Blog – Page 16 – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

How many times have you tried to sell an idea to a colleague, only to have it be misunderstood or ignored? Or offered important knowledge in a marketing piece or sales pitch meant to encourage or educate a prospect to buy, only to have it overlooked? Why don’t patients follow new healthcare regimens prescribed by doctors they trust, to heal an illness they know they have?

I began thinking about this recently when I heard a noted leader in healthcare say: “There is a persistent consensus that insufficient evidence exists that behavior can be modified.” Hmmm. And yet the industry is throwing hundreds of millions of dollars researching Behavior Modification (without a parallel model to test it against! So much for the scientific method.). This is similar to my own aphorism, after decades of facilitating prospect buy-in in the sales industry: “Selling doesn’t cause buying.” Both recognize that the outside-in push method for causing compliance isn’t an effective way to elicit permanent change. Indeed: as outsiders, we’re trying to cause behavior change, rather than elicit it.

WHO’S INSANE?

The common thread behind both is the enduring belief (even with a 5% success rate in sales, and a only fraction of patients complying with necessary health-based regimens) that with the ‘right’ idea and the ‘best’ data, offered by someone who is ‘trustworthy’ and ‘credible’, written, offered, or spoken in a way that ‘inspires’ action, that people will act as they ‘should’ and make the ‘right’ choices we’re ‘certain’ they need to make.

But they’re not. And instead of recognizing that maybe we’ve got it wrong, that maybe we’re looking at the problem from the wrong angle while doing the same thing over and over hoping to get the results we want, we’re calling THEM irrational?? Seems to me we’re the very definition of insanity.

Is it any wonder people aren’t compliant? Pushing OUR ideas, OUR beliefs, OUR biases, OUR assumptions, onto another, in the format WE’VE chosen, assuming because we’re right, or smarter, or caring, or ‘scientific’ or or or, that they’ll do what WE want them to do! And then we’re surprised at the paucity of compliance?

We know this doesn’t work. For decades, if not centuries, sellers, coaches, leaders, and now healthcare providers, have bemoaned the lack of success we’ve achieved (even building failure into our expected results) with our push methods. And yet we continue, hoping that we’ll say it right this time, or offer impeccable research data, or use terrific apps, or pitches, or marketing that will instigate permanent change or decisions in our favor. Has it never occurred that just maybe outside-in push doesn’t work? Or is it just that we don’t know what else to do?

THE FAILURE OF PUSH

Selling doesn’t cause buying. Good content creation doesn’t cause action. Behavior Modification doesn’t cause behavior change. Do you see a pattern here? As reflected in our failed attempts across industries and time, an external push – regardless of how trustworthy, or researched, or ‘rational’, or necessary as it may be – cannot cause another person to change permanently.

As outsiders, we forget: change is an inside job. Yet our activity – all sales models and healthcare apps, coaching models and leadership trends – focuses on attempting to cause change from the outside. With our reports and regimens, proof and advice, stories and examples, we try to convince others to change before teaching them how to, and then complaining they’re not listening to us. Let me offer the reasons it’s not possible for people to change merely because we offer them terrific reasons why they should.

1. Subjective Listening: This is the main hurdle with information push: people don’t hear the intent of a message, when it falls outside of their conditioned, subjective listening filters and habituated neural pathways, regardless of the efficacy of the information offered. When our clients, or children, or patients, ‘mis-hear’ us, it’s not their fault; their brains actually tell them something different from what was intended.

We all listen unconsciously, through our biases, assumptions, triggers, habits, and normalized neural pathways. I’ve written a book about the gap between what’s said and what’s heard (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) and it’s formidable: our brains ‘kindly’ keep us comfortable and safe by hearing what they want, discarding bits of meaning and intent at will, without letting us know that what we end up ‘hearing’ is highly subjective and some unknowable percentage removed from what the speaker (or article, or app) intended. Try as we might – the best wording, or clever text/apps – whatever we say will be interpreted uniquely and not necessarily as we wish it to be interpreted; we’ll be heard more accurately only by those who already think exactly as we do.

So: information-in will probably not be heard as intended and translated according to some unconscious filtering that we outsiders cannot control. And this is compounded by our assumption that because we believe we’ve said something clearly it should be understood, i.e. ‘they’re not listening’. They are. To the very best of their unconscious ability. And it’s a good reason to not rely on sharing information as the way to influence change.

2. Status Quo: Every day we wake up being who we were yesterday. We live our lives and make decisions according to our unique Identity, our personal system of rules, experience, hopes, goals, culture, education, etc. developed over a lifetime, that cause us to operate in the world uniquely. This is how we wake up knowing how to brush our teeth and drive our cars, vote the way we prefer, and love who makes us happy – all regardless of the way others would like us to be.

When any change is required of us our entire habituated, unconscious system/status quo faces disruption: to be willing and able to change, we must find a way for our personal system to buy-in to the new, get rid of the old, and find a way to maintain the habits and beliefs that keep us stable. Indeed, when we ask someone to change, regardless of the need, benefits, or the efficacy of the solution, we are asking people to unravel their status quo and do something different before they know if change would threaten who they know themselves to be. Their system, their status quo, is sacrosanct, and we are asking them to risk who they are.

3. Trust: When we assume we have answers for another, we are basically telling them we know more than they do, that we’re ‘right’ and they’re wrong, that we don’t trust them to find their own best route to excellence. So with the best will in the world, we push against their personal, habituated, normalized system (and yes, it’s the same system that caused the problem in the first place), and get… wait for it… resistance. And then we call them ‘stupid buyers’ or ‘non-compliant patients’. By not trusting our clients, by not enabling them to traverse their OWN route to congruent change, by assuming we have their answers and working at getting them to comply, we’re causing the very resistance we blame them for.

4. Beliefs: For some reason, outsiders attempt to change someone’s behaviors without realizing that behaviors are merely the transactions of our beliefs. It’s like trying to get an app to do something it’s not meant to do without changing the underlying programming. This is why Behavior Modification largely fails: it seeks to cause behavior change; only belief change, and systems buy-in, can elicit behavior change.

5. Bias: Even when accurately assessing another’s needs and have solutions that could resolve problems, our own needs for specific results bias our interactions. We’re outside the Other’s system, using our own preferred languaging, our own biased choices of stories and examples, our own approaches, posing biased questions meant to pull the data we want to understand (often regardless of how the Other uses or hears language i.e. biased) and assuming we’ll be heard and heeded! By choosing the words and story line we adhere to, by choosing activities or making requests according to our own need to get our suggestions recognized, we’re unintentionally biasing our interactions and restricting success to those who think, act, assume like we do.

So with the best will in the world, with solutions that can actually save lives and fix problems, we’re inhibiting success. We must stop pushing the change WE want to have happen, and begin facilitating others through their own behavior change, from within. We must elicit change rather than attempt to cause change. We must trust that everyone has their own answers and lead them through, and design, their own route to discovery and change, within their own norms and identity, so they remain congruent.

ELICIT CHANGE

We’ve not been given the tools to facilitate permanent change, depending instead on many ways to push information/change in. Yet information – heard through subjective filters, chosen, offered and presented in formats designed by biased do-gooders – doesn’t teach someone HOW to change congruently, from the inside. Inside-out. Pushing data in merely causes resistance. Here are the skills necessary to facilitate others through permanent, congruent change from the inside.

1. The Steps of Change: There is a specific set of sequential steps that human systems follow unconsciously en route to change, starting with enabling Others to rise above the weeds, into an Observer position, so they can get into an unbiased and disassociated state to begin dispassionately noticing, assembling and assessing the elements that caused the systemic problem to begin with. [Note: information-in, and push models, cause people to dig in and defend.] I’ve coded the steps of change that every human system – i.e. every person, group, etc. – must traverse sequentially to remain congruent through change. Change will not occur until a person recognizes

all of the elements of how they got where they’re at and the systems that hold them in place;
they know without a shadow of a doubt that they cannot fix the problem with their known resources;
that any proposed change could be factored into the existing system without fallout – i.e. the status quo would buy-in to change and be willing to do something different because it recognizes it won’t be harmed.

It’s possible to lead people down their own steps of change to make their unconscious beliefs conscious and enable them to consider if it’s time to change. No one, no one, from outside can ever, ever understand what’s going on in other’s personal system.

2. The Direction of Change: People think in habituated patterns; to find the elements that maintain their status quo they must go beyond their habituated thinking to seek out bits of their unconscious that aren’t necessarily obvious. How to do this? By being Neutral Navigators, Change Facilitators, that guide the brain to its own answers. I’ve been thinking about this problem since 1980, understanding that conventional questions are biased by the Asker, and responded to accordingly. Repeat: any time we ask a question of another, it’s biased by our own need to know and word choices, and will be heard with biased ears.

To overcome bias, to help people find their own answers, and knowing that conventional questions are biased by the Asker, I’ve developed Facilitative Questions that actually direct the brain sequentially, through its own givens, to discover best answers (often unconscious) and avoids the bias of influencers who net/net seek answers/pull information THEY think relevant. (Definition: Facilitative Question – a systemic, action-based, directive question, (not information-pull) that uses specific words, in a specific order, to lead people through sequential steps of discovery and buy-in without bias.)

These questions can be used in surveys, questionnaires, and research to elicit ‘good’ information, without bias. I know this is a bit outside of mainstream thinking, but I’ve been successfully teaching the formulation of these questions for decades, in sales with Buying Facilitation®, coaching, and leadership – any place congruent change is required. Sometimes new ideas are needed, right?

3. The Who of Change: By taking on the mantel of Change Agents, Facilitators, Influencers regardless of field (i.e. in apps, in sales, in coaching), we must begin by trusting Others to discover and design their own change, not attempt to cause change with wizzy content, Behavior Mod approaches, pricing ‘deals’ or any other outside-in push techniques. They don’t work – hence a 95% failure rate in sales, and patients regularly not completing regimens that would help them heal. Once people recognize how to change themselves in a way that’s congruent with their personal system, they will then need outsiders to supply relevant information. First facilitate change for Others; then supply necessary data according to THEIR needs.

4. Testing for Change: By only doing research on Behavior Mod or other behavior change approaches, we’re ignoring the real problem and not helping people make permanent change. Let’s begin doing research on Change Facilitation practices in side-by-side experiments with behavior change approaches. Then we’ll have real answers.

SUMMARY

For those who want to think about the inherent problems of pushing change from the outside, below I’ve summarized the baseline beliefs in this article so you can begin thinking of why an inside-out approach is the only way to elicit successful change (Note: I’ve designed a generic Change Facilitation approach often used in sales as Buying Facilitation® to handle this; design your own, or call me to discuss.):

We can never have answers for others, regardless of their need or the efficacy of their solution. Think about how you can enable others to address their internal beliefs to come up with their own answers that will normalize and habituate a new, more beneficial, habit pattern.
People (or groups, etc.) won’t change until they can go beyond their habituated patterns, recognize that their current unconscious system is flawed and they cannot resolve a problem themselves; bringing in a ‘foreign’ solution is initially avoided as it would disrupt the status quo.
Systems (i.e. people’s status quo) won’t change if the cost of the change is higher than the fallout from continuing the problems in the status quo. The system must discover this itself; telling only gets resistance.
If offered information or activities run counter to the existent beliefs and entrenched, normalized habits within the system, they will be resisted, regardless of efficacy.
Information is unnecessary, not understood, ignored, not accepted, until or unless the system has recognized it’s ready, willing, and able to change and knows exactly what it needs to assist it – and can hear the intended message without bias or resistance. That’s why we have success only with the low hanging fruit – those who have already gone through their own internal change process. So information last, Change Facilitation first. By asking them biased questions based on our need for information, by offering them our regimens, pitches, stories, reasons, proof, etc., we restrict success to those who need that specific piece of information at that moment, and ignore those who may need to change but otherwise resist.
There is a sequence of change that all systems go through unconsciously to open a place for congruent change that avoids resistance. It is not information based, but belief-change. Focus first on leading patients and prospects through discovery before offering data.

It’s possible to develop healthcare apps that first enable Others to be ready for change prior to offering Behavior Mod. It’s possible for sellers to first facilitate prospect buy-in, notice those who WILL buy and are ready for change on the first call. It’s possible to facilitate coaching clients through permanent change. And I know that influencers like to be the pivot point, the arbiter of change. But if an outside-in line of questioning or directing is used, only people who have done their own change work first will be compliant. Let’s elicit change; let’s stop pushing.

I’m happy to discuss the above with anyone, and seek situations to test, use, offer my stuff to enhance excellence. 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®, author NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell), listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. 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.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen March 9th, 2020

Posted In: Communication, Listening

Sales folks make a few incorrect assumptions about who a buyer is, including: 1. the name on the marketing automation or prospecting system is the name of the buyer; and 2. a receptionist or secretary isn’t a buyer. Not only is there rarely only one ‘buyer’, but whoever responds – yes, even secretaries and receptionists – might actually be on the Buying Decision Team (BDT). Indeed, if you ever attempt to ‘get through’ a receptionist or secretary, you’ll know for sure this person is a major decision maker.

OUR FIRST JOB IS TO FACILITATE CHANGE

Before anyone buys, they need buy-in from the full set of stakeholders – the BDT – who include those playing a role in managing any change a new solution generates. Each decision team member will face different hurdles: one team member might need to reorganize their team; one might need to fire someone or facilitate user compliance.

As outsiders we cannot know any of this, especially if we’re entering with a focus on placing a solution. But make no mistake: anything new brought into an environment causes some sort of irritation, and someone is responsible for resolving it; these issues need a plan for resolution before a purchasing decision is made. And as outsiders we can’t know what’s involved or who on the BDT is handling it.

NEED ISN’T THE ISSUE

Entering to find someone with a ‘need’, or someone specific to sell to, limits sellers to seeking/finding those who are ready to buy at the moment the seller connects – the low hanging fruit. It ignores all those in the process of becoming buyers and those still figuring out how to manage the change who can be facilitated through to Buyer Readiness.

We can expand the group of possible buyers by a factor of 8 if we enter as change facilitators first and help them do whatever they must. Indeed, this large group doesn’t respond to the conventional sales tools and goals we employ: they can’t yet know the full complement of their need, and aren’t yet interested in any of our content.

By starting off with the goal of finding those still on their buying decision journey and not yet buyers, and lead them through the steps necessary to manage the change, it’s possible to recognize who will be a buyer on the first call. Indeed, by helping them traverse their route, they will become buyers quickly. Your pipeline will actually include real prospects, not suspects. But the definition of who is a buyer will need to change.

For knowledge on this subject, I’ve written articles on the model I developed to facilitate the elements of the buying decision path that differ from sales: Buying Facilitation®, the real buyer’s journey, and help buyers shift their status quo. In this article, I offer three case studies on how to sell by going beyond what the sales process considers ‘buyers’. One shows how I sold more than anticipated by not assuming the listed name was THE buyer; one tells how a receptionist got me business; one shows how I instigated a prospect to enlist the Buying Decision Team and become a buyer.

CASE STUDY: DON’T RESTRICT YOUR CONTACT

Years ago, I was training Buying Facilitation® to a sales group within a call center selling three of IBM’s software packages. In those days, sellers prospected using the names on coupons sent from folks requesting information (old school!). During the training, I suggested that participants not ask for the folks whose names were on the coupons, as there was no way of knowing who was actually on the BDT or who filled out the coupon.

During my one-on-one coaching session with John Megatz (one of the participants…. I’ll never forget him!) he called a small construction company to sell an accounting package, assuming they’d need one. He asked the woman who answered for Louis, the name listed on the coupon. “Not in” she said. “Please call back Monday.” I then called the number back. Here was the call.

SD: Hi. My name is Sharon Drew Morgen, and I’m calling from IBM in response to a coupon. Can you tell me how you’re currently handling your accounting, and if you’re seeking any additional tools to help? [Note: I always assume everyone is part of the BDT. I do this on all cold calls.]

Kathy: I’m doing the accounting. Me. It’s me. All me. Since May. Me. I was the one who filled out that coupon. I’m trying to convince my husband to buy an accounting package within the next week, or I’ll not only quit, but I’ll divorce him. We’re a Mom & Pop shop here, and I took over the accounting when our accountant left last May (it was December). It takes up too much of my time and I hate doing it. Louis promised me I’d only have to do it for a month. So if I can buy a package now, it would save my marriage.

Kathy: Oh. Louis just walked in. Hey Louis! Pick up the phone, will you? It’s IBM with a solution to save our marriage.

Louis: Hi. This is IBM? Do you have an accounting package we can buy? I need to buy one today or she’ll divorce me.

SD: Hi Louis. Yup. We’ve got one. We need to check if our package fits your needs. But before I discuss it, I’m wondering if you also could use a Project Management package. It’s pretty cool. The project managers on client sites could log hours and create client invoices from the field. Or a Payroll package that would automatically write checks electronically. I see you’re a small construction business and can’t tell if anything we’ve got is anything you need.

Louis. Wow. I need all three! Can you tell me about them?

SD: Since I’m just a trainee, can we wait until Monday when the product managers for each package would be available to discuss the packages with you? I’m only the one with the mouth; they’ve got the brains. [Note: I really said this. I had no idea how to pitch any of the products.]

Louis: No. Is there any way we could do it today? [Note: It was 5:00 Friday afternoon.]

SD: Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll call you back.

John and I ran up two flights of stairs. Ran (and somehow I lost a very expensive Tiffany pen during the trot). We got to the sales group as they were walking out the door for the weekend. John grabbed the two sellers from the Project Management and the Payroll packages, and we ran back downstairs and called Louis back. To be honest, I knew almost nothing about the products.

Turned out, they bought all three packages. Right there and then. But they might not have if John had waited until Monday for Louis, or hadn’t assumed the woman answering was a secretary instead of co-owner. And John was set to restrict his sales effort to the accounting package.

CASE STUDY: ASSUME EVERYONE IS A BUYER

I once made a cold call to an engineering firm. The receptionist answered. I used my Buying Facilitation® model on her as I do with every person who answers a phone; I can never know who is part of the BDT, how their buying decisions get made, or even if they’re in the process of seeking new skills. You’d be shocked to know how much information these front line people have and how helpful they’re willing to be when respected:

SD: Hi. My name is Sharon Drew Morgen, and this is a sales call. I wonder: how are you folks adding new skills to the ones your sales folks currently use, for those times you want to shorten the sales cycle?

Susan: Wow. Cool question. Could you teach our folks to do that?

SD: Sure. That’s what I do. And I know you’re at the front desk and it’s probably busy. But I’m happy to see if what I offer and what might enhance your business would be a fit. Is this a good time?

Susan: No. It’s mayhem around here always. Would you mind sending me some sort of a packet and I’ll get it to the sales director? I promise I’ll do it. I like what’s going on in this conversation.

So I sent her a packet. She called me a week later.

Susan: Hi Sharon Drew. Thanks for the packet. I put it on our Sales Director Joe’s desk. But he was fired an hour later. I went into his office after he’d gone and he’d cleared everything out, including your packet. Sorry to ask you this, but would you send me another one?

I sent her a new packet. A week later I got a call from Gary.

Gary: Hi Sharon Drew. I’m sitting here with Susan who says I have to call you because whatever it is you’re doing sounds like we should be teaching our sales folks. This is my first day as Sales Director, and Susan has made sure this is my first act at my new desk. In fact, she’s standing here right now. You must have made quite an impression on her. Is this a good time for us to discuss?

I ended up training their company, not only in Buying Facilitation®, but in change facilitation. And even though she wasn’t an obvious stakeholder, Susan was on the Buying Decision Team and brought in other team members without me having to look for them.

CASE STUDY: THE IDENTIFIED PROSPECT NEEDS THEIR STAKEHOLDER GROUP.

I once got a call from the Director of Training at KPMG. He had just read one of my books, and said he intuitively believed his team needed Buying Facilitation®. With a 3 year sales cycle and only 1000 possible companies large enough to spend $50,000,000 to buy their tax minimization service, he wanted to stop blowing through his limited number of prospects and shorten the sales cycle.

“What has stopped you from figuring this out on your own until now?” said I.

Steve didn’t have an answer, but said he’d think about it and call back. Next time he called, he had 2 others on the phone. I posed another question about how they could resolve the problem internally and get the buy in that any change would require. We’ll think about it and call back, Steve said. This process continued for two months; each time Steve called back he had more people on the phone and more answers, until one snowy day at 7:00 a.m. while I was on a client site in Rochester NY (in winter!), he had 15 people on the phone from 4 countries.

We did our normal thing of me asking a question that no one had an answer to. During the silence of ‘no answer’ one of the participants started this conversation:

Man: Hey Steve. What’s she selling?

Steve: I have no idea. Hey, Sharon Drew, you haven’t pitched me anything yet. Why not?

SD: I had nothing to sell if you had nothing to buy. Now there’s a larger percentage of your stakeholder buying team present; you have more knowledge of what’s stopping you from having a more effective selling process; you understand the issues that will come up when you add my facilitation system; and who needs to buy in moving forward. Now you’re ready to hear my content.

Then, for the first time mentioning what I was selling, I pitched to the group who was ready to buy. They brought me in, and I trained the global team for 2 years. With my help, they reduced their sales cycle to 4 months.

Remember: until or unless the entire BDT is present (which might be more complex than obvious); until they know if they can/cannot fix any problems themselves or how to manage the change an external solution will bring with it; they’re not buyers.

Trying to sell to one person who you THINK might be a buyer because they were in the right demographic, or because they responded in a way to your manipulative questions that caused you to assume they had a need, or because you attempted to be their ‘best friend’ or ‘relationship manager’ won’t get you more than your 5% close – the low hanging fruit. Not to mention wasting 95% of your time hoping and waiting, asking the wrong questions, to find those who SHOULD buy, and don’t.

DON’T TRY TO GET TO THE TOP

For those of you who spend hours/days/months attempting to get to the person at the top, stop. That person has probably delegated the responsibility to the appropriate team, and more importantly, even if s/he is one of the decision makers, there are several on the BDT. During the time you spend trying to get to THE person, you could have been speaking with one or more folks on the BDT who will then bring the rest of the team into your discussion, so long as you use your time with them to help them facilitate their change to excellence and not try to pitch or pose manipulative questions.

It’s time for us to stop assuming that there is only one person who is THE person we need to speak with. You’re losing business, wasting time trying to find that ‘one’ person, and (when trying to get around or through a receptionist or secretary) not realizing the number of people who must be involved in making a buying decision. Remember: a buying decision is a change management issue before it’s a solution choice issue, so there are many folks who must be included. That will expand your audience of potential buyers by a factor of 8.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, author NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell), listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. 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.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen March 2nd, 2020

Posted In: News, Sales

People don’t really want to buy anything. We’d much rather maintain our status quo if possible: it’s worked; it’s comfortable; it’s normalized; we’re set up to keep on keepin’ on. Indeed, the goal of a buyer is to solve a problem with the least ‘cost’, using the least resources (money, time, human power, culture, etc.) and causing the least disruption. And a purchasing decision is far, far more than good information, collaboration, or good decision making practices.

Adding, choosing, buying anything new means change to the status quo, always fraught with risks that are unknowable before a purchase is made. Indeed, a buying decision is a change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue. And the ‘cost’ of bringing in something new must not exceed the ‘cost’ of maintaining the status quo. How can you know this before making a purchase?

CASE STUDY

Years ago, I was a consultant at KPMG training a team of Senior Partners in my Buying Facilitation® model. My contact, Dave, called to say he’d not returned my call because they’d received their first RFP from Boeing (who’d always used Arthur Anderson as their consulting partner) and a group of them were madly trying to compose an impressive proposal.

“What’s stopping them from using AA again this time?” I asked. Dave didn’t have an answer and said he’d find out. He called back to say Boeing was indeed going to use AA again, but had sent them the RFP because they needed a second bid. (Note: do YOU know how often that happens?)

With my assistance, they stopped writing the proposal and instead sent a letter saying since Boeing would be using AA, we wouldn’t be submitting a proposal. Instead we offered them a couple of pages of my Facilitative Questions (a new form of question I invented that works with brain function to discover criteria) which led them to discover how to avoid resistance and disruption during the large-scale, global change they were seeking. This included how to

avoid disruption and resistance during implementation,
recognize and involve the complete set of stakeholders from the beginning to ensure the entire fact pattern was collected and the success criteria designed to elicit buy-in,
notice, manage, and avoid the project/change risks,
maintain the change over time.

KPMG knew it was risky to approach the RFP as we did, but since they weren’t getting the job anyway, they decided it was a good risk to take as the questions exhibited their ability to lead. And it was indeed a good risk: Boeing called after a couple of months to give them the job (without a proposal or price discussion, I might add).

“When we saw your questions, we realized we never even considered those sorts of issues and just assumed our vendors would handle that stuff. And we consistently had problems in those areas you mentioned but never knew it was possible to avoid them. We just didn’t know what we didn’t know, and didn’t know how to include those elements in our RFP. When AA came in to start the project, they had no plans to manage anything but the exact end-result specs we asked for. From your questions, we know now that a few extra steps can be taken at the start of a project to ensure buy in and trouble-free adoption. We certainly didn’t know it was possible to set up the right components from the beginning to avoid the problems later on. Realizing the size of this project and the numbers of people and teams involved, we don’t have tolerance for any dysfunction, so we fired AA. Can you come in and start from the beginning and factor in all of the items you mentioned in your letter?”

Whether an individual or part of a Buying Team, somehow buying choices get narrowed down to one. How do you do that? And is there anything you could have included in your decision process to assure your selection comes with minimum disruption and maximum buy in for after you’ve made your selection?

WHY WE BUY ANYTHING

Outside of small personal items, the only time we consider buying anything is when we’re absolutely certain we can’t fix a problem any other way AND we have comprehensive buy-in. The risk of the new causing imbalance is just too high. ‘Need’, price, features and benefits are important, of course, but secondary; purchasing something new must maintain the status quo as well – problematic since anything new faces the possibility of disrupting the equilibrium. It’s a systems thing.

Every person, group, family, company, is a system. To maintain themselves, systems need balance (homeostasis) and work hard to ensure its norms and values are carried forth through actions. (For those unfamiliar, this is called Systems Congruence). The last thing a system wants to do, the challenge we all face when we recognize something needs to change, is how to bring in an unfamiliar element (certainly a risk) and maintain our status quo. And the time it takes for all the elements that will touch the final solution to agree to something new and know how to integrate it, is the time it takes to choose.

It’s not about price or features until it is; it’s about the dynamics of change. And without taking these steps, the risk of resistance is high as it puts the system out of balance.

One thing is certain: before any decision to buy anything occurs, a set of ‘soft’ criteria – rules, norms, beliefs of the underlying system, if you will – must be met that go beyond the tactical – factual – specifics of the requirements. We get so focused on ‘hard’ criteria we put every buying decision at risk, including:

environment not able to integrate or use the new adequately and causes disruption;
environment not ready to accommodate change congruently causing relationship and output problems;
goal that initiated the purchase in jeopardy;
resistance when implementation causes change that hasn’t been accounted for.

Regardless of the need or the efficacy of a new solution, if the risk of disruption to the system is higher than the need for change, no purchase can be made. But as you’ll see, it’s possible to change without resistance or disruption.

WHAT WE LEAVE OUT WHEN IT’S TIME TO BUY

In the Boeing story, the Buying Team’s RFP focused on the facts, the outcomes, of what they thought would solve their problem, but overlooked the ‘soft’ issues – the systemic issues. It’s the same problem with individual purchasers: Have you ever thought about how you decide to buy THIS one instead of THAT one? Have you specified your criteria to ensure the new will fit with the old – and a way to notice when there is an integration issue? Have you captured the specific steps you’ll need to do something different than your normalized habits?

An online search for ‘buying process’ explains the conventional approach: recognize a need, research and evaluate the choices (price, features, etc.), and buy. Seems so simple. But it’s not simple at all.

For smaller decisions, weighting and evaluating features and choices works just fine. But sometimes, especially when Buying Teams must choose a new item or vendor, or something wholly different that shifts the intent of the status quo, is required, we don’t always address the unconscious elements that cause us to accept or reject choices. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. But sometimes it does.

For those times there’s less leeway for error, for when implementation can be fragile (i.e. there’s resistance to change before any decisions have been made), or when numbers of people will be involved, it’s possible to manage those unconscious elements upfront. Sure, facts, needs, features and outcomes are necessary. But the non-obvious data points may lurk without recognition until they come back to bite us or harm performance. Here are the challenges: We:

compare the purchase of a new solution against what’s already there, but might forget to add in how to manage what happens when the new criteria changes our outcomes, actions, job descriptions, management needs, downtime, learning curve;
seek to find something equal-ish to what’s being replaced without considering how the new will alter our status quo over time or how it will change performance in unexpected ways;
gather initial data only from obvious stakeholders without expanding the group to those who will ultimately touch the final solution, and face resistance;
have feelings about a choice if our jobs or ego-needs will be affected, causing unspoken resistance that comes out through sabotage or interference;
sometimes acquiesce to a group’s choice and hold hidden biases that will rear their heads later or cause an ineffective decision making;
resist a purchase due to an ‘intuitive’ feeling (fear of change, dislike of implementation practices being discussed, distrust of vendor being selected, etc.) that makes the status quo feel safer, and procrastinate making a decision.

There are actually specific steps to all buying decisions that take into account the full panoply of criteria – hard and soft – to make congruent buying decisions. Along with the practical and factual details, these steps make conscious the unconscious elements that ensure a successful conclusion, regardless of the size or price of the purchase or the complexity of the implementation.

STEPS TO BUYING

Note that if everything were working perfectly there would be no need to buy anything. In fact, people only buy when they cannot fix a problem with a known solution. Making a purchase is the last thing anyone wants to do. But when it’s necessary, the outcome must include the maintenance of Systems Congruence, or the cost of failure is too high.

I’ve put together steps below to address systems functionality, more factors than merely need, price, or vendor selection. [Note: for those interested, I’ve written a book on this: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell] By including all steps, you’ll discover the unconscious factors, the risk factors, the change management factors, so they can be addressed, either individually or with the Buying Team, as part of the actual purchasing decision. Take a look.

Specified Outcome: What is the status quo you’re trying to change? While this might seem simple, and come to you defined by a user, this is far from simple. It requires:

a. The entire stakeholder team be included so they can discuss all of the elements that caused the problem, and understand why it hasn’t been fixed until now. The love of the existing processes? The habits incurred by many? The attitude of being ‘good-enough’? Whatever is in here is the reason a new solution is needed now. If this is an unknown, a solution might be purchased that doesn’t address the baseline problem. (i.e. If there is a ‘rules’ problem and it hasn’t been resolved, the same problem will occur with the new solution.)

Often the same factors that have kept the problem in place will cause implementation or acceptance and use issues: the entire group of folks who will use the purchase must understand all possible problems and outcomes. Of course this will bias the ultimate choice to purchase.

b. If any stakeholders are left out from the early stages, it will be harder and more disruptive later on when they join. When I urged British Airways to include their HR manager in a large software rollout, they said “OH! We always forget her, and then need to play catch up when she needs things changed.” Precisely.

Status Quo: It’s rare that a problem exists, or a new enhancement needed, without there being something in the status quo that has, or must be, changed and will resist when it’s threatened. The only way to discover the precise factors is by leading the stakeholder team through a thorough examination of how they got where they are.
Criteria: What criteria need to be met for the problem to be resolved? Again, all stakeholders must work together to figure the criteria out and reach agreement as to how to manage it before going forward to list the criteria for a purchase. Here are some criteria that my clients manage before putting out an RFP or moving forward with a project:

a. Minimal disruption: How will the new replace the old to ensure minimum disruption? What needs to be in place, or accepted, or shifted?

b. Buy In: Who needs to be involved to implement efficiently? Who needs to buy-in?

c. Resource cost: Who will analyze the resource cost of the new to make sure anything new will cost less than maintaining the status quo? And how will this be gauged when weighting choices?

d. Disruption management: What disruption will take place when the new is brought in? No, really. The stakeholders MUST know this: What EXACTLY will be the disruption and how will it be mitigated? By whom? How will you prepare the people, groups, situations that will be effected? What does that look like? This must be handled specifically, point by point, by all stakeholders or you face resistance or non use.

Workarounds: Until everything known is tried and failed, it is irresponsible to consider bringing something New in as the risk is too high for disruption. Of course all new purchases create disruption. But the New must match the norms and carry the rules of the system.

When considering fixing the problem, what options have been tried already from within the existing structure of choices? What stopped these workarounds from working well-enough to not need something from outside? What would a new option need to do differently than the workarounds that have been tried? Did the trials and choices of the workarounds come from the entire stakeholder team?

Problem Recognition: It’s not until all of the above have been addressed is there a clear understanding of what needs to be purchased. Sometimes Buying Teams are given a fact sheet, or send out an RFP, blithely assuming it’s accurate, only to have the end result fail when one or two stakeholders scream because they were never contacted, or didn’t understand the consequences for them. This is a huge problem in Buying Teams. Sometimes folks do research, make calls, meet with vendors, without having handled steps 1-3 and can’t figure out why they’re getting such resistance.
Research: When the entire fact pattern is understood, when all stakeholders are aware of the consequences to them when the new is purchased, when there is agreement they can’t fix the problem themselves, it’s time to do initial research. Delegate out different research modalities among the different stakeholders. We know that different people get different searches as per their past history, so assign several folks to the same topic. But also research other departments, friends, reliable vendors.
Evaluation: The entire stakeholder team must buy in to the new. Until there is agreement that the new matches the values and norms of the underlying system, and the cost of bringing it in is known and addressed, there will be no purchase.

Purchasing a service or an item is relatively easy. The difficult part is making sure the new fits into the status quo with minimal disruption and cost. Add the systems element to your buying decisions to ensure an easy integration and use. Otherwise, you might end up failing when you don’t need to.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, author NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell), listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. 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.sharondrewmorgen.com. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen January 20th, 2020

Posted In: News

I’ve recently heard sales folks complain that the status quo was the ‘enemy’ of buyers buying. Nonsense. It’s just another element along the buyer’s decision path that must be addressed, and can be directed, codified, and influenced – but not with a sales hat on. Let’s consider the, um, status quo: When does a buyer buy? When they’re ready – regardless of their need. When is a buyer ready? When their stable status quo recognizes it cannot fix any problems with known resources and is prepared to change in a way that won’t cause irreparable disruption. A buying decision (any decision, frankly) is a change management problem. Here are the basics:

Ready: Ready means that

the status quo has carefully determined (through trial, error, and agreement) that it cannot fix recognized problems with anything familiar (current vendors, current software, other departments, different people),
there has been systemic buy-in and the status quo is ready, willing, able to incorporate something new into the current operating procedures,
a new solution can fit without major disruption (or it will be rejected regardless of the need or the efficacy of the new),
the ‘new’ matches the rules, values- and systems-based criteria that identifies it.

In other words, even if buyers need your solution, they can’t buy if the cost of disruption is higher than the cost of the solution implementation. And here is the frustrating part for us: Any change must be initiated, managed, and maintained from within the system because no outsider can understand the nuances of a status quo they are not part of. Here is a rule: until they know how to manage any change that would be incurred as a result of a purchase, prospective buyers cannot buy regardless of need.

Status quo: The status quo is

the established conglomeration of elements that define our unique, largely unconscious, human operating system,
made up of idiosyncratic rules that determine the habits, patterns, agreeable behaviors, and organizing principles that enable us to get up every day as the same person/team we were yesterday,
a representation of the beliefs, values, history, assumptions, moral structure, cultural/educational standards it embodies,
stable, unique, idiosyncratic, complex, and mysterious (especially to outsiders).

The status quo keeps us operating congruently every moment of every day. It doesn’t judge right or wrong; it doesn’t recognize good or bad. It’s just ‘what is’. To become a different ‘what is’ it would have to change. And change means disruption, potentially a breakdown or interruption of normal operating. Although a natural occurrence – we move house, make new friends, take a new jobs, buy new clothes – we won’t substantially change unless we are assured we avoid disruption, confusion, and uncertainty.

THE PROBLEM WITH CHANGING THE STATUS QUO

The norms and values within a status quo have been normalized; right or wrong, good or bad, we function in a pre-ordained way day after day. Anything – anything – threatening this habitual functioning will be resisted. I remember sitting on the floor of a hut in the Ecuadorian Amazon, sharing a meal with an indigenous family. My women travel friends were warned not to smile at the local boys who showed up to stare, as a smile was an invite to bed. After imbibing liberally on the local and highly fermented ‘chi cha’, everyone was drunkenly smiling – a cultural imperative for Americans – and the boys surrounded us like bees in a flower garden. Our host had to usher the swarming, eager boys out, offering a frustrated glare at us en route. The rules of our cultural status quo included being friendly to strangers; the rules of their status quo included avoiding women unless invited.

As individuals, our status quo has been formed by our subjective life experiences: the rules, beliefs, and thinking that we learn from our parents and grandparents, our schooling and birthplace, our education and work life, our friends and family. Our life choices, our communication patterns, our choice of mates and jobs all maintain our status quo. Doing anything different threatens our very core.

As members of teams, groups, or relationships, our status quo has more moving parts, including individual needs, rules for collaboration and communication, politics, corporate regs, and the historic relationships. For our clients, it’s imperative they maintain their status quo or they cannot get up day after day and run a business.

At the point we meet clients they are a walking bouquet of normalized elements that make no sense to anyone outside the group (or even inside the group sometimes). When we try to push change, the offered information is seen as foreign and will be resisted regardless of its efficacy. Until or unless the status quo knows how to add something new in a way that conforms to its baseline (and unconscious) rules, and understands that no permanent damage will occur, it won’t be willing/able to shift behaviors, learn new habits/patterns, or accept new ideas or solutions. In other words, no change can happen.

SALES, BUY-IN, CHANGE, AND THE STATUS QUO

Changing the status quo is a challenge of Systems Congruence; the new must fit comfortably with the habitual so the person or team can continue functioning normally.

For buyers, the time it takes them to figure out how to do this is the length of the sales cycle. It’s a systems/change thing, not a purchase/fix thing. But facilitating congruent change hasn’t been part of the sales skill set: with our solution-placement agenda, we limit our prospect population by seeking those who may be ready now or soon; too often we wait (and wait and hope) while those we deem appropriate complete this. We don’t take into account that sellers (or any influencers) are outsiders who can never understand how the status quo is kept in place, or add something to it.

Offered too early our data, or pitch, or ‘rational argument’ is not seen as a reason to buy but as threats to the balance of the status quo when it may not be prepared to change. Sometimes our solution is not recognized as being needed because the Buying Decision Team hasn’t yet been fully assembled and needs haven’t been fully elicited. Sometimes they know they have a need but haven’t determined how to change congruently yet, or tried out all of the internal workarounds that might offer a resolution.

It’s certainly possible that at the time we’re getting “No’s” our prospects are merely at a stuck stage and can easily move beyond it once they get understanding or internal agreement. When I hear sellers say that the status quo is ‘the enemy’ I know they are attempting to push against it with data, contacts, media. As I said above, nothing – not our brilliant pitches or presentations or charming personalities – from the outside will sway this stable beast.

But there is a way to help our buyers facilitate the 13 steps to congruent change as part of our initiative. Instead of spending so much resource seeking only those who are ready (the low hanging fruit), we can recognize, and enter earlier, with those who will buy, and help them shift their status quo from within, using their own values and rules to seek and accept new solutions. It will require, however, an addition to the status quo of the selling model.

HOW THE STATUS QUO CHANGES

Let’s begin by understanding how the status quo adopts change (I wrote a book on this. Read two free chapters: www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com). And, regardless of the size or complexity of the problem, the path to congruent change is the same for all systems. It begins when something within recognizes something awry. It must then find a path to congruent change that includes consensus and change management. Knowing what needs to shift, having ‘good’ data on why the shift is necessary, or having a few elements willing to shift (without complete buy-in) does nothing to create change. There must be a thorough understanding of all the moving parts (i.e. you can’t get where you’re going until you know where you’re at).

Rule: status quo must recognize rules, beliefs, norms, that must be maintained before considering change to avoid resistance and systems incongruence.

To add anything foreign from the outside, the new must get buy-in from any people, policies, rules, and politics that would be affected. All change must be accompanied by a re-weighting of the norms of the status quo. The status quo itself must know exactly how it will be effected by anything new, and if it’s worth it to spend the energy mitigating itself to adopt. For this, everyone involved in maintaining the status quo must have a hand in defining the elements and understanding how change would effect it.

Rule: assemble everyone/everything that makes up the status quo to determine how, if, why, when any change would be required or accepted.

Once the status quo is coded, everyone/everything has bought in to change, the fallout from change must be considered and strategized. Change must be systemic and based on the values and rules that maintain it. Certainly no one from outside can cause the change.

Rule: every element within the status quo must understand the potential fallout to change, and be willing to consider ways to adapt to, or align with, the new, or it will resist change regardless of the rewards.

Unfortunately, the sales model doesn’t include this level of change facilitation; it occurs privately within the buying environment, during what sellers call the Pre-Sales, hidden, and highly personal portion of a pre-buying decision. I developed a model (Buying Facilitation®) that gives sellers a new tool kit to use with sales to manage systemic change and buy-in. I’ve trained it with terrific results for decades. But make no mistake: it’s not a normal part of the selling process.

The question is whether or not you want to change: to continue seeking those who have already accomplished this change management, or seek those you can lead through it as a change consultant first. You’d need to avoid gathering data and stop pitching until this has occurred and instead, begin by listening for systems and facilitating change. But then you’d have approximately 40% more real prospects who are ready, willing, and able to buy.

Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities. To facilitate buying, you must enter earlier as a Servant Leader and be willing to first be a change agent. Then you’d find and facilitate the journey with those who really need your solution but haven’t completed shifting the status quo yet. Potential buyers must first do this, with you or without you, as we sit and wait, or miss the opportunity entirely. Instead of seeking those who have already finished this and are in the 5% you can sell to, why not find those who WILL buy, facilitate them through their change, and become part of their status quo. It actually takes less time and closes more. So much easier, kinder, and more profitable than chasing the low hanging fruit. You’d just have to change your status quo.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the developer of Buying Facilitation® – a generic change management model for influencers that facilitates the journey through the status quo to enable congruent, systemic change. It includes Listening for Systems, formulating Facilitative Questions, and enabling choice. She has trained the model to 100,000 sales folks in companies such as KPMG, IBM, DuPont, Clinique, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, FedEX, GEIS, HP, Wachovia, Morgan Stanley, and Bose. Sharon Drew is the author of 7 books on this including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestseller Dirty Little Secrets. Sharon Drew’s most recent book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? breaks down the gap between what folks say and what is heard. She is an original thinker and visionary who trained, speaks, consults, and coaches. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. 1700 articles appear on www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen January 6th, 2020

Posted In: Communication, News, Sales

Have you ever attempted to implement a procedure with a group, or move toward some sort of change that everyone approved of, or get a prospect, client, or patient to agree to adopt a new solution and ultimately fail due to lack of Buy In? It happens all the time:

97% of software implementations are considered failures (and it’s blamed on the group).

The sales model fails to close 95% of assumed buyers, even those who really need their services (and it’s blamed on the ‘stupid’ buyer).

Coaches lose clients who didn’t get the results they wanted (and it’s assumed the clients didn’t really want to change).

Negotiations rarely end up with both sides feeling they were treated fairly (and it’s blamed on the Other being selfish/vindictive, etc.).

Healthcare practitioners fail to convince ill patients to switch to lifesaving regimens (and it’s blamed on the patient not wanting to be healthy).

In each of the above situations, Buy In, permanent Behavior change, compliance, and better decision making could have easily been facilitated by the Influencer. But not with the approaches used.

THE COST OF NON-COMPLIANCE

Failure to elicit Buy In is costly. We certainly try: to ensure success we encourage open dialogue, pose questions, request suggestions; we provide necessary details, data, and incontrovertible reasons; we carefully data-gather to ensure we understand the full fact patterns involved in any change; we request new Behaviors that will implement the new ideas. And yet something happens between our efforts and Another’s actions. What’s happening? We’re:

seeking compliance and agreement before people know how to appraise the personal ramifications of the request:
- How, specifically, will the new expectations blend with, or affect, their normalized status quo in their daily activity, job descriptions, relationships, output, ego drivers, etc.?
- Which of their instinctive, standardized habits would need to be changed and how (un)comfortable or disruptive will that be? Would their norms and values remain intact?
- What level of certainty is there, at the very start, that the final result would be better for them?
challenging the rules, ego needs, habituated/normalized activity, or Beliefs that have been the foundation of all prior decisions, activities, and the status quo.
starting with a specific set of actions, Behaviors and end-point goals that will alter whatever was in place, normalized, comfortable, and stable.

As Influencers we’re pushing from the outside before the inside is addressed; we’re requesting modifications from the very place that created and maintains the issue we seek to change, in a way that could cause instability.

To garner Buy In and avoid resistance, it’s necessary to help the status quo – the underlying system of rules, Beliefs, relationships, goals, people, etc. – configure its own change process before we begin our implementation, or close a sale, or modify eating/exercising habits for patients (or or or). Currently when we try to influence Others, we’re attempting to CAUSE change to comply with OUR goals – pushing from the outside/in – and unwittingly pushing against the normalized status quo which will automatically resist. Sort of like trying to convince a forward-moving robot to move backward before reprogramming it.

To get real change with no resistance, to garner Buy In, agreement and permanent compliance, we need to help Others ELICIT their own change – inside/out. We need to help others reprogram themselves. And just like with a robot, we cannot do it as outsiders pushing our agendas against their established norms.

INFORMATION DOESN’T ELICIT CHANGE

Our current process to elicit Buy In includes sharing information about our goal: we offer the right details, at the right time, presented the right way, with the right languaging, assuming people will understand its importance and generate new Behaviors. We’re offering what WE want them to know and do, so they will take the action WE want them to take (but may initially seem damaging for them personally).

Information is useless as a stimulus for change until the underlying system that maintains the status quo has prepared itself to change and seeks that specific bit of data to complete new activity. So the robot wouldn’t need verbal instructions from us to move backwards when confronted with a wall, for example, until it already had the capability of moving backward. The robot will break, or just stop working, if we start by trying to push it backwards. Information is the very last thing needed once a route through to congruent change has been designed and the system understands the exact information it will require for Excellence.

Unfortunately, our efforts often fail because we use reasoning, rationale, stories, scientific arguments, numbers crunching, etc. as the ‘rational explanation’ to incur Behavior change and compliance. I was once consulting with Inside Sales at Bethlehem Steel after they moved 90 people from their homes in individual states into one of two centers (Sparrows Point, MI, or Burns Harbor, MD). The Bethlehem Team had ‘incontrovertible evidence’ that teams were more effective when working around each other. They gave the sales folks one month to move house, relocate, sell their homes and buy new ones, get new schools for their kids, etc. The people were furious. Many quit; some had heart attacks. One woman actually became ‘emotionally blind’. All were separated from their families and pets for months while family members were left behind to finish school, pack, sell their houses. My client couldn’t understand why they were so upset. He had, he reasoned, paid all their expenses and gave them $5,000 for their upheaval. The information that detailed the reasoning wasn’t the problem.

CHANGE IS AN INSIDE JOB

All systems (and each of us are a system) are set up to be stable and habitual as per Homeostasis. Systems can’t even recognize anything is wrong, as they are self-perpetuating and ignorant of the problems they’ve already baked into the ‘operating’ system. Fish don’t recognize the water they’re in.

Before any change, or new decision, our unconscious system must be assured its norms will be preserved, its core objectives will be met, its Beliefs and core principles will be maintained, and it will suffer minimal disruption. Buy In requires the core norms and rules of the system remain intact; it demands systemic agreement for core change, and a reconfiguration of the habituated internal configuration that created and maintains the status quo (and the problem being resolved). Only when the system is reconfigured with new rules and Beliefs and norms, will it design the new output, choices, and Behaviors that we require.

The way we’re going about it, we’re inadvertently setting up non-compliance by pushing in against the norm before the system has determined how or why to make changes and actually causing the resistance we get. For congruent change and Buy In, (human) systems must design their own route to determining if they seek change, and if they do, they must understand how to reconfigure their unconscious norms in a way that maintains Systems Congruence; they will not, cannot, hear, understand, or apply what we want from them until all this is handled.

Our normal influencing and communication tools that collect data, share ideas, suggest new Behaviors, and promote dialogue challenge the status quo.

Listening: Because of the way our brains listen subjectively (I wrote a book on this called What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), people only hear what our brains have normalized. With habituated neural pathways already in place, we mishear, misunderstand, or discard what has been said when it doesn’t fit – without our brains telling us what it has misheard, misunderstood, or discarded. We have no way to recognize what our brains have translated (or discarded or mangled) from someone’s comments and how far our interpretation is from accuracy. In other words, sharing explanations, details, reasons, etc., regardless of how necessary, targeted, or well-presented may not be interpreted as per our intention.
Questions: Conventional questions are interrogation devices biased by the Asker and cannot, cannot be fully, honestly, or accurately answered by the Responder who is most likely listening with subjective ears and hearing something different from what we intend.

Questions pull a fraction of a fraction of the real answer, if they even find any pay dirt at all. To remedy this problem, I’ve developed a new form of question (Facilitative Questions) that eschews information exchange or pull, and acts as a directional device, guiding the Other through their own unconscious (and beyond their biased listening) to cull their own responses and reorganize their internal hierarchy of choices accordingly. They actually lead the brain to sequentially capture each element of memory and Beliefs, highlight each decision necessary in the right order, and develop each necessary action, that all systems must take in order to recognize the elements of their unconscious change. All systems take these internal, unconscious steps anyway, while outsiders wait or push. With Facilitative Questions, outsiders can actually serve Others in making their own best decisions. [Note: I’m happy to discuss this new question if you’d like to contact me.] It’s toward the end of this process they seek the information they need.

Systems: Each of us is regulated by our unconscious, internal systems: our ‘I’, our status quo, our identity, is made up of an established system of internal rules, Beliefs, norms, history, experience, etc. that are the foundation of our choices and the instigation of our Behaviors. Our system is who we are. It’s sacrosanct, and it fights to maintain itself (our status quo, Homeostasis) and remain stable (Systems Congruence). Anything new threatens the habituated standard; it won’t do anything differently unless it develops new norms and accompanying Behaviors that will maintain the congruence of the original system. By asking the system to change, or add new Behaviors, before this discovery and modification process occurs, we’re actually inciting resistance regardless of the need or efficacy of our solution.
Responsibility: We cannot change anyone; we are not part of their system, and as outsiders can never, ever understand how the Other’s status quo was configured or maintained. In other words, with the best will in the world, there is no way to cause permanent change or Buy In in Another by pushing our requirements from the outside.

Until or unless every element that maintains the problem and causes the current Behaviors that need changing agree to, and have a route through to, change, no Buy In can occur.

BEHAVIORS ARE NOT THE WAY IN

Most people certainly are willing to change to become ‘better’ if they know how to change without major disruption and that they’ll maintain Systems Congruence. Change involves disrupting the status quo in a way that causes different Behaviors to emerge. But new Behaviors cannot emerge without the foundation that stimulates them changing as well. Changing behaviors is not so simple as changing behaviors.

Behaviors do not exist in a vacuum. They are merely the output, the translation, of our unconscious Belief system – we ‘do’ what we ‘do’ because our system needs a physical representation of who we are. Because we’re each unique, we each exhibit different Behaviors to interpret our unconscious Beliefs. And an outsider sees only the output (i.e. the action, the Behaviors) without understanding the underlying values that created them. I repeat, as this is a hard one: there is no way for an outsider to understand, or change, Another’s Behaviors because the system that developed them is unique for each person.

To enable agreement and change, we must facilitate the Other to change its own system, to design new Behaviors, and re-assess the norms, rules, and Beliefs that developed the Behaviors to begin with. There are actually 13 steps necessary for real change to occur. I’ve coded these steps of change and have scaled them, teaching them in the sales and coaching fields (as Buying Facilitation® over the past 35 years. The Change Facilitation model I’ve developed gives influencers the tools to

listen in a way that hears what’s being meant, with no over-arching bias that might restrict what’s been said;
ask questions that lead Others sequentially through to their own discovery of how to implement something new without disrupting the status quo;
trust that when Others change themselves, they will keep the change and find their most efficient Behaviors to embody the change;
become Servant Leaders and facilitate the reorganization of Another’s status quo to congruently make room for the new;
facilitate the system through to Belief change to accompany the new, and allow it to design new Behaviors that match the new Beliefs of the system.

For Buy In and compliance, we must stop trying to influence or cause the change, but enable Others to develop their own change. It might not look exactly like we hoped, but it will carry our goals forward in a way that becomes a welcome part of the status quo, habituated and accepted immediately. Healthcare providers will elicit permanent healthy Behaviors from patients; buyers will know how to buy quickly; implementations will occur effortlessly and quickly. Our problem has been our focus on changing Behaviors our way. Let’s enable Others to design their own change. And then they will happily Buy In to becoming their own brand of Excellence.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker and the developer of Buying Facilitation®, a generic Change Facilitation model she’s taught in dozens of global corporations (Kaiser, Bose, IBM, KPMG, Wachovia, etc.) to sales, coaching, and leadership teams. She is the author of 9 books, including NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the sales standard: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. Sharon Drew also decoded how our brains keep us from hearing others (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) and offers a route through to closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. Sharon Drew is currently developing a route to wellness and healthy eating by facilitating a healthy identity. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com and 512 771 1117. Read other articles on change, sales, leadership, decision making, and creativity at her award winning blog: www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen December 23rd, 2019

Posted In: Communication, Listening

For some reason, it’s an accepted norm that presenting details of an idea or solution will prompt action. It goes something like this: you want someone to buy or do something, or fund you; you want a team to organize in a certain way, or a teenager to change behaviors. In other words, you want someone to do something they’re currently not doing. You decide on a story, a pitch, a tactic, a presentation, that will influence them to change their current behaviors to do what you want them to do. So you

formulate the ‘right’ message, in the right way – according to their demographics or personal characteristics – that (you assume) represents their ‘needs’ and will motivate action;
develop the ‘right’ supplemental materials or stories;
pitch, present, tell a story, offer indisputable research and superlative references that prove your value.
You then assume your ‘relationship’ with the listener – your status, brand, assumed expertise, history – offers you authority to be granted what you ask for. And then you wait. And then…nothing.

In case you’re wondering why you’re not getting the results you deserve, it’s because it’s all based on you.

WHAT – PITCHES CAN’T BE HEARD

Just because you may be ‘right’, have the essential information and capability to fix a problem, your message won’t be heard unless the listener recognizes they want to change, that they cannot resolve their own problem using familiar resources, and they’re ready to seek an external fix.

Indeed, until they know precisely when, why, what, and how to change their current thinking and behaviors, until they recognize that the ‘cost’ of adopting a solution from outside the status quo is lower than the cost of maintaining the problem, there’s a case to be made that your suggestions will be ignored or resisted.

Here’s the problem. Your pitches and stories:

try to persuade others according to your needs and goals (As a listener, if don’t think I have a need, why should I listen?);
are misunderstood and mistranslated as per unconscious listening biases (As a listener, if I misinterpret what you’re talking about, what is my takeaway? And how will I know what I think I hear isn’t what you’re saying?);
provide an answer according to what you believe is needed (As a listener, I’m offended when you think you know more than me about what I need.);
use biased verbal and graphic forms to represent the message you think will be effective (As a listener, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think that way.);
reflect your need for them to take action NOW (As a listener, I haven’t figured out if I need to change anything. So why are you pushing me to take action?);
probably don’t resolve the potentially broken internal rules and historic choices that created and maintain the problem (As a listener, I know I need to resolve this, but it’s always been this way and so many things are dependent upon it. What will break if I try to do something different?).

Notice it’s you and your biases determining:

the information you’re sharing – which may not be the best set of facts for that listener;
the particular words, graphics, presentation used – which may not be the best for the listener’s understanding;
the assumption that the problem needs to be fixed – and fixed the way YOU think it should be fixed;
that YOU are the one (an outsider with no true knowledge of the full data set of what’s going on internally) who has THE content to fix them – and aren’t recognizing any possible avenues for them to fix themselves;
the intended outcome YOU believe needs to be met – which may not be the same outcome or agenda the listener condones.

In other words, with no accurate idea of how your information is being received OR the actual underlying fact pattern that has both created and maintained the status quo, with no ability to understand the historic, systemic issues that keep the status quo functioning well-enough to not have considered change, you’re trying to tell folks to do what you want them to do using your own criteria for them to change.

You certainly have no control. You have no way of knowing the rules, relationships, background, of what you can only see parts of from outside the system. You have no idea how you’re being heard, or if your chosen languaging and presentation is what the Other will respond to. Indeed, you have no way of knowing that your message is ‘right’ for that person at that time.

I contend that by entering a conversation fraught with your own biases, goals, needs, and limited understanding, you’ll only succeed with those who already believe the way you do, are seeking change, and are looking for exactly what you’re presenting. And those who really might need your message will ignore it if it’s mistimed, runs counter to the current operating rules or agreements, or uses the wrong languaging.

This can be amended. You can prepare listeners to accurately hear and be motivated to act on what you want to share; you can language your information according to the best chances to be heard, at a time when the listener is ready, willing, and able to hear. But you need to add a new mindset.

WHY – CAN’T YOUR PITCH/STORY BE HEARD?

Right now it seems your listeners are ignoring you, or resisting; that they misinterpret or forget on purpose. But that’s not the case. They just cannot respond to what you are telling them. The way they hear you is a big part of the problem.

Simplistically, brains take in spoken words through your ears as chemical and electrical signals devoid of meaning. These signals

travel down neural pathways
seeking similar-enough signals
that match with the incoming signals
to an unknowable (greater or lesser) degree,
and may have a different meaning
that’s some degree ‘off’ the incoming message,
but matches historic decisions and beliefs
that have been built in to current choices, status quo, and accepted norms.

In other words, there’s a high probability your intended message will be misheard, misunderstood, or mistranslated as per the meaning attached to the neurons and synapses a listener’s brain automatically chooses to match with your words; you have no idea what others hear when you speak, your clarity, personality, and messaging aside.

Those with no interest at all, and regardless of your attempts to inspire attention, may notice only a fraction of what you offer and certainly won’t care if they’re getting it wrong. For those who are trying to listen, they don’t know what parts of your message they’re missing or misinterpreting. Their brains won’t tell them they’ve got it wrong.

In fact, people can’t know that they DON’T accurately hear what you’re saying. As per above, their brains don’t tell them which words or concepts were omitted or mistranslated during their normal brain/listening process. So if I say ABC, you might actually hear ABL and your brain won’t tell you it haphazardly discarded E, F, G, etc. during its signal matching process. I actually wrote a book on this called WHAT? Did you really say what I think I heard?.

In other words, even if people try to hear you, even if you’re messaging is terrific, all listening is unconsciously biased by your listener’s brains regardless of what you say. And using normal conversation, or pitching/storytelling, you have no control. When you merely pitch

what you want them to hear
AND your listener has not heard what you intended them to hear
AND your listener is not in agreement or doesn’t know how what they think they heard relates to their situation,

there’s a good likelihood you’re unwittingly fostering resistance and resentment.

But when listeners have agreed they want new knowledge, when they know how to manage any disruption that would result from bringing in something new, their brain will connect with the correct neural pathways to listen through and accurately hear what you’ve got to say.

Your first job is to get them ready to hear you. I can’t say this enough: regardless of how much Others need to hear what you’ve got to say, no matter what problem it will resolve, no matter how urgently they need the information you have, they cannot, cannot hear you accurately unless they unconsciously match what you’re saying with their unconscious listening biases.

WHEN – SHOULD YOU SHARE INFORMATION?

Begin by getting on the same page as your listener. That means your normal pitch, your normal presentation materials or deck, may need to be amended to include factors on THEIR side of the table. Do research with current clients. Come at this from the standpoint of the listener, the buyer, the funder:

recognize it’s your responsibility to help the listener hear you accurately; their brains won’t know what’s accurate.
create the path to ensure listener buy-in before mentioning your idea.
assume you will be resisted if what they hear doesn’t match their current beliefs and historic rules about the subject.

I continue to be shocked that I rarely meet a marketer OR a seller who knows exactly how their buyers buy: the types of internal change issues they must manage before they can do anything different; the possibilities they have of fixing their own problems; the relationship and power and buy-in issues going on amongst stakeholders that influence (in)action. Or folks seeking funding: what criteria will funders use to choose you over the competition? It won’t be based on your pitch – they’ve heard it before. Or influencers: what historic actions or cultural norms are fixed in the status quo that would need to shift for them to buy-in to change?

Until you know this, there’s no way for you to be certain the proper technique to use to pitch, and you’ll only be successful with the low hanging fruit. I wrote a book on this that will teach you all of the stuff going on behind the scenes: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. But make sure you do research. Or let me know and I can help you gather the right data and give you a report.

Once you understand the ‘lay of the land’ behind the scenes, your conversation must begin by engendering trust so they’ll begin to turn off their guarded ear and open up a bit. And the only way you’ll engender trust is to really care about them. They will have no need to care about you unless you do. Something like this:

formulate the ‘right’ message, in the right way – according to their demographics or personal characteristics – that (you assume) represents their ‘needs’ and will motivate action;
develop the ‘right’ supplemental materials or stories;
pitch, present, tell a story, offer indisputable research and superlative references that prove your value.

You then assume your ‘relationship’ with the listener – your status, brand, assumed expertise, history – offers you authority to be granted what you ask for. And then you wait. And then…nothing.

In case you’re wondering why you’re not getting the results you deserve, it’s because it’s all based on you.

WHAT – PITCHES CAN’T BE HEARD

Just because you may be ‘right’, have the essential information and capability to fix a problem, your message won’t be heard unless the listener recognizes they want to change, that they cannot resolve their own problem using familiar resources, and they’re ready to seek an external fix.

Here’s the problem. Your pitches and stories:

try to persuade others according to your needs and goals (As a listener, if don’t think I have a need, why should I listen?);
are misunderstood and mistranslated as per unconscious listening biases (As a listener, if I misinterpret what you’re talking about, what is my takeaway? And how will I know what I think I hear isn’t what you’re saying?);
provide an answer according to what you believe is needed (As a listener, I’m offended when you think you know more than me about what I need.);
use biased verbal and graphic forms to represent the message you think will be effective (As a listener, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think that way.);
reflect your need for them to take action NOW (As a listener, I haven’t figured out if I need to change anything. So why are you pushing me to take action?);
probably don’t resolve the potentially broken internal rules and historic choices that created and maintain the problem (As a listener, I know I need to resolve this, but it’s always been this way and so many things are dependent upon it. What will break if I try to do something different?).

Notice it’s you and your biases determining:

the information you’re sharing – which may not be the best set of facts for that listener;
the particular words, graphics, presentation used – which may not be the best for the listener’s understanding;
the assumption that the problem needs to be fixed – and fixed the way YOU think it should be fixed;
that YOU are the one (an outsider with no true knowledge of the full data set of what’s going on internally) who has THE content to fix them – and aren’t recognizing any possible avenues for them to fix themselves;
the intended outcome YOU believe needs to be met – which may not be the same outcome or agenda the listener condones.

WHY – CAN’T YOUR PITCH/STORY BE HEARD?

Simplistically, brains take in spoken words through your ears as chemical and electrical signals devoid of meaning. These signals

travel down neural pathways
seeking similar-enough signals
that match with the incoming signals
to an unknowable (greater or lesser) degree,
and may have a different meaning
that’s some degree ‘off’ the incoming message,
but matches historic decisions and beliefs
that have been built in to current choices, status quo, and accepted norms.

what you want them to hear
AND your listener has not heard what you intended them to hear
AND your listener is not in agreement or
doesn’t know how what they think they heard relates to their situation,

there’s a good likelihood you’re unwittingly fostering resistance and resentment.

WHEN – SHOULD YOU SHARE INFORMATION?

recognize it’s your responsibility to help the listener hear you accurately; their brains won’t know what’s accurate.
create the path to ensure listener buy-in before mentioning your idea.
assume you will be resisted if what they hear doesn’t match their current beliefs and historic rules about the subject.

Until you know this, there’s no way for you to be certain the proper technique to use to pitch, and you’ll only be successful with the low hanging fruit. I wrote a book on this that will teach you all of the stuff going on behind the scenes: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. But make sure you do research. Or let me know and I can help you gather the right data and give you a report.

I have something I’d like to share. But I’m not sure if you need to hear it. How are you currently thinking about X right now?

This lets the listener know they have their own valid viewpoint and you won’t foist your beliefs on them; pushing your data too soon encourages resistance and resentment. Continue with some of these:

I hear you currently believe X? Did I hear correctly?

If there is a time when you consider change, how would you plan on handling X?

I notice that you didn’t mention X. Do you have any thoughts on how you might incorporate any needed new choices? I have a solution/idea that would offer new thoughts on this subject should you want to consider new choices.

The hard part is to keep yourself from talking if their responses seem to naturally lead to them adopting your solution: until they have agreed to add something new or consider change, until they realize they might be missing a piece, you’ve got nothing to say.

How many times have you walked through booths at conferences and heard folks wasting their breath pitching pitching pitching, hoping hoping hoping their message will be heard by someone?!?! Well, there’s a good chance you’re doing the same thing. Stop wasting your breath; save it for those who want to hear it and then language it according to their listening patterns.

Wait until you’re certain your listener wants to learn/do something different before pitching. Even for you folks seeking funding: before you pitch, help them determine the criteria they’ll use to choose someone to fund and then match that criteria. For parents seeking to change a teen’s habits: what’s stopping them from implementing what they promised? For sellers: what do they need to do internally to get the buy-in for any proposed change? How will they determine if an outside fix is less costly than maintaining the status quo? What can they do to fix the problem themselves first?

Until people know if they’re ready/able to do anything different, that the ‘cost’ of change is manageable, they aren’t available to listen to what you have to say. When you begin with a pitch, you’re restricting your audience to those who have already decided to change – the low hanging fruit. Until people know how to listen without bias you can’t be heard accurately. Sorry.

HOW – SHOULD YOU PITCH?

Of course it’s necessary to share specific details when needed:

to take action (The space for the desk is 8 feet long.);
to recognize a fit between items (We will be serving fish, so bring white wine.);
to explain penalties (If you come home after midnight, you’ll be grounded.);
when someone seeks you out to answer their curiosity (How do you cook that?)
to know what to do when an action has been agreed upon (Our first action will be to…);
to know content details (I now recognize I cannot solve a problem myself, know how to manage the fallout from bringing in something new, and have the buy-in to learn, buy, think, add something new).

It’s necessary to language your pitch so you’re understood when information is needed. Once the listener has shared what they already believe to be true about the topic you’re discussing, use their words, their beliefs, and what they think is missing, to populate your pitch. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re selling email organization software.

You: How are you currently organizing your email?
Prospect: I use my folders in my email software.
You: I assume that’s working fine for you or you would have added new capability before now.
Prospect: I know I should do it, but I can’t get my head around adding any new software than I already have. I’m overwhelmed.
You: I know. All of us are. I sell an email organizing product that’s simple to install and seamlessly works with most existing software. If you want, we can discuss it if your stakeholders would consider adding the organizing capability to what you’ve got now.

Notice when it was time to speak I focused my pitch to only the comments my listener mentions. If I used my entire pitch, I’d be breaking trust.

I’ve spent decades training sales folks, another decade as a life/business coach, and more recently as the developer of a unique change model that enables folks to generate congruent behavior change. I developed an entire generic change management model (Buying Facilitation®) that teaches sellers how to facilitate any buying decision, coaches to facilitate congruent change, and helps leaders and parents expedite requests and promises. And I also developed a new form of question (Facilitative Questions (above) that help others discover their own answers with no bias from the questioner other than a facilitated direction for brains to find answers.

I understand how difficult it is instigate change in others. Remember that when you’re pitching, or sharing a story to initiate another to take action, you’re asking them to change. Please consider the problem from a different angle. Help your listeners change by helping them change their brains. Stop thinking your brilliant content will be enough; serve them by helping them figure out how to use what you’ve got to say to become better.

_______________________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, inventor of Buying Facilitation® and Facilitative Questions, trainer, coach, and consultant. She is the author of 9 books, including NYTimes Business bestseller Selling with Integrity. Sharon Drew can help you develop, perfect, and present your message for optimal success.

Sharon Drew Morgen November 4th, 2019

Posted In: News

As a Change Facilitator, I often get asked about the nature of decision making, change and buy-in. Since my responses seem surprising in their laser focus on systems, I thought it might be an interesting conversation to start among influencers: what role do systems play in change? I contend that unless we understand systems we can’t hear others without bias, can’t pose pitches or try to influence others, can’t effectively design or implement projects and project teams, and can’t effectively maintain relationships.

To that end, I’ve jotted down a few of my favorite ‘laws’ of systems that might help explain my intense respect for them, and provide you with baseline truths of how our status quo rules our behaviors, how our beliefs and decisions are tied together, and why it’s so difficult to change anyone’s mind.

Here are my thoughts on how and why systems are not only central to change, but the glue that makes the status quo so substantial and change so difficult; at the end, I offer an approach to enable congruent, inside-out, permanent change.

A system is a conglomeration of elements that represent the status quo and have agreed to the same rules and beliefs which are then expressed through behaviors. All behaviors represent and express the beliefs and rules inherent in the system.
A system has created its status quo, with a set identity and Hierarchy of Beliefs that govern it. It’s largely unconscious and historic, designed to maintain itself as is, perpetuated by the historic rules that recreate it daily, and defends itself at all costs. It can be said that all systems are complex in their own way.
A system always makes choices that enable it to maintain itself with minimal disruption. Regardless of how others interpret the decisions or choices made by the system, our take-aways as Outsiders are always subjective.
A system just IS. Systems always act upon the givens, rules, beliefs, etc. that define it, and are congruent onto itself.
No one from outside the system can ever understand why it does what it does (i.e. behaviors) due to its idiosyncratic nature. While it may appear to Outsiders to be ineffective, unstable, etc, (all judgments seen through an Outsider’s subjective filters) a system has developed operational behaviors, created the rules and elements of the status quo that maintains itself daily, and will not allow itself to be disrupted.
When Outsiders attempt to push their own agendas through advice, information, ideas, content (i.e. sales , coaching, healthcare, marketing, trainin g, leadership, management) they are pushing against a closed, fixed system that must resist external influence in order to maintain Systems Congruence.
No change can occur unless a system makes room for the new (systemic reorientation) in a way that maintains the rules of the system (Systems Congruence). The system is sacrosanct, regardless of its downsides.
All elements within a system that would be touched by a proposed change must agree to changing its rules, and buy-in to all of the elements that will change. This is the only way to ensure Systems Congruence. Otherwise there will be rejection, sabotage, lost relationships, misunderstanding, failed implementations, delayed sales cycles, etc. In other words, attempting to create or influence change (aimed at the behavioral level) will fail unless the system has already reoriented itself to seek and adopt change because it is convinced it cannot fix a problem itself, and has a specific path forward that is congruent and avoids disruption.
All decisions are change management problems. Decisions are prompted by changes in the Hierarchy of Beliefs, and get made only when there is internal alignment to ensure continued congruency.
To influence change, decision making, and buy-in, influencers should focus on the origination points (in beliefs) that designed the behaviors to begin with.
Successful change can occur only when the system has assembled, and gotten buy-in from, all of the elements in the status quo that would be modified as a result.
Before change can happen, there must be a systemic understanding within the system of the downside of change, and it must be compensated for congruently or there will be fallout as it fights to maintain stability.
Before change can happen, the system must know with certainty that it cannot fix a problem on its own. The last thing a system wants is to accept an external fix, or change.
Information does not teach a system why, when, if, or how to change. Information is necessary at the end, once there is buy-in for change, and only to fill in the necessary gaps when the system gets to the point when it recognizes it cannot fix itself, has gotten the go-ahead (buy-in) from each of the affected elements and knows how to remain congruent while doing something differently.
Before change can happen, systems must figure out how to re-organize, re-prioritize, enhance, or devalue, the elements that define so it continually maintains Systems Congruence.
There are 13 steps included in all change decisions, regardless of whether it’s one person buying a toothbrush, or a global team deciding to implement new software. The steps may be iterative or unconscious, but they all must be addressed for congruent change to occur and for the components to design, buy-in to, and support, the change.
All change must be initiated, and adopted, at the belief level. When content or influencing procedures are used to drive change, it’s too often aimed at changing behaviors, causing systemic resistance. Note: behaviors are merely the expression, the transaction, of a belief and are not the cause of change, but the response to it.
Influencers can use their positions as Servant Leaders to enable people, teams (i.e. human systems) to traverse their own unconscious steps to change, so long as they avoid biased questions, biased l istening, or content sharing, etc. and stick to facilitating the system through their own discovery and down their own steps to congruent change. Then it will be obvious the type of information required to enable change that’s non-disruptive.

WRAP UP

Systems are the core – the foundation, the status quo – of congruent human structures (people, teams, companies, families) and are based on every element within them agreeing to the same rules and beliefs that specify the operating rules for behaviors. (It’s obvious. Do you think IBM and Google and Uber all operate out of the same foundational rules and operational beliefs?).

This system gets up every day and replicates itself so it not only recreates the status quo, but maintains it. All systems resist, and potentially misinterpret, anything from outside that threatens it. Until or unless there is a systemic understanding that there will be no/minimal disruption – certainly no change without buy-in from the elements – change will not occur.

Each system (each family, each person) is unique and idiosyncratic, unknowable to an outsider due to its unconscious nature, history, patterns, and Hierarchy of Beliefs and rules.

For those of us in sales, coaching, healthcare, leadership, consulting, or any type of change management, we often use content/information (initiatives, information, Behavior Modification, education, pitches, marketing, advice, etc.) or our own intuition and needs for the Other as the means to invoke change, assuming that offering the right data, in the right format, will teach someone to do something differently.

Yet change doesn’t happen as a result of information, regardless of how critical it is, unless the system has already determined its willingness and ability to change congruently, with buy-in from all effected elements. Change only happens systemically, when the foundational beliefs are ready, willing, and able to change. Until or unless the system learns how to facilitate and incorporate new congruent choices, or reprioritize the existing Hierarchy, change cannot occur.

Conventional practices include posing conventional (biased) questions asked to elicit answers as per the Asker’s needs and curiosity, filtered through their biased listening, directed toward behavior change (rather than belief change) that they want to see occur and use biased content to convince/influence/rationalize the system to acquiesce. In other words, the approaches we’re now using won’t affect systemic change unless the system was already poised to do so.
Change only happens when the system has already agreed, and knows how to manage any change so there is no disruption (or there will be automatic resistance); change cannot happen when the system believes it will become unstable as a result.

A good rule of thumb: no one, and nothing from outside the system can change it so long as conventional questions and curiosity, biased content or convincer strategies, are used. Systems must change themselves from within. This is the reason why sales closes such a small percentage of prospects, why coaches have permanent success with so few clients, and why 97% of all implementations fail. I’ve written an article on why ‘push‘ doesn’t work.

And this is why change appears to be so hard. It’s not. We’re just going about it ineffectively. By merely attempting to change behaviors, we actually cause the resistance we get, only capture those who are ‘ready’ (the low hanging fruit), and miss an opportunity to facilitate and enable those who CAN change.

CHANGE FACILITATION

I’ve developed a Change Facilitation model (Buying Facilitation®) that manages congruent change through a unique skill set, including Listening for Systems and formulating Facilitative Questions (using specific words, in a specific order; directive and action inducing, not information driven or biased) that enable a system to discover its own route through to congruent change and its own brand of excellence. Different from conventional sales, coaching, etc. that run the risk of pushing change, facilitators enable the system to change itself, with no bias from the influencer, and results of greatly enhanced success.

Over the last 35 years, I’ve trained the model globally to corporations and teams in sales, healtcare, coaching, leadership, consulting, and communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?). It’s a generic model that can be used in any industry (clients include banking, consulting, insurance, tech, project implementations, wellness (doc/patient buy-in), real estate, research, travel, etc.) in any format (i.e. sales pitches, marketing articles, websites, questionnaires, customer service, team building, doctor/patient relationships, buy-in, etc.) and enables congruent buy-in and Change Readiness.

For those ready to add a new capability to their current influencing practices, I’ve designed several approaches, from self-guided study, to learning programs, to coaching. Let me know of interest.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker and the developer of Change Facilitation. She has written 9 books, including the acclaimed NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestsellers Dirty Little Secrets and What? Did you really say what I think I heard? Sharon Drew is the inventor of Buying Facilitation® a change facilitation model that works with sales to facilitate Buyer Readiness to use with sales. She is a consultant, speaker, trainer, and coach. Visit her award winning blog: www.sharondrewmorgen.com. She can be reached at 512 771 1117 or sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen October 28th, 2019

Posted In: Change Management

Writing a proposal is an accepted norm in many industries: as a vendor, you receive an RFP, or get a call from a client site to bid on a job; you either take direction from the RFP or gather data on specs from a customer; you then go forth writing a proposal to explain exactly how you’ll achieve their stated goals; and figure out a competitive price that’s as low as you can go – a fight to the bottom – and still make a few shekels.

Then you sit back and wait. And close far less than you deserve, sometimes losing to folks who you know wouldn’t have done as good a job as you would do.

How do customers choose a vendor? I suggest that 1. It’s not based on your proposal (except possibly if it’s a government RFP), 2. It’s not based on your price. I believe that the process of writing proposals is not only irrelevant, but has a cost: neither you nor the customer gets the results you deserve. Here are some truths:

People don’t buy on price, unless all else is equal and it’s their only determining factor. They will pay to get the exact results they want.
RFPs are usually sent to help the client figure out exactly how to reach their goals.
Too often, only a fraction of the folks using the end result are involved, either to write up the RFP or discuss the project, and you have no way to know.
Too often, the client doesn’t have the full set of criteria for excellence needed to choose the best vendor, and the RFP/bid process often overlooks the inclusion of use, collaboration, resistance, and disruption factors that often occur during/following the project.

WHAT’S MISSING FROM AN RFP

The problem with a proposal is it only addresses the completion portion of the underlying problem to be resolved. Sure, a finished solution is needed, and that solution will have a cost. But until the entire set of stakeholders is involved to not only collaboratively define the acceptable parameters of a result, and buy in to the resultant disruption and change, any outcome will be plagued by resistance and implementation issues. Unfortunately, these important considerations are too often left out of the RFP/bid process:

How involved were all (ALL) the stakeholders developing the RFP, or parameters of the project?
Have ALL those who will touch the solution bought-in to, and understand, the full fact pattern of the entire process involved?
How does the new solution disrupt the status quo and what can be done to alleviate problems upfront?
How will integration be managed?
How will the vendor be connected with the customer during the process to make sure all problems are managed immediately before they fester?

I contend that most vendors will come up with a decent proposed execution and cost, but fall short during the process of developing and implementing it because the upfront work was incomplete and different types of resistance ensue unnecessarily. This is where the RFP/proposal/bid process falls short, and it’s your competitive edge.

Think about it: if you’re going to do a house remodel, you assume whoever sends a proposal will be some level of competent. But which one will make your life difficult/easy during the build? Will any of them sit down with you and the recipients of the remodel BEFOREHAND to make sure everyone has a say and is committed to the process? To make sure you’ve managed your expectations for what’s involved and find new choices if necessary? If you knew that one contractor would begin by ensuring all stakeholders had a voice in the outcome and process, led you all through the potential disruption, and designed a communication channel to minimize fallout during the process, would you mind if this group charged 15% more than the others?

Years ago my partner was a famous landscape architect who did major land rebuilds as he put in ponds, mountains and waterfalls, Chinese tea houses, etc as his landscaping. He came home daily grumbling about his clients’ anger. Knowing how brilliant his work was, I decided to follow him around for a couple of days to find out why clients were so unhappy: while his designs were magical, the clients didn’t know upfront the amount of mud, noise, filth, access problems, etc. that would take over their lives for months. I helped him understand the problem and his process changed. Before he even submitted a proposal, he sat down with the potential clients and helped them come to terms with the levels of chaos that would be involved and submitted designs and timing plans that incorporated their needs. His business doubled, and the grumbles subsided.

If you seek a new training partner for a leadership program, for example, you might send out an RFP, and seek references (separate from the price) to help make your best choice. But imagine if, before responding, one of the vendors set up a meeting asking the full set of stakeholders (or their representative) be present and helped them determine their own criteria for success, what they’d need to understand about the process and delivery of a program and how it would meet their values, and how to include post-training maintenance to ensure a learning culture would be maintained.

Years ago, when I still wrote proposals, I was friendly with my closest competitor. When we received an RFP, we agreed on a similar price to submit (usually within a few hundred dollars from each other) to make sure we were chosen specifically on our merits, not on price. I personally met with the client to include all stakeholders and manage the change upfront, and got a greater share of the business, based on my merits.

The question is: how can you be the one to assure customers get their full set of needs met – especially when they’re not always cognizant of the ‘cost’ as they send out their project for bid?

OUTCOME VS PROCESS: HOW KPMG CHANGED THEIR PROPOSAL PROCESS

Years ago, my client at KPMG didn’t return my call for many days. When I finally got ahold of him he said he was suddenly busy: a large team of the consultants were working on responding to an RPF from a company that had never used them before, always using their biggest competitor Arthur Anderson (no longer in business). “What’s stopping them from using Arthur Anderson this time?” I asked? Dave said he’d find out and call me back.

Next day Dave called: They ARE using AA. They just needed a second bid.

We went into action. Since it now made no sense for KPMG to respond to the RFP (saving a team of 4 people almost a month of time), but they really wanted to be considered for future business, we sent a cover letter stating that we’d not be sending a proposal, but instead help them recognize what they needed to do internally to ensure buy-in from all stakeholders before, during, and after the final implementation; how to ensure minimal disruption; and the specifics of how to alleviate resistance or fallout by managing relationship, compliance, and change issues BEFORE they started the project.

We sent them a list of a form of question I invented called Facilitative Questions that lead Others to discover their own best answers, rather than conventional questions that are biased by the needs of the Asker (Example: What would we all need to know, and agree to, moving forward, to recognize a glitch or resistance early and avoid fallout?). My FQs facilitate the HOW for any situation of change and went far beyond the details – the WHAT – the RFP required including:

input from the stakeholders who will touch the final solution,
the arc of change during the course of the project, from status quo through to completion, and how it collides with the people and status quo,
the downsides of disruption for each group, set of stakeholders, change in routines,
the team collaboration needed in each phase of the implementation to ensure buy-in,
a list of elements necessary for folks to buy-in to the final solution.

We didn’t hear back for two months. Then KPMG got a call asking them to begin the job. “We hired AA as planned. But when they started, they didn’t address the topics of your questions, where we always seem to experience fallout and resistance. We never thought about those issues before we started a project and always suffered fallout from ignoring them. Your questions taught us how to think of the whole project as a coordinated structure not just an end result. Thanks. Can you do the job for us?”

From then on, my clients at KPMG used the same questioning structure whenever they received an RFP, and never sent out another proposal – and got more business. And btw the RFP was for multimillion dollar work that involved global stakeholders; the process is equally effective with small jobs.

WHAT DO CLIENTS/CUSTOMERS REALLY WANT?

People want a job done well for them, executed in a way that will cost them the least downsides, in a way that’s acceptable to those who will be part of the process. It’s not a money thing, not an output thing; it’s a system thing. And the way proposals are now approached, it becomes a money/output thing.

Let’s think it through: people would prefer to resolve all problems themselves, but in some cases they need outside help, and as per the size of the project, need outside help.

Do customers know what will happen while getting from here to there? The people/jobs that will be disrupted, the time it will take and how that will affect them, the working conditions that might change? Do they know, exactly, what any disruption will look like to them?
Do they know how their folks will be confronted with disruption, each step along the way, or how a new implementation will collide with the existing situation?
How can they be certain, up front, that the vendor they choose will work in a way to maintain their stability and minimize disruption?
How can they get the buy-in from everyone to agree to the necessary changes?
Does their stated outcome represent the full set of stakeholders, or only a small group of decision makers, leaving those who may face disruption in the dark until a problem surfaces?
Who chooses the vendor? A small set of leaders, or the entire stakeholder team? And what’s the fallout if just a small top heavy group that ignores the internal change issues? How can you resolve this?
Do vendors get chosen in terms of how they’ll manage disruption, implementation, or resistance?

The reality is, unless the full set of stakeholders is involved and has a say in the process and fallout, unless there is a known route through the change/disruption/implementation process, there will be a mess for the contractor as the voices that have been silent get raised in protest.

Most folks sending out an RFP or talking to a contractor don’t include the whole group, and do NOT understand the full set of givens necessary for a good job. They are trying to choose a vendor based on referrals, websites, reputation, without actually knowing what the hell is going to go down.

But imagine if you can lead them through to the entire set of circumstances, the gathering of the right stakeholders, the understanding of the downsides to the sort of result they seek, the route through to facilitating buy in so the fallout is minimal. Imagine if you do that – and none of the other vendors do. Is it not possible they won’t need to look at other vendors? That price won’t be an issue?

In reality, you don’t really know the full set of stakeholders when you receive an RFP or get called in to price a job; you have no idea how close the specs are to the needs of the full set of those who will touch the final solution and who may be unhappy when a new solution is thrust on them; you have no idea how the implementation will play out in terms of buy in and resistance; you have no idea what level of chaos is involved under the sheets, as it were. In the same vein, neither do your clients. Help them first determine the full set of their own needs and issues, and then writing up a few details and costs will be simple. You would have already paid for yourself, and saved a lot of time writing up proposals.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, thought leader, consultant, trainer, speaker and coach. She is the author of 9 books, including a NYTimes Business Bestseller, Selling with Integrity, and two Amazon bestsellers Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and What? Did you really say what I think I heard?Sharon Drew works across industries, using her generic Buying Facilitation® model to enable sellers, healthcare professionals, leaders, coaches, etc. to facilitate others through to their own best decisions. She lives on a houseboat in Portland OR.

Sharon Drew Morgen September 30th, 2019

Posted In: Communication, News

Working with a partner in Amsterdam recently, I was one of a small team of communication experts offering a day of skills for executive leaders. Wanting to make sure my contribution would work interdependently with the other consultants, I asked my Dutch partner Thomas Blekman the topics my colleagues would be presenting. Voice and Storytelling, I was told. Did I need to contact either of them to discuss how to best fit my content in with theirs? Nope. “Just teach your great stuff.”

Hmm…. From the topic titles, it seemed the client company wanted the leaders to learn the best tools to facilitate audience buy-in. To add my knowledge appropriately, I developed an agenda that enabled these leaders to be heard without bias and encourage maximum information/idea adoption. Given my work on the unconscious biases involved in our brain’s physiologic listening processes (I wrote a book on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard – WHAT? Did you really say what I think I heard?), I know that people can accurately interpret only a percentage of what’s said. I wanted to help these leaders make sure their outreach efforts would be heard as per their intended outcomes.

Twenty minutes prior to my session, I met the man teaching Storytelling. Except it wasn’t Storytelling. He was teaching How to Pitch. He introduced himself as the winner of The Netherlands Pitching Competition.

PITCHING VS STORYTELLING

What? Not Storytelling? The blood drained from my face. Thomas noticed immediately: “You’ve got a bias against pitching. Admit it,” he whispered. I was so overwhelmed by the enormity of my misunderstanding, and the consequences to the participants, I merely agreed. But I had to very quickly try to figure out how to reconfigure what I’d developed to more accurately address the new situation.

Different from the listening skills I would now be teaching, I’ve spent 35 years training sales folks in my Buying Facilitation® method, and my pitching program teaches 1. very specific skill sets to facilitate an audience’s ability to make a new decision and be ready to act before a seller pitches anything, and 2. how to develop pitch materials that match the responses of the audience. In other words, not pushing content at them as per the speaker’s outcome, but helping them determine the type of content they’d need in order to consider making a purchase now, then giving them that exact content. Quite the opposite of conventional pitching.

For me Storytelling and Pitching are entirely different concepts. In Storytelling, the speaker shares a narrative that will hopefully facilitate audience buy inand connection, potentially shift thinking, and maybe consider new ideas. Pitching means there is a manipulation going on – with precisely chosen words and images – to get Others to act according to the speaker’s agenda. While both are potentially forms of influencing, Storytelling has an idea-shift outcome while Pitching is a persuasion tactic designed to cause an action desired by the presenter.

Had I understood the real program title was Pitching, I would have designed a very different program, including role plays to teach how to formulate the new type of question I developed (Facilitative Questions) that facilitates decision making, to use before they pitched; and then ways to develop presentation materials for their pitch that matched the audience responses rather than traditional pitch decks that focus on the seller’s information choices.

While I was able to add some new material to my original design, my presentation left the audience confused as to where my stuff fit. Not to mention that without discussing his content to see how I could collaborate, I was flying blind against The Best Pitcher in The Netherlands. Obviously, an upfront discussion weeks prior to the program would have given me the data I needed to design the best skill sets to complement his.

While there was no blame involved here (I don’t think Thomas intended to mislead – he most likely just translated wrong.), there was a cost to my misunderstanding. The participants didn’t get what they deserved because I had misunderstood my mission. The fact that it wasn’t my fault is irrelevant.

HOW WE GET IT WRONG

Often in our communications we make assumptions, mistranslate another’s words or meaning, or misunderstand the nature of a message, and unwittingly end up causing harm.

While sometimes – maybe 15% of the time – the problem isn’t your fault because you can make faulty assumptions from the facts you’re given; or you have such an entirely different world view that you cannot fully comprehend the full fact pattern. Most of the time you unconsciously bias what you hear, causing a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. It’s your brain’s fault.

What you hear enters your ears as chemical/electrical signals that trigger your unconscious biases- historic, systemic, physiological – leading to flawed assumptions. You don’t even recognize that what you think you heard is inaccurate: your brain doesn’t tell you how it has ever-so-kindly (re)translated the incoming message, leaving you to believe the speaker actually said what you thought you heard even when it was never said. When you think someone’s not hearing you, that’s not true: they are hearing you, but their brain is sending your message down an incorrect synapse and discards what doesn’t fit – and then neglects to tell us what it omitted. Oops.
Sometimes we translate what’s been said into an entirely different world view than intended. Recently I asked a friend – a techie – to read over a draft article to tell me if he could understand the way I explained something, or if it was confusing. After an hour (should have taken 10 minutes max) and a missed meeting, as I waited for his response (the article was time sensitive) I called him. He said he was still editing my article. What? Did he hear me ask him to be my editor? “Well I heard you say to just read it, but that’s what people say when they really want me to fix it for them.” Why didn’t he first check with me if that’s what I meant? “Why? I knew that’s what you really wanted.” His faulty assumption cost me a meeting.

So net net, it’s quite difficult to know for certain if what you think you hear is accurate without checking; when you believe your understanding is accurate, it’s pretty hard to get curious about the possibility of a misunderstanding. [Of course it’s only when an influencer can consciously recognize fact from personal, unconscious bias that it’s possible to truly understand what’s been said. For those wishing to learn how to do this, I have a chapter on this (Chapter 6) in WHAT?.

But whether it’s because a situation has occurred outside of your choice, or because your own unconscious bias caused you to misunderstand, the results are the same: when your actions are based on a fundamental misunderstanding that results in you causing harm, you must fix it. Otherwise you lose trust.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

To fix a misunderstanding, you must take responsibility for it, regardless of whether or not you believe you’re at fault. Many years ago, when leaders still made unilateral decisions, I was working with the inside sales reps at Bethlehem Steel. Over the months, it became very clear that the entire group was deeply angry. Earlier that year they had been ordered to move: leave their homes and lifestyles, and move to either Burns Harbor, MI or Sparrows Point, MD. They were given two months to sell their houses, pack, buy new houses, move their families, find new schools and new jobs for spouses, in the middle of a school year. Two months! Obviously, families split up to remain behind with kids in school, houses weren’t sold in two months, or packed, or purchased. The reps were living in rentals, flying to their families on weekends. Or the spouses moved and left teenagers to finish out the school year with neighbors, etc. A mess.

The reps lived in daily resentment, unconsciously (or consciously) dragging their heels getting things done, forgetting to do stuff. Sales numbers plummeted. They took a lot of sick time, took days off to visit their families back in their old houses, got weird illnesses like emotional blindness (Who knew that was a thing!), etc.

Because my client Dan was the instigator, I decided to do something about it. One day, Dan came out of his office to meet his mystery lunch guest. It was me. I had arranged everything with Dan’s secretary, and flew in on my own dime.

Dan: Hey, SD. You’re not supposed to be here today, are you? Are you my lunch date?

SD: No. And yes. And you’re paying.

During our lunch I explained how angry everyone was, and how he had disrupted their families and lives. Dan didn’t get it. “I gave them each $5,000 compensation to move!” Obviously he needed a bit of a push. I told him I’d set up a meeting at 2:00 that afternoon with him and the rep’s leadership team, and handed him a speech to say to them.

Dan: This is an apology!!! I’m not saying this!

SD: Yes you are.

Dan took the paper, and began pacing around the restaurant, reading. He paced for 20 minutes. Then said he was ready to go. We didn’t talk in the car. In the meeting, I sat in the back. At the table, he stood up, looked over at me, cleared his throat, and said to everyone:

It seems I overstepped my bounds and didn’t consider your needs when I forced you to move on such short notice, find other houses to move into, pack, move in the middle of the school year, and didn’t respect your family obligations.

That was all he had to say. The entire group got up and cheered. Some of the men starting crying. They all went around him to hug him. “We just needed to hear you apologize. We felt overlooked and disrespected. You didn’t seem to care about us or our families. We just needed you to take some responsibility for your mistake.”

Dan had totally misunderstood the system involved in families moving house across country and how children needed to find schools, parents needed to find playgroups, the time it takes houses to sell. The misunderstanding harmed his team. They needed an apology. They needed to be respected.

Net net. I don’t care if you believe you misunderstood anything or you believe you’re ‘right’. If there is a problem under your watch, you’re responsible.

THE HOW

Here’s what you’ll notice if there might have been a misunderstanding:

Something is amiss. You may not know exactly what it is, but it will feel like something is a bit off center. People will try work with the givens, but they’re not particularly happy, and not particularly at their best; they might be late for work, forgetting to do promised stuff, ignoring deadlines, etc.
You’ll hear people grumbling and their issues don’t seem to make sense.
Suggestions for change will be made in areas you believe to be stable.
People won’t look you in the eye, or they’ll make themselves unavailable.
People will not necessarily complain, but they won’t necessarily be compliant either.

Net net, there will be something wrong and you won’t know what it is. Gather the group, or the leaders, and ask if there is something you did that caused confusion or annoyance that you need to clean up. Is something wrong that you need to make right?

Make sure you don’t have any attachment to being right; your goal is to make sure whatever problem has occurred will be resolved. You’ve got a ‘people’ criteria here, not a ‘right’ criteria.
Listen with an unbiased ear. It’s helpful for you to walk around while you’re listening – it puts you into Observer, and will supersede your unconscious biases.
Let the outcome, the fix, come from the people that are experiencing the hurt.
Make sure you repeat what they say to make sure you hear them accurately and you work from their suggestions.
Get agreement from everyone for the fixes, and make sure everyone is on board.
Ask if there is anyone still left hurt or angry – and ask them what they’ll need from you to feel the problem resolved going forward.

Your responsibility is to have a well-functioning, thriving group, an outcome in which everyone is creative and collaborative, a conclusion that everyone can buy into and become better for. Blame, fault, mistake, are not operative. It’s just your job.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, sales visionary and inventor of Buying Facilitation®, and author of 9 books including the NYT Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and What? Did you really say what I think I heard?Sharon Drew works with companies to facilitate congruent change and collaboration, with healthcare providers to facilitate patient buy-in, with folks seeking permanent change by facilitating them through their unconscious to design a conscious route to permanent change (The HOW of Change). She is a consultant, coach, trainer, speaker, change maker and award winning blogger (www.sharondrewmorgen.com). She lives in Portland, OR on a houseboat. Reach Sharon Drew at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen September 23rd, 2019

Posted In: News

Today was a typical day. I arrived at my office early in the morning and began by checking email: colleagues, fans, strangers writing from around the world, each with their own agendas, each email exchange demanding a different type of communication. I then went to LinkedIn and connected with new colleagues from several countries, answered questions from followers, and added ideas to a group discussion. Twitter is always strictly relegated to 10 minutes. Then I had several Skype meetings: with a business partner from Paris and her colleague in Brussels to consider developing a healthcare app; brainstorming with my tech in India; coaching a team of banking reps studying Buying Facilitation® with me, and a strategy call with a new client to discuss a leadership implementation we’re developing; a brainstorming call with another author of listening books in India to discuss ideas for a collaborative article we’re writing. Finally, I spoke with a friend, now in London visiting her dying grandmother. I spent the rest of the day writing an article, using Google for references.

I suspect your worlds are digitally similar and equally challenging: our global interactions include people with ideas, cultural norms and assumptions, perceptions, religious beliefs, and languages different from our own. The internet has expanded our world. And therein lies the problem.

WHY IS OUR COMMUNICATION PROBLEMATIC?

We all take our communication skills seriously. But in this digital world of instant connection with people around the globe, our communication skills haven’t kept up: we speak from our normalized biases, assumptions, and patterns; we listen with our habituated, biased listening filters; we use terms and regional communication styles and (very idiosyncratic) subjective criteria and reference points.

Sometimes we hear others accurately, sometimes we don’t but think we do. Sometimes we unwittingly use terms that annoy, or are annoyed by a Communication Partner’s (CPs) terms. I remember once when living in the UK, being insulted when someone from London said my house was ‘homely’. Only later did I learn that ‘homely’ in the UK means what ‘homey’ means in the US, while ‘homely’ in the States means ugly. What was meant as a compliment almost ended our dialogue.

Using our established communication skills, we may not know when or how to modify our languaging accordingly, or hear precisely what’s intended and face the possibility of communicating ineffectively with people outside our experience and culture.

It’s time to add new skills for global communication: without knowing when what we’re doing isn’t working – listening with a cultural or subjective bias that causes an ineffective response, asking what might seem to be pushy, or manipulative, or invasive questions, responding according to our own agendas – we can only have a restricted set of communication choice points available, causing us to respond or connect inappropriately. We need soft skills training.

Soft skills always seem to be put on the back burner. When I wrote my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? I got calls from several HR Directors who wanted to bring in my unbiased listening skills training (just one day!), but couldn’t get the buy-in to actually hire me. Why? Because they said, everyone thinks they know how to listen. But of course, that’s not true. We certainly know how to hear spoken words, but there is no way we can correctly interpret them when what we hear is outside our normal references.

WE CANNOT KNOW HOW ANOTHER’S REALITY DIFFERS

Finely honed throughout our lifetimes, we all live in a reality of our own making, seeing, hearing, and feeling the world uniquely, according to our own idiosyncratic, and very unconscious, filters – obviously some degrees removed from veracity. Programmed to do this, our brains are pattern recognition devices, unconsciously on the lookout for anything (differences, disparities) that may challenge our baseline beliefs and status quo.

We hear what others say through biases, triggers, and assumptions that carry a modified interpretation of what’s been said through our brain’s habituated neural pathways, mistaking or misinterpreting some fraction of the intended message: we hear the message our brain wants us to hear regardless of the Speaker’s intent. And because our brains fail to tell us what it mangled, omitted, or misinterpreted, we actually believe that what we think we hear is accurate.
We feel our emotions through automatic feedback loops that trigger us, via normalized and habituated neural pathways, to historic events our brains have determined are similar to the current event, objective reality aside.
Our vision is idiosyncratic and habituated. We each see colors uniquely, for example; we remember details according to historic triggers, and our field of vision is restricted accordingly.
We choose neighborhoods and mates who match our beliefs; professions that are comfortable in dress codes, values, communication patterns, and culture; even our TV choices match our chosen reality and biases.

Sadly, we don’t question our experience. Our brains don’t tell us the level of interpretation or modification they’ve automatically chosen for us, nor do they tell us when we might be missing something important, expecting something that was never promised, or fabricating something never agreed to. And yes, we occasionally, unwittingly, hurt others.

Yet we continue doing what we’ve always done, believing our constructed reality to be True, believing that our skills are fine, regardless of the consequences. Why? By adhering to our subjective reality, we get to maintain our core beliefs and cultural norms so we can wake up every day and ‘be’ who we are. Our inadequacies, prejudices, mistakes, and viewpoints are built in and habituated daily. And we’re comfortable. So long as we stay in our own worlds.

Obviously, this restricted, biased reality has consequences in our global worlds. What happens when we encounter people or situations that are sufficiently different from us and our miscommunication causes us to inadvertently take a wrong action? What happens when we actually hear something inaccurately and act on what we think we heard rather than what was said? [My book explains and fixes this: What? Did you really say what I think I heard?] What happens when we perceive incoming harm, and it’s merely our unconscious biases overreacting? What happens when we misinterpret someone’s intent and miss an opportunity for joy? What happens when we consider ourselves successful, or content, or ‘right’, and blame another for any confusion? What happens when we unwittingly harm another?

What do we lose when we react inappropriately to something we mistakenly deem reality? What happens when our livelihoods are dependent upon making accurate decisions and having truly collaborative conversations with folks outside our normal sphere of influence, and our questions, or listening, or comments, or assumptions, go against the norms of our CPs? It’s all unconscious; we may never know if something untoward is occurring until it’s too late.

It’s time for soft skills training to be a Thing. Our communication status quo is just not good enough in our global worlds. It’s time to get training to

enlarge possibility,
expand our realities, understanding, inferences, and unconscious biases,
make fewer errors and have more choices,
hear what’s intended, even when it goes outside of our reality,
include a new set of triggers, neural pathways, and listening filters,
have no personal restrictions that could hinder our connections.

GUESSES AND HABITS

Often we can’t tell if what we take away from a partner communication is accurate when it seems to be fine. Unfortunately, our brains don’t tell us they’re hearing, feeling, or seeing something uniquely: it seems normal to us. Even those few instances when we notice something seems a bit ‘off’, we’re merely comparing what’s in front of us against what we have historically held to be ‘true’ and have no idea what is causing the irritation or our part in it, too often blaming the other for the problem. And even when we try to understand there’s a good chance we can do no better than confirm, misinterpret, or disprove according to our own biases, using our own ‘givens’ as comparators of ‘right’. We are actually projecting our status quo and guessing meaning per our past predictions. It’s real if we believe it to be real.

Indeed, there is no intrinsic meaning in anything, outside the meaning we give it, making a problem difficult to fix even when we suspect something is wrong: the same unconscious, habituated neural pathways that caused the problem is restricted when it needs to do something outside of its scope.

By bringing soft skills training to all of our professions, sales folks can accurately connect with prospects and customers in other countries, coaches can work with clients worldwide and effectively enable self-driven change, leaders can run groups and implementations with folks from different countries. Here are the programs I believe necessary.

Listening: What we think someone says has been unconsciously curated for us by our filters, biases, assumptions, and triggers; we only hear what our unconscious wants us to hear. In fact, while our brains sift and insert, they don’t tell us what has been misinterpreted or mangled, leaving us to believe that what we think we hear is accurate. And we never realize our errors until it’s too late. I’ve lost business partners who think something has been agreed with without my awareness that anything was proposed.
- To actually hear/understand what’s meant, we must override our normalized listening filters and develop neutral neural pathways to hear through.
Asking unbiased questions: Even with colleagues, the questions we pose are indications of what we want which biases and restricts possible responses and can be easily misinterpreted by those outside our culture.
- Pose Facilitative Questions that direct the brain to specific memory channels (i.e. not interrogation devices) to enable others to figure out what THEY want from the conversation, disconnected from our needs or guesses.
Managing triggers: We all have unconscious, habituated, normalized triggers that are activated automatically with a word, phrase, or idea, causing us to use our own subjective values to judge our CPs. With global colleagues, it’s especially important to unhook our triggers to have effective communication.
- We must learn to recognize, and make adjustments for, our own triggers and biases, and add new triggers to make mutual understanding possible.
Choice: We must learn to choose communication skills that match our CPs skills, especially once we recognize a miscommunication.
- We must know how to disconnect from our habituated responses, listening, and general communication styles and build in the cultural norms of our communication partners.
Expanding curiosity: Our curiosity is limited by our current knowledge. With a global audience, we must expand our curiosity to ask better questions and listen accurately.
- To wonder why a conversation is taking a turn, or not progressing, we must go outside of our habituated biases and subjective defenses to recognize problems outside our customary thinking.
Negotiating skills: Different countries, different cultural groups, have different expectations when they negotiate. Learn them.
- For win-win to occur, both sides must understand the other’s interpretation of what is fair, and must supersede acculturated expectations.
Changing beliefs: Our beliefs are the underlying trigger in any communication. We need to examine what they are and how they align with our global communication partners.
- Soft skills programs are designed to change behaviors but don’t cause permanent behavior change unless the originating beliefs and norms that created the behaviors are modified. All soft skills programs must focus on permanently changing beliefs so new neural pathways and triggers are installed.
Gaining empathy: Short of living in a new community for years, the easiest way to understand other’s cultures and experience is by reading novels.
- I recommend James Baldwin, Jane Austin, Toni Morrison, JD Vance.
Writing: Much of our communication is through writing, albeit through our own styles that might conflict with a CPs expectations. We need to learn to write in more efficient, neutralized ways to ensure we don’t conflict with others due to how we write.
- Training must be designed to teach skills for email exchanges, social media interactions, proposal and presentation writing.

CAN I HELP?

I believe my learning facilitation model is perfect for today’s need for enhanced soft skills. I’ve spent my life – since I was 11 – coding the steps and skills for unconscious choice and change to enable influencers (leaders, sellers, doctors, parents, coaches) to facilitate others through to their own, idiosyncratic, systemic, congruent decisions to change; I can use this Change Facilitation approach to help people prepare to learn learn, buy, change, themselves from their own core, largely unconscious, criteria. Instead of outside/in, it’s inside/out.

Used in global corporations since 1987 (first course with KLM titled Helping Buyers Buy) I developed this approach when I realized that people cannot respond accurately to the type of shared, or experienced, information offered in current training modalities (regardless of value or efficacy) due to their own habituated filters, biases, assumptions, cultural norms, etc.

As a result, learning occurs in only people who can hear, understand, and accept that approach, that idea, that representation. So: offered information is automatically biased by a listener’s filters; conventional questions merely represent the biases of the Asker and restrict the response framework accordingly; and the training approach of a set of data being offered, using the languaging, examples, and exercises of the course designers, and may cause unconscious reactions or lost learning.

In other words, the only people who will truly benefit from a program are those whose unconscious beliefs are already aligned; all those with different biases, different beliefs, different assumptions or norms, will not be able to hear, understand, abide by, or comprehend the need for, the proposed change and may find it incongruent enough to resist. This problem persists not merely in training programs, but anywhere outside influencers try to effect change. So buyers with a need won’t buy; patients with an illness won’t follow doctor’s regiments; coaching clients won’t buy-in to a needed change.

Using my learning facilitation approach, people seeking change can discover their own route to their unique learning path, eschew bias and resistance, and create their own permanent change where existing choices are found to be less than excellent.

I’ve used the training to spearhead permanent behavior change, to expand possibility and make new decisions without resistance or bias: sellers can facilitate buyers through their change management issues to enable buying; doctors can teach patients to make appropriate, permanent behavior changes; coaches can help clients buy-in to permanent change; unconscious bias and diversity programs can help people get rid of unconscious bias. Here are a few of the skill sets that I developed that are different about my training model.

Facilitative Questions – with no bias from the Asker except to facilitate congruent change (in other words, not used as interrogation vehicles), these questions are designed as directional devices to help Responders traverse through their unconscious route to change and discover how to change, using their own criteria. They are posed in a specific sequence, using specific words, to enable others to figure out their own unconscious answers, and actually, lead through the steps of congruent change. I know there is no referent for these questions. I have trained their formulation to over 50,000 people, so the skill is learnable and scalable. Please email me to start a conversation. To learn how to formulate these, take a look at this learning tool.

Listening – normal listening merely uses accepted viewpoints to make sense of what’s said. Remember: we only ‘hear’ air vibrations that hit our habituated neural pathways and are interpreted as per our biases. It’s possible to go outside our habituated pathways and listen without bias. To learn more about this, read sample chapters of my book What?. If you get excited and want to learn how to do this, use the Study Guide I’ve developed that takes you through each chapter to shift our normal skills. Or call to have me train a one day program for your folks to listen with choice.

Choice – we currently make choices according to our own biases and norms. I’ve coded the steps of choice and change and can teach people, and outsiders (i.e. leaders, coaches, trainers, etc.) to intervene in their own or other’s choices at the stage where there is a breakdown, incompatibility, or misrepresentation.

I’ve first tested, then offered, this training in global corporations such as Morgan Stanley, IBM, Kaiser, DuPont, P&G, FedEx, Wachovia, etc. using control groups and pilot studies which consistently found my learning facilitation approach 8x more successful than the control group. For those needing a more expansive discussion on this, read my paper in The 2003 Annual: Volume 1 Training [Jossey-Bass/Pfieffer]: “Designing Curricula for Learning Environments Using a Facilitative Teaching Approach to Empower Learners” pp 263-272.

So here’s the pitch: when used in training, my learning facilitation model does something well beyond conventional training models that use information as the route to helping others embrace, adopt, receive, or execute a new idea or behavior. I can actually teach people how to change their core choices, and help them develop new neural pathways for choice, using their own terms of excellence, so they can adopt the new behaviors they choose.

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Receive Sharon Drew’s original articles and essays on Mondays: http://sharondrewmorgen.com/subscribe-to-sharon-drew-morgens-award-winning-blog/

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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker and thought leader. She designs change facilitation models that enable the buying decision journey in sales (Buying Facilitation®), the change issues needed for coaching clients to permanently change, the implementation issues needed for leaders to organize congruent change without resistance. Sharon Drew is a speaker, coach, trainer, and NYTimes Business bestselling author of 9 books including Selling with Integrity, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and What? Sharon Drew is a speaker, consultant, trainer, and blogger of an award-winning blog www.sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen September 16th, 2019

Posted In: Communication, Listening

« Previous Page — Next Page »

The Big Push: why sellers, doctors, coaches, and leaders, don’t effect permanent change

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A Buyer’s Guide to Buying: the hidden steps

How To Help Buyers Shift Their Status Quo

Buy-In: how to procure compliance, and why it seems difficult

When, Why, What, and How to Pitch Your Story: a guide for parents, leaders, fund raisers, and sellers

What You Need to Know about Systems and How they Affect Change

Do We Really Need Proposals?

The Cost of Misunderstanding: why leaders must take responsibility for mistakes

Communication Competence: the case for enhanced soft skills for our new digital world