Do you know precisely who in your funnel will buy? During your conversation it seemed like these folks needed your solution, but from your history you know that being in your funnel may not indicate who will buy.
Here are a few questions that will help you consider the baseline criteria that potential prospects must meet before deciding to buy something:
To make a purchase, all the stakeholders, or at least those who will touch the final solution, must buy-in to change. In fact, if the cost/risk of bringing in a new solution is higher than the risk of maintaining the current problem, they won’t buy anything and will maintain their status quo.
RISK A BETTER FACTOR THAN NEED
Since 1987 I’ve trained Buying Facilitation® to about 100,000 sales professionals globally, in all sectors and industries, and at solution price points from $3,000 to $50,000,000 – and I’ve never met a salesperson who knows precisely who will buy. And yet they should.
The sales model continues to use ‘need’ as a factor, falsely believing that if you find someone with a ‘need’ (according to answers to your biased questions), they’re a prospect. But you probably aren’t closing more than 5% so maybe that assumption is incorrect: ‘Risk management’ and the ‘cost of change’ are the issues that must be resolved by potential buyers for them to consider making a purchase. Until they understand these factors they can’t even know their needs.
I know that Dale Carnegie, Neil Rackham, David Sandler (who tried to buy me out in 1993 before he died), and Lori Richardson – the founding fathers and mother of our sales process – all promoted needs-based selling.
But I’m here to tell you that ‘need’ is NOT an indicator of purchasing. Do you need to lose 10 pounds? You’ve got a need to replace some of your foods, exercise more, stop drinking. Have you done that? Nope. What about your need to get organized? Need is not the determinant. And the folks you deem ‘prospects’ most likely aren’t real prospects since 95% of them don’t buy!
Who, then, IS a prospect?
WHO IS A PROSPECT?
Prospects are folks who have:
In other words, they agree there’s a problem they can’t resolve and accept the risks, the disruption, involved with a purchase. And until they’re ready to make a purchase they’re merely people trying to solve a problem, people who have no interest in your solution.
Think of your own life: if your car is dead when you need to get to work one morning, the first thing you do is call to get the car towed to your mechanic. It’s only if the mechanic says your car is irreparable, or the cost of a fix would be prohibitive, that you start researching new cars. Buying a car is the LAST step you’d take.
Unfortunately, the sales model, designed for a different era, does not offer the tools to facilitate Buy Side change. Indeed, the sales model ignores this entire – and ubiquitous – Pre-Sales change management process. Yet it’s where 80% of real prospects reside.
As sellers, we’re so focused on selling to need that we forget the costs of bringing in a new solution: How does a new solution affect daily business routines? Pay? How can buyers mitigate their learning or integration curve? Currently people do this on their own, very slowly.
Sadly for sellers, the time it takes to complete this is the length of the sales cycle. They must do this anyway, with us, or without us. Until now, they’ve done it without us. And this is our competitive edge, not to mention a revenue boost and time saver.
Sales is the second tool in a two-stage decision process, useful once people traverse their 13 steps of change (defined in my book Dirty Little Secrets) AND can’t resolve a problem on their own AND understand the risk/cost of the change AND the stakeholders buy-in to the change. Buying Facilitation® first, THEN sales.
I know sellers aren’t accustomed to thinking this way, believing that ‘indecision’ is causing a ‘stall’. But potential prospects are just taking the time they need to address their internal decision making.
It’s not an idiosyncratic idea, or industry trope: for any buying to occur, people must congruently address their internal change issues and risks to their environment. And by leaving this element out of our sales, we end up trying to find the low hanging fruit – those who have completed their process.
What if sellers had an additional tool kit to first facilitate the change, and then sell to those who are real prospects? Contact me to discuss Buying Facilitation® training for your team. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen November 6th, 2023
Posted In: Sales
How do we manage change in our organizations? Not very well, apparently. According to statistics, the success rate for many planned change implementations is low: 37 percent for Total Quality Management; 30 percent for Reengineering and Business Process Reengineering, and a whopping 3% for some software implementations. Regardless of the industry, situation, levels of people involved, or intended outcome, change seems carry a real possibility of failure:
Change initiatives can be far more successful if we include systems thinking in our change management models.
THE SYSTEMS ASPECT OF CHANGE
I believe change is a systems problem. But let me start at the beginning with my definitions of change and systems.
CHANGE: Change is a new set of choices that cause the existing components to exhibit altered Behaviors while still maintaining balance. In other words, no change will occur unless the original system reorients itself in a way that incorporates and maintains its foundational and accepted norms.
In other words, all change must include a way for the elements – the existing behaviors, roles, policies etc. – to buy-in to, and incorporate, new outputs while maintaining the rules and Beliefs of the foundational status quo.
SYSTEM: Any connected set of elements that agree to, and are held together by consensual rules and Beliefs that generate a unique set of Behaviors that exhibit a unique identity. Because change represents risk to the status quo, systems defend themselves by resisting when feeling threatened.
In order to facilitate congruent change, it’s necessary to get agreement from all who will touch the final solution. A good way to encourage this is to not only include everyone (including front line workers) in the problem definition and brainstorming of possible solutions, but to develop a path forward (There are specific, sequential steps in all change processes.) that is agreeable to all.
Buy-in and sequenced discovery ensures the core identity, Beliefs, and rules of the original system is maintained. When leaders define the problem and solution and then attempt to get agreement, they run the risk of insulting the core Beliefs that are the very foundation of everyone’s jobs.
Too often change is approached with an eye on altering activity and Behaviors without ensuring that the core system maintains balance, thereby putting the system at risk. When we attempt to push Behavior change before eliciting core Belief change, we
Herein lies the problem: until or unless the full complement of relevant elements (those that created and maintain the problem and will be affected by the new) agrees to change, the system will resist change regardless of the problem that needs fixing. The system is sacrosanct.
Here’s where change agents face problems: In general, outsiders cannot know what norms must be maintained. Change is an inside job. Congruent, resistance-free change must teach the system how to change itself. My new book How? explores this topic thoroughly.
ALL CHANGE MUST ADDRESS SYSTEMS
Most influencing professions (leadership, coaching, consulting, sales etc.) begin with a goal to be met, adopt an outside-in approach that uses influence, advice, ‘rational’ scientific ‘facts’, and use various types of manipulation to inspire change – while ignoring the fact that anything new, any push from outside the system, represents disruption.
We put the cart before the horse, attempting to change Behaviors and elicit buy in before the system is certain it won’t be compromised. Until the system knows it will remain in balance, whatever problem is being resolved will continue as is: it’s already built into the system:
Until all that happens the system will resist change (or buying, or learning, or eating healthy or or) regardless of the level of need or the efficacy of the solution. Indeed outside influencers actually cause resistance.
By we can actually lead Others through to their own change:
Note: the issues that must be addressed for change without resistance are the same regardless of the problem or number of people of people involved – a company resisting reorganization, a patient refusing meds, a user group resisting new software, a buyer who hasn’t figured out how to buy, or a group not taking direction from company leadership. As outsiders we too often push for our own results and actually cause the resistance that occurs.
It’s possible to use our positions as outside influencers eschew our bias and be real Servant Leaders and teach the system how to manage its own change.
CASE STUDY: SYSTEMS ALIGNMENT
Here is a case study that exhibits how to enable buy-in and change management by facilitating a potential buyer through her unique series of steps to change.
I was with a client in Scotland when he received a call from a long-standing prospect – a Learning and Development manager at a prodigious university with whom he’d been talking for 11 months – to say, “Thanks, but no thanks” for the product purchase. After three product trials that met with acclaim and excitement, an agreed-upon price, and a close relationship developed over the course of a year, what happened? The software was a perfect solution; they were not speaking to any other providers; and price didn’t seem to be a problem.
At my client’s request, I called the L&D manager. Here is the conversation:
SDM: Hi, Linda. Sharon-Drew here. Is this a good time to speak? Pete said you’d be waiting for my call around now.
LR: Yes, it’s fine. How can I help? I already told Pete that we wouldn’t be purchasing the software.
SDM: I heard. You must be so sad that you couldn’t purchase it at this time.
LR: I am! I LOVE the technology! It’s PERFECT for us. I’m so disappointed.
SDM: What stopped you from being able to purchase it?
LR: We have this new HR director with whom I share a leadership role. He is so contentious that few people are willing to deal with him. After meeting with him, I get migraines that leave me in bed. I’ve decided to limit my exposure to him, discussing only things that are emergencies. So I’ve put a stop to all communication with him just to keep me sane. He would have been my business partner on this purchase.
SDM: Sounds awful. I hear that because of the extreme personal issues you’ve experience from the relationship, you don’t have a way to get the necessary buy-in from this man to help your employees who might need additional tools to do their jobs better.
LR: Wow. You’re right. That’s exactly what I’ve done. Oh my. I’m going to have to figure that out because I’ve certainly got a responsibility to the employees.
SDM: What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to work through the personal issues and figure out how to be in some sort of a working relationship with the HR director for those times your employees need new tools?*
LR: Could you send me some of these great questions you’re asking me so I can figure it out, and maybe use them on him?
I sent her a half dozen *Facilitative Questions to facilitate a path to a collaborative partnership with the HR Director. Two weeks later, Linda called back to purchase the solution. What happened?
Linda was willing to do something different once she knew how to avoid personal risk.
Rule: Until or unless people grasp how a solution will match their underlying criteria/values, and until there is buy-in from the parts that will be effected from the change, no permanent change will happen regardless of the necessity of the change, the size of the need, the origination of the request, or the efficacy of the solution.
Too often change management initiatives have two major drawbacks: they assume that a ‘rational’, information/rules-based change request and early client engagement will be enough to inspire change; they forget that until the proposed change meets the foundational values and Beliefs of the culture, the status quo prevails.
Rule: Whether it’s sales, leadership, healthcare, coaching or change management, until or unless the folks within the system are willing to adapt to, and adopt, the requested change using their own rules and Beliefs, they will either take no action or resist to maintain the system.
Until the elements within the system understand the risks of the proposed change, they cannot agree to it. Too often, outsiders try to push change when it doesn’t match the unspoken rules and Beliefs.
Rule: Until the risks that a proposed change are known and agreeable, until it’s understood that the risk of the change is less than the risk of staying the same, no change will occur.
BUY-IN: A REAL WORLD EXAMPLE
Joseph, a coaching client of mine, was a CMO in a small company (around 150 employees) that had a problem: He wanted to implement a new customer-service initiative but had just joined the company and was fearful of making waves. He initially wanted to design the project, issue edicts, and fire those who didn’t comply with the initiative. After casually speaking with a few people about it, he got huge resistance.
He called me in when he realized he had to choose between enforcing the Behaviors and outcomes he had in mind, or creating the structure and teaching the employees how to design their own process. I helped him build a creative structure for change, starting with Joseph listing his baseline criteria and then leading the team through to decisions that would:
He called a meeting with the entire company – even groups that the change process wouldn’t necessarily touch – and told them that he was thinking about expanding the customer service operations. He asked everyone to take a few hours to discuss, think about, and brainstorm what it could look like if they had an unlimited budget (which they didn’t have, but it would eliminate the money piece from their brainstorming), and said he’d meet with them the next week to get their ideas.
He told them that this process was highly important, and he wanted it to be part of people’s daily discussions over the next week. He asked that each group have a spokesperson and historian to keep track of all ideas.
The next week, Joseph met with employees again and asked for their input. He captured the ideas by audio and put them up on an interactive website and told people to add their thoughts. He then sent them back in a link, asking folks to consider the ideas offered and generate even more.
At the next meeting, he asked workers to take all of the ideas now floating around and use them to brainstorm what the new initiative would look like, who might do what, what would have to change, and what the change would look like for those involved. He asked them to consider:
Eventually, employees got into teams and developed solid implementation plans. Those folks who had to change jobs or had their work significantly restructured in a way that might cause resistance joined a management team and became part of the solution. And throughout the process, I listened carefully to hear points of discontinuity so we could stop and go through their internal examination of their steps to change.
Did Joseph get everything he wanted? Well, yes and no. The new organization ended up far exceeding anything he had conceived. It had more creativity and leadership. It also cost more than he realized (time and money) to put everything in place. But it elicited buy-in from everyone: there was no resistance because everyone had bought in to the idea and made it their own. And over a short amount of time, the change paid for itself.
This is only one method of facilitating change and avoiding resistance. I’ve developed a Change Facilitation model, used often in sales as Buying Facilitation®, that uses a unique skill set to enable core change. I’ve trained this to Senior Partners at recognized consulting firms, farmers in Iowa, tech people in Hong Kong, coaches in Kansas. It’s a generic model that influencers can use to elicit real change. I’m happy to discuss it with you. (Sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com).
Before introducing any change initiative, give up the need to push the change, listen without bias, and enable Others to traverse their route to discovery:
Until now, we’ve assumed that resistance is a normal part of the change process. But we’ve effectively been pushing our own biased needs for change into a hidden system. We’ve forgotten that the change we are suggesting will encounter resistance if it doesn’t match the system of the original culture. It’s possible to get buy-in without resistance. Change really needn’t be hard.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen October 30th, 2023
Posted In: Communication
A few years ago, Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, was interviewed as he discussed their new Customer Focus initiative: prioritizing Customer Centricity over revenue by putting their customers first. He said something like, ‘The money will come. Let’s take care of the customer!’
Until now, I haven’t noticed many companies, including Bank of America, who’ve actually done the work of re-organizing around customers; to be Customer Centric means you must put rules, staff, tasks, websites and customer interfaces in place to, um, put People first.
DEFINITION CUSTOMER-CENTRIC
My long-held ideas and questions on what a true Customer Centric company would look like begins with an admonition: stop making it so hard on your customers. They purchased something from you. That automatically puts them in a relationship with you (And probably in a leadership position, since if customers don’t buy anything you’re not in business at all.). They paid the price you set and trusted your promises enough to believe they’d get what they paid for. If they have problems, questions or needs, their resolution and your kindness are a representation of your promise, must be a part of the relationship, and cannot be separated from the purchase.
You claim you want ‘relationship’ with customers, yet you create rules that disrespect, offend, ignore, insult, and frustrate them. Your customers have bought-into being on your team; don’t make it so hard on them. All that does is cause customers to complain to their 1000 closest friends, damage your reputation and give your competition the competitive edge. You forget that your customers are your competitive advantage.
New Book
‘Putting the customer at the center’ means having rules, procedures, hiring and training practices, and baseline values that use a People filter. It demands a customer lens through which to view every aspect of your company. It demands that your customer be the heart and soul of your company.
Corporate identity: Since behaviors and rules are translations – the daily actions – of your foundational identity and values, a Customer Centric company has the commensurate People values and ethics at its core. I always ask myself, after being hung up on, or ignored, or disrespected by a contact with a company whose solution I’ve purchased, what the foundational beliefs of that company must be: That I’ve made a purchase from the wrong provider – a company that doesn’t care about me. That my problems and needs are secondary to profit. That I’m not worthy of care once I’ve made my purchase.
It must begin with an identity of ethics and integrity. How you accomplish this will take the work of change – assembling and assessing the broken elements, getting buy-in for change from each of the broken parts, addressing disruption and confusing implementations. There are lots of decisions to be made that will ripple through the company.
Stakeholder alignment: All stakeholders, all company employees, all managers and Board Directors, must share, exemplify, and communicate the exact same beliefs and values. Your marketing and customer service must portray your kindness and respect; you’ll hire people with values that match. There used to be a legend that Nordstrom had a one line customer service rule: “Use your best judgment.” Imagine how hiring practices, management, and training shift if such rule is in place.
With a People orientation, everything and everyone has one goal: to keep a customer happy. Then, a lower level rep would feel free to make this sort of adjustment on her own:
So sorry this is happening. Please accept my apologies on behalf of X company. What would make this right for you? And I’ll be your Team Leader to make sure your problem gets handled, including speak to whoever I need to speak with on my side and get back to you with a resolution.
not this rule-based, disrespecting flip-off that we all suffer time and time again:
This is not something I can take care of. I’m transferring you (and transferring you, and transferring you, and…).
With a Customer Centric filter, each rep, each internal stakeholder, each person who touches a customer, owns the problem and resolution. This will change your rules.
One more thought here: your employees are your first customers. Don’t ever forget that.
Proximity to customer: With ‘Customer’ in the center, organization is based on the proximity to the customer, giving the most importance (and training) to help desk and sales groups who directly touch customers, and Senior Management, the Board and CEO at the far end with the job of coming up with the ideas and maintaining the foundation of values and vision.
ORGANIZING A CUSTOMER CENTRIC COMPANY FROM INSIDE OUT
In order of customer proximity, here are some thoughts on the organization of a truly Customer Centric company. Again, each customer touch point must have a criteria of putting the focus on People first, with Task, Rules and Profit Margin second.
First touch point:
I’ve been told by customer service reps that they’re only allotted a short time frame – minutes – to handle a problem and then get on to the next customer on the cue. One rep called me back on his own cell phone because he didn’t want to ‘get in trouble’ (his words) for taking too long with a customer. Seriously?! Of course this means you’d need to train your team differently. And yes, you’ll need to hire more reps to get them off ‘the clock’ and into ‘relationship.’ Keep thinking: People vs Task. Which will it be? Here are two conversations I had with different AT&T reps, 5 minutes apart, when I called to change my billing address. I bet you can tell which one has a People filter:
Rep #1: You don’t have your password? Sorry. I can’t help you. I know you only want to change your address. But call back when you find your password….. (And then she hung up on me).
Rep #2: You don’t have your password? Hm… Let’s use your social security number to start with. Then we can change your address, and then I’ll send you a link to reset your password so you have it for the next time you call.
Same company; but one rep was Task/Rules-bound with no criteria re taking care of me and just wanted to get me off the phone quickly; one was Customer Centric and got creative so I was cared for. Both had the same customer screen in front of them when I called but one had a People hat on. And btw, who the hell was supervising that first Rep? Why was that ok? Do companies even KNOW what their representatives are saying to customers?
I urge you to consider having whoever answers the phone ‘own’ the customer’s problem. This way customers don’t get hung up on, and don’t get shuffled between departments to explain their issue over and over again – only to be disconnected after 45 minutes and on maybe the 6th person!
The initial rep must take the customer’s phone number, give them a case number, and a call-back number that connects directly TO THE PERSON THEY SPOKE WITH so there is a continued process. How much will that cost? Compare that with the amount of business and reputation you’re losing now from NOT doing it, from complaints against your company showing up on social media, from customers cancelling service because they can’t take it anymore.
Website: Your site is often the first (and sometimes only) connection with a customer and it can go a long way to making sure customers feel cared for. Here is where a lot of companies fail. Almost all sites are strictly Rules, Company, Profit, Product driven. There’s no way to talk to anyone, and lots of hoops to go through before it’s even a vague possibility.
Few sites have their phone number available. What’s the deal with that? How much business are you losing because a customer or prospect can’t ask a simple question, or get directed to their best resource? What is the cost? I buy only from companies whose sites offer a phone number so I know I’ll have fewer hoops to go through if there’s a problem.
And what’s the deal with ONLY having the sign-in boxes in the Contact area? You’re soliciting their data for your marketing lists and reducing their ability to make contact only according to YOUR terms? You want something precious from them and you’re not willing to offer something in return? What percentage of real buyers won’t fill out those things? I have never, ever filled out one of those damn things. I want my vendors to take care of ME, not me take care of THEM, especially when it might involve me receiving tons of unsolicited email.
And while I’m on a rant, how ‘bout including a real time Customer Tweet roll bar on your home page? Invite customers to Tweet their thoughts, questions, and feelings to make it a living dialogue. Too scary you say? Well, if you focus on a customer, and all your rules are similarly focused, you should hear nothing but good things, no?
And where there’s a negative comment, it will exhibit how quickly and accurately you handle the situation. After all, these folks are going onto social media to complain about you anyway; you might as well hear it straight and deal with it immediately and show other customers your fallible, but trustworthy.
This is your first line of contact. You can use your site as a good representation of your brand’s promise. You’re blowing it.
One more idea. With a People focus, online communication tools like Live Chat/Bot must abandon their Rules/Task focus and use vocabulary that is helpful, soothes disgruntled people, and finds ways to take responsibility for supportive dialogue. It’s beyond infuriating.
I found myself recently having a fight with a Live Chat person (Well, 3 actually, because I kept asking to speak with a supervisor.) for 2 hours (with horrible NameCheap) and finally SCREAMED in frustration at this invisible ‘person’ who kept explaining ‘rules’ that didn’t correspond to my questions; I actually wrote I HATE YOU YOU’RE A TERRIBLE COMPANY AND YOU CHEAT PEOPLE AND I’M GOING TO TELL EVERYONE NOT TO EVER USE YOU YOU’RE CHEATS. I became a tantrumy teenager as I felt more and more disrespected, misunderstood, and thwarted by invisible rules that didn’t seem to match my issue. Turns out not ONE of these folks heard me or resolved my problem. Don’t do this to your customers. They deserve better.
Second touch point:
Customers don’t need you for the details of your solutions until they’ve decided they cannot fix the problem themselves, what sort of a solution everyone agrees to, and how to manage any change that will occur when they do buy. [A purchase is a change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue; a prospect is someone who CAN buy, not someone who SHOULD.]
Your site might be one of their steps toward deciding on whether or not to buy anything. Help them. It will not only differentiate you, but you’ll have vast amounts of data to bring back to other groups in your organization to help them be more Customer Centric, including R&D, customer service, manufacturing, billing.
All areas of your company will shift according to the voices of real customers and their needs and problems – so long as the focus is on serving, not selling. Remember: People filter, not Task. Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? Two different activities.
Third touch point:
Have managers sit alongside of reps and coach them for hours during a week, to check their skills real time. You could even design a Customer Service Check List to hand out to managers for their phone coaching hours. Obviously you’ll have to employ new hiring practices to hire People oriented people rather than Task oriented people. Like the AT&T story above, we all know to keep calling back until we get a ‘good’ rep. How much does that cost you?
Question for you: how will you know that the front-line staff are congruently representing your values? What is it costing you to have reps who hang up on paying customers? Or transfer transfer transfer to the point of madness because no one owns the problem? Why are managers acceding to this practice? What is it costing you?
Fourth touch point:
Add a People/Customer filter to your marketing: send out content marketing that helps them make sense of those decisions they need to make as they figure out if they even want to make a purchase. It’s possible to create staged marketing to address each of the 13 stages of a buying decision. Because people aren’t buyers until a purchase is their only viable option to solve a problem, you’re missing entering earlier in their decision cycle and only focusing on those relative few who have already decided to buy (at the end of the buyer’s journey). Make it easier for those who CAN/WILL buy.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Here are some questions you need to ask yourself moving forward:
What is the soul of your company? How can you operationalize that? Hint: Make sure you’re not a ‘financial company that serves customers’, and be a ‘customer centric company that offers banking services’. People first; it changes everything.
What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to make People your priority? How would that change your staffing? Sales? Marketing? Leadership? Training? Management? What is the cost? What is the cost if you don’t?
How would you know it would be worthwhile to use a People filter over a Task/Rules filter? Would you need to have a pilot group with specific tracking capability re customer retention, or surveys, or increased revenue, etc.? [Call me. I’ll help you set it up.] A new Mission Statement?
Where do Integrity and Ethics factor in to your customer touch points? Or is that not part of your equation? Do you have defined values? Do the rules you’re currently using match your company values? Why not? And don’t tell me it’s time or money – rescale if you need to. Your success depends on this. Amazon.com has an impressive focus on the customer. Takes me one minute to get a problem resolved, including them giving me my refund BEFORE they even get the product back – and often they tell me just to throw it away, or keep the extra item. They make it easy for me and actually less time consuming for them. I always feel trusted and valued, and I’ll never go to any of their competitors.
How do your current rules restrict Customer Centricity? Evaluate your current rules. What new rules would need to be in place to be Customer Centric – and what does that mean for how you run your company?
How would Customer Centricity change your hiring practices? Training? HR? Management?
How will you know in advance that it will be worth the time/effort to tackle this? Because if you don’t, your competition will. Remember: your customer is your competitive advantage.
What skills training would need to occur? Listening, certainly.
What would need to change within your company culture? How people speak to each other? The symbols of success, expectations, agreements?
How are you currently communicating your values to customers? Take a look at your site, your rules, your reps. What you see IS a representation of your corporate values.
What promises are you making to customers who buy your solution? How does this differ from what a customer thinks you promised them?
How would your technology need to change to embrace a Customer Centric mentality? In 1996 (before Google), I designed a new search tool named Hobbes based on helping a site visitors get to the exact page they needed using 3 simple questions that highlight their choice criteria. I got an offer from the VC Heidi Roisen for funding if I could find one other funding source. I could not. And to this day, no one is using my search tool; seems tech folks never understood why sorting with human criteria is necessary.
I hope I’ve inspired you to begin thinking about this issue and started a conversation. I believe that becoming Customer Centric will be your competitive edge moving forward. But that also means change. What is it worth to you?
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen October 23rd, 2023
Posted In: Change Management
We all know the importance of listening; of connecting with others by deeply hearing them share thoughts, ideas, and feelings; by being present and authentic. We work hard at listening without judgment, carefully, with our full attention. But are we hearing others without bias? I contend we’re not. WHAT IS LISTENING? From the work I’ve done unpacking the routes of incoming messages in brains, I believe that listening is far more than hearing words and understanding another’s shared thoughts and feelings. Listening is actually a brain thing that has little do to with meaning. It’s about puffs of air. There are several problems with us accurately hearing what someone says, regardless of our intent to show up as empathetic listeners. Generally speaking, our brains determine what we hear. And they weren’t designed to be objective. There are two primary reasons:
This second point is confounding and paves the way for misunderstanding: our ears hear what they’re set up to hear, not necessarily what a speaker intends to share. Just as we perceive color when light receptors in our eyes send messages to our brain to translate the incoming light waves (the world has no color), meaning is a translation of sound vibrations that have traversed a very specific brain pathway after we hear them. As such, I define listening as our brain’s progression of making meaning from incoming sound vibrations.
HOW BRAINS LISTEN I didn’t start off with that definition. Like most people, I had thought that if I gave my undivided attention and listened ‘without judgment’, I’d be able to hear what a Speaker intended. But I was wrong. When writing my book WHAT? on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I was quite dismayed to learn that what a Speaker says and what a Listener hears are often two different things. It’s not for want of trying; Listeners work hard at empathetic listening, of caring about the Speaker and the conversation, of responding collaboratively and caringly. But the way our brains are organized make it difficult to hear others without bias. Seems everything we perceive (all incoming sensory) is translated (and restricted) by the circuits already set up in our brains. If you’ve ever heard a conversation and had a wholly different takeaway than others in the room, or understood something differently from the intent of the Speaker, it’s because listening isn’t based on words or intended meaning; it’s because our brains have a purely mechanistic approach to translating signals. Here’s what our brains do:
Input (vibrations from words, thoughts, sound, feeling, sight)
CUE (turns incoming vibrations into electro-chemical signals)
CEN (Central Executive Network finds existing ‘similar-enough’ circuits to interpret into meaning)
Output (meaning)
Here’s a simplified version of what happens when someone speaks:
– the sound of their words enter our ears as mere vibrations (puffs of air with no meaning),
– get turned into electro-chemical signals (also without meaning) that
– get sent to existing circuits
– that have a ‘close-enough’ match (but may not match fully)
– previously used for other translations,
– and then discards the overage
– whatever doesn’t match
– causing us to ‘hear’ the messages translated through circuits we already have on file!
It’s mechanical. The worst part is that when our brain discards the ‘overage’ signals, it doesn’t tell us! So if you say “ABC” and the closest circuit match in my brain is “ABL” my brain discards D, E, F, G, etc. and fails to tell me what it threw away! That’s why we believe what we ‘think’ we’ve heard is accurate. Our brain actually tells us that our biased rendition of what it thinks it heard is what was said, regardless of how near or far that interpretation is from the truth. In other words, we ‘hear’ only what our brains translate based on our historic circuits – or, our biased, subjective experience. With the best will in the world, with the best empathetic listening, by being as non-judgmental as we know how to be, as careful to show up with undivided attention, we can only hear what our brain allows us to hear. Being unwittingly restricted by our past, just about everything we hear is naturally biased. IT’S POSSIBLE TO GET IT ‘RIGHTER’ The problem is our automatic, mechanistic brain. Since we can’t easily change the process itself (I’ve been developing brain change models for decades; it’s possible to add new circuits.), it’s possible to interfere with the process. I’ve come up with two ways to listen with more accuracy:
To make sure I understood what you said accurately, I’m going to tell you what I think you said. Can you please tell me what I misunderstood or missed? I don’t mind getting it wrong, but I want to make sure we’re on the same page. Listening is a fundamental communication tool. It enables us to connect, collaborate, care, and relate with everyone. By going beyond Active Listening, by adding Brain Listening to empathetic listening, we can now make sure what we hear is actually what was intended.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen October 16th, 2023
Posted In: Communication, Listening
When my son George was born in 1972 I was determined to give him attributes I found compelling in men: kindness, respect and an awareness of others, creativity, a willingness to listen and to collaborate. To accomplish this, I kept TV out of the house, ensured he had creative toys like blocks, Legos, and art supplies like paints and pipe cleaners. I brought him to theater and galleries as was age appropriate. I began teaching him colors at the Picasso exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum when he was 18 months old in a backpack. I began a storytelling routine so I could instill in him the skills to listen. Yup. I was raising a creative, kind leader.
By the time he was 2, George was making guns with his pipe cleaners, drawing pictures of rocket ships and army tanks. Where did he gain an affinity to guns? How did he know about army tanks? No idea. But it wasn’t from me.
Eventually he turned into a professional jock (Ok. I’m a proud. He’s a silver-medal Olympian.). But he’s not creative, certainly listens with very biased and judgmental ears, and only kind under a gruff exterior. How did I not raise the person I tried to raise? Sure, it was ‘nature’. But where did the ‘nurture’ go?
DO MEN WANT THE SKILLS TO CONNECT?
I have come to believe that not only do most men not have the communication and connection skills women have but are content without them as per this funny story. Friends recently did construction on their house. When they showed me around, one of the new rooms had 5 comfy leather chairs lined up side by side facing a huge TV screen. It was obviously a Man Cave. I started to laugh.
Peter: What’s so funny?
SD: This is obviously your man cave.
Peter: Why is it so obvious?
SD: Women would never line chairs up like that. They’d be in a semi-circle.
Peter: Why would you do that?
SD: So we could engage with each other, communicate, see and hear each other.
Peter: But why would I want to do that?
Right. Why.
THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP
I was the second woman on a public BOD in the UK in 1986. I quickly learned to keep quiet during our Board meetings: men would over-talk me when I spoke; they’d seize and spout my ideas to broad approval with no attribution; fail to invite me to meetings (“Oops! Sorry. My bad.”) even though my group was bringing in 142% of the net profit of the company. I was once so furious tears of rage seeped out of one eye. “Awwww. Let’s give Sharon-Drew a moment to compose herself,” said the Chairman. “I have no need to compose myself. I’m just enraged at all of you.” Funny, but the next meeting one of the other Board members cried. As women have done for centuries, I had given them permission.
Times have changed a bit. But why, why, has it been such a struggle? And why, why are women in leadership still uncommon? 35% of leadership positions go to women, even though 60% of the workforce are women; 20% of companies have at least one woman on their Board, and there are 53 women CEOs – 10% – in the Fortune 500.
There are lots of reasons offered as to why the numbers are so low: women have babies and aren’t represented in the workplace; women aren’t accepted into the Boys Club and don’t have the mentors to provide them a leg-up; men don’t respect women and won’t listen to them; women don’t play by the rules. Obviously these are all silly. And yet.
Much has been written about the differences between men’s and women’s leadership styles. And yes, it’s been proven that working for a woman leader offers more success – staff are happier, there’s less turnover, more profit is generated, teams work better with a more creative output. For sure more women are being hired in leadership roles. But it’s not enough and it’s not representational.
WOMEN HAVE GREAT SKILLS
With so many excuses as to why women aren’t promoted to leadership positions, maybe it’s time to explain precisely why women make great leaders.
I will never understand the full set of reasons given why women are kept out of leadership positions. But I do know that by leaving us out, our companies suffer, lose market share and profit and have diminished creativity and kindness.
It seems that in today’s workplace, change is afoot. I look forward to there being an equal number of men and women leaders someday. And just maybe we can all raise our sons in an environment where kindness doesn’t have to be hidden, and equality and respect is the norm.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen October 9th, 2023
Posted In: News
Note: Sharon Drew now has available a 5-session How of Change™ program for folks interested in brain-based, permanent behavior change. Watch the one-hour video introduction.
Why does it seem so hard to change a habit or a behavior? Why do we drag our feet when buying a replacement appliance or car? Why do our teams go through disruption when going through a merger? Why do we resist changing our diets or adding exercise to our day when we know it’s good for us?
The oft-repeated myth claims people hate change, that change is hard. But that’s not true. People like the results of change; they just fear the process, the disruption and disorientation that change seems to cause. But the problem isn’t the change; it’s the way we’re approaching it.
The very skills we use to instigate change cause the resistance, struggle, failure to change, and conflict that occur when we initiate doing anything outside of our habituated norm. With a different skill set we can not only avoid resistance altogether, but change in a way that’s pain free, creative and expansive. In fact, change can be a pleasure.
In this article I’ll briefly discuss the topics necessary to consider painless change, and link to five 30-minute podcasts I taped a while ago with Nathan Ives of Strategy Driven Magazine. Since I recorded these podcasts, I’ve since developed a How of Change program and written a new book (How? Generating new neural pathways for learning, behavior change, and decision making) that actually teach how to isolate the exact elements in the brain to consciously generate new neural pathways to stimulate easy change. As always, I’m here to discuss.
WHAT IS CHANGE?
Change means doing/thinking something different than our status quo – our internal system that has been accepted, habituated, standardized, and normalized through time – potentially replacing it with something unknown, untried, and therefore risky.
And therein lie the problem: because our change methods don’t take systems into account, anything we do to effect change potentially causes a destabilizing effect and puts our system at risk. This fact alone causes disruption, pain and confusion. We’re trying to push an as-yet unaccepted element into a fully/long-functioning stable system that hasn’t agreed to alter itself, and it’s defending itself.
To do anything different, we need approval and a route forward from our unconscious system; to change congruently, we must consciously facilitate our normalized, unconscious internal structure to design new and acceptable rules for any additions.
Once the ‘new’ is acceptable, seen to be nonthreatening, recognized as having the same rules, norms, values as the status quo, it will be easily adopted. Note: regardless of the efficacy of the new, or the problems inherent in the status quo, change is not acceptable until the status quo, the system, the group of norms and beliefs that have been good-enough, recognizes a way to normalize itself with the new included.
#1 What is Change? and Why is Change so Hard?
WE IGNORE THE SYSTEM: HOW BIAS AND INFORMATION PUSH CAUSE RESISTANCE
Historically, we have approached change through information sharing, traditional problem-solving methods, personal discipline and behavior modification, and strong leadership, assuming by pushing new information – new activities, new ideas, new rationale, requests for different behaviors – into the status quo it will be sufficient. But it’s not. We’re ignoring the system, causing it to resist to maintain itself.
Why are systems so important? Systems are our glue. Our lives are run by systems – families, teams, companies, relationships. Each of us individually is a system. Systems are made up of rules and norms that everything/everyone buys in to and that maintain the beliefs and values, history and experience, that make each system unique and against which everything is judged against.
And each system holds tightly to its uniqueness as the organizing force behind the activities, goals, and output of our behaviors. Change any of the elements and we change the system; try to push something new into the system, and it will defend itself. We learned in 6th grade that systems seek homeostasis (balance), making it unlikely we can pull one thing out of a system and shove something else back in without the system resisting.
Currently, our attempts at change (sellers, coaches, negotiators, or diets, exercise programs, etc.) are little more than pushing a new agenda in from the outside and assuming compliance will follow because the new is ‘better’ or ‘rational’. But because the new most likely doesn’t match the unique, internal norms already in residence, we get implementation problems in teams, closing delays in sales, resistance to changing eating and exercise habits, modification problems in healthcare and coaching. Indeed, all implementations, all buying decisions, all negotiations, all new behavior generation, are change management problems.
It’s possible to introduce change in a way that does not cause resistance – from the inside out, by teaching the system how to reorganize along different lines, in accordance with its own rules and values.
For lasting change, it’s necessary to enlist buy-in from the system. Any reasoning or validation for needed change will be resisted because the system fears disruption. Hear how systems are the organizing principle around change – and what to do about it.
#2 What are Systems and How Do They Influence Change
WHAT IS RESISTANCE?
The universally held concept is that resistance is ubiquitous, that any change, any new idea, will engender resistance. University programs teach it how to manage resistance; Harvard professors such as Chris Argyris and Howard Gardner have made their reputations and written books on it; consultants make their livings managing it. Yet there is absolutely no reason for resistance: we actually create the resistance we get, by the very models we use to implement change.
The underlying problem is, again, systems. As per homeostasis, a system will fight to continue functioning as it has always functioned, regardless of how impractical or non-efficient it is or how compelling the new change might be. And by attempting change without an agreement from the system, without designing any implementation of the new around the inherent beliefs, values, and norms of the status quo, we’re causing imbalance.
Systems just are. They wake up every day maintaining the same elements, behaviors, beliefs, they had yesterday, and the day before. They don’t notice anything as a problem – the problems are built in and, well, part of the givens. When anything new attempts to enter a system and the system has not reorganized itself to maintain systems congruence, it is threatened (Indeed, we are threatening the status quo!) and will defend itself by resisting. Hence, we always define and create our own resistance.
It’s possible to avoid resistance by beginning a change process by first facilitating the system to re-think, re-organize, re-consider its rules, relationships, and expectations, and garner buy-in from all of the elements that will touch the final solution, while matching the introduction of the new accordingly. Believe it or not, it’s not difficult. But we do need a new skill set to accomplish this.
#3 If Decisions Are Always Rational, Why Are Changes Resisting?
WHY BUY-IN IS NECESSARY AND HOW TO ACHIEVE IT
As sellers, change agents, coaches, doctors, parents, and managers, we seek to motivate change. Whether it involves a purchase, a new idea, a different set of behaviors, or a team project, all successful change requires
#4 Why is Buy-in Necessary and How to Achieve It
HOW TO AVOID RESISTANCE, DISRUPTION, AND FAILURE
Until now, we have approached change by starting with a specific goal and implementation plan and seeking buy-in to move forward successfully. While we take meticulous steps to bring aboard the right people, have numerous meetings to discuss and manage any change or disruption possibilities, our efforts are basically top-down and outside-in and end up causing resistance and disruption.
Starting from the inside begins with an explicit goal that everyone agrees to, but leaving the specifics – the Hows – up to the people working with the new initiative, an inside-out, bottom-up/top-down collaboration. While the result may not end up exactly like imagined, it will certainly meet the objectives sought, and include far more creativity and buy-in, promote leadership, continue through time, and avoid resistance and disruption – and potential failure.
#5 A Radical Approach to Change Management, Real Leadership
Change need not be difficult if we approach it as a systems problem. I’ve developed models for sales, leadership, coaching, and healthcare that facilitate systemic, congruent, values-based change. I’m happy to help you think this through or implement it. To learn more about systemic models for decision making, change, and sales, go to http://sharondrewmorgen.com/ or contact Sharon Drew at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com
Here’s a link if you wish to have copies of the entire series Making Change Work.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen October 2nd, 2023
Posted In: News
Do you know how much of what you hear is accurate? Why you can’t maintain your weight loss, or why you overlook a good choice and make a ‘bad’ decision? Do you know why you can’t change a bad habit even though you really (really really) try?
Perceived wisdom says we hear others accurately, that we’re undisciplined dieters, bad decision makers, and unmotivated to change. But none of that is true. And it’s not our fault.
We’re at the mercy of our unconscious brains. They determine what and how we see, hear, notice, feel, behave and think. Electrochemical signals zip around our 100 trillion synapses causing our conscious and unconscious activities, making our choices for us. It’s all automatic and mechanical. And meaningless.
Until now, science has not found a direct route to the unconscious to affect permanent behavior change. They say it’s a black box. It was. Until now.
HOW? makes it possible to get into the brain circuitry for conscious choice. It provides the precise skill sets – the how – to:
Beyond conventional Behavior Modification and disciplined habit-change processes, beyond decision weighting and learning theories, HOW? includes innovative thinking on
Using detailed explanations, fun exercises and examples, HOW? provides tools for personal and professional use, to generate new answers and permanent skills for conscious choice. It also includes the specific steps to Sharon-Drew’s signature Facilitative Questions, as well as the Buying Facilitation® and How of Change™ models.
Now, finally, you can connect directly with your brain to lose weight permanently, listen without bias, and have conscious choice.
Bio: As an original thinker, author Sharon-Drew Morgen has spent her life developing mind–>brain choice and decision making models, tested over 40 years in corporations with 100,000 people in sales (Buying Facilitation®), coaching (Change Facilitation), leadership, and folks seeking habit change (The How of Change™) that unpack the mind–>brain route to intentionally reprogram neural circuitry for choice and change. She has written several books, including: WHAT? Did you really say what I think I heard?, the steps involved in change and decision making (Dirty Little Secrets), and one New York Times Business Bestseller, Selling with Integrity. Sharon-Drew consults, trains, speaks, and coaches. She currently lives on a floating home in Portland OR.
Sharon Drew Morgen September 18th, 2023
Posted In: News
If you are a therapist or coach, manager or consultant, you’ve been schooled to be a guide, a mentor, to help people find solutions they couldn’t find on their own.
During a recent conversation with a coach who prides himself on Always Being Right! (Clients who don’t heed him are told to go elsewhere.) and wondering who would choose him as their coach, I began thinking about how Helpers go about helping, and why clients often ignore their suggestions.
I believe there’s an ‘accepted practice’ problem here: Helping professionals use questions and ‘active listening’ to ‘understand’ the identified problem so they can then ‘help’ them find solutions. But – and I know this is an unusual thing to say – conventional questions are so biased by the goals of the Helper that they may not uncover accurate data, causing Helpers to sometimes offer unhelpful answers.
To add insult to injury, the way our brains ‘listen’ is biased by our history, regardless of what’s been said. In other words, through no fault of our own, neither client or Helper hear each other accurately! But none of it is purposeful: It’s our brain’s fault.
BEYOND THE BRAIN
So many of us – healthcare providers, sellers, coaches, leaders – truly want to help Others achieve their best outcomes. In this article, I’ll provide a much-simplified explanation of how brains cause our choices, explain where conventional skills fall short, and introduce you to new skills that can facilitate permanent change without resistance.
I’ll begin with the ‘big picture’ and explain how our brains cause us to do what we do, based on my decades developing systemic brain change models.
Simply, our brain is an enormous database that captures and organizes the data from our lives, stores it in circuits, and uses our mental models and history as the foundation from which to act.
Sharon-Drew’s new book coming out on 9/16/2023
Each of us operates from historic, unconscious, and unique neural configurations, stored as memory in 86 billion brain neurons that hold our history, our ideas, our values and from which our decisions and behaviors arise. Obviously, we each think and act uniquely. Obviously, no one else has access to our brain circuitry; no one else has our life story or history; no one else can ‘get in there’.
Technically, change occurs when brain components get reconfigured or new ones get formed. Behavior change is a brain issue.
HOW BRAINS STORE INFORMATION
I’ve spent decades unpacking how brains are organized and have developed several facilitation models that enable real choice (See How?), models that make it possible for Helpers to enable clients locate the neural circuits that initiated their problem and, by triggering and generating new synapses, reconfigure them.
And herein lie the problem Helpers face now: standard questions and usual listening practices steer the Other to where the Helper, using their own unconscious assumptions and curiosity thinks the answers should be and possibly miss where actual answers reside.
Once I realized this I began developing questioning and listening models that make it possible to get directly into the neural circuits and use brain change as their foundation. I also discarded my role as a Helper and became a Decision Facilitator, to facilitate Others to their own circuits easily develop new behaviors with no resistance.
WHAT IS CHANGE? NO, REALLY?
Change is systemic, not as simple as merely doing something different. Since behaviors are outputs from instructions sent by existing circuits, new behaviors need new neural circuits to send out new instructions for new outputs. Too often, Helpers merely try to change behaviors without changing where in the brain the new instructions will come from.
You see, any change request represents a difference, a threat to the existing system and as such, will cause resistance unless it’s been accepted first. This is the problem with noted change management models – they merely attempt behavior change.
It’s like trying to get a backward moving robot to move forward by explaining, questioning, and showing videos; the robot must be reprogrammed. Without taking this into account, by trying to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior without changing the neural circuits, people will resist, or not maintain, the change.
QUESTIONS AND LISTENING
Here are the reasons people have difficulty finding internal answers and making decisions.
Brains: The time it takes to figure out all the criteria needed to make a decision is the time it takes to act on it. No, they’re not dragging their feet; they’re trying to change congruently.
See, the brain’s 86 billion neurons are stored and labeled in ways that may be difficult to consciously access. In fact, words or ideas even enter brains as meaningless sound vibrations (Neuroscience actually calls words ‘puffs of air.’) which ultimately get turned into the signals that then get translated into meaning.
Let me explain the brain stuff that goes on. Hang in with me as it explains why we mishear and misunderstand. To begin with, our brain doesn’t accept spoken words accurately, as intended. It takes the sound vibrations, turns them into signals, and then finds existing ‘similar enough’ (historic, biased) circuits to translate the signals into meaning – a very inexact process.
To make the process fast (It takes five one hundredths of a second for the entire process.) our brain chooses the quickest route to translation circuits, almost always an oft-used superhighway that may only have a tangential connection to the original meaning and intent. In other words: all incoming words get translated without any regard to accuracy!
Most of us aren’t aware that our thoughts, realizations, understandings, are merely versions of what our brains have already translated for us.
Unfortunately, questions meant to ‘gather data’, are restricted by the Helper’s assumptions. Sometimes Others uncover the exact data we need in order to help them. But sometimes our questions direct the client’s brain to an unhelpful answer, and something more valuable remains unretrieved.
To help Others find precisely where the necessary data is stored, Helpers must have NO assumptions, NO biases, and NO belief that we have anyone’s answers. All we need is to send Others to the right circuits where their answers are stored. And for this, conventional skills don’t work. If you want to better understand exactly what goes on, read my new book How?
Listening: Given we all have a ‘brain circuit translation’ problem making it near impossible for anyone to listen without bias regardless of how well they ‘listen’.
To avoid biases and misinterpretations, to help Others discover where their answers are stored, Helpers must listen differently and don’t assume they ‘understand’ what’s been said. I actually developed a process called Listening for Systems, which bypasses our assumptions and hears what’s intended.
If you’d like to learn more I wrote a book on the subject: What? Did you really say what I think I heard?.
Questions: This one is the most uncomfortable for Helpers. Conventional questions are formulated to elicit data as per the needs, intent, languaging, curiosity of the Asker.
To this end, I spent 10 years inventing a new form of question (Facilitative Question) that foregoes data gathering per se and instead leads Others to the brain circuits and memory channels to precisely where the appropriate data is stored. If you go to my site I explain how I invented them and provide descriptions and articles.
By posing unbiased, systemic questions that lead brains to appropriate circuits, by listening without assumptions, by trusting everyone has their own answers, we can truly serve Others beyond any natural biases we might have.
The new job of Helpers is to begin with the assumption that clients may actually have perfectly good answers stored in some place where their brain isn’t looking.
HELPERS AREN’T HELPING
Unfortunately, these skills are not taught in coaching schools or MBA programs which continue to teach to ‘be aware’, be ‘open minded’, take a ‘different perspective’, do ‘active listening’, ask ‘probing’ questions to ‘give the Helper the information’ they need to ‘help’. But as you now know, neither standard questions or conventional listening will always collect accurate information.
When Helpers try to have answers for Others, our track record is spotty: clients use some of our suggestions and ignore others because they may not have gotten to the core (and unconscious) factors that caused the problem to begin with.
And because our advice ultimately brings Others up against their own inabilities, they push the Helper away regardless of the length or success of the relationship. Inadvertently, because no other way has been developed to professionally help Others, we infantilize our clients.
I know that most coaches, leaders, managers, and Helpers truly want to serve Others. Please consider shifting your goal and learn new tools. I’m happy to help. I’ve developed new skills for Helpers (coaches, sellers, managers, healthcare providers, therapists) to enable folks to discover and create their own answers while reducing the power imbalance and bias, as well as learning tools to teach you how to listen without bias and pose Facilitative Questions. Please contact me in case you’re interested in learning how to do this, and we can all Help as true Servant Leaders. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen September 11th, 2023
Posted In: News
Decades ago I had an idea that questions could be vehicles to facilitate change in addition to eliciting answers. Convention went against me: the accepted use of questions (information gathering devices, biased by the Asker’s need to know) is built into our culture. But overlooked is their inability to extract good data; overlooked is their ability to facilitate congruent change.
WHAT IS A QUESTION?
Questions are biased by the expectations, assumptions, goals, unconscious beliefs and subjective experience of both the Responder and the Asker and limit responses accordingly. In other words, questions can’t extract ‘good’ data. They’re certainly not designed to lead Responders through to real change or accurate revelations. (What? Did you really say what I think I heard? offers a broad discussion of bias.) Here are the most prevalent ways we limit our Communication Partner’s responses:
Need to Know Askers pose questions to pull conscious data from the Responder because of their own ‘need to know’, data collection, or curiosity. An example (Note: all following italicized questions are posed as a mythical hairdresser seeking business) might be: Why do you wear your hair like that?
These questions risk overlooking more relevant, accurate, and criteria-based answers that are stored beyond the parameters of the question posed – often in the unconscious.
Pull Data Askers pose questions to pull a range of implicating data considered useful to ‘make a case’ in a ploy to obtain their desired results (i.e. sales, leadership, marcom, coaching). Don’t you think it might be time to get a haircut?
These questions run a high risk of missing the full range of, or accurate, responses. Certainly they offer no route to enabling choice, decisions, or collaboration/buy-in. They encourage resistance, partial/missed answers, and lies.
Manipulate agreement/response Questions that direct the Responder to find a specific set of responses to fit the needs and expectations of the Asker. Can you think of a time you’ve felt ‘cool’ when you’ve had short hair? Or Have you ever thought of having your hair look like Kanye/Ozzy/Justin? Or What would it feel like to have hair like Kanye/Ozzy/Justin? Wouldn’t you say your hairstyle makes you look X?
These questions restrict possibility, cause resistance, create distrust, and encourage lying.
Doubt Directive These questions, sometimes called ‘leading questions’ are designed to cause Responders to doubt their own effectiveness, in order to create an opening for the Asker. Do you think your hairstyle works for you?
These narrow the range of possible responses, often creating some form of resistance or defensive lies; they certainly cause defensiveness and distrust.
Conventional questions restrict responses to the Asker’s parameters, regardless of their intent or the influencer’s level of professionalism and knowledge. Potentially important, accurate data – not to mention the real possibility of facilitating change – is left on the table and instead promote lost business, failure, distrust, bad data collection, and delayed success.
Decision Scientists end up gathering incomplete data that creates implementation issues; leaders and coaches push clients toward the change they perceive is needed and often miss the real change needed and possible. The fields of sales and coaching are particularly egregious. The cost of bias and restriction is unimaginable.
Here’s an especially unfortunate example of a well-respected research company that delayed the discovery of important findings due to the biases informing their research questions. I got a call from one of the founders of Challenger Sales to discuss my Buying Facilitation® model. Their research had ‘recently’ discovered that sales are lost/delayed/hampered due to the buyer’s behind-the-scenes change issues that aren’t purchase-driven and sales doesn’t address – and yay for me for figuring this out 35 years ago.
Interesting. They figured this out now? Even David Sandler called me in 1992 before he died to tell me he appreciated how far out of the box I went to find the resolution to the sales problem. The data was always there. I uncovered this in 1983. But the CEB missed it because their research surveys posed biased questions that elicited data matching their expectations.
Sharon-Drew’s new book coming out 9/16/2023
WHAT IS AN ANSWER?
Used to elicit or push data, the very formulation of conventional questions restricts answers. If I ask ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ you cannot reply ‘I went to the gym yesterday.’ Every answer is restricted by the biases within the question. I’m always disappointed when I hear sellers say “Buyers are liars” or coaches say “They didn’t really want to change.” Or therapists or managers or leaders say “They’re resisting”. Askers cause the answers they get.
So why does it matter if we’re biasing our questions? It matters because we are missing accurate results; it matters because our questions instill resistance; it matters because we’re missing opportunities to serve and support change.
When sellers ask leading or ‘open’ questions that seek answers they want to hear, or coaches ask influencing questions that try to uncover a specific answer, or scientists ask questions according to their own presumptions, we’re coaxing our Communication Partner in a direction that is often biased.
Imagine if we could reconfigure questions to elicit accurate data for researchers or marcom folks; or enable buyers to take quick action from ads, cold calls or large purchases; or help coaching clients change behaviors congruently, permanently, and quickly; or encourage buy-in during software implementations. I’m suggesting questions can facilitate real change.
WHAT IS CHANGE?
Our brain stores data rather haphazardly in our brain, often in Long Term memory, making it difficult to find what we need when we need it, and making resistance prevalent when it seems our Status Quo is being threatened.
But over the last decades, I have mapped the sequence of systemic change. Following this route, I’ve designed a way to use questions as directional devices to pull relevant data in the proper sequence so we can lead Responders through their own internal, congruent, change process and avoid resistance.
Not only does this broaden the range of successful results, but it enables quicker decisions and buy-in – not to mentiontruly offer a Servant Leader, win/win communication. Let’s look at what’s keeping us wedded to our Status Quo and how questions can enable change.
All of us are a ‘system’ of subjectivity collected during our lifetime: unique rules, values, habits, history, goals, experience, etc. that operates consensually to create and maintain our Status Quo; it resides in our unconscious and defines our Status Quo. Without it, we wouldn’t have criteria for any choices, or actions, or habits whatsoever. Our system is hard wired to keep us who we are (Systems Congruence).
To learn something new, to do something different or learn a new behavior, to buy something, to take vitamins or get a divorce or use new software or be willing to forgive a friend, the Status Quo must buy in to change from within – an inside job. Information pulled or pushed – regardless of the intent, or relationship, or efficacy – will be resisted.
For congruent change to occur, appropriate elements within our Status Quo must agree with, and have prepared for, a possibly disruptive addition (idea, product, etc.). (See my new book HOW?) But since the process is internal, idiosyncratic, and unconscious, our biased questions cause the system to defend itself and we succeed only with those folks whose unconscious biases and beliefs mirror our own.
To manage congruent change, align the Status Quo, and enable the steps to achieve buy-in, I’ve developed Facilitative Questions that work comfortably with conventional questions and lead Responders to
It’s possible to help folks make internal changes and find their own brand of excellence.
Facilitative Questions (FQs) use a new skill set – listening for systems – that is built upon systems thinking. Even on a cold call or in content marketing, sellers can enable buyers down their route to change and buy-in; coaches can lead clients through their own unique change without resistance; leaders can get buy-in immediately; change implementations won’t get resistance; advertisers and marketers can create action.
Using specific words, in a very specific sequence, it’s possible to pose questions that are free of bias, need or manipulation and guide congruent change.
Facilitative Question Not information gathering, pull, or manipulative, FQs are guiding/directional tools, like a GPS system. They lead Responders congruently, without any bias, from where they’re at to Excellence. How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle?
This question is a guiding mechanism to efficiently enable a route through the Responder’s largely unconscious path to congruent change.
Here’s the big idea: using questions directed to help Others efficiently recognize their own route to Excellence, and change as appropriate vs. using questions to seek answers that benefit the Asker. This shift in focus alone creates an automatic trust.
An example is a question we designed for Wachovia to increase sales and appointments. Instead of seeking prospects for an appointment to pitch new products (i.e. using appointments as a sales tool), we designed questions to immediately facilitate discovery of need, taking into account most small businesses already have a banking relationship.
After trialing a few different FQs, our opening question became: How would you know when it’s time to consider adding new banking partners, for those times your current bank can’t give you what you need? This question shifted the response to 100 prospecting calls from 10 appointments and 2 closes over 11 months, to 37 invites to meet from the prospect, and 29 closes over 3 months. Facilitative Questions helped the right prospects engage immediately.
When used with coaching clients, buyers, negotiation partners, advertisements, or even teenagers, these questions create action within the Responder, causing them to recognize internal incongruences and deficiencies, and be guided through their own options. (Because these questions aren’t natural to us, I’ve designed a tool and program to teach the ‘How’ of formulating them.).
The responses to FQs are quite different from conventional questions. So when answering How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle?’ the Responder is directed by word use, word placement, and an understanding of systems, to think of time, history, people, ego, comparisons, family.
Instead of pulling data, you’re directing to, guiding through, and opening the appropriate change ‘boxes’ within the Responder’s unconscious Status Quo. It’s possible Responders will ultimately get to their answers without Facilitative Questions, but using them, it’s possible to help Responders organize their change criteria very quickly accurately. Using Facilitative Questions, we must
FQs enable congruent, systemic, change. I recognize this is not the conventional use of questions, but we have a choice: we can either facilitate a Responder’s path down their own unique route and travel with them as Change Facilitators – ready with our ideas, solutions, directions as they discover a need we can support – or use conventional, biased questions that limit possibility.
For change to occur, people must go through these change steps anyway; we’re just making it more efficient for them as we connect through our desire to truly Serve. We can assist, or wait to find those who have already completed the journey. They must do it anyway: it might as well be with us.
I welcome opportunities to put Facilitative Questions into the world. Formulating them requires a new skill set that avoids any bias (Listening for Systems, for example). But they add an extra dimension to helping us all serve each other.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen September 4th, 2023
Posted In: Communication, Listening
What if most of our viewpoints, interpretations and assumptions are so unconsciously biased that we unwittingly restrict our ability to accurately understand, or act on, incoming information? And what’s accuracy anyway?
Our brains are the culprit, as they set the stage for the way we make sense of the world. With historic and automatic circuits that instruct our thoughts and actions, we don’t question what our brains tell us.
Responding from our historic personal norms and beliefs, we instinctively assume our perceptions, actions, interpretations, are based on reality. But we invent our own reality. As David Eagleman says in The Brain,
“Each of us has our own narrative and we have no reason not to believe it. Our brains are built on electrochemical signals that we interpret as our lives and experience… there’s no single version of reality. Each brain carries its own truth via billions of signals triggering chemical pulses and trillions of connections between neurons.” [pg 73-74]
Our brains actually restrict us to hearing, understanding, and learning what’s comfortable and acceptable, causing deep seated biases. Our subjectivity maintains us. At all costs.
Sharon-Drew’s new book coming out 9/16/2023
SUBJECTIVITY VS OBJECTIVITY
We live our lives subjectively, based on our personal, unique, and idiosyncratic beliefs, assumptions, and norms. We think we’re making good choices when we choose or consider one thing vs another, when we easily reject something because it makes no sense or annoys us. Or worse, when it’s ‘obvious’ to us that one thing should be valued differently than another.
We like to think we’re able to be objective. But we’re not.
The Wikipedia definition of objectivity is “… the elimination of subjective perspectives and … purely based on hard facts.” And “a lack of bias, judgment, or prejudice.” But is this possible? What are ‘hard facts’ when our brain rejects them as faulty? When our brains determine what ‘reality’ is? I suggest that objectivity is only slightly less biased than subjectivity.
Indeed, it’s pretty impossible to experience or interpret most anything without bias. We act, make decisions and choices, communicate with others, raise children and have friends, all from a small range of favored, habitual mental models that we’ve spent a lifetime culling and assume are accurate.
Indeed, our worlds are very tightly controlled by our unconscious and habituated biases, making it quite difficult to objectively hear or understand new idea-based incoming information that is different. It takes quite a bit of work to act beyond our perceptions.
WHY CAN’T WE BE OBJECTIVE?
Each of us interpret incoming messages uniquely. Have you ever spoken with folks who believe that ‘9/11’, or the moon landing, was a hoax or conspiracy? What about people who smoke, and interpret the health data uniquely, believing that because their grandfather smoked until he died at 95 that it’s not going to happen to them? Objectivity is not, well, objective. Here’s what happens: Sometimes
We each live in worlds of our own making. We choose friends and neighborhoods according to our beliefs and how our ears interpret ‘facts’, choose professions according to our likes and predispositions, raise our kids with the same norms and beliefs that we hold. In other words, we’ve created rather stable – certainly comfortable – worlds for ourselves that we fight to maintain regardless of how our biases may distort.
When communicating with others, ‘objective facts’ might get lost in subjectivity. In business we connect with different viewpoints and attempt to convince other’s of our ‘rightness’, and either they don’t believe us or they feel we’ve made them ‘wrong’. Our children learn stuff in school that we might find objectionable regardless of its veracity, or we might disagree with teachers who have different interpretations of our child’s behavior. What about the ‘fake news’ claims these days?
What, exactly is true? I contend the difference between ‘fake news’ and factual reporting is in our perceptions. Either can be objective or subjective given our underlying biases, and separate from the ‘reality’ of facts.
And of course, most scientific facts we deem ‘objective truth’ may just be opinions. Folks like Curie, Einstein, Hawking, and Tesla were considered to be cranks because their ideas flew in the face of objective science that turned out to be nothing more than decades and centuries of perceived wisdom/opinions.
The problem shows up in every aspect of our lives. Sometimes there’s no way to separate out objective fact from subjective belief, regardless of the veracity.
I remember when my teenage son came home with blue hair one day. Thinking of what his teachers would say (This was in 1985!) or his friend’s parents, I wanted to scream. Instead I requested that next time he wanted to do something like that to please discuss it with me first, and then told him it looked great (It actually was a terrific color!). But his father went nuts when he came to pick him up, screaming at both of us (“What kind of a mother lets her son dye his hair blue!!!”), and taking him directly to the barber to shave his head. For me, it was merely hair. Objective reality.
CASE STUDY IN OBJECTIVITY VS SUBJECTIVITY
I once visited a friend in the hospital where I began a light conversations with the elderly orderly helping her sit up and eat. During our chat, the orderly asked me if I could mentor him. Um… Well, I was busy. Please! he begged. Not knowing what I could add to his life and having a bias that folks who asked me to mentor them just wanted me to give them money, I reluctantly, doubtfully, said ok.
He emailed me and invited me to dinner. Um… well, ok. I’d donate one night. He lived in a tiny room in a senior living center, on the ‘wrong’ side of the tracks. It was very clean and neat, and he had gone out of his way to prepare the best healthy dinner he knew how to offer. Shrimp cocktail. Nice salad. Hamburger and beans. Ice cream. During dinner he played some lovely music. Just lovely. I was transfixed. Who is that playing, I asked.
“It’s me. I wrote that piece, and I’m playing all the instruments. I have several CDs of music I’ve composed and self-produced. Can you help me find someone who might want to hear it and do something with it? I’ve never met anyone who could help me.” I helped him find folks who helped him professionally record at least two of his compositions.
By any ‘objective’ measure, using my own subjective biases and ignoring the objective truth that we’re all equal and everyone is capable of having talent, I didn’t initially consider that someone ‘like that’ (old, black, poor, uneducated) had the enormous talent this man possessed, regardless of my advocacy of non-bias and gender/race equality.
Unwittingly, we seriously restrict our worlds the way we process incoming data. We live subjective lives that restrict us. And as a result, we end up having arguments, misunderstandings, failed initiatives; we end up having a smaller pool of ideas to think with and don’t see a need for further research or checking; we make faulty assumptions about people and ideas that could bring benefits to our lives. I personally believe it’s necessary for us to remove as many restrictions as possible to our pool of knowledge and beliefs.
HOW TO COMPENSATE
To recognize bias and have a new choice, we must first recognize the necessity of noticing when something we believe may not be true, regardless of how strong our conviction otherwise. It’s quite difficult to do using the same biases that caused us to unconsciously bias in the first place.
Here’s a tip to help expand your normalized perception and notice a much broader range of givens, or ‘reality,’ to view an expanded array of options from a Witness or Coach or Observer position on the ceiling:
Since the difference between subjectivity and objectivity is one of perception, and in general our brains make our determinations unconsciously, we must go to the place in our brains that cause us to perceive, and make it conscious. Only then can we have any objective choice. And next time we think we’re being objective, maybe rethink the situation to consider whether new choices are needed.
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen August 28th, 2023
Posted In: Communication, Listening, Sales