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

Posted In: News

Our Brains Cause Resistance: why change management initiatives get opposed

After listening to folks complaining about getting resistance during a needed change initiative, I decided to write an article explaining how resistance gets triggered from our brain. You see, people don’t make a conscious choice to resist; their brains are perceiving risk and automatically rebelling as protection. As I’ll explain, it’s possible to avoid resistance altogether. But we’d have to alter the way we’re going about change.

I’ll begin by saying that behaviors don’t just pop up, arise like Venus from the sea. Before we ‘do’ anything our brain goes through a series of neurological, biological, and electro-chemical reactions that automatically trigger and instruct behaviors.

Everything we do, think, see, feel originates in our brains, including our behaviors. And in current change management models, we overlook the brain bit. Resistance is caused by brain chemistry; to avoid it we’ll need to think differently about how we construct our change initiatives.

RESISTANCE IS A (WRONGLY) ASSUMED CONSEQUENCE OF CHANGE

I’ll begin by naming the elephant in the room: ‘resistance management’ has become integral to change management. Frankly, my ideas in this article may cause resistance because they go beyond perceived wisdom and current academic research which both concentrate on behavior change rather than where behaviors get triggered in the brain. And because it’s believed to be endemic, resistance is naturally incorporated into change practices.

A friend of mine (a Harvard professor and MacArthur Genius) was writing a book on how to manage resistance. When I sent back my edits following his request to look at his draft, he opposed my ideas about avoiding resistance altogether: “This is just aspirational thinking, Sharon-Drew. Resistance is endemic no matter what models you use.” As I said, it’s built in.

Remember the adage: if you always do what you’ve always done you always get what you’ve always got? Indeed, the expression “change is hard” has become the perceived wisdom and various forms of coercion (persuasion, convincer strategies, rewards, manipulation) have cropped up to mitigate it.

In John P Kotter’s change bible Leading Change he says it’s necessary to ‘win hearts and minds’,

encourage them to make sacrifices to support the change and persuade them that the change is achievable and that the rewards are beneficial to both the business and themselves.

In other words, resistance is such an integral part of the change culture that the reason it occurs is overlooked. We assume:

• change is hard (It’s not hard. We’re just approaching it as a behavior change issue rather a brain triggering problem.);
• there will be obstacles (The existing norms and current activities have been the status quo. To make a change, a new set of norms must be developed that match the values of the old, and those involved in the status quo must determine this.).
• the efficacy of ‘urgency’ to involve Others (We ask folks to adopt OUR urgency without helping them design something THEY feel urgency around and then push them to full OUR needs!);
• when change is led by someone respected, Others will be compliant soldiers (Think of your mom telling you to wear that horrid outfit to Grandma’s. Nope. And it’s not about the clothes.);
• all will go smoothly once we win ‘hearts and minds’ (The initiatives created may not match THEIR hearts and minds!).

Resistance is avoidable and change is not hard at all. We’re just doing it wrong.

In this article I’ll explain how our brains cause our reactions/responses, and how conventional change processes cause the very resistance it works to overcome.

WE UNCONSCIOUSLY RESIST WHEN OUR IDENTITY IS THREATENED

Let me say a bit about my mindset and thinking. I’ve dedicated my life to developing change facilitation models used in coaching, behavior change, and sales that enable mind-brain connections to have conscious choice over our unconscious behaviors. Along the way I’ve discovered that our brain neurology is set up to create and maintain our core identities; as such, all of our actions and responses, attitudes and convictions are nothing more than unconscious, automatic outputs of who we are. To explain how we end up resisting, I’ll begin by introducing you to how we ‘be’ who we are.

Each of us is an amalgam of generations of family history, education, religion, friends, employment, life experience. Together, these mental models – the system of ‘me’, or SOM – carry electro-chemical signals (without meaning) that link together as neural circuits, or ‘cell assemblies’, that inform our actions: the way we look at, judge, and operate in the world; our assumptions, our politics. They inform our identity, our values, our beliefs. And signals from these circuits instruct our choices, our behaviors, in a way that maintains our system.

All of us act, make choices, decide from our mental models, our SOM; our behaviors arise unconsciously and automatically to represent and maintain who we are. In other words, we’re always ‘doing’ who we are, making us all victims of our unconscious.

Personally, I’ve been a liberal and activist since my first protest as a freshman in college when I chained myself to a crane and ended up in jail (Mother: ‘You’re calling from WHERE?’). I’ve continued my liberal activity during my life, taking great pride in who I am, believing fervently that my map of the world is the ‘right’ one. I’ll defend this to my death, regardless of what anyone else wants me to do, regardless of whether I’m considered right or wrong. I’ve lost jobs, book deals, friends, husbands, rather than make choices that will put my core identity, my SOM, at risk. I think I’ve been ‘right’ more often than not. But I’ve always respected my unique system, made the best choices I knew how to make based on my values, and followed my vision. It’s who I am.

And so we all are: our behaviors – our choices, our actions, our unconscious automatic triggers – are our beliefs in action. It’s here we must begin when considering resistance.

HOW BRAINS CAUSE BEHAVIORS

Given we are always DOing who we are, let me explain (in simplified fashion) how our brain accomplishes this so you’ll see how defiance might be a natural, albeit unconscious, choice.

Behaviors are the end result of several neural processes, generated from a sequence of neurological, biological, and electro-chemical actions that get triggered by incoming vibrations (as words, thoughts, messages, instruction). Here’s the sequence in words:

• input vibrations (all sound/words enters ears without meaning) that get
• filtered, massaged, shortened and
• automatically turned to signals
• that get dispatched among
• 86 billion neurons, 1,000 trillion neural connections to seek a match
• with ‘similar-enough’ cell assemblies that then
• translate the signals uniquely and
• send instructions to act (behave).

Here’s another way to explain what happens from start (input) to an action (output):

Input (message, vibration) -> Filters (Beliefs, norms) -> CUE (Signal creation) -> CEN (Dispatch to ‘similar-enough’ existing circuits) ->Output (Behavior, action, decision)

For those who want more detail, here’s a video of me explaining the entire process of how we make decisions with visuals.

Notice that the input (message) and the filters (beliefs, norms) drive the output (behavior). It’s impossible to have an output without an input that triggers it. Indeed, everything we do, think, feel, see, hear has been instructed by our neurology. An easy way to think of this is how Alzheimer’s sufferers die because their brain forgets to instruct their organs.

BEHAVIORS ARE BELIEFS IN ACTION

Resistance begins at the input stage: If the incoming instructions, the initiatives and goals we provide at the start, match the norms/values/beliefs of the existing system being targeted, the filters will accept it.

If the incoming message is in conflict with the system, the filters (automatically, unconsciously) discard, mistranslate, or resist it. It’s biologic and of out awareness, an act performed by dopamine.

Since our unconscious brain is the instigation point that causes us to ‘do’ who we are, our behaviors arise from the way our brain translates (mistranslates) incoming vibrations (words, messages). So a behavior is nothing more than a response, the output of a chain of events set up to comply with the norms and values of the system – the person – they represent. Behaviors (outputs) are the very last element that arise from a string of commands from our brain.

Simply put: When people receive inputs that are out of alignment with their SOM, they resist. Resistance is merely a reaction from the part of the brain that thinks it’s at risk. It has nothing to do with intent. It’s not malicious. It’s neurologic.

This is what we overlook during change initiatives: when we get an unwanted reaction from an initiative, we end up trying to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior – push change from an output that’s already been programmed! It’s like trying to change a chair into a table!

Unfortunately, by the time there’s a reaction it’s too late. Here’s my podcast series on change without resistance.

It is possible, however, to avoid the problem altogether. To get a different response, a new output, we just need to create a different input.

STAKEHOLDERS MUST DESIGN THE INITIATIVE

To make sure new directives are approved, carried out, and enlist buy-in; to make sure we achieve goals that produce Excellence; our change initiatives must comply with people’s mental models and personal beliefs or the brain thinks it’s at risk and balks to protect the system.

When leadership tries to elicit behaviors before enlisting the brain circuits that protect the SOM, the belief-based filters that check incoming messages will discard or resist anything that doesn’t match the existing norms of the system.

There’s a simple way to fix this problem, but I’m going to ask that you don’t resist what I’m saying out-of-hand: We can bring in the stakeholders, the folks who will be performing the new initiative, before the initiatives are developed, before the goals have been established and have them design the initiative. (Note: no problem set can be fully understood without the input, the knowledge. of the entire stakeholder body anyway.)

This ensures that the values, the SOM, of the stakeholders will become part of the new initiative and the brain will happily generate the new behaviors with passion and creativity, responsibility and ownership. And no resistance!

By starting with a goal in mind, by beginning with outcomes and targets and proposed action, by designing initiatives to conscientiously overcome resistance by including users somewhere – too late! – in the process, current change management models unwittingly instigate the very resistance they seek to overcome.

And note: it’s not possible to attempt to ‘gather data’ to capture the SOMs to include in the initiative as the both the questions and answers will be biased by the direction already set; and conventional questions don’t get into the unconscious anyway.

Everyone involved (or a very comprehensive set of representatives) must sit down together – maybe for an offsite day with an outside consultant – and brainstorm ideas, needs, fears, feelings, job descriptions, collective goals, and dreams.

I’d even suggest there be only representation from leadership, with the bulk of the participation coming from the users. After all, folks in leadership have different jobs, different goals and viewpoints, different knowledge of the day-to-day ops, different SOMS than the managers and staff who will carry out the initiative.

A NEW GOAL: EXCELLENCE

Here are a few starter questions to create compliance and joy throughout the life of the initiative:

• What’s the best idea, the best aspiration, to begin from that will result in goals that match the beliefs, the integrity, the vision, of those who will carry out the change?
• What if we begin with a goal of Excellence, not specific actions?
• How can we design initiatives in a way that expands possibility and invites buy-in, creativity and vision over time?

Will goals be met in the exact way the leadership team originally envisaged? Nope. But they never are anyway. The goals will be met, just differently and with long-term follow through and universal buy-in.

I’ve written extensively on this and developed several models and tools that create comprehensive teams, unearth the SOMs, and design goals and action items that lead to Excellence far beyond anything originally envisaged. Please contact me to either help you design a new initiative or coach you through one you’re currently involved with. Here’s how an article on how I’ve used my thinking in one industry (sales) to facilitate change and avoid resistance.

For now, here’s an example of how I enlisted the buy-in of a resister who wasn’t even compliant with the coach hired to help him keep his job.

EXAMPLE OF FACILITATING A RESISTER THROUGH TO CHANGE

I once got a call from a very noted coach (once on the cover of Inc Magazine) who had a problem he needed help solving. He had been hired by a senior manager (Susan) from a company going through change. She was having difficulty enlisting the agreement of one of their top, well-respected managers and asked Ed to coach the guy (Lou) to perform the new behaviors or he’d be fired. Ed said he’d tried for three months to get Lou to do what he’d been asked to do – set agreed-upon target actions and goals for Lou – only to have Lou miss deadlines and overlook entire segments of his agreements. Ed thought that maybe I’d have a different way to think about helping Lou and save him from losing his job.

Ed agreed to do a role play with me during which I used my facilitation process that targeted Lou’s underlying, baseline sentiments. With no real knowledge of what Lou would say, Ed responded using bits he’d heard from Lou. We had the following conversation (Note: I knew nothing about either Lou or the initiative.).

SD: Hi Lou. Before we begin, I’d like to thank you for being willing to speak. Seems you were not given a choice about speaking with me. Do I have your approval? I don’t want you to be forced to speak if you don’t want to.

Lou: You’re right. So much seems to be going on that I have no say about. But I know Susan is trying to help me keep my job. So I’m happy to speak. Thanks for asking.

SD: I hear both Susan and Ed have been trying to encourage you to take on new tasks and there seems to be a glitch in your uptake. What has stopped you from being comfortable doing what they need you to do?

Lou: I have some questions. I was hired to do my original job and I’ve done it well. Over the years I’ve come up with creative solutions, hired terrific people, and have been successful. I’ve gotten promoted and rewarded, and by now part of my identity is based on my success. Now they want me to do X. Who will take over my old job and do it as well as I did? Maintain the relationships with my staff and clients? And what happens to me? Given it’s a wholly new job description, how do I know I can do it? And no one will be teaching me because it hasn’t been done before. What happens if I don’t succeed? I’ve never been unsuccessful before. Seems they’ve given me a lose/lose situation. If I do what they want me to do, I’ll end up being fired for incompetency anyway.

SD: Wow. So you had no input into this new role before it was given to you, weren’t included in the creation and description of it, don’t know if you know how to do the work, don’t know how to be good at it, and might end up losing the success you had in your current job! That’s a lot. What has stopped you from telling this to Ed or Susan?

Lou: I tried to tell Susan but she told me they trusted me and just concentrate on doing the new job. But that didn’t handle my fears or loss of identity. When I started working with Ed he just gave me targets for each part of the new job and never discussed my personal challenges.

SD: Oh! So if Susan could make sure your current job will end up in good hands with continued great results, and you could have someone guide you through the new job with an agreed-upon learning curve, it would be easier for you.

Lou: Right. But I’d also need to have a say in how the new job is defined. As I can’t know what I don’t know before I start, I can’t know what would need to change in the job description they’ve provided. If I can have a say in how I will accomplish what they need accomplished, and have the time to get good at it, AND my original job is being done well, I have no problem being compliant.

When we were done, I asked Ed why he hadn’t considered my line of questioning since he apparently had all the data.

Ed: I heard him say those things, but because they seemed to have nothing to do with my job of getting him to ‘do’ the necessary behaviors, I ignored them!

This is a true story. How many people have been fired because they didn’t ‘do’ what they were told to do, and this type of conversation hadn’t occurred?

The belief that a change initiative must be agreed-with as per leadership’s vision has caused great harm in corporations and people. In 2004 I spoke with the then-CEO of Kinkos who traveled to all U.S. sites to visit 30,000 employees to announce the FedEx/Kinko’s merger. He used a multi-million-dollar deck to make his announcement. How did it go? You decide.

Kinkos: I had trouble convincing about 10% of them to get onboard.

SD: What happened to them?

Kinkos: It became a retention issue.

SD: You fired 3,000 people because they didn’t like your dog-and-pony show??

Kinkos: Yes, but it wasn’t a big loss. They were the folks who had been around from the beginning and were expendable.

He fired the very core, the very foundation of his business, the folks who carried the history and heart of the company, because he had no capability of enabling collaboration and a joint vision.

Indeed, there is a way to create productive routes to outcomes that carry passion, ongoing success, and happy people. I’ve dedicated my career to creating mind-brain, conscious-to-unconscious models that make systemic change possible and very easy. Contact me and we can discuss: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

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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 September 26th, 2022

Posted In: News

What’s in a Name? The tale of Speaker vs Listener

I often get wonderful ideas during my daily walk. Today I was musing on the implications of Speakers as the arbiters of understanding between Communication Partners. And then I came upon what I think may be an exception. My first name.

Because brains have a hard time accurately interpreting content different from what’s familiar, people generally don’t ‘hear’ my name accurately. But it shouldn’t be THAT difficult. We’re comfortable with Mary Ann. But not, apparently, with Sharon-Drew.

In this article I’ll discuss how incoming words get translated by our brains, but first I’ll give you a few examples of my daily tribulations. And make no mistake: it’s quite obvious to me that since I’m the one responsible for being understood, I’m the one failing. I just don’t know how to do it better.

NOPE. NOT SHARON

I’ll begin by sharing how I introduce myself (If you can think of a better way to say this, PLEASE let me know!) and how a typical introductory conversation goes:

SD: Hi. I’m Sharon-Drew. That’s my first name. Sharon-Drew. Both words. Like Nancy Drew but Sharon-Drew. Both words. Together. Sharon-Drew. It’s my whole first name. What’s your name?

    Hi Sharon. I’m Betty.    

SD: No, actually it’s Sharon-Drew, Betty. My first name is Sharon-Drew. I use both words. Not Sharon please.

    Right. Got it. Hi Sharon.

SD: No. There are 2 words in my first name. Sharon-Drew. And I always use them both and never shorten it.

    Then what’s your last name?

SD: Morgen.

    I thought it was Drew-Morgen.

SD: Nope. First name Sharon-Drew, last name Morgen.

    Huh. So your first name is Sharon-Drew? Gosh, I’ll need to remember that.

This happens, or some semblance of it, about 25 times a week, year in, year out, everywhere in the States. In Europe and Asia, and in my neighborhood where 5 people have double-barreled first names, there’s no problem so I know it’s possible. But the rest of the time, 100% of every person, every day, refers to me (the first time) as Sharon. Here are more stories:

SD: Hi. I’m Sharon-Drew. That’s my first name. Sharon-Drew. Both words. Like Nancy Drew but Sharon-Drew. It’s my whole first name. What’s your name?

        Hi Sharon. I’m…

SD: No, actually my first name is Sharon-Drew. Both words together. Please don’t refer to me as Sharon. I don’t like it.

        If you don’t like Sharon, then what’s your name?

SD: Sharon-Drew. Two words. Last name Morgen. Sharon-Drew, first name. Then Morgen second name.

      Wait, you want them together? Can’t I just call you Sharon? Or Drew?

I could go on: The time at a party when I introduced myself to 5 people in a circle and they each called me Sharon – including the 5th person who’d heard 4 previous name interactions. The time the bureaucrat changed my form so Drew would be under M.I. (middle initial) and I had to show her my license to prove Sharon-Drew was my legal first name and I actually don’t have a M.I. Or the editor that labeled my picture Sharon Morgan (double insult. Last name morgEn) and refused to correct it (“I didn’t get the name wrong. You must have sent it to me wrong.”). It stops being funny after a while.

Of course most people – maybe 70% – remember it after the first time we have this interaction. (My god, who could forget it by then!) Only once did it go on for so long I ended a budding business partnership because the man refused, refused, to call me by my name. Here was our final conversation

SD: I am going to have to walk away from our work together. I can’t figure out how to tell you my name in a way you’ll understand although I’ve tried and failed 9 times (for real). And you can’t figure out that my first name is Sharon-Drew no matter what I say. I don’t see a way forward for us.

R: I still don’t get it. You’re ending because I call you by your name? But I guess you’re right. We just can’t communicate.

Really. Sounds funny in these hilarious stories, but while it’s happening, not so much. And to make matters MUCH worse, my daily defeat is causing me to question my own ability as a Speaker to take responsibility for an interaction. And I’ve written a book extolling this for goodness sakes!

HOW BRAINS TRANSLATE INCOMING CONTENT

The reason people can’t ‘hear’ my name is a great example of how incoming words get (mis)understood by Listeners. It’s actually a brain circuit thing and has nothing at all to do with words or intended meaning.

All incoming words enter our brains as mere sound vibrations – puffs of air with no meaning – that go through several chemical/electrical processes and get dispatched to a circuit of historic and ‘similar-enough’ (A neuroscience phrase! Similar-enough to what??) signals that translate them into what we think we hear.

We’re left thinking we’ve heard accurately, but sometimes it’s nowhere near reality. So when folks don’t ‘get’ my name, they just don’t have the brain circuitry translate an unusual double-barreled name and it’s not their fault.

From my own writing and research, I know it’s my responsibility to use words in a way they’ll be translated accurately. But frankly, even after developing mind-brain models for decades, I still have trouble getting my name understood. Sometimes, when I say ‘two words, together’ or ‘I know it’s odd but…’ folks can add a codicil to their current circuitry. But when people have NO circuits to translate, I fail.

MIND-BRAIN HACKS

That brings up a question: Since we can’t control how our brains translate incoming content, and our listening/understanding capability is restricted by our history, the mental models, experience, and beliefs that shape our Identity, can we have choice?

As Speakers we can help enable accurate comprehension by saying things in several ways, using different metaphors, different words, different tones. Or begin with a summary statement, asking if anything like that is familiar… like, “I’d love to discuss the way we communicated last night. Do you remember any of our history of those sorts of conversations?”

We can also check if what we think we’ve heard is accurate. Ask our Communication Partner:

“I’d like to tell you what I think I heard you say. Can you please check that it’s accurate and correct me if I missed something?”

One of my favorite mind hacks is listening in Observer; meta listening that captures the essence, the metamessage, of what’s being said rather than the exact details. Remember when your small children used crayons on the new wallpaper and you needed a deep breath to remind them to use their pads instead of the wall? Or that time your partner forgot your birthday and you decided to have patience? You were in Observer. Observer offers choice.

As a meta position, Observer enables you to go beyond your standard listening, avoid standard reactions, and enable your brain to do an expanded search. You’re metaphorically going up to the ceiling looking down at the situation with a broader, much-less subjective viewing range, less emotion, and more conscious choice.

When coaching and communicating with clients, in negotiations, or gathering data, I remain in Observer to make sure I listen with as little bias as possible. I have a whole chapter on this in my book on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard (WHAT?). It’s a nifty tool to expand choice and minimize bias.

But as with my name, I suppose there are just those times when nothing works. So long as we don’t blame the Listener, it’s our own responsibility as Speakers to be understood and acknowledge we all live in restricting brains.

____________________________

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 July 5th, 2022

Posted In: News

I’ve Been Plagiarized

On 5/13/2022 I received an apology from Gordon Hogg for plagiarizing my work. For several years he lifted my exact words from my writings that explain my original thinking on sales, listening, questioning, and training in his own articles, website, posts, and client offerings. Below you’ll find Hogg’s apology to me and the sales community. Note: it does not contain his continued belief that any published content is freely available for anyone to copy.

I’m heartbroken. Not only did Hogg crib my original IP that I worked tirelessly over hours, years, decades to write, invent, and develop, but he misconstrued my innovative thinking, specifically my Buying Facilitation® model, to be used as a sales ploy rather than the change management, servant-leader front-end I intended.

I ask that Hogg’s readers visit www.sharon-drew.com where I explain and offer the original material with the accurate intention.

Sharon-Drew Morgen

_________________________

To the sales industry:

Many years ago, I came across a number of books and articles written by Sharon-Drew Morgen who is an original thinker and inventor of systemic brain change models that are often used in sales as Buying Facilitation®. Sharon-Drew has spent the past 40 years developing, inventing, writing, thinking, testing, and trialing, to create Buying Facilitation® and get it published into books, articles and delivered in corporations. I was fascinated by the sheer brilliance of how Sharon-Drew articulated, and developed, models to assist the buying process.

There is nothing like it in mainstream business. I have been involved in sales and marketing for as long as Sharon-Drew has been developing her material. I have always struggled with trying to explain why salespeople are so out of sync with how their buyers buy but could never find the right words to explain why sales merely tries to push their products rather than enter at the other end to first help people go through their decision process to become buyers. I found Sharon-Drew’s words and insights could help me convey the right message.

Unfortunately, while developing a message to salespeople, I plagiarized Sharon-Drew’s words, slogans and phrases directly from her articles, books, titles and neglected to attribute them to Sharon-Drew. And unfortunately, I misunderstood the true import of her original thinking and misappropriated her concepts as an improved way to get people to buy, totally overlooking the change focus (i.e. instead of buying focus) and the spiritual nature of Sharon-Drew’s intent, to truly serve people in making the decisions needed to actually become buyers.

This misunderstanding caused Sharon-Drew’s decades of work to also be misunderstood and misappropriated as I used her exact words with a different intent. As a small example, I misappropriated her terms buying patterns, helping buyers buy, steps in the buying journey, traversing the 13 steps of change, workarounds and stakeholders, selling doesn’t cause buying, the ‘cost’ of change, change management. While some of these words are words in common usage, in her writing Sharon-Drew defines them uniquely, in a narrow definition of how brains make decisions and I used them in service to selling solutions.

1. I wrote blog posts using her words and ideas directly from her blogs (including words that she used to define her Buying Facilitation® thinking, and the new forms of question and training she invented), including titles from her already published articles.
2. I have misinterpreted her words to explain the failure in sales processes rather than their original intention as a model to facilitate systemic change.
3. I plagiarized words and phrases in her change facilitation material as a way to overcome deficiencies in sales model rather than their original intention of facilitating the steps of change which Sharon-Drew has laid out so sellers can lead people through them before trying to sell.

I now wish to make clear that the goal of what Sharon-Drew has pioneered for decades as an original thinker and servant leader has been to truly (and singularly) facilitate change; when used with sales, a purchase might result as an output; when used in generic coaching and leading, a congruent, permanent decision results.

Plagiarizing any of her work without any attribution to get the attention of salespeople was wrong and for that I apologize. Sharon-Drew deserves to be properly credited. The writing, the developing, the inventing of the material I plagiarized has been Sharon-Drew’s life’s work. She often spends 50 hours writing the articles that I so carelessly plagiarized.

Sharon-Drew has invented additional brain-based models from which I also plagiarized:

1. Learning facilitation: a new form of training that uses brain function. I plagiarized some of her writing and thinking when I mentioned how I would train salespeople.
2. Facilitative Questions: a unique form of question that enables others to find their own answers and excludes information gathering. These are used in Buying Facilitation® to lead people through their change steps. I not only plagiarized her words used when explaining these, but I offered this new skill set in the form of Enabling Questions.
3. The 13 steps of change: the stages everyone must go through before becoming buyers. I plagiarized some of her steps in both articles, posts, in illustrations as a tool to help sellers position sales pitches, rather than the brain change steps that facilitate good decisions.

While my site claimed to offer clients a ‘new form of training’ and a ‘new form of question’, those were taken directly from Sharon-Drew’s inventions. I will no longer be offering services re any of the original material Sharon-Drew has invented.

I also had a 73 page sample assessment on how buyers buy that plagiarized many of Sharon-Drew’s words and ideas directly from her books and articles.

I apologize for plagiarizing and misrepresenting her work. As I did this over the course of years, I hope the people who have read my articles will go back to Sharon-Drew’s work on www.sharon-drew.com and read the ideas as they were intended. Sharon-Drew’s concepts on helping buyers buy and Buying Facilitation® are wholly original and needed in the sales industry.

I am truly sorry, Sharon-Drew.

Gordon Hogg

____________________

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 20th, 2022

Posted In: News