Selling Ideas to Colleagues

You’ve got a great idea, but need your colleagues – your boss, your teammates, your partners – to approve and help develop the implementation. You put together a great deck that makes your case professionally, rationally, and clearly. Your colleagues respond wonderfully – you get great feedback and they say they’ll begin moving the idea along. And then…. nothing. What’s going on?

BEHAVIOR VS BELIEF

What’s going on is the gap between what you mean to say and what your audience hears. Rational and significant as it may appear to you, they may not know what your ideas will mean for them or their daily functioning; they may interpret your pitch differently than you intended; they may have an entirely different set of beliefs causing their unconscious to automatically resist your ideas (regardless of their efficacy); they may not get buy-in from their own teammates to move forward. In other words, your idea may be getting lost in translation because people

• hear/translate/bias your content into their own unique understanding (which may not be in alignment with your intent);
• have unconscious beliefs that resist your material;
• may require significant buy-in from folks not yet assembled;
• may not understand why your vision is important enough to cause the disruption that could result from change.

With an existent and fully-formed hierarchy of beliefs and rules that define and operationalize it, the Other’s status quo might find the new information threatening and disruptive, causing them to resist regardless of its presentation or efficacy. It’s not until the person or team (or more accurately their internal system of values, rules, goals, behaviors) understands how to operationalize your ideas in a way that enables them to remain stable through any proposed change that they will consider shifting to anything new. The status quo has been habituated and normalized; it’s been ‘fine’, thank you. Changing it causes confusion and unknown consequences.

It’s a conundrum. They need your information, but cannot act on it until they’ve agreed to, and have a route toward, congruently changing what they’re already doing (Anything ‘new’ added to something that exists is a change management problem.). Indeed, before needing the specifics, or considering an action plan, they must first figure out how to change congruently, with minimal fallout. Your information is actually the last thing they need.

To get your great ideas appreciated and acted upon, to encourage change and buy-in in a way that supports and enhances the status quo without threatening it, you must first lead Others down their own route to congruent change in a way that incorporates and maintains their historic actions and outcomes.

Unfortunately for those of us who really have great ideas that will make a difference, no information, no outsider, can do it for them – they must do all this themselves, as none of us can never know or understand what’s going on within their idiosyncratic status quo. But we can help them figure out how to welcome, and participate in, change.

THE STEPS TO GETTING IDEAS ACCEPTED

New ideas suggest change; change suggests a threat to the daily functioning and core beliefs of the status quo, causing resistance until the status quo knows how to incorporate the new congruently. That means all of the voices and accepted norms that helped create the status quo and will be affected by the change must buy-in, lend their ideas and concerns to, and be a part of, the new solution.

Here is a way to get your ideas accepted and include all of the voices and elements necessary to promote change without resistance. Before introducing an idea, call a meeting that brings together all the folks (or their representatives) that will be affected by the change and pose the following questions [customized for your situation] one at a time, with discussion time for each. And note: make sure the initial meeting is relatively generic, focusing only on the central idea you’re proposing; during this process, your idea will expand as per the collaboration of Other’s ideas and input, including how, when, and where acceptance and adoption can occur:

A. How is our [status quo] working? Without the full range of voices heard, the full set of ideas or needs won’t be collected.

B. What do you think has stopped us from enabling it to work even more effectively? Make sure everyone has a say and there is agreement, or there might be resistance later.

C. What would it look like if we were to do whatever we’d need to do to realize more success? Get everyone’s voice involved, even if to object. Then the full view of the status quo will be represented.

D. How could we design some sort of change to ensure we don’t disrupt what’s working yet enable us to enhance the status quo for more effective results? Here, take time to get everyone into some type of agreement to fixing the same problem or expand/contract parameters.

At the first meeting, make sure everyone’s voice is heard, including other ideas, thoughts, doubts and fears. After a thorough discussion, suggest they all go away and think about it, talk to their teammates about it, and come up with additional ideas and concerns to share at a subsequent meeting. Don’t try to bias the group into your thinking – let the process evolve, with you as the Servant Leader. Using this approach, here’s what’s happens:

1. You’re inviting everyone (or group leaders at least) into a conversation to begin the discussion and change process from the standpoint of buy-in and consensus. Then everyone will own the ‘problem’ and a say in any eventual change. This collaboration ensures group engagement.

2. ‘Your’ ideas will expand to ‘our’ ideas with additional components, specific considerations and broad creativity.

3. You will have encouraged/promoted collaboration and excellence by creating an opening for change and new ideas, and enhancing your ideas even further. Will it end up looking exactly like your original idea? Nope. But it will reach a similar end goal with everyone owning the solution and contributing to its success.

4. You will highlight, discuss, and ultimately avoid resistance, as the elements of congruent change will be tackled first and any problems will be incorporated into the new solution.

Then, at the next meeting, and once there is buy-in for change, and all – all – appropriate voices have been assembled and heard from, present your ideas along with everyone else’s. Discuss collaboratively, then have the group lay out some preliminary action plans that everyone agrees to.

Net net: you’ll have amassed the full fact pattern with all voices sharing; achieve buy-in/consensus; have a larger pool of ideas to work from; design a workable plan to incorporate the new with the ‘old’; enable congruent change that fits comfortably with the status quo; and avoid resistance. You will have a harmonious team ready to work together. It may not look like you had originally envisaged, but it will reach the goals you seek with everyone’s heart and muscle behind you. And you will have become a Servant Leader to your cause.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the thought leader in Change Facilitation, enabling congruent, collaborative, win-win change in several areas, including Buying Facilitation®, Learning Facilitation, Coaching Facilitation. She has written 9 books, including NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and the Amazon bestseller What? Did you really say what I think I heard? Her book Dirty Little Secrets – why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell – lays out the steps of change and influence.  Beyond information exchange and push technologies, Sharon Drew’s original skill sets impact and stimulate belief change and efficient buy-in. She has trained to over 100,000 sales folks and coaches in companies such as Boston Scientific, Bose, KPMG, IBM, Kaiser Permanente, Wachovia Bank, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, FedEx, P&G, and Morgan Stanley. She currently trains, keynotes, coaches, and supports groups seeking congruent change and win-win collaboration to enable Servant Leadership. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. See hundreds of articles on sales, change, and skills on www.sharondrewmorgen.com 

Sharon Drew Morgen April 24th, 2017

Posted In: Communication

Checklist for Influencers: questions for sellers, coaches, leaders, change agents.

Most of you are really good at what you do: as influencers, sellers, coaches, change agents, or leaders, your intuition, excellent skills, and history of success guide your ability to facilitate change for your clients. And yet using conventional models and questions – both designed to drive the needs of the facilitator – it’s inevitable that your interactions will have bias, and will unwittingly restrict possible outcomes accordingly. Here’s a checklist of questions to help you determine the extent of bias in your interactions:

• When attempting to influence someone (as sellers, leaders, etc.) how can you determine the role your natural assumptions, unconscious expectations, and goals play in biasing or restricting the outcome?
• Are you aware of, and make allowances for, your full range of biases? Can you think of how your biases might predispose specific outcomes? Do you know what you’d need to do differently to enter a conversation without bias or assumptions?
• How do you manage your Communication Partner’s (CP) biases and assumptions to avoid unconscious resistance, fallout, and restricted choice (not to mention lost sales and difficult implementations) and expand choice and possibility?
• Are you aware the extent to which your curiosity and questions are subjectively biased toward the goal you’ve (un)consciously set that 1. potentially lose a more congruent outcome, 2. alienate many who might need your solutions?
• Due to conventional assumptions for information gathering, how can you be certain that you’re speaking to all (ALL) the right people, or using the most appropriate questions for their idiosyncratic knowledge and culture, to gather the most appropriate – and complete – information? In other words, are your expectations biasing your outcomes?
• Are you aware of how much your brain filters what you hear and how much more is being said/meant than what you think you’re hearing? Are you aware of the cost of misunderstanding what’s going on outside of your goals and expectations? How much information is available that you’re not asking for due to your biases?
• How much of the data you gather turns out to be accurate? How do you know when/if you ever get to the accurate data? How do your expectations and the bias in your questions interfere with the Other’s recognition of the full fact pattern (largely unconscious at the start)?
• What would you need to believe differently to consider that your current skill set, biases, and habitual set of expectations that you enter a conversation with are creating a diminished ability to influence the full extent of real change and avoid resistance?
• How often do you assume something is ‘working’ or was successful – a coaching client was changing, or a buyer was going to buy – and you were wrong in your approach or communication? Do you know for certain what happened behind-the-scenes that caused the failure and you could have circumvented? And if you don’t, what would you have needed to do differently during the interaction(s) to enable more of a collaborative communication?
• Are you aware of how your own biases, assumptions, triggers, and filters, have gotten in the way of success – or do you believe you’re right and the other person wrong/stupid?
• What would you need to believe differently to be willing to add some new skills to use less bias? To enable your CPs to recognize and manage their own unconscious elements that have informed their choices and would need to be shifted for change (a purchase, an implementation) to occur so they can easily buy, change or adopt your terrific material?

FACILITATING CHOICE

We’re all in the business of influencing, or attempting to get what we want. Yet we fail a very high percentage of the time; sellers lose 95% of their prospects; coaches lose 70% of follow on clients; implementations fail 97% of the time. It’s not our fault: we fail because our conventional skills are focused on

• content push
• premature goal setting
• the facilitator’s expectations
• listening for pre-determined details

and miss the unspoken metamessages, values, history, rules, and consensus issues that make up our CPs status quo. In other words, the biases that we use and enter our conversations with biases, and restricts outcomes. It’s possible to enable our CP to do their own change work from within (where real change takes place), without us biasing and limiting possibility.

So here’s the ‘pitch’: Using our conventional, habitual skill sets and unconscious listening, it’s pretty impossible to enter conversations without bias. To that end, I’ve developed a generic change management model that facilitates decision making and change at the core unconscious, systemic level and avoids bias and resistance. But it’s not a conventional model that uses ‘normal’ skills.

Coding my own Asperger’s systemizing brain over decades, I’ve developed a new form of listening, a new type of question, and coded the steps that happen unconsciously during all change to add to anyone who seeks to influence change in others. For 30 years, I’ve trained it to sales people, coaches, leaders, and negotiators globally. I’ve written 7 books on the subject and hundreds of articles sharondrewmorgen.com.

The model is not conventional (I have Asperger’s, remember?) but works as an addition to most other coaching, sales, leadership, etc. models to help others determine how to quickly and congruently buy, change, implement, etc. themselves in the area you are facilitating. In other words, you end up avoiding bias because you support them in using their own idiosyncratic system of rules and relationships to make their own changes rather than trying to get them to do what you want them to do.

I’ve named the model Buying Facilitation® but it’s a generic model that enables real change and quicker decisions. In sales there are no more delayed sales cycles or lost prospects; in change management, you can have successful implementations that get the right people, the right issues, involved immediately; coaching clients no long resist change. You can close 40% of all qualified prospects from first call, in half the time; you can help coaching clients discover their unconscious incongruences on the first call; you can implement large change events with no resistance.

The new model makes it possible to unhook from your personal biases and enter conversations in a way that leads/ discovers/ creates all that’s possible through win/win, servant leadership and congruent change. Imagine being able to enter every conversation and have it reach its most ethical, financial, and creative possibility. Imagine. All you have to do is first be willing to help others make their own change, and get rid of your biases.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the developer of the generic change management/decision facilitation model that teaches Others how to buy, change, collaborate, negotiate, and implement with no resistance, with full systemic buy in. She has trained 100,000 people worldwide, in global corporations (IBM, FEDEx, Morgan Stanley) and consulting firms (KPMG, Unisys). She adds this model to the front end of sales, change, decision analysis, leadership, and influencing, all discussed in her book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. Read more articles on: www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Read the first two chapters of her book What? on how to hear others without bias: www.didihearyou.com. She can be reached at 512 771 1117 or sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen February 12th, 2017

Posted In: Communication

The How of Heart

Collaboration. Empowerment. Win/Win. Integrity. Authenticity. We’re finally recognizing the efficacy of acting with humanitarian values! But how do we DO it? How do we know when, or if, to change our comfortable communication patterns? How do we modify any unconscious behaviors to make new habitual choices and recognize when what we’re doing no longer is sufficient?

WHY BEHAVIOR CHANGE ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH

DOing kindness, collaboration, and authenticity isn’t as easy as wishing it to happen. It takes a change in our behaviors; it means we have to change our habits and status quo. And that means we must do more than merely knowing we ‘should’. The problem is that our behaviors occur unconsciously and systemically, and won’t necessary accede to our desire to change. Here’s how it happens.

Our brains unconsciously choose our behaviors from our cache of lifelong subjective experience, values, and unconscious rules that forms our unique status quo. I call this our system – a well-oiled machine that keeps us ticking congruently every moment of the day. Our viewpoints, our styles, our behaviors are all pre-determined and habitual, and represent us consistently so we maintain our individual, unique systems (Systems Congruence) according to our own personal rules. I realize we all think we have unrestricted choice; we don’t. We follow our personal ‘company line’ in every action, every communication. We remain who we are in everything we do.

The problem arises when we wish to do anything different: our unconscious system will resist anything new because it is seen as a threat even if it’s something we’re nominally in agreement with. For any change to occur, our brains must first align the new with the old/habitual so we remain congruent. We know we should go to the gym more often, or eat healthy; we know we should allow our relatives to have disparate political viewpoints. But try as we might, we hard-pressed to permanently change our behaviors. This is the problem with conventional training and Self-Help books. We cannot change just because we seem to want to.

Why can’t we just DO something different? Because before we do, we must figure out a way to bring in the ‘new’ in a way that garners buy-in from the rest of our system so we can continue to be congruent. It’s a belief issue, not merely a behavior change problem. And our behaviors are merely the action, the outward manifestation, of our beliefs. The 400-pound man walking down the street will not heed an offer of a half-priced gym membership – not because he hasn’t looked in the mirror lately or because he’s ignoring his doctor’s warnings, but because his eating and lack of exercise are habitual and match the rules he’s already got in place: to make a permanent change, he’d have to ‘chunk up’ as they say in NLP, and go beyond the ‘What’ or the ‘Why’ to change his beliefs about who he is. He’d have to become a healthy person.

‘What’ to do is behavioral. ‘How’ is structural, systemic, and unconscious. Here’s an example of the difference: ZDNet has an article on transforming an organization on the principles of collaboration. They say it’s necessary to “Empower staff”: “To accomplish this goal it is important to train, support, and mentor staff to help them work more collaboratively. Staff must also practice their new collaboration skills back in the workplace so it becomes the new daily business and not just the latest management fad.”

Great. But HOW does one accomplish this? Everyone will interpret these words subjectively, according to their own beliefs about their skills. Obviously there can’t be organization-wide consistent adoption with just the What; information doesn’t cause change, and ‘What’ doesn’t address how to reconfigure our brain’s automatic choices. ‘How’ demands that we

• add automatic unconscious choices to our habitual behaviors to comply with our new goals;
• recognize the difference between what we think we’re doing and what we’re actually doing and notice there is a gap that prevents excellence;
• install the change we seek without offending what’s been working well;
• facilitate internal systemic buy-in to ensure our Status Quo is ready and able to change;
• override habitual behavior choices and replace them with the new as appropriate;
• maintain systems congruence.

It’s far more complicated than just understanding What to Do. It’s actually How to Be.

CHANGING BELIEFS CAUSES CHANGED BEHAVIORS

The problem with seeking to act with authenticity or empowerment, etc., is that we attempt to make behavioral changes without shifting the underlying system that holds our current behavioral choices in place. To enact any internal changes, to take on new habits or change behaviors, we must shift our core Identities and Beliefs, with new Behaviors the enactment of these shifts.

All of us have unique Identities; our Beliefs are the operating manuals; our Behaviors exhibit our Beliefs in action. Every day, in every way, we ACT who we ARE. I, for one, work out at the gym 9 hours a week. I hate it. But because I have determined that I AM a Healthy Person, I need my Behaviors to carry out my Identity accordingly: I eat healthy, exercise, and meditate. And on the days I would prefer to stay in bed, I ask myself if I’m a Healthy Person today and almost always, get my lazy self up and go to the gym.

This dependence on our Identities and Beliefs is foundational: we will do nothing – nothing – unless there is buy-in. When anything seeks to change us – when we receive training, or get told to ‘do’ something, or when coaches ‘suggest’ or sellers ‘recommend’ or leaders promote a new change – it shows up as a threat and will be resisted unless it’s accepted and adopted by our Identity and given a value set in our Beliefs. Once we ARE the change we seek, our new Behaviors will be natural and permanent.

To act with compassion, to have empathy, to lead with values, to design collaborative environments, we need a set of core Beliefs (I am a Kind Person; I Care About Collaboration With Colleagues) that get translated into new habitual choices; we need to inform our system to match the Doing to the new Being. We cannot congruently act the Doing if it’s incongruent with our Identity. It’s the most difficult aspect of change – creating consistent, habitual actions – because it’s unconscious, systemic, and resistant. It is possible, however, but not simple.

Working, speaking, acting with Heart is not behavioral. We must first Be the people with heart; Be kind, collaborative, authentic people. Organizations need to shift their corporate identities and manage behavioral adoption; we must become Servant Leaders and compassionate Leaders. We just need the Skills of How to accomplish this.

I’ve spent my life coding and designing models that create habitual, unconscious change. Although my work often shows up in the field of sales, it’s a generic model that is used by leaders, coaches, managers, doctors, and teachers, to lead Others (buyers, patients, clients, employees) through the necessary changes to shift their status quo congruently and embrace real change; it’s the ‘How’ of Excellence. After 35 years of teaching this material, I’m well aware of how difficult real change is. But if we begin by aspiring to Collaboration, Integrity, and Authenticity, we can become the change we seek.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker and the visionary behind the choice model Buying Facilitation® that enables unconscious change and gives sellers, leaders, coaches, change agents, the skills to facilitate choice, change and buy-in in those we serve. The model is used globally in such companies as DuPont, Kaiser, IBM, Bose, KPMG, P&G and California Closets.

Sharon Drew is a speaker, trainer, author, coach, and change agent. She is the author of the NYTImes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and 7 books on how to facilitate buying/buy-in decisions. Her innovative work on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard (see What? Did you really say what I think I heard?)offers choice to the listening process. Her blog (www.sharondrewmorgen.com) is consistently ranked in the top 10 of all sales and marketing blogs. Her articles regularly appear in HR.com, Personal Excellence, and Sales and Service Excellence. She can be reached at 512 771 1117; sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen February 6th, 2017

Posted In: Communication

Meetings: The Purpose, The Pain, The Possibility

As business folk, we hold meetings regularly. Yet often we don’t accomplish what we set out to achieve. Why?

The Purpose

Meetings are held to accomplish a specific, beneficial outcome requiring the attendance of the right people with the right agenda.

The Problem/Pain

Often we end up with miscommunication, wasted time, incomplete outcomes, misunderstanding, lack of ownership and ongoing personnel issues – sometimes an indication of internal power and faulty communications issues.

The Possibility

With greater success we can: stimulate thinking; achieve team building, innovation, and clear communication; and efficiently complete target issues. Here are some problem areas and solutions:

People. When outcomes aren’t being met effectively it’s a people- and management problem including: fall-out, sabotage, and resistance; long execution times; exclusion of peripheral people; restricted creativity and communication; exacerbated power and status issues. Are the most appropriate people (users, decision makers, influencers) invited? All who have good data or necessary questions?

• Rule: unless all – all – relevant people show up for the meeting, cancel it. It’s impossible to catch people up or have them collaborate, add creative thoughts, or discuss annoyances. Once it’s known that meetings aren’t held unless all are present, the frequency, responsibility, and motives shift.
• Rule: unless all – all – of the people who will touch the outcome from the meeting’s goals are in some way represented, the outcome will not reflect the needs of all causing fallout later, with resistance, sabotage or a diminished outcome.

Agenda. No hidden agendas! Recipients of potential outcomes must be allowed to add agenda items prior to the meeting.

• Rule: unless all – all – of the items of ultimate concern are on the agenda, the meeting will be restricted to meet the needs of a few with unknown consequence (resistance and sabotage).

Action. Too often, action items don’t get completed effectively. How do action items get assigned or followed up? What happens if stuff’s not done when agreed? How can additional meetings be avoided?

• Rule: put a specific, consensual, and supervised method in place to ensure action items get accomplished as promised.
• Rule: as meeting begins, get consensus on what must be accomplished for a successful outcome. This initial discussion may change agenda items or prioritize them, detect problems, assumptions, resistance before action items are assigned.

Discussion. How long do people speak? How do conversations progress? How do the proceedings get recorded? What is the format for discussions? How is bias avoided?

• Rule: record (audio) each meeting so everyone who attends can have it available later. Folks who didn’t attend are not privy to this audio. (See People above).
• Rule: design a time limit for speaking, and rules for topics, presentations, discussions, cross talk.
• Rule: include periods of silence for thought, notes, reflection.

Understanding. Does everyone take away the same interpretation of what happened? How do you know when there have been miscommunications or misunderstandings?

• Rule: unless everyone has the same perception of what happened for each topic, there is a tendency for biased interpretation that will influence a successful outcome.
• Rule: one person (on rotation) should take notes, and repeat the understanding of what was said to get agreement for each item before the next item is tackled. This is vital, as people listen with biased filters and make flawed assumptions of what’s been said/agreed.

Transparency. Agendas should be placed online, to be read, signed-off, and added to.

• Rule: whomever is coming to the meeting must know the full agenda.
• Rule: everyone responsible for an action item must be listed with time lines, names of those assisting, and outcomes.

Accomplishments. Are items accomplished in a suitable time frame? What happens when they aren’t?

• Rule: for each action item, participants must sign off on an agreeable execution. A list of the tasks, time frames, and people responsible must accompany each item, and each completed task must be checked off online so progress is accountable.
• Rule: a senior manager must be responsible for each agenda item. If items are not completed in a timely way, the manager must write a note on the online communication explaining the problem, the resolution, and new time frame.

Meetings can be an important activity for collaboration and creativity if they are managed properly and taken as a serious utilization of time and output. Ask yourself: Do you want to meet? Or get work accomplished collaboratively?

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the author most recently of What? Did you really say what I think I heard?, as well as self-learning tools and an on-line team learning program – designed to both assess listening impediments and encourage the appropriate skills to accurately hear what others convey, to avoid biases, misinterpretation, and misunderstanding.

Sharon Drew is also the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller ‘Selling with Integrity’ and 7 other books on how decisions get made, how change happens in systems, and how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a facilitation tool for sellers, coaches, and managers to help Others determine their best decisions and enable excellence. Her award winning blog sharondrewmorgen.com has 1500 articles that help sellers help buyers buy. Sharon Drew has recently developed 3 new programs for start ups.
She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com  512-771-1117

Sharon Drew Morgen January 10th, 2017

Posted In: Communication