their jobs. The goal was to help them keep their brains creative and curious. Certainly a way to let them know I appreciated them. I also didn’t give them vacation time per se but told them to take off whatever time they needed (so long as they covered their responsibilities) when they felt they weren’t operating on all cylinders. I told them I trusted them to know when they needed rest – it wasn’t about the time. Surprisingly I had to force them to take time off. I would call their wives – and in those days (1980’s) the team was mostly men and the women were usually at home doing child care – tell them to give the kids to the grandparents for a few days, and keep their husbands in bed. To make sure they had plenty of time to relax, I had restaurants deliver food to them so no one had to cook or shop. My folks would return rested with happy faces. Because it was quite important to me that we all meshed even though in scattered locations, I took my inside and outside folks to a pub once a month for beer and darts. I always lost (I never figured out darts in all my years in London!); out of pity, I suspect, they then bought the next round. FIELD FOLKS BROUGHT IN BUSINESS To keep abreast of the field folks (the techies) and make sure they felt like part of the company, I called each of them once a month to check in. Sure, I only had 40 people in the field so it was doable (My secretary would schedule the calls to make sure we connected). One of the pluses of my check-ins was they would tell me when our client was preparing to upgrade the program/package we supported. I knew the vendor had a team that installed it, but that would have taken business away from us and we could easily do the installation. I certainly wanted to be involved with any follow-on work. I would then call my client before the new software was installed and asked if they’d be willing to continue working with us if they brought in new software. Of course they were happy to have us do the work, given my staff’s excellence. This factor alone caused my business to explode. I once even got a call from the vendor: “You’re killing me. Clients order an upgrade but don’t hire us to do any programming because you’re already handling it. How do you get in there so fast?” My colleagues chided me when they found out how well I took care of my peeps: “Are you running a spa?” they’d ask. “Don’t you think your folks will take advantage?” I think they were jealous, but that didn’t stop them from trying to hire my staff away from me. I would hear grumbles at conferences, gossip that they were offering big bucks to lure my folks away. But nope, I never lost an employee to anything other than relocation in four years. They were happy. Together we grew the business from zero to almost $5,000,000 in under four years – with no internet (1984 -1988), no websites, no email, no Twitter, no LinkedIn. Just me – a rookie entrepreneur – and my team remained dedicated to caring for our clients and each other. WHO IS YOUR CLIENT? I believe our employees are our first customers – happy staff happy clients. Why do we forget this? How is it possible that some of the larger companies are known to have high turnover, low pay, and very strict hours with rules designed to minimize variance and kill the creative spirit rather than maximize kindness and respect? Why are companies willing to harm employees, to be disrespectful and unkind, just to save a buck? When did money become more important than values or humanity? What are they saving, anyway? When I did consulting work at KPMG I noticed a bravado about working all night, or 80 hour weeks. No surprise that many of the partners were on their third marriages – almost all on their second. Working that hard – hard enough to ignore sleep, relationships, food – was a highly valued part of the culture. Why? Why don’t we take care of our employees better? Trust them and their ideas? Take time to listen to them? Make them understand that without them we can’t be successful? How did people become expendable to save money at all costs? I know a very large, successful multinational that forces all levels of employees to spend hours preparing for meetings with senior managers where they’d have to make a case to receive modest funds – even $200! – for an online skills course or money for needed coaching. It’s a misuse of everyone’s time, disrespectful, and not even rational. Why not give mid-level managers a slush fund to have on hand when someone needs something and trust their judgement!? Why not hire people you can trust and let them decide what their folks need? We all put so much energy into our clients and customers so we can make money. Why don’t we offer our staff the same respect? We spend a fortune hiring and training the ‘right’ people and then create rules and restrictions to control them. We treat them like chits, like cogs in a wheel and make them replaceable, ‘things’ without value. And yet we want them to deliver for us and complain about turnover, about their lack of ownership. What we lose is not only ideas and loyalty, but the spirit of a man, the heart of a woman. We too often make our employees objects. I’ve interviewed middle managers in large corporations who tell me they’ve stopped bringing in new ideas because they don’t get heard, or live only for their vacation time because they’re so miserable and stay only because they’re getting paid so well. Let’s take as good care of our employees as we do our clients and customers. Let’s make sure everyone is given the time, the respect, the remuneration, to work in an environment that is filled with kindness, trust, creativity, collaboration and ideas so they can’t wait to come to work each day. Let’s treasure each of our employees. They are, indeed, special. That’s why we hired them. What’s the cost? What’s the cost if we don’t?

__________________________

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 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 1st, 2023

Posted In: News

Stop Trying to Persuade; Facilitate Decision Making Instead

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 so they’ll agree for you to do what you want, 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. Sales strategies employ persuasion to convince people to buy; doctors and healthcare professionals employ biased stories 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, but they’ll most likely distrust the influencer even if it turns out the influencer is accurate. By persuading another to do what you want them to do you’re 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 wishes. Persuaders assume they’re ‘right’. I once ran a Buying Facilitation® training program for the Covey Leadership Center. They were the most manipulative sales folks I’d ever met. Given that Covey espoused spiritual values, I was surprised. When I questioned their use of persuasion tactics I was told: “Of course we use persuasion tactics! It’s our responsibility to convince people to use the practices we espouse!” 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 and becomes distrusting. 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.

1. An ‘I’m right so you should listen to me’ framework operates from win/lose, disrespect, and distrust (‘I obviously know better than you’).
2. Persuasion uses judgmental language based on an ‘I know/you don’t’ framework, making the other person ‘stupid’ or ‘unaware’ – certainly ‘less-than’.
3. 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.
4. 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 suggestions 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.

1. 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!
2. 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.
3. Understanding: you can never, ever, understand what’s going on for Another. Ever. But you can lead them to understand themselves through facilitated discovery.
4. 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? And just maybe, use your connection to trust Others to discover their own answers.

_____________________________

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 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 6th, 2023

Posted In: News

Can We Know When We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know?

Years ago I visited a spa where 4 magnificent macaws stood on individual perches, each with a long, not necessarily heavy, chain around one of its legs. Yet the chains were not attached to anything: if the birds had known what they didn’t know, they could have easily flown away.

I was reminded of that recently when sitting with a close friend starting up a company. I suggested he write down 1. What he knew he knew; 2. What he knew he didn’t know; 3. What he didn’t know he didn’t know (This being impossible, but the column needed to be there as you’ll see.). A long-time friend, James was always up for my mischief. He promptly began writing a list of what he knew that he knew. As I looked on, knowing him as long as I did, I noticed two items I knew for certain he did NOT know.

I told him I had doubts about some of the items he thought he knew and that they belonged in the ‘don’t know that I don’t know’ column. I asked him how he’d know if thought he knew something but in fact was mistaken.

“Oh. I guess there’s no way to know unless I fail. Without knowing there’s any other option, I wouldn’t even know when I need help or the kind of help I needed.”

A similar situation came up recently when a colleague explained how his sales team ‘truly cared’, and ‘truly served’ prospects. When I asked him what skills he was using to care and serve, he rattled off the same skills he used when selling. And even though we’d known each other for some time and he’d read a couple of my books, it never occurred to him to contact me to learn additional skills he knew I’d developed specifically for what he was doing. Why? Because his results were ‘wildly successful’ – a close rate ‘higher than others’ (10% success vs 5% industry standard – but still a 90% failure). He never stopped to consider that he could have been much more successful with additional skills. He didn’t know what he didn’t know.

OUR BRAIN

So how do we know when we don’t know what we don’t know? We don’t even know how to think or consider something outside our assumptions or beliefs, or something not already in our neural makeup. There’s just no way to know what outcomes, risks or rewards, skills, comparators, or thought processes are possible. So how do we attain the courage to do something different when we have no way to even think about it?

Let’s consider how we do anything at all. Our brain instigates our actions, thoughts, what we hear, how we decide and choose, how we behave. When we have an idea or goal, hear a lecture or are given a directive, our brain

• receives and filters (some deletion involved) incoming vibrations – words being meaningless puffs of air until our brain translates them – and
• turns them into electrochemical signals that
• get sent down well-worn pathways (superhighways) that
• lead to existing, ‘similar-enough’ circuits (some deletion involved) that
• instigate habitual behaviors and outcomes.

In other words, whatever we think, hear or read enters our mind as sound vibrations that end up being (mis)translated through some conglomeration of synapses, pathways, circuits, etc. and we end up ‘hearing’ little more than something we have previously experienced, regardless of the facts. And our brain doesn’t tell us what havoc it’s played: we just assume what we think we heard is accurate.

I was once meeting with a couple who were licensing some of my material. I made a comment that John interpreted what I said as X when I actually said Y. I carefully explained, again, what I’d said. Here is what followed:

John: You didn’t say that! I heard you say X with my own ears!

SD: No, John. You misheard. I said Y.

Wife: John – she really said Y. I was standing right here. You heard her wrong.

John: YOU’RE BOTH LYING!

And he stomped out of the room, and never spoke to me again.

Listening is a brain thing, causing us to interpret incoming sound vibrations according to where among our 100 trillion neural circuits the sound vibrations get sent. [See my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard?] Indeed, we hear some rendition of what a Speaker means to say, and rarely ‘hear’ accurately. Let me explain.

The way our brain turns signals into behaviors, ideas, or thoughts, determines everything we hear, think, and do. Usually it’s a good thing. It’s how we know to get up in the morning, put our slippers on, and brush our teeth. It’s how we make our decisions, go on our diets, make our New Year’s resolution. But it’s restrictive. In fact, and I still get annoyed about this, our brains automatically pretty much keep us doing what we’ve always done and we have very little say in the matter.

Indeed, we live our lives restricted and directed by how our neural circuits translate for us. And certainly, that provides a lifetime’s worth of choices. But: our curiosity, our ideas, are restricted by what’s already there.

I’ve developed a model to make it possible to change habits and behaviors by consciously adjusting your unconscious hierarchies and neural pathways. It includes wholly new skills, tools, and thought process with a hands-on learning and Belief change process.

Can we know what we don’t know that we don’t know? Because when we can’t, we’re left with the results of fewer choices with no way to know what to look for if we need to add something new.

WHAT’S IN THE WAY OF ENCOURAGING ‘NOT KNOWING’

Don’t get me wrong. none of us ever intends to mishear, or misunderstand, or restrict ourselves. But we’re basically out of choice, never told what our brain has edited or deleted, or what other choices were possible if our brain chose different circuits to translate the incoming vibrations.

Let me share my thoughts on some of the reasons I think people have a hard time getting beyond what they know (or don’t know they don’t know):

1. Ego. People have a hard time acknowledging they are ‘deficient’. I’m not sure why. My question is: “What would stop you from seeking assistance at those times you’re aware that you are missing knowledge? Those times you have a pattern of failing and have no additional options?”
2. Assumptions. When we presume we know something, we have no reason to think differently. Unfortunately, when failure occurs we have a ‘blame’ response since we, obviously, can’t be wrong and the Other, obviously, must be the culprit. Entire fields are based on Others being wrong because they don’t heed the provider (healthcare, sales, coaching, etc.).
3. Denial. Wrong? I’m not doing anything wrong. Better? I already know how to do that. I really don’t want to change. I know my stuff is better. Why should I want to know what I don’t know when I already know what’s best? Sometimes people prefer their own ideas and ignore incoming content that would lead them to greater success.
4. Listening Bias. Sometimes we are so committed to a specific outcome and approach that we consider successful that we listen to others through very biased ears and allow our brain to tell us what we want to hear…without question. I try to avoid this by seeking answers from people from different industries, or countries. But when we enter a situation with the end in mind, whatever we hear, whatever we take away, will be biased by our history.
5. Fixed Views. We become attached – both emotionally and neurologically – to what we know. With a habituated superhighway that leads us straight to oft-used answers and beliefs, we dislike going through the decoupling process to accept and adopt a new answer.

Net net, due to our lazy brain and idiosyncratic personalities, there’s no way to naturally recognize when we don’t know what we don’t know. This makes it quite difficult to learn anything new until we fail and it becomes obvious.

HINTS

Here are a few ideas that might lead to more choice:

1. When you face confusion, it’s because your brain’s dispatch unit (the Central Executive Network) can’t find an existing set of circuits to translate or interpret new ideas – a perfect time to recognize there’s something you don’t know.
2. When you’ve had repeated failure, there’s something you’re missing. What needs to happen for you to get curious? Assume there are better answers somewhere?
3. Ask others who know more than you do. Here is where a good friend or coach comes in. People who are outside your field will ask questions that you may not have answers to. And you need to find them!
4. Research. When I’m developing a new model I do broad research – reading sample chapters or whole books on unfamiliar topics (Picking Up by Robert Nagle about the New York City garbage collection provided new ideas about systems), researching papers and articles on topics adjacent to my ideas – to find new concepts that I hadn’t heard before to stimulate further thinking. I’ll never forget how my world shook when I learned that no input (no ideas, words, sounds) could be interpreted outside the circuits I have in my brain already. That upset me for a week! And it absolutely shifted my thinking.

Entire fields are missing information and doing nothing to discover what they don’t know:

• Healthcare professionals don’t know why patients ignore their directives. For instance, handing someone a new food plan without them knowing how to change habits and neural circuits congruently will instigate resistance. Instead of doctors blaming themselves for not knowing how to facilitate congruent change, they blame patients for not having motivation.
• Coaches, managers, leaders, supervisors assume their mandates will be followed. Clients who don’t follow them are said to ‘not really want to change.’ At no point do they acknowledge that their approach may be the problem.
• Sellers and marketers continue to push solutions, overlooking the way people actually buy and face lower and lower success rates (now 5% rate) that should alert them there’s something they don’t know. What other industry believes that a 95% failure rate is ‘success’?
• The training model fails 80% of the time. Pushing new content into a brain that might not have circuits to translate it accurately causes confusion, resistance, and disregard causing trainers to assume learners are ‘unmotivated’. Learning how to design programs that generate wholly new circuits for the new knowledge is not anything instructional designers know they need to know.
• Business Process Management uses a flow chart that invites front line workers into the process halfway through the flow! Obviously this leads to implementation problems, such as insufficient data collection and resistance when people are pushed to be compliant against their will. One of the leaders in BPM recently approached me about adding the Steps of Change (a model I invented that facilitates the flow of change and decision making) to help them, but he became agitated when I suggested he needed to begin at Step One by assembling everyone who touches the problem. He left our discussions, not realizing he was following the exact failed format he called me to change.
• OD and Change management relies on standard questions which are biased and restricted by the thoughts of the asker – and ignore the foundational Beliefs and norms that shift in the Other’s brain for congruent change to occur. And they don’t question why they get resistance, time delays, lack of buy-in. They just blame the Other.

So I leave you with these questions:

–  How committed are you to having the full set of data you need for success?

–  How willing are you to forego your ego and Not Know?

–  What would you need to know or believe differently to recognize when you don’t possess the full data set you need?

Imagine how successful we could all be if we knew what we didn’t know and had the right attitude to find out.

___________________________

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 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 February 6th, 2023

Posted In: News

Facilitative Questions: Questions that facilitate change

There’s a universal assumption that well-crafted questions will result in ‘good’ responses. But as leaders, coaches, sellers, and search-developers know, that’s not necessarily true.

Sometimes questions end up gathering incomplete or flawed data. Or the questions unwittingly cause resistance because they’re not interpreted by the Responder as we intend. Or they are worded in a way that’s biased by the Asker’s unconscious beliefs and miss better answers that would lead to different, possibly better outcomes.

WHAT ARE QUESTIONS AND WHAT DO THEY DO?

Have you ever wondered why the questions we use often don’t achieve what we want them to achieve? Here’s why:

• Conventional questions seek to extract information. But due to the unique word choices and specific goals of the Asker, they can miss the real answer that’s sometimes lodged within a Responder’s unconscious, or the LLM’s database, and outside the scope of the question posed.
• Conventional, or information-based, questions are biased: by the Asker seeking or assuming a specific type of response; by the Responder whose responses are dictated by the biases and assumptions within in the question.

Conventional questions – even those we ask ourselves! – are great for simple queries, but may not uncover good answers. After decades of brain research, systems thinking, and figuring out the gap between what’s said and what’s heard (Read my book WHAT?) I’ve discovered a way to formulate questions that finds the precise neural circuitry where accurate answers are stored.

Sample

What if it were possible to formulate a question that would:

• extract accurate data,
• influence change,
• promote efficient implementations, buy-in, and sales cycles,
• avoid resistance and bias, maintain personal integrity,
• act as a filter and conductor for good decision making,
• facilitate permanent learning and habit change,
• help Responders (buyers, clients, patients) and search Users discover the unconscious criteria that evoke accurate answers?

Certainly it’s quite possible to pose good questions. But sometimes conventional questions lead to inadequate, biased, or reactive responses.

I suggest it’s possible to use questions in a way enables Responders to discover their own answers based on their own unique beliefs and mental models, reducing inaccuracies and reactions, and making real change and decision making possible.

INFLUENCING CHOICE

My life’s work involves studying the brain for ways to impact unconscious choices, with a focus on unbiased ways into the brain to help people uncover their own answers and generate new choice.

In other words, in addition to helping us discover ways to change personal habits or make good decisions, coaches could lead clients to where their best answers are stored; sellers could facilitate buyers through to decision making without bias; search could prompt the right questions to summon the best answer.

In 1988 I read Roger Schank’s The Creative Attitude that discusses how our brains store data in memory that can only be discovered by using exact words that get sent to the exact brain circuitry where they’re stored. Interesting, I thought. But how is it possible to get to specific brain circuits?

I already knew that we unwittingly listen through biased ears due to the way brains process and dispatch incoming sound vibrations. Was it possible to use questions to unlock the unconscious drivers, the beliefs, the values, the emotions at the core of all decisions? Could questions be formulated in a way that gets to the exact part of someone’s brain where their answers were stored amidst their 100 trillion neural connections?

Using my knowledge of the mind->brain connection I began experimenting with new forms of questions that would avoid bias altogether. It took me 10 years to break down the elements necessary. I eventually developed a new form of question (Facilitative Questions) that eschews information-gathering, and instead leads Asker’s to the exact brain circuits – congruent with their values and beliefs – to facilitate their accurate unconscious choices, unbiased by wording or intent, for personal decisions and change.

THE PROBLEM WITH INFORMATION

Conventional questions seek information as per the needs of the Asker. They cause retrieval, translation, and relevance issues in the Responder:

1. We each translate incoming words (called puffs of air by neuroscientists) according to our mental models, beliefs, history, and existing neural circuits, causing misinterpretations and misunderstandings that may be quite different from the intent of the Asker, producing unintended reactions and responses.
2. Because of the way our brains uniquely hear and interpret incoming words, incoming information may be misinterpreted, potentially affecting people’s beliefs negatively, regardless of the intent of the Asker.
3. Real answers are unique and held in Long Term neural circuitry within a Responder’s brain, sometimes stored in ways that aren’t conscious or easily accessed.
4. We can only hear, see, feel, think, notice, etc. what exists in our neural circuits, causing each of us to live in worlds biased and restricted by our histories. It’s the same with current AI, which restricts responses to the way it interprets questions – not necessarily as intended by the asker – and captures and shares content accordingly.

With a data elicitation focus, conventional questions often cause failure:

• Sellers gather information to ‘recognize’ a buyer with a ‘need’ they can pitch to – often leading to false assumptions and interpretations by the seller – when they can use the same time to actually find and lead prospective buyers through their decision making steps based on their own criteria and avoid rejection;
• Coaches, consultants, facilitators and leaders pose questions biased by their assumptions and desire to influence. To that end, they risk causing resistance and certainly miss the opportunity to direct the Other’s brains to where their own answers are stored, eschewing resistance and enabling permanent change along the way.
• Change Management professionals generate their goals, processes and implementations when gathering incomplete data from only a subset of folks involved in the initiating problem, causing resistance, delays, and failed outcomes when asked to apply the new activities.
• Search queries are reduced to how LLMs interpret them, often in a manner biased by the search engine or AI, and often missing the real intent of the User. It’s possible to lead users to their specific circuitry to guide search to the most appropriate response.
• Decision analysts and tech developers use their own biased curiosity to gather, weight, and analyze needed data, potentially extracting incomplete or inaccurate information when it’s possible to evoke accurate answers by formulating differently worded questions.

Eventually I invented a wholly new form of question that gets to the exact neural circuits where accurate, values-based answers are stored.

FACILITATIVE QUESTIONS

Facilitative Questions (FQs) are brain-directional and go to specific parts of the brain that will capture the appropriate, most relevant, unconscious content from a Responder’s memory or LLM’s database.

Facilitative Questions differ from conventional questions in their intent and scope. They are brain-directional and don’t seek information, but formulated in a way that mirrors how brains process, store and retrieve personal, unconscious, belief-based and historic data   from a Responder’s memory – great for making complex personal decisions, buy-in, and for making habit and behavioral changes; great for helping search capture the most appropriate content that matches the real, often unconscious needs of a User.

Using specific wording and sequencing, FQs shift the onus of responsibility from the Asker wanting answers to enabling Responders and AI to find and generate answers based on their history, norms, beliefs, and mental models. In other words, influencers – (sellers, coaches, therapists, friends, clients – even search engines!) become facilitators who enable Others to discover their own Excellence, with no guesswork or resistance.

But they are complex, outside conventional thinking, and can’t be formulated without additional learning. [If you’re interested in learning how to formulate them, get the Learning Accelerator or my MP3 series where I use, role play, and explain them for sales, coaching, and fundraising.] Without using precise wording or sequencing, without enabling Responders to listen from a Meta position, FQs become highly manipulative, fail to retrieve important ideas or information, and miss an opportunity to enable Others to change.

Facilitative Questions:

• use specific words in a specific order to reach the specific place in the brain that stores the best answers;
• put the Responder into Observer/coach/witness to reduce any natural biases and expand brain search;
• open new choices within the unconscious of the Responder to make it possible to fix discover their own excellence;
• construct new awareness, new choices, new behaviors based on unconscious belief/values-based criteria;
• are non-manipulative and non-biased;
• offer change agents a new skill to engage the right people, address the right problem, and manage change without resistance;
• eschew information gathering;
• eliminate resistance by eliciting commitment and buy-in at the very beginning of any project or initiative; 
• enable Responders to simultaneously uncover the unconscious core of the problem and create the necessary change on their own.

Here’s a very simple example of the differences between conventional questions and Facilitative Questions:

Information-based question (conventional question based on the goals, word choices, word usage of the Asker): Why do you wear your hair like that? This question is an information gathering question based on the needs of the Asker and capture oft-used, habitual, automatic responses. Also, all ‘why’ questions cause a Responder to defend current choices and underlying beliefs. If a question invades the Responder’s beliefs, the response will be biased and resistive. There’s a good chance a conventional question would gather incomplete or inaccurate data.

Facilitative Question (sequential navigational question that directs Responders to the exact brain circuitry where their unconscious information is stored): How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle? This question begins by putting the Responder into a Meta position to have an unbiased, broader expanse of their neural circuits to peruse for answers, and uses words in the order that brains can dispatch them to the proper circuits. With no intent to capture information, with no bias or manipulation, the Asker becomes the facilitator/change agent/servant leader.These cause no resistance. Specifically:

• users of search and AI can find their best answers with less guesswork and minimal bias;
• buyers can recognize issues that would help them make decisions, assemble the right people, and instigate buy-in to ready them to buy;
• coaching clients can be led to they’d need to address for permanent change and eschew resistance;
• doctors can elicit natural, permanent behavioral change in patients rather than push to try to cause change, etc.

By helping Others discover their own criteria for change and decision making, by enabling search to efficiently find accurate responses, by finding accurate answers for researchers and influencers, Facilitative Questions provide an expanded scope to cull accurate answers and increase the probability of quality responses.

FACILITATING CHANGE

The big idea here is the change in the intent of the questions: FQs are brain directional. They trust that accurate answers are stored in unique places in brains that may not respond to conventional questions that are biased by the needs and wording of an Asker. After all, there really is no way for an outsider to ever know the full extent – the connections, history, values, complications, etc. – of how someone’s internal system is set up. The differences are important:

• from seeking and pushing content to achieve the influencer’s goals to facilitating the person’s own discovery of beliefs, values, identity issues and systemic drivers, and eliciting (not causing) change;
• from guessing at answers based on an algorithm or an Asker’s needs and beliefs to enabling the discovery based on a Responder’s unique criteria;
• from bias and resistance to participation and creativity;
• from directing change and creating resistance to discovery, buy-in and participation.

To use Facilitative Questions requires a different sort of thinking and a different level of control. Most of all it requires that influencers change their goal to truly serve the other, to help Others initiate and manage change from within – not with any content or directive from the Asker, but true buy-in.

What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to add a new questioning technique to your already superb questioning skills? How would you know that adding a new skill set would be worth the time/effort/cost to make you – and your clients – even more successful?

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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 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 February 5th, 2023

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