Communication – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

Those of us in the helping professions often provide services to clients (patients, coachees, etc.) when they’re stuck during life or business decisions, need different perspectives for decision making or to stop harmful habits. We ‘actively listen’ and pose questions to assess their situation, understand their goals, and guide them to what seems like their own answers.

But what if our exchanges contain biases that prevent them from finding their best solutions? Or unwittingly lead clients to flawed conclusions or personal risk? What if

we can’t understand each other due to the way brains process incoming words?
our questions are biased by our own assumptions and can’t get accurate information?
we’re seeking information from a client’s mind and their change capability is in their brain?
it’s not possible to change behaviors by trying to change behaviors?
we don’t need to gather information or assess a client’s needs/problems to lead them to their own best answers?

What if there’s a more direct, unbiased, and precise route to helping clients discover and accomplish their ideal solution that avoids these pitfalls?

What if clients (and patients, and buyers, etc.) only need help finding where their answers/solutions are already stored in their unconscious and your intervention could lead them to it?

For those of you who like new ideas and don’t mind a bit of complexity, who work with consulting, OD, and counseling models that use verbal interactions as part of their process, I’ve written a Thought Paper to introduce a new way to think about change and discovery. Note: for Helpers working with non-conscious states, body-centered therapy, or mindfulness models that don’t use questions, I suggest the information on how brains listen, decide, and enable change will be helpful. If you’re interested in a more detailed discussion, email me at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

OVERVIEW

We each make sense of the world and our lives through our unique mental models (beliefs, values, norms, assumptions, history) which form the basis of our decisions and life choices, restricting what we do, notice, think and hear.

As Helpers we’re especially affected: due to the way brains

store and process our history and values-based criteria,
form the choices that govern our lives,
determine what we think was said,

there’s a high probability our natural biases and unconscious subjectivity will unwittingly get in the way of us accurately hearing each other, or noticing the client’s historic triggers to be considered.

WHAT THIS PAPER WILL DO

For times it’s important to hear and be heard without bias, there’s a direct route to change and decision making: lead clients to the unconscious choices where their current problems have been triggered and generate new ones for new outcomes. In other words, instead of understanding or assessing their problems, change your ultimate focus and merely lead them to their unconscious triggers for change.

At this point, it might be important for you to know who I am as my concepts don’t fit standard models. I’m an original thinker and have Asperger’s Syndrome. Like most folks ‘on the Spectrum’, I naturally think in systems – interconnected elements in the Status Quo that have agreed to the same rules, and work hard to maintain balance (Systems Congruence).

My lifelong topic has been discovering the elements involved in getting to the unconscious for conscious choice, and developing tools and models (Learning Facilitation, Buying Facilitation®, Change Facilitation, Facilitative Questions™) that enable permanent change at the source. I’ve successfully taught these globally to 100,000 sellers, leaders, coaches, and healthcare practitioners for over 40 years, and written a book on generating new circuits for behavior change a decision making (HOW?).

In this Paper, I’ll explain why current helping models (coaching, consulting, leadership, healthcare, etc.) often fail to produce permanent change and introduce an approach that’s more direct and long lasting. For those of you interested in learning any of the models, please contact me as it’s impossible to delve deeply into specifics in this paper. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Let me start by defining what I mean by change.

CHANGE

Most of us have our own definitions of change. Mine comes from my work with systems and neural connections:

Change represents a modification to a unique system that holds existing choices in place.
Any proposed change must maintain the core identity and beliefs of the larger system (the Status Quo) to maintain balance and Systems Congruence.
Be it behavior-based or interior feelings, change emerges from the unconscious, physiologic, chemical, automatic, and meaningless neural activity that trigger our choices into conscious actions.

Currently, Helping professionals are taught to enable behavior change but fail to include and get buy-in from the client’s often-unconscious system that produced the offending behaviors to begin with. Note:

until or unless all the elements that created and maintained the presenting problem, and those that will be affected by the new choices, agree to do something different, the system will feel at risk and will resist any change regardless of the problem.

Permanent, congruent change requires:

identification, assessment and agreement of the problem by the systemic, underlying elements that hold the Status Quo in place;
buy-in from the system – the new must match the core beliefs, values, and norms (Systems Congruence) that represent the Status Quo;
risk management – the system must understand, and consider solutions, for any potential risks before any changes occur.

Indeed, all change is systemic and must

Maintain Functional Stability. Any change initiative must maintain the foundational balance of the original system. Change is not so simple as replacing one behavior with another.
Achieve Buy-In. For a system to be willing to change successfully and avoid resistance, a system must
understand and the risk of change;
recognize exactly what fallout will occur when anything is added;
know how each affected element must modify to maintain the integrity of the system.
Maintain Underlying Rules and Beliefs. Great data or solutions, important needs or dangerous consequences do not influence change if they run counter to the system’s beliefs and rules, overt or covert.
Avoid Risk. Risk can only be recognized by all who touch the status quo/system. Then it must be determined the magnitude of the risk. If it is seen to be less than any proposed change, it will be accepted. If the risk is greater than the proposed change, it will be resisted.

Here’s a rule I consider sacrosanct:

regardless of how extensive the problem or necessary the change, permanent change cannot occur if the system believes it’s at risk and may face major disruption.

There’s a way to get directly to the neural circuits that triggered the offending choices to enable permanent change. But first, let me explain why our current models are problematic.

YOU CAN’T CHANGE A BEHAVIOR BY TRYING TO CHANGE A BEHAVIOR

Unfortunately, today’s standard practices for change management as well as standard Behavior Modification practices ignore the brain change element and focus on attempting to modify the habits, the behaviors, decisions, actions etc. AFTER they’ve been generated. But by then it’s too late.

So what’s a behavior? Behaviors are merely outputs, expressions of our values and beliefs that announce to others who we are and what we stand for. They reside in neural circuits in our brain that trigger them when instructed to do so.

Every behavior is a symbol of who we are – a representation of our personal system. Every behavior is a belief in action, a statement of our values and beliefs, and a representation of our internal unconscious system.

Any proposed alteration to a behavior (or habit, or choice, or…) potentially represents a risk to the current system. When we attempt to make a change without modifying the neural circuits that triggered the problem, our lazy, habituated brain resists, preferring the originating pathways that maintain Systems Congruence. After all, it’s been working ‘fine’ for some time and habituated into daily norms and routines.

Sadly, behaviors can’t simply change themselves because we want to make a change. After all, our personal system must remain balanced (Systems Congruence). Therefore, permanent change must incorporate the underlying system of beliefs, norms, history, culture, and assumptions that form of the foundation of the offending actions.

When we merely try to change offending behaviors and overlook changing the origination points that triggered them we unwittingly cause imbalance, which results in resistance and non-compliance (the downside of current change models) as the system attempts to return to its normalized routines.

Indeed, it’s not possible to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior. This is the reason behavior-change models often fail to cause permanent change: permanent change requires reprogramming a new input message into the client’s unconscious. Once the new input (new message, new instructions) is accepted, it will automatically trigger a new output. Trying to change a behavior once it’s already an output is akin to putting toothpaste back in the tube.

BRAINS – WHERE SYSTEMIC, CONGRUENT ANSWERS COME FROM

Since I refer so often to neural circuits, let me simplistically explain the role the brain plays.

All our actions, what we see, hear, think and do, what we’re curious about and what we notice, our history and our values, originate in the unconscious as part of what makes us each unique: meaningless, automatic electrochemical signals brain, making connections between our 100 trillion neural circuits that each hold unique values-based criteria (beliefs, norms, history, etc.) that form and trigger our choices.

When the brain receives an input (some form of instruction sent via an electrochemical signal) it collates the appropriate circuits and triggers a new output/behavior.

According to Bing,

Electrochemical signals are the fundamental basis of how neural circuits are informed, formed, and operated. Incoming content (triggers) flows through the nervous system via a continuous loop of electrical impulses moving within individual neurons and chemical messages passing between them.

It goes on to explain how values-based decision making is stored in our circuits in the form of dopamine:

Dopamine is a key chemical messenger that operates within specific neural circuits in the brain. It acts as a neurotransmitter, allowing nerve cells to communicate and shape activity across large-scale pathways linked to movement, reward, and thought. Dopamine tags cues in the environment with importance (criteria), driving attention and action toward things the brain deems worth pursuing.

Current helping models don’t purposely reach the neural circuits (in the unconscious brain) where a client’s change criteria originate, necessary to generate new choices.

HOW BRAIN’S LISTEN

One of the unspoken problems Helpers face is ensuring all communication partners accurately understand each other. We can’t. And it’s our brain’s fault.

Since birth, we’ve naturally listened for content, for details, for the story line. This is useful when discussing facts or making plans or sharing life stories that come from the conscious brain. Also, we naturally assume when we speak or pose a question we’ll be understood accurately and, in turn, understand our partner’s responses. Neither are probable.

Due to the way the ‘listening’ process takes place in the brain, we can’t hear each other very well. While we can ‘hear’ words (called ‘puffs of air’ by neuroscientists) accurately, our brain doesn’t translate them according to a speaker’s intent. In other words, it’s likely neither Helper or client can accurately translate what the other has said.

Due to the several distortion and deletion processes involved when the Listener’s brain ultimately translates incoming words, we end up accurately understanding less than 35% of a Speaker’s intended message. I’ve written a book explaining this if you’re interested:

Sample

To make it worse, incoming/spoken words are ultimately translated by existing (historic) neural circuits, making it probable we end up ‘hearing’ some rendition of what we’ve heard before, potentially causing flawed understanding and misguided assessments.

In other words, both Helper and client unwittingly mishear, mistranslate or misunderstand the Other regardless of intent or skill level. With potentially flawed understanding, Helpers and client make assumptions based on what we think we heard. An easy mind hack for this is to say “What did you hear me say?” or “I’d like to tell you what I think I heard to make sure I’ve understood you correctly” during important meetings.

This completes Part 1 of A DIRECT ROUTE TO FACILITATING PERMANENT CHANGE. Part 2 will be published next week and includes: Questions, Perceptual Positions, Mind Hacks, Model in Action.

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If you’re enjoying these Monday Articles, please subscribe to make sure you get them delivered to your inbox on Monday morning. I use no cookies, they’re free, and I never use the database to market. As an original thinker I offer these to share out-of-the-box ideas as part of my life’s work. And I’m always eager to hear your thoughts and start a conversation: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. Enjoy.

_______________________

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 September 21st, 2026

Posted In: Change Management, Communication

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AI has become integrated into our lives. I’m sure we will continue discussing whether it’s constructive or destructive for quite some time. Certainly it’s been a boon to science and medicine. But does AI squelch creativity? Plagiarize? Important discussions to have. Surely we’ve all benefited.

But to date, AI doesn’t enable a user’s brain to discover and apply their core values for personal decision making.

HOW VALUES-BASED DECISIONS ARE MADE

When people ask AI for advice, they’re largely provided with amalgams of historic information. But this doesn’t enable the neurochemical, very complex, values-based and largely unconscious decision process that would guide users to the:

- core values-criteria in their brain that
- form the unique, unconscious, and subjective outputs (actions, decisions, behaviors) that
- emerge when a mixture of the brain’s limbic system, prefrontal cortex, and dopamine
- cull choice criteria from the decision maker’s personal decision making that includes

o history

o mental models

o personal beliefs

o time comparators

o private assumptions

o norms/culture

- and represent the neural activities
- beyond external sources.

In other words, there’s a whole lotta neural processing that must occur before a personal change decision can be reached. For personal decisions such as

“Should I put my mom into a memory care center now?”

“My girlfriend lives near me so maybe I should choose a college near home, but the college I want to attend is across the country. How do I decide where to go to school?”

information doesn’t help, making generative AI a poor choice to facilitate a user’s subjective decision making.

In this paper I’ll simplistically lay out the explanations and elements needed for someone to make a values-based decision – a complex range of circuits and signals, history and processing, that reside within the unconscious and not dependent on information. This will explain the route AI would need to follow to develop a decision facilitation capability. This will explain the route AI would need to follow to develop a decision facilitation capability.

INFORMATION DOESN’T GENERATE PERSONAL DECISIONS

Simplistically, AI uses question prompts to extract information from LLMs. But information is needed in personal decision making only after the criterial portion of the decision is reached.

Don’t get me wrong. Information is vital once values-based criteria are in place. But providing information (from the conscious mind) before the neural work (in the unconscious brain) has been completed causes resistance – the reason sales pitches, leadership requests, coaching interactions face so much opposition: unless the Other’s beliefs, norms, history, assumptions are included, there’s a high probability the Other will resist change.

Decision making is largely unconscious and uniquely personal – a complex, systemic process that involves much neural organization. Until

the system (the full set of foundational elements – beliefs and mental models – that created and maintain the status quo) understands and agrees to the risk of doing/thinking anything different;
the system understands the full set of foundational elements that have mitigated the status quo and must be shifted;
the system understands its risk of change and knows how to manage it with minimal disruption;
the new is congruent with the core beliefs and values of the system;

no values-based decision will be made regardless of the need or the efficacy of the information. And the time it takes the decision maker to figure all this out is the length of time it takes to “come to a decision”.

To make a personal decision, people must align the presenting facts against their values-based criteria, biases, assumptions, emotions, reasoning approach, future needs, hopes and fears, then understand and manage risks, all before choosing the actions to take. Here’s my book on how to do this for coaching and change management situations.

Sample

WHAT IS A DECISION?

To choose a new action, to ensure any decision is congruent with the system and won’t cause disruption, personal and neural elements at the core of all values-based decisions must be managed:

Mind/brain: AI largely focuses on manipulating information for use in the conscious mind. But the brain (the unconscious) is where decision criteria are stored.

Misinterpreting incoming content: Due to the way brains ‘listen’, people only accurately understand 10-35% of the information offered. I wrote a book on this.

Managing the status quo: We are each comprised of several systems administered by our mechanical brain processes. New decisions threaten the status quo and must be approved by the system so it doesn’t feel at risk.

Repositioning/reevaluating belief hierarchy: Making a final decision involves a process of weighting values, history, assumptions, and cultural norms and comparing them against future gains/losses…a process unique to each individual and largely unconscious.

Comparators: All change/values-based decisions require comparing historic activity and the decisions that led to the status quo.

Once these have been addressed, the risk of change is deemed manageable, and the system feels congruent with the change, users are ready to make a decision and information is needed to provide details.

AI doesn’t address this yet.

A NEW FORM OF QUESTION

AI requires prompts to trigger answers. But the questions currently used prompt historic, amalgamated information and most likely don’t get to the unconscious elements in a user’s brain necessary for values-based decision making.

Although generative AI is set up to manipulate LLMs, it certainly could have a function that sequences and simulates neural processing and actually make values-based decisions quick and efficient for coaching, personal decision-making, customer support. AL Would need a rules-based capability that would lead users through their own neural circuitry.

In 1988, I read Roger Schank’s book Tell Me a Story that said the only way to find an answer that was tucked away in the brain was to pose a good question. But he never explained what a ‘good question’ was.

I had already recognized that questions are biased and assumptive and couldn’t understand how it could discover bias-free answers. I became intrigued by the possibility of generating a question that

had no biases, assumptions, or principles that would prejudice the answers;
would get to the specific, unconscious, neural circuits where values-based answers are stored.

As an original thinker, I then spent 10 years figuring out the elements involved to ensure personal decisions could be easily made:

the need for Responders to shift perceptual positions to minimize unconscious bias;
the sequence necessary for the Responder to discover their existing values, patterns, specific reference points;
the route to the specific neural circuits that held the values-based criteria to match a congruent answer;
the specific words, sequences, and sentence structures that would get to the specific neural circuits where values-based choice criteria could be found and managed for congruent, systemic change;
the ability to hear/recognize the next question to formulate to enable the listener’s (user’s) brain to take the next step in the multi-step decision-making sequence;
the specific hierarchy of decision criteria that lead to a values-based decision;

I eventually invented a new form of question (Facilitative Questions™ FQs) that is brain-directional and leads the Other, using specific words in specific sequences, to the specific neural circuits necessary to capture their personal, values-based decision criteria and cause congruent change and values-based decisions.

For AI to facilitate personal decisions, a rules-based FacilitationAI could prompt sequences of self-generated FQs. FacilitationAI can provide new capability for AI in:

sales
life/personal coaching;
personal/team decision making;
customer feedback.

I’m happy to discuss and provide examples in detail and discuss possibilities with interested AI developers. Please contact me to discuss. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen September 14th, 2026

Posted In: Communication

Neurodiversity is now considered a variation of human experience rather than a disability. Indeed, 20% of the workforce is neurodiverse including 50% of sales and technology professionals. That means there’s a good chance there are neurodivergent (ND) employees working in your company. But you may not know who they are: 75% of ND employees avoid disclosure.

CREATING A SAFE PLACE FOR NEURODIVERSE EMPLOYEES

Historically, diversity, generally confined to as race and gender diversity and included in most hiring practices these days. Recently, standard practice is to specify inclusive hiring practices for neurodiverse people in their job specs and include requests for applicants to state their needs for the interviewing process.

But companies without specific neurodiversity hiring practices may not know the ND employees already working for them, making the problem of self-disclosure and individual support a big one for both the company and the employee: ND folks are often afraid of losing their jobs or facing discrimination if they self-disclose and, because there’s no structure for it, may not get the services they need to be as successful as they otherwise might be.

To find and serve these highly creative, hard-working individuals, to ensure they’re accepted and integrated, your company culture must embody inclusion so they’re accepted and integrated onto teams; given work that matches their unique skills; and get supervised by managers who know how to communicate with them – all areas fraught with obstacles unless there are accepted practices in place.

The question for the HR professional is: are you willing to create an inclusive workplace environment – a culture – that offer unique hiring methods? In which NDs are offered supervision or needed allowances? Can choose to self-disclose? In which communication practices are shared and discussed? Where everyone can learn from each other and thrive?

CULTURE CHANGE

ND people think, understand, act, and communicate differently from their neurotypical (NT) colleagues. And because they are in the minority it’s been left up to them to fit in – challenging since their needs may defy standard practices.

Creating a culture in which neurodiverse employees not only fit in but are active, successful, accepted members of the community takes work. It’s not merely doing a few things differently but having a commitment to an inclusive workplace where everyone thrives, welcomes diversity, and collaborates. It means a culture change.

TO DO’S

Here are some specific suggestions if you currently have no dedicated plan (or want to add to what you’re already doing):

Rethink hiring practices. Some neurodiverse people may be overwhelmed during standard interviews. Ask applicants to provide examples of their work on email; ask them how they’d like to communicate with interviewers.
Discover the barriers to inclusion within the company. You can use confidential surveys, questionnaires, suggestion boxes to gather information and suggestions from current ND employees, including what they would need from HR or their managers to have a safer, more comfortable situation so they can succeed. It’s a good idea to use a consultant to assist you with these as they know the best vocabulary and topics to include.

Doing this puts out a clear message to all employees that you’re taking ‘workplace inclusion’ seriously. And don’t forget to publish the findings from this outreach so everyone is working from the same fact pattern.

Inclusive communications. Employee communiques must be written clearly and directly with a visual component if possible. In written communiques there is sometimes a note at the bottom that invites anyone seeking clarification to contact the sender.
Internal campaigns: Begin running internal campaigns targeted to inclusion: stories from leaders about how they learned to be better at providing directions for their ND team members or what they learned from their ND employees; great ways to manage problems that might arise; or stories from disclosed NDs themselves on best practices for collaborating with colleagues. This not only provides stories for other leaders and folks with neurodiversity but plainly affirms the company’s dedication to inclusion.
Questionnaires: Send out questionnaires that request employees share what they need from management to be even more successful. Make sure they’re unmarked and unnamed so undisclosed NDs can respond without fear of discrimination.
Management training: bring in consulting firms (Orchvate https://www.orchvate.com/) that specialize in best practices (integration, sensitization, awareness) on communicating with NDs. These could also be taught by ND employees who have disclosed and are willing to share their personal knowledge. Btw the secondary gain here is that all your employees will communicate – collaborate, ideate, work – more successfully.
Time management training programs for all employees. This will naturally include ND folks but would be useful for all. ND folks have strict time issues – always on time, very organized to get stuff done on time, etc.
Physical issues: Neurodiverse people have a greater sensitivity to their surroundings – overhead lights, noise – than neurotypical folks and may have physical challenges that require flexible work arrangements and accommodations. Provide Quiet Spaces for anyone who needs them.
Advertise inclusive job opportunities in other departments: i.e.’ Seeking folks with strong pattern recognition, or great job for people who enjoy hyper focusing.’
Hold frequent discussions via intranet, bulletins, house organs written by NT staff about their resolved work challenges or great conversations.
Peer coaching: where possible, set up peer coaching relationships between self-disclosed ND folks and those who have not yet self-disclosed, or between managers who have ND employees and want to support and learn from each other, or…
Publish corporate guidelines on inclusion: by clearly stating in all corporate communiques that the company has a culture of inclusion, it becomes obvious to employees and potential hires that all are welcome, regardless of difference.

NDs may be overlooked and burned out – certainly not contributing fully. Doing this lets all employees know they must be more accepting and learn new skills.

These practices will generate trust: trust that the culture has changed; trust for NDs to self-disclose without discrimination; trust that the company values their input; trust that any existing problems will be resolved.

CONCLUSION

Neurodiverse employees offer great advantages. In addition to being loyal, hardworking, relentless, creative, and honest, they bring new points of view otherwise not considered that stimulate creative solutions and outside-the-box thinking,

Create a culture in which they want to work, and once employed, to thrive. Find those in your company and serve them. Generate a culture of inclusion and acceptance. Design hiring and outreach procedures that find people who would not only fit but be an asset.

_______________________

Sharon Drew Morgen August 17th, 2026

Posted In: Communication

I recently chatted with a VC invested in 15 healthcare apps that use Behavior Modification to facilitate patients through permanent behavior change for enhanced health. He said although many of his apps use it, there’s no scientific evidence that Behavior Modification works. Hmmmm… And the reason you’re still using it is… “There’s nothing else to use.”

I contend that current Behavior Mod approaches are not only faulty, but seriously harmful to a large population of people who need to consider permanent change.

CAN’T CHANGE BEHAVIORS BY TRYING TO CHANGE BEHAVIORS

Behavior Modification cannot permanently change existing behaviors. In diet, smoking cessation, and exercise maintenance alone, there is a 97% failure rate for ongoing adoption of altered behaviors. You see, it’s not possible to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior.

If you’ve ever tried to keep lost weight off, or habituate a new exercise routine, or stop smoking, or… you’ve probably tried to modify your current behaviors by doing something differently without making the necessary structural changes to hold it in place.

Conventional thinking usually explains the WHAT and WHY. But permanent change needs the HOW – HOW your brain causes your behaviors, and where the inflexion points are so you can intervene and generate new ones (or lead your patients and clients through to their best choices).

This essay explains what behaviors are, where they originate from, and the elements necessary for permanent change. For this, I must take you briefly to the source – into your brain – to not only explain why you behave the way you do or resist new behaviors, but HOW to actually elicit the behaviors you want. I’ve made the brain explanations brief. But if you want to understand precisely how to facilitate permanent change from the source, it’s worth the effort. Enjoy.

BEHAVIOR

There are two major problems with Behavior Modification:

1. Behavior 2. Modification.

I suspect most people haven’t considered what a ‘behavior’ denotes. Behaviors are the way we exhibit our identity, our beliefs, our history/norms/life experience.

In short, behaviors represent us. They’re our beliefs in action – the demonstration, the expression, the external actions that portray our internal essence and morals. Like an autobiography is the written representation of a life but not THE life. Like going to church represents us practicing our faith but not FAITH. Behaviors are the visible depictions of each of us.

Behaviors don’t occur without a stimulus, some sort of input. Nor do they operate in a vacuum – they don’t arise from the sea like Venus. And they are always, always congruent with our beliefs. You know, without asking, that someone wearing a bathing suit to a wedding most likely has different beliefs than the other guests. It’s not about the bathing suit.

Behaviors are automatically and unconsciously triggered from our neural circuits – the end result of a series of automatic and meaningless chemical signals that face congruency checks before taking form into action. In other words, behaviors are the result of risk-averse neural activity – not actions that show up on their own.

Sample

Below is a greatly simplified summary of what happens in our brains that ultimately lead to behaviors. It’s here you’ll understand what’s needed to make permanent changes and why Behavior Modification isn’t able to accomplish it.

HOW TO CHANGE BEHAVIORS PERMANENTLY

Here are three of the key elements involved in how we choose to behave differently – the modification portion of change. It’s systemic.

SYSTEMS CONGRUENCE. Systems are the glue, the conglomeration of mental, physical, emotional, physiological, neurological elements make us human. I am a system. You are a system. Your family is a system. And everything we do, think, notice, are curious about, follow the unique rules of our individual, idiosyncratic, and historic systems. And our individual systems define our status quo.

Ultimately the job of our status quo is to maintain Systems Congruence, or balance, so we can wake up every day being who we were yesterday – to know to brush our teeth each day and be kind to the colleague we don’t like.

One of the important things to know here is that systems don’t judge our behaviors. Whether we’re fat or controlling or mean, our neural systems only work with electrochemical signals and have no meaning. So it doesn’t care if you lose weight – just that it remains congruent.

All day, trillions of signals enter into our brains and trigger us to behaviors that have met our Systems Congruence criteria. Indeed, our brains check all incoming signals for incongruence before behaviors are agreed to and triggered, making sure we remain in balance. Without doing so we’d be at risk for incongruence.

Any time you try (and try and try and…) to behave in a way that unconsciously causes imbalance within you – when you push against an existing habit or action to try to get a different behavior – you’ll experience resistance or sabotage because you’d be trying to disrupt your system.

Unless we change the system that holds our problematic behavior in place, it’s not possible for permanent change to occur. For any proposed change, to maintain congruence, your system must agree, Buy In, in a way that matches your beliefs, identity, and norms. And it’s physiologic, chemical, automatic, and unconscious. Our brains do this for us every second of our lives.

Behavior Modification attempts to replace this process, trying to change the final output (like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube) without making the changes in the system that would hold the new in place permanently and maintain Systems Congruence.

When something ‘new’ hasn’t been vetted and agreed to, your putting the system at risk and generating an imbalance. And the system will ultimately reject it.

INPUT. Any new input for change will only become a permanent behavior if it’s congruent with the person’s system. To change a behavior, it’s necessary to 1. find an existing neural circuit, or generate a new one that accepts and triggers the new request, and 2. input a message that will be acceptable.

Let me give you the simple version of how I lost weight and kept it off. My original message to myself was:

‘I want to lose weight.’

While the words requested a different behavior, they’re merely behavior-change focused and didn’t get to my specific neural circuits to trigger a change or get agreement from the rest of the system that had maintained it for some time. In other words, that input message caused me to do what I’d always done and end up maintaining the weight because there’d been no circuit change to trigger different actions.

After failing for decades (pictures of skinny women on my fridge, dozens of diet books) I changed the input message to include my identity and beliefs, precise action required, and precise goal.

Starting with a newly expanded ‘identity’, I became a ‘healthy person’ and gave myself a new rule that I had to be healthy mind, body, and spirit. With that rule, I began studying nutrition and discovered I was eating foods that were unhealthy for me and changed the way I was eating entirely. Here is the message I eventually came up with:

‘I am a healthy person who seeks to find the best nutrition and exercise protocol to get to the best weight for my body’

That did the trick, and I’ve eaten my revised food plan (and kept the weight off) for 30 years.

TRIAL LOOP. This one needs some patience. Here you’ll need to try different input messages to find the one that incorporates the right systemic elements that will cause a permanent change. But note: if at any point a risk is determined to put the system out of balance, it will reject the new behavior. Not to kick a dead horse, but Behavior Mod does not address this at all – the reason behavior change attempts fail so often.

I’ve developed a model for this to lead you through the steps if you’re interested in the entire process.

There are plenty of uses for this. Think of enabling patient Buy In for obesity or cardio clinics, to help patients design a work-out regimen for heart health. Or for diabetes sufferers to design a healthful food plan for life. Or athletes trying to change an inferior swing, or develop a new pattern to their feet differently to run faster. What about helping yourself meditate daily or organizing your life. Or to get more sleep.

We can help people alter their behaviors in a way that’s not only congruent with who they are, but helps them make their own best choices. But not with Behavior Modification alone.

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Sharon Drew Morgen July 20th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, Listening

Have you ever wondered why folks who get trained don’t retain the new knowledge over time? According to Harvard studies, there’s a 90% failure-to-retain in instructor-led classrooms. Surely students want to learn, trainers are dedicated professionals, and the content is important. But the problem goes beyond the students, the motivation, the trainer, or the material being trained.

While trainers assume their content will be heard per their intended meaning, learners may be hearing something different; they might have no way to accurately translate it or retain it. Learning is a brain change issue.

C urrent training models, while certainly dedicated to imparting knowledge in creative, constructive, and tested ways, may not develop the necessary neural circuitry for Learners to fully comprehend, retain, or retrieve the new information.

WE CAN ONLY ‘HEAR’ WHAT WE’VE HEARD BEFORE

The primary problem is how brains ‘hear’. Due to the nature of how brains handle incoming words (puffs of air that face distortions and deletions before being translated into meaning by neural circuits), an instructor’s content may be mistranslated, misunderstood, or misappropriated. Certainly there is no way to retain it as intended unless the learner has precise circuitry that matches the instructor’s content.

Let me say this another way: because incoming content/words (Initially meaningless sound vibrations.) face so much distortion and deletion during the brain’s automatic, habituated, physiological, neurological, electrochemical, biological listening process, and because incoming content can only be translated by existing/historic circuitry, we basically only ‘hear’ what we’ve heard before.

For those interested in learning how brains ‘listen’, my book WHAT? explains it all (with lots of funny stories and learning exercises) and offers workarounds.

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Our brains are the culprit: they construct the way we make sense of the world – without our agreement or knowledge. Unfortunately, we don’t question what shows up as our ‘reality’, but our viewpoints, interpretations and assumptions, what we believe, what we think we hear and even what we’re curious about, are unconsciously biased by our history. Indeed, our ability to accurately act on and understand incoming information is unwittingly restricted and misconstrued.

WE EACH INVENT OUR OWN REALITY

Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains how we invent our own reality 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]

In an NPR interview neuroscientist Stephen Macknik says:

“Most of the world is very real. You’ve just never lived there. You’ve lived a perception of that world in your mind that’s been filtered by a bunch of salt water sacks, proteins and electrochemical signals that can’t possibly be making an accurate determination of what’s actually going on. The brain actually receives very, very little accurate information.”

For the 10% of students who have been involved with similar training, or who already have circuits for similar ideas, accepting and understanding new content is easy as there’s an existing translation point.

For those who don’t have existing circuits, the brain chooses a ‘similar-enough’ circuit that, while historic, may not be similar enough, causing misunderstanding and failure to learn what’s being offered – or worse, the assumption that what’s ‘heard’ is what was intended. Following a lecture, professors who study with me ask their students what they heard, and each student hears something different.

LEARNING FACILITATION

It’s possible to design programs that help students generate new circuits specifically for the new knowledge before offering content. This ensures the information will be accurately heard and retained.

As an original thinker who’s been inventing systemic brain change models for decades, I’ve developed a Learning Facilitation™ model that first trains the brain before presenting the core content.

I presented my Learning Facilitation™ model at the Learning Ideas Conference in June 2024. Here is a link to the full one-hour presentation. Enjoy.

If you have questions, or want to learn the process, please get in touch: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

____________________

Sharon Drew Morgen July 13th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, News

Alexa, Siri, Google, AI, and all programs that answer questions have mechanisms that determine the answers. If you’re like me, you largely assume they’re accurate, without knowing the reference material or checking further.

This assumption is normal: in our daily lives we regularly pose questions to friends, colleagues, and clients about stuff we’re curious about, and receive responses we don’t check for accuracy or congruence.

But have you ever wondered what a question actually is?

Conventionally, questions are posed to elicit a response or answer a curiosity. Sometimes we use them rhetorically or posed to elicit a specific response. Sometimes questions are deemed ‘closed’, like in, “What time is dinner?” Sometimes they’re ‘open’, like in, “What do you want to eat?”

But all standard questions share the same features. They:

assume the words within the query will extract the information needed;
are posed according to the curiosity, goals, assumptions, and intent of the Asker;
use words that limit responses to narrow interpretation;
get interpreted uniquely, according to a Responder’s historic, unconscious, world views and mental models;
potentially ignore more important and accurate information.

Of course, most of the time, conventional questions work just fine. How else could we find out how many acres there are at Machu Picchu, or which movie our spouse wants to see?

But what if you can pose a question that leads others to discover their own answers and path to decision making and change?

WHAT QUESTIONS DO

Because of their inherent biases, standard questions extract only a portion of the possible responses. Indeed, standard questions can be misunderstood or interpreted badly.

Information: because information is elicited in a way that represents the requirements of the Asker (even when they aim to help the Responder), a Responder’s real answers may not be captured. The wording, the request, the topic, the intent, the underlying assumptions, and/or the vocabulary may unwittingly offend, confuse, or be interpreted badly, causing partial or inaccurate responses.
Listening: words and meaning are merely our brain’s interpretations of sound waves that enter our ears through our historic neural pathways, guaranteeing we assign meaning according to our unconscious biases and history. Obviously, we might miss the intent of the question entirely. I wrote an entire book on this (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?). Recent research has shown that the maximum we understand from a Speaker’s intent is 35%! In other words, it’s likely that what we think we’ve heard is some degree different from the Asker’s intent.

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3. Biased question formulation: Askers use words meant for a specific goal and outcome, but may not obtain the best, accurate, or truthful, responses. Sadly, it’s possible that higher quality answers could have been retrieved with a different wording or intent.

4. Restriction: questions restrict answers according to the boundaries of the question. We cannot uncover data we never asked for, even if it’s available. We cannot elicit accurate data if the question is heard differently than intended.

Are you getting the point here? Questions have so many in-built biases, get translated as so mysteriously within a Responder’s brain, that it’s a miracle people communicate at all.

This is especially disturbing in coaching, healthcare, and leadership situations. Well-meaning professionals believe the ‘right’ question will uncover a truth from a Responder. Every coach and leader I’ve met deeply believes in their own knack – ‘intuition’ – for posing the ‘right’ question because they have a history of similar situations.

Sadly, when Responders share answers that prove unhelpful or inaccurate, Influencers may not even be aware of it, or worse, blame them for being non-compliant. Hence: patients end up keeping bad habits, clients end up not making needed changes, buyers end up not getting what they need.

A NEW FORM OF QUESTION

As someone who has thought deeply, and written, about the physiology of change and the neurology of decision making for decades, I began pondering this conundrum in the 1980s.

What if healthcare professionals asked questions that triggered patients to positive, immediate habit change, or coaches knew the exact questions that enabled new habit formation and behavior generation? What if scientists and consultants could elicit the most accurate information? And imagine if it were possible for questions to help sellers and advertisers actually inspire action to generate Buyer Readiness.

What if a question could be worded in a specific way to act as a GPS to lead a Responder – a buyer, a patient, a client – through a sequence in their brain to make it possible to discover the full set of criteria to make a decision from and a permanent change without resistance?

FACILITATIVE QUESTIONS

I’ve invented a new form of question – a Facilitative Question™ -that addresses the above problems. With a goal of helping Others consciously enter their unconscious brains, they use

specific words, in a specific order to go to the most appropriate memory channel to enable discovery without resistance;
no bias from an Asker’s curiosity or need;
a very specific route to specific, unconscious, memory storage circuits that avoid sparking defense or resistance.

Facilitative Questions (FQs) help Responders uncover their own criteria, beliefs, and mental models to find their own unique answers within their existing neural circuitry – great for permanent behavior change and decision making.

Once you learn how to formulate these questions, prospective buyers can be led through change and buying stages; coaching clients can discover their own path to resistance-free change; doctors can elicit behavior change in patients rather than push to try to cause change; and advertisers can trigger interactive responses to normally one-sided push messages.

Conventional questions keep Responders in a very small, idiosyncratic, and personal response range. And while the Asker is most likely attempting to elicit a response, they are out of control. FQs actually define the parameters and give Askers real control.

USES

Here’s a few industries that could benefit from FQs.

Healthcare: Intake forms that create an interactive doc/patient experience from the start: What would you need to see from us to know we’re on your team and ready to serve you? [This FQ automatically creates a WE space between patient and provider.] Doctors could lead people to how they’d create new habits for health: What has stopped you from being able to exercise regularly until now? What would you need to know or believe differently to be able to add regular walking to your weekly schedule?
Advertising, for an ad for a Porsche, for example: How would you know when it was time to buy yourself a luxury car? [This FQ makes the ad interactive and gives a reader time to reflect on personal change.]
Sales: What has stopped you until now from resolving your issue using your own resources? [This FQ enables potential buyers to look at how they’ve gone about solving a problem on their own – necessary before realizing they can’t fix the problem themselves and might need to buy something.]
Coaching: What would you need to see or believe differently to be willing to consider new choices in the places where your habitual choices are more limited? [This FQ gives clients an observer viewpoint, thus circumventing blame, to notice old habits/patterns, and limits viewing to the exact historic behaviors that may not be effective.]

These can be used in advertising and marketing campaigns; healthcare apps that sit on top of Behavior Mod apps and facilitate new habit formation; AI where apps or robots need to understand the route to change and decision making. I’ve been teaching it in sales with my Buying Facilitation® model for 40 years and companies such as DuPont teach how to use them with farmers; Senior Partners at KPMG use it with client consulting; Safelight Auto Glass uses it to compete against other distributors; and Kaiser Permanente uses it to engage seniors needed supplemental insurance, to name a few.

If anyone would like to learn the HOW of formulating Facilitative Questions, I developed a primer in a FQ learning accelerator. Or we can work together to develop or test a new initiative. Given how broadly my own clients have used these questions, I’m eager to work with folks who seek to truly serve their client base.

By enabling Others to discover their own unconscious path we not only help them find their own best answers but act as Servant Leaders to decision making.

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

Should you wish to add the ability to use questions as a way to truly serve others, let me know. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen June 29th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, Listening

Salespeople know the likelihood of closing a sale is small (less than 5%). Leaders understand the prospect of avoiding resistance during a project is unlikely (a 97% fail rate). Doctors realize the chances of patients following their suggestions are low (95% don’t follow doctor’s orders). Trainers are aware there’s a high probability (80-90%) their audience won’t retain what they’ve been taught.

Rationalizations make sense of the failures: it’s the buyer’s fault for not buying; the stakeholder’s fault for not wanting to change; the patient’s fault for not wanting to be healthy; the student’s fault for not being motivated to learn.

What if none of that were true? What if the models themselves were at fault and the industries merely build in their failure as the price of doing business rather than making a few small changes to achieve excellence?

DOING THE SAME THINGS EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS

Each industry continues doing the same things they’ve always done regardless of the decades-long failure rates (Shouldn’t they be indicators? Isn’t that the definition of insanity?), blaming the Other rather than recognizing the inherent problems.

Globally, in learning institutions, corporations and consulting groups, people teach and apply the same problematic models and ideas that have been accepted through time and adopted as Truth, regardless of their failures.

I was horrified to learn recently that a man I dated decades ago has been teaching my original Facilitative Questions™ to his Harvard MBA students without license or training. I called him.

SD: But I never licensed you! Or taught you how to formulate them! They took me 10 years to invent and take days to learn!

A: I heard you use a couple of them. I figured out the rest myself.

SD: How does your interpretation get to the right neural circuits in the Listener’s brain to help them get to their source criteria for decision making?

A: WHAT? I don’t know anything about that. I just do it my way. They’re just questions.

SD: No, they do not gather information, nor are they based on curiosity. They’re brain-directed tools that make it possible to avoid automatic assumptions so people can quickly make criteria-based decisions.

A: I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal of this.

SD: Well, you’re using my IP, my coined and legally defined term to apply to a conventional practice (questions) that’s so biased there’s no way to capture good data or help anyone make a values-based decision. Not to mention you’re teaching future leaders the wrong thing!

A: They don’t know the difference.

This is how original ideas get quashed and perpetuated: stealing original ideas from the inventors, redefining and misusing them to fit standard thinking, and then propagating them regardless of the cost. And it gets normalized endlessly.

ORIGINAL IDEAS GET IGNORED

As an original thinker I invent, train, and write books on systemic change models that enable Others to discover their own, usually unconscious, answers – which they must do anyway as part of their decision making process.

My models include skills and ideas that run counter to standard thingking: Buyers don’t buy based on solutions (and selling doesn’t cause buying!); leaders overlook first-hand, accurate knowledge before goal setting when they fail to include all stakeholder’s voices, assuring resistance later. When docs forget that patients need a belief change before they modify behaviors, they’re setting up non-compliance. When training models offer content before participant’s brains can accurately translate it, they cannot retain new knowledge.

None of the current models have specific skills that enable Others to discover their own values-based answers and outputs. Rather, they’re rules- and culture-driven and fail to recognize the risks they instigate.

Change, after all, is a risk consideration: unless the risk of change is known and managed, unless the underlying values of the new match the original values, no change will occur: The risk of change must be lower than the risk of staying the same or the status quo prevails.

And standard thinking lacks the tools to guide Others – learners, buyers, clients, patients – to recognize and manage their risks, assuming instead that good information, stories, content, or explanations will provide the ‘proof’ to buy, learn, change.

WHERE STANDARD THINKING GETS IT WRONG

Standard thinking assumes ‘good’ or ‘rational’ information, delivered by someone with ‘credibility’ (a seller, a coach, a leader, a doc, a trainer) will convince and cause change. It doesn’t: information is needed only after a risk gets uncovered and managed, and after the values criteria are engaged. Otherwise there’s no way to know what information is needed.

Not only can there be no evaluation unless the risk is known, brains can’t easily understand content that doesn’t already exist within their historic brain circuitry: Due to the way brains listen, how they receive and translate incoming words/sound vibrations, what we think we hear is unwittingly translated according to what we’ve heard before – all but guaranteeing the status quo continues.

Obviously, this causes all incoming content – pitches, presentations, incentives, stories, and ‘rational’ explanations – to be misinterpreted when it goes against a listener’s history and beliefs.

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CASE STUDIES

A Sales University

I had an unnerving experience in early 2000 that exemplifies how standard thinking prevails regardless of the possibility of adopting new ideas that have a better chance of success.

In the 1990s I keynoted at a sales university. Prior to my talk, I took the opportunity to listen to other speakers and sit in on workshops that taught standard sales models (how to place solutions and counter objections – the Sell Side). I never once heard mentioned the differences between selling and how buyers buy, a separate and unique values-based, risk-avoidance process all folks must go through before being willing to buy.

I must admit I was surprised. My book Selling with Integrity had been on the New York Times Business Bestseller’s list and the reason I was hired for the job. Given the number of copies the book sold I (naively) thought people were at least considering adding tools to first facilitate buying decisions to their selling activities.

Knowing I was fighting an uphill battle to change an industry that had been around since the Serpent convinced Eve to eat the apple, I carefully prepared my talk to at least inspire curiosity. I also spent my own money ($3,000, against my $5,000 pay!) to purchase hardcover books for the audience of 200 that I placed on each chair.

About 10 minutes into my talk, audience members began leaving. Because my ideas went against what they were being taught, and even though Buying Facilitation® would enhance their close rate substantially and instigate trust, they couldn’t even consider my ideas. By the end of my talk there were 9 people left in the audience. And every single one of my books was left on the chairs. Not one – not one – seller-in-training thought my book (free! a NYTimes Bestseller!) worth taking.

Dug in Leadership

Here’s another story:

I once sat next to a well-dressed young man on a flight to Seattle.

SD: You look very professional. I assume you’re going to meet a prospect?

Man: Yes. I’m hoping he likes me well enough to allow me to provide free services for two weeks in hopes they’ll hire me.

SD: So you’re using your body as a prospecting tool. What would you need to believe differently to be able to facilitate your prospect into choosing you without you working for 2 weeks without pay?

Man: You sound just like this book I just read! (My book, of course). She made a lot of sense.

SD: So why aren’t you using her suggestions?

Man: I gave my boss the book and told him I wanted to work with her to learn how to help buyers buy. He read it and told me she was crazy, that sales doesn’t work that way and not to use any of her ideas.

No, sales doesn’t work that way; facilitating buying decisions does. In both case studies, standard thinking prevailed, regardless of the cost.

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WHEN IS IT TIME TO CHANGE?

It’s time we re-examine our assumption that our established models represent Truth.

Indeed, information is the last thing people need when deciding to make a change (see my 13 steps of change).

What needs to happen for standard thinking to evolve beyond current failed processes? When will sellers and leaders and doctors and trainers realize it’s their own models causing the failures – and maybe it’s time to consider adding new skills?

Is it really worth the cost of failure to continue doing what you’ve always done? Yes, it takes courage to do something different. But what’s the risk if you don’t?

______________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen June 15th, 2026

Posted In: Communication

During a day we make innumerable decisions. What should I eat for lunch? When should I go to the store? Should I complete this paperwork now? Or wait until after the meeting? We make these simple decisions quickly, effortlessly, using top-of- mind answers. But sometimes we must make consequential decisions that need some pondering.

Whatever we go through to get to our final end point, the process is often fraught with confusion, time delays, and unknown risk. To help you minimize these downsides when making important decisions, here are a few foundational elements:

Perspective: Have you collected the full data set necessary for resolution?
Criteria: What are the norms and values you must consider?
Goal: What is the specific goal you seek to achieve?
Risks: What are the threats to specific choices?
Steps: A replicable route to practical decision making.

I’ll take them one at a time.

PERSPECTIVE

One of the problems with decision making is the way your brain presents you with habituated responses. Like when you decide to go on a diet and unconsciously duplicate the patterns you used in previous (failed) diets, or when you stop at the same point when trying to learn a new hobby – again. So much of how we decide is ruled by our brain’s historic biases and restrictions.

To have as broad a range of options as possible with a minimum of bias and restriction, it’s necessary to consider the problem from different perspectives.

Ordinarily we automatically think our standard, familiar thoughts and unconsciously pose our standard, familiar questions to ourselves. I call this perspective Self. Self is our natural state, a largely unconscious idiosyncratic mix of physical, mental, emotional, unconscious and comfortable reactions and ideas. In Self we are the fish in the water.

From Self your decisions are based on your immediate world view – restricted by your momentary feelings, what’s going on in your life, and your history of managing similar issues.This is perfect for daily living. But for making consequential decisions it’s good to have as broad, and unbiased viewpoint as possible. For this you’ll need an expansive perspective that I call Observer/Witness.

Being in Observer offers more a conscious choice with a broader perspective and far less bias. You already do this, albeit unconsciously: the quick intake of breath telling you to be more alert and consider a new choice; that it’s time to go beyond your natural reaction, your standard thoughts and feelings.

You use Observer when raising children, like when your 2-year-old so creatively crayons the wall and you gently guide her to the coloring book but really want to scream ‘I JUST PAINTED THAT WALL!!!’. It’s when you’re fighting with a partner and take a step back to say, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s chill.’

In Observer, you notice a broader range of choices that weren’t visible from Self. They were always there, but not habituated like the more-used options. My book HOW? teaches how to do this.

Rule #1: Make important decisions from Observer to perceive a broad range of choices.

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CRITERIA

Values and Beliefs – the basis of any decision making criteria – are the primary determinants for making important decisions as they defend and maintain who you are and what you stand for. Indeed, people often delay making a decision because they fear they’ll overlook something significant, because they don’t know the full set of risks involved.

From Observer you can consider the underlying values that must be maintained in the new decision. They’re often personal, although in team decision making the group must collaboratively agree to the values they want to maintain.

Here’s a personal tale of how my switch from Self to Observer converted my criteria to more authentic, less reactive values and a positive outcome.

A mythic row with a dear friend ended our relationship. He betrayed me! He lied! He broke my values-based criteria of honesty, of my ‘right to be respected!’ But as time passed I began to get a different perspective: I must love with ‘Ands’ not ‘Buts’. That meant (to me) I had to find a way to be in relationship. So I shifted my criteria (and Self perspective) from honesty and ‘right to be respected’ to my Observer perspective: ‘How do we love each other AND be respectful and honest?’ With this new criteria our relationship had a way forward.

Rule #2: Know the criteria you want to meet for your decision and write down some thoughts on what it will look like when it’s met.

GOALS

Goals often include specific target actions and a time limit for completion, and require a well-worded goal. So “I want to go on a diet to lose weight” becomes “I will do the research to find the best foods for my body to find and maintain its best weight.”

Goals must include details that can be evaluated or you run the risk of failure. The more specificity, the higher the possibility of success.

Rule #3: Set a goal using very specific words and expected results.

RISKS

All decisions carry some sort of risk. What risk are you willing to take? Are you willing to switch values? Are you willing to let go of people in your life? Relationships? Money?

Before making a final decision it’s important to know the risks involved in the change caused by the final outcome. Ask the people in any way involved in the final decision what the upsides/downsides are for them. Make sure you pose questions from Observer so you instill as little bias as possible. I’ve invented Facilitative Questions™ that lead to unconscious circuits where decision criteria are stored. Again, I teach them in HOW?.

Your final decision may not be able to address all risks but knowing them in advance is valuable for goal setting. Where there’s a chance the risks won’t be fully addressed, do as much advance work as possible to reduce the fallout.

Rule #4: before making a final decision, know the risks involved for the people, policies, values, etc.

STEPS

Often people begin seeking information too soon. I suggest you wait until you’ve determined the goals, risks, and criteria so you’ll have a more accurate foundation. Then:

Assemble all the elements involved: Know the goals, criteria, people and fall-out from each. Include gathering data (from Observer, to minimize bias) from the people who will be touched by your decision. While you might not be able to meet their criteria, you’ll at least have an idea of the risks.
Determine and manage the risks: Fully understand the distance between where you are now and where you will be once the decision is made. Will the same values prevail? Will jobs or situations be changed? How will this affect the status quo? How will you deal with any fallout?
Gather data: Once you know the risks, goals and criteria involved, gather supporting data (both internal and external) that ensures you’ve got the important elements covered and the risks managed best you can.
Weight the options: You’ll now have the information you need to understand the types of choices and risks. Go back to the drawing board. Get into Observer. Write down a hierarchy of criteria to meet and see how/where they match the options. Weight them according to risks and values. Know precisely the fallout.
Carry out the decision: make sure to personally manage any fallout.

And good luck! Should you require some team coaching to facilitate an important decision, please contact me: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen June 1st, 2026

Posted In: Change Management, Communication

Remember when a person would answer a company phone? I found myself shocked recently when a live human answered. “Um, Hello?? Are you a real person?”

When we call a company these days we often get caught in one of those automated loops that lead us from one wrong person to another, from one long hold to another, ultimately landing us where we started, with no resolution, lots of frustration, and rage toward the company. Company websites aren’t any better: no way to connect except via links that either lead nowhere or never get responded to; chat bots that have no idea what you’re talking about and keep repeating perky phrases.

As a paying support customer, I once waited 13 hours for a promised ‘one-hour’ call-back from Best Buy to resolve an urgent technical problem. I went to sleep with the phone in my hand, waiting. When the call came at 3:00 A.M. (!) the tech started by asking me how I was. “I’m sleeping! It’s 3:00 in the morning and I’ve been waiting since 2:00 in the afternoon! And I still have my technical problem!” And he hung up on me. This was particularly egregious given I’d been forced to listen (for hours!) to Best Buy’s ‘hold’ jingle promoting fabulous customer service.

We’ve all learned to accept these indignities, to be ignored if we have a problem, to spend hours attempting to resolve a crisis caused by our purchase. And it’s getting worse.

CUSTOMERS DON’T SEEM TO MATTER

We’ve grown to hate our providers, and they don’t seem to care. But they should. We provide the income for their profit and salaries, certainly enough to hire employees to answer phones or help solve problems. In so many ways, hiring a human would be cheaper than the cost of the automation.

Gone are the days when customer service mattered, when three rings was the maximum number before phones had to be answered to keep customers from being frustrated. That doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

Companies now use only two criteria to interact with customers: Time and Cost. And because these companies may be sole providers in regional sectors or global behemoths, users have no choice but to remain customers.

Sadly, there’s no regulation on this, no way to reduce our monthly payment by the number of hours we spend on hold, or the number of problems we can’t get resolved. Until we form a Citizen’s Council, or there’s some sort of regulation – neither of which are likely – we’ll just have to suck it up. Nobody cares, no one is responsible, and no one pays for the problem except us.

What happened? How did our companies go from touting stellar customer service as a competitive advantage to computerizing all human interactions? How did companies decide to stop respecting the very people who keep them successful? Why have they been so willing to cause their customers to distrust them?

POSSIBLE CAUSES

We know what companies pay their ‘C’ level people, their profit margins and how much they pay (or not) in taxes. We know they can afford to hire customer support folks. But somewhere along the way customers became secondary. What’s going on? Is greed the only motivation these days? How did it become a ‘thing’ that customers don’t matter – except for their purchases?

Frankly, I have no way to think about this in an unbiased way. I’ve spent my life developing facilitation models that enable win/win and servant leadership, to respect each individual and engender trust. Making it difficult for the very folks you depend on to get the service they require goes against all my beliefs.

It might come from the momentum of ‘cheap’. Everything seems to require a low price tag, and money becomes the main criteria for choice. We don’t consider what happens when goods are reduced to a price tag, for doing ‘whatever it takes’ for price to be the sole choice criteria. We avert our eyes when we learn that companies use children as cheap labor or when they strip the environment to create cheap products.

We seem to want cheap even when price differentials convey value differentials. Someone once asked the price of my Buying Facilitation® training, a unique model I invented that uses mindbrain connections to help buyers generate their buying decisions. When I told him the price (thousands) he told me he could get ‘almost the same’ course at ATT for $49. I told him to take it 😊

Are we all implicated here? Is automated customer service the fallout from the search for cheap? How did we move away from scrupulous business practices, or good customer care as a competitive advantage? Why isn’t it a simple calculation that happy customers provide more revenue?

Somewhere in the past few years automation became the accepted corporate interface regardless of the toll on customers. And I can’t imagine that focus groups would chose automation and no-human-contact as a preference over being cared for by a human.

BEST PRACTICES

I have some ideas that might stop this nonsense. My favorite is that each call is answered by a representative who owns the problem to its conclusion. I suspect that when companies pay their own folks to sit on hold for hours only to get connected to the wrong department, they just might fix the problems. They don’t seem to respect a customer’s wasted time; maybe they might care when it’s their own time.

Here are my ideas:

Human beings will pick up customer service lines; site links will go to real support people who will respond within 12 hours.
The person who picks up the phone will own the problem.
Customer Care will be seen as a competitive advantage.
Companies will pay bonuses to reps who keep customers happy.
A vehicle – a YouTube Channel, for example – specifically for customers’ complaints. Their grievance gets calculated as a cost to the company, with a running tally of how much money the company owes its customers. At the end of a month the company gets sent a Grievance Bill with the proceeds going to charity.
An advertised day a month of “no shopping” in the companies who don’t serve customers adequately.

Sadly, the very people who sell us services have become adversaries. What do we need to do or say to have our needs met, our voices heard, our time respected? What do companies need to know, believe, or do differently to be willing to provide resources to handle incoming calls, or provide websites that offer support? What can any of us do to knock some sense into their heads?

Does anyone have better ideas that might help? God knows, I don’t.

________________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen May 25th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, Listening

Do you know how you end up doing what you do? How you make those quick, natural, unconscious decisions? Certainly, there’s pondering when you make ‘important’ decisions.

But what about those that don’t demand much thought, that you’ve done so many times and assume are suitable? Do you know how they affect others? The risks involved that remain unspoken but certainly color ongoing activity and relationships?

Unless you know the consequences of your (unconscious) decisions, you can’t know the risks you face.

I’d like to share a story of how unconscious choices have consequences and offer some ideas to have more conscious choice.

CASE STUDY

I mentor a wonderful company in India (Orchvate), led admirably by two visionary women (Panchali Banderjee and Geethanjali Ganapathy) that trains, places, and supervises neurodiverse people into Indian corporations. In a world where diversity, especially neurodiversity, is still not easily accepted in corporate environments, their important work provides both people and companies terrific services and opportunities.

One of my jobs has been to assist Orchvate in building a structure that’s less dependent upon the founders and more organized around growth, supervision, authenticity and servant-leadership.

After a recent monthly team meeting – our second, conceived to ensure all would be involved in cultivating a cohesive culture – I noticed leadership had failed to send out a ‘thanks for attending’ follow up notice.

I wrote Panchali reminding her to send a follow up with a cc to me. What I received was cut and dry – a great effort (to the point, professional, and practical) but lacked the kindness, support, acceptance and inclusion we were trying to engender.

I wondered how she decided to use those words and tone after all our discussions. Here was our conversation.

SD: How did you decide to write the note the way you did?

P: I didn’t decide.

SD: But you did. You chose the words and the tone. Everything we all do involves choosing some things over others.

P: I just wrote it. It was something I needed to do.

SD: Just because your decisions weren’t conscious didn’t mean you didn’t make decisions. You just made them unconsciously.

P: Oh! I never realized I needed different choices!

SD: Most leaders do the same thing – assume their natural choices are effective – without realizing there may be unintended consequences. Let’s figure out when you must make choices more consciously. Remember when you sat down to write this. What comes up?

P: That I needed to get it done.

SD: So this was a task, a DOing (the quantitative) rather than using it to connect authentically – a BEing (the qualitative)? Did you realize you omitted the way you usually speak from your heart that makes it so easy to connect with you?

P: I never consciously thought of it! It was a task. I realize now I tend to treat certain things as tasks to be done rather than moments of connection.

SD: So your DOing is a task orientation that excludes the BEing! Huh. Hopefully next team email will combine the two, maybe by using ‘kindness, authenticity, connection’ as your goal or task.

P: I could do that!

CONCLUSION

Choice. The essential element necessary to recognize the risks that emerge from unconscious decisions.

For those of you wanting to try generating decisions more consciously, here are some Facilitative Questions™ to help you going forward:

How will I know that something deserves my time to stop and deliberately consider my full range of choices before doing what comes naturally? To include both the DOing and the BEing where it’s appropriate?
How can I trigger myself to consider the unspoken – but real – risks that each communication from me produces, before I send anything out?
What new skills must I learn so my communications match our beliefs, to help the teams and supervisors incorporate them into their work?
What do I need to think of to remember to use qualitative words and include kindheartedness in my messages?

Panchali was initially unaware that her choices represented a risk to the changes we were instituting. But this problem isn’t hers alone. Most leaders respond to their tasks without conscious choice, certainly not realizing the consequences.

How will you know when you need additional choices beyond your automatic decisions to ensure you’re conveying the essential elements that will avoid risks and assure your best outcome?

______________________

Sharon Drew Morgen May 18th, 2026

Posted In: Communication, Listening

A Direct Route to Facilitating Permanent Change – Part One, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

AI’s Missing Piece: personal decision making is beyond information, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Are you supporting the Neurodiverse Employees in Your Workplace? by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Why Behavior Modification Fails to Modify Behaviors and What to Do Instead, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Design Training Programs to Retain Learning, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Questions: the new superpower, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Inconvenient Truths: how culture, assumptions, and standardization thwart change and new ideas, by Sharon-Drew Morgenby

Making Important Decisions, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

The Cost of Automating Customer Care, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Are Your Unconscious Decisions Risking Excellence? by Sharon-Drew Morgen