Why Change Seems So Hard: Essay on facilitating buy-in and avoiding resistance, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

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:

• Internal partners fail in attempts to promote and elicit proposed initiatives across departments.
• Leaders get blindsided by unknowns, creating more problems or becoming part of the problem when attempting to find a fix.
• Improper, or non-existent, integration between developers and users cause lack of buy-in and resistance.
• The change doesn’t get adopted as conceived, with financial and personal fallout.

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 an alteration to a system and entails modifying an existing structure that has been working well-enough for some time, accepted by all, and habituated into the daily norms while maintaining balance.

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 and 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 involved with the status quo (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.

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 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

• cause the system to defend itself (i.e.resistance);
• overlook helping the system design it’s own version of congruent change;
• are left managing the fallout when the stable system is forced to defend itself.

Herein lies the problem: until or unless the full complement of elements 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.

Sample

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 overlooks 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:

• The full complement of elements that created the existing problem must be assembled and recognized;
• The risk the system will face when doing anything new;
• Everyone/everything within the system must accept that it’s not possible to fix the problem with known resources;
• All of the elements (people, policies, rules, relationships, etc.) that will be affected by a new solution – i.e. change – must understand, buy-in to the ways they’d be changing to ensure they end up balanced.

Until all above are managed the system will resist change (or buying, or learning, or eating healthy or or) regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. Indeed outside influencers actually cause resistance.

But we can actually lead Others through to their own change:

• Maintain Functional Stability. Any change initiative must maintain the foundational balance of the original system. Change is not so simple as shoving in a new Behavior.
• Achieve Buy-In. For a system to be willing to change successfully, to avoid resistance, a system must understand the risk of change; recognize exactly what fallout will occur when anything is added, and 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. (It’s why your Uncle Vinny still smokes with lung cancer, and why training doesn’t cause new behaviors.)
• Avoid Risk. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way ‘round: when we attempt to push a new behavior – say, asking a heart patient to change her diet or exercise program – before eliciting belief change from the entire system, we will achieve resistance as it may be seen as a threat.

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?

1. While the university had a need for my products solution, the poor relationship between the HR director and the L&D director created hidden, ongoing dysfunction. The information flow problem could not be resolved while the hidden problem remained in place – details not only hidden from the sales person but used as a deterrent by Linda (who resolved the problem by walking away). So yes, there was a need for the solution and indeed a willing partner, but no, there was no buy-in for change.

2. The only viable route was to help her figure out her own route to a fix.

3. This was not a sales problem but a change management issue. I helped Linda resolve her own problem. Current change management models attempt to rule, govern, constrict, manage, influence, maintain the change, rather than enable the system to recognize and mitigate its own unique (and largely unconscious) drivers and change itself congruently.

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 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 of the system.

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.

Conclusion

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:

• what elements created and maintain the status quo,
• who needs to be included (often a larger group than anticipated),
• recognize what would get in the way of success and what needs to happen to mitigate that interference,
• figure out how to manage the workarounds in place that attempt to mitigate the problem,
• notice levels of buy-in and help those who resist shift their personal criteria to become part of the group,
• get agreement, steps, criteria, and Behaviors for an intact, non-resistant, functioning system that welcomes the new initiative. Then introduce the change.

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 March 31st, 2025

Posted In: Communication

How, Why, and When Buyers Buy, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

I  recently heard yet another excuse as to why a buyer didn’t buy: seller/buyer misalignment. Seriously? Because the seller didn’t close a sale (That was expected by the seller? In the mythical pipeline? According to the expectation of the seller?) there was a relationship problem? No. The problem stems from sellers not understanding what a buyer is, and what a buyer must know before self-identifying as a buyer. In this case, there was no buyer to be ‘misaligned’ with.

The fact is, selling doesn’t cause buying.

FROM PERSON TO BUYER

A decision not to purchase has very little to do with the seller, the solution, the relationship, or the need. In fact, making a purchase is the very last thing a buyer does. Just because a situation seems like a perfect fit with your solution does not make it a buying/ selling opportunity; just because someone really needs your solution does not mean they are ready, willing, or able to buy.

Let me begin by defining ‘Buyer’: a person (or group) who has

• assembled all people, causes, and elements that created their problem and agreed to a problem definition AND
• recognized they cannot fix the problem with familiar resources, usual vendors, or workarounds, AND
• determined the risk of change and found it palatable, AND
• gotten buy-in from everyone/everything involved with the changes a fix would affect, AND
• decided that the cost of a fix is lower than maintaining the status quo,

and decides that purchasing an external solution is their best option.

As the thought-leader behind how buyers buy (programs, books, models, steps, terms, since 1985) , the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the person who coined the terms Buy Cycle, Buying Patterns, Buying Journey, Buying Decision Team, and How Buyers Buy, I’d like to offer some thoughts:

1. A buyer isn’t a buyer until they’ve bought something. Until then they are people with a problem who may, if they can’t resolve the issue themselves and the risk is manageable, seek an external solution.

2. Solving a problem never begins as a decision to buy anything (unless a small personal item), regardless of ‘need’. People don’t want to buy anything; they merely want to resolve a problem in the most efficient way with the least risk. Hence, they won’t respond to or read your marketing or sales content based on ‘need’.

3. People prefer to resolve their own problems. Workarounds are always the first option, a purchase the last.

4. Unless the risk of making a purchase is lower than the risk of staying the same, there will be no purchase regardless of the need or the efficacy of your solution. By seeking folks with ‘need’, sellers only find the low-hanging fruit and reduce their potential prospect audience by 80%.

5. A purchase occurs only when the stakeholder group has found the risk of change manageable and buys-in to something new.  It’s only when there’s agreement from all elements that created the problem that

• it can’t be fixed with known resources or workarounds,
• the cost in resources/change is lower than the cost of the fallout of bringing in something new,
• a path forward is defined by everyone who will touch the final solution,

that the full scope of a bringing in a new solution (i.e. buy something) is understood. Until then ‘need’ isn’t fully defined, people haven’t yet self-identified as ‘buyers’, they won’t read your content or take a meeting (unless to pick your brain), and no external solution is required. Here is where sellers often get caught thinking there’s a ‘need’ before the folks with the problem think there is one.

‘Need’ is NOT the criteria people use to buy. Until they are convinced they cannot solve their own problem and change without much disruption, until the understand and can accept the risk of change, they are not buyers and won’t heed pitches or appointment attempts.

6. There is a defined series of 13 (generic) steps that determine if, when, why, how, what to buy. A buying decision is a risk/change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue. Until the full set of stakeholders have agreed they can’t fix the problem with familiar resources AND have developed a plan for congruent change with minimal risk, there is no willingness to seek an external solution. In other words, before people become buyers they’re merely people trying to fix a problem themselves.

Sample

7. People don’t need you to sell to them. They can get all the data they need from your site. They really need your help in traversing their decision steps: the time it takes them to figure this out (non-buying, cultural, systems/ rules based) is the length of the sales cycle, and sales overlooks this entirely.

8. Making a purchase is a risk/change management issue before it’s a solution choice problem. The first question people consider is how they can achieve Excellence with the least ‘cost/risk’ to the system; the last question they consider is what solution they’d need from ‘outside’. With a focus on placing solutions, there is no element of the sales model that facilitates systemic change. Sales overlooks the largest portion of the buyer’s journey – how to manage the change a fix will cost to the system.

9. Until any disruption caused by a purchase (i.e. all purchases are ‘foreign’ to the system) is understood, planned for, and agreed to, no purchase will take place. The existing environment is sacrosanct; keeping it running smoothly is more important to them than fixing a problem that’s already been baked into the system, especially if it would cost unwanted internal disruption.

10. Everyone and everything who created the current problem and would potentially touch a new solution must agree to any modification (purchase). This is why pitches, marketing, presentation will only be noticed by those who have completed their decision path.

11. The time it takes people/buyers to discover their own answers and know how to manage change in the least disruptive way, is the length of the sales cycle. It has nothing to do with selling, buying, need, relationship, content, or solutions until the route to congruent change is defined and agreed to. It’s a risk/change management issue before it’s a solution choice issue. And the sales model ignores this, causing 5% close rates instead of 40%.

12. The last thing people want is to buy something. With their criteria of ‘solution placement’, sellers often enter at the wrong time, ask the wrong questions, and offer the wrong data – and end up selling only to the low-hanging fruit (the 5% who have planned their route to change already).

13. Buyers buy using their own buying patterns, not a seller’s selling patterns. Using a specific type of sales effort further restricts the population of those who will buy. We don’t necessarily object to the products Robocalls promote. It’s the invasive selling patterns we object to.

14. There is a difference in goals, capability of changing, and level of buy-in between those who CAN/WILL buy vs those who sellers think SHOULD buy. By entering to seek folks in the process of solving a problem your solution can resolve, we can find and capture 40% of those on route to become buyers.

15. The time it takes people to come up with their complete set of buy-in and change-based answers is the time it takes them to seek an external solution – i.e. become a buyer. Let me say this again: Buying has nothing whatsoever to do with their need, your solution, or your relationship.

By only listening for clues that lead you to assume a ‘need’ for your solution, by entering into ‘relationships’ based on what you’re selling, by only asking questions to ‘prove’ a need/solution match (too often with only one or two members of the full Buying Decision Team), you’re not only biasing the interaction, but limiting your sales to closing those who have gotten to the point when they’re ready, willing, able to change – the low hanging fruit; you’re missing the opportunity to enter earlier, develop a real relationship, and facilitate the path that people who CAN buy must take before they are buyers.

The current sales model ignores the possibility of facilitative buying, or becoming real relationship managers and true consultants and Servant Leaders.

In other words, the sales model enters too early in the buying decision journey to reach or serve the maximum number of prospects.

BUYING FACILITATION®

Potential buyers need your help figuring out how to figure it all out much more than they need a product pitch, or more biased questions, that attempt to uncover a ‘need’ they don’t yet know they have.

I’ve developed a model (Buying Facilitation®) that uses wholly unique skills (Listening for Systems, Facilitative Questions, etc.) to facilitate a prospective buyer’s route to Excellence.

A generic model used for coaching, management, leadership, healthcare, Buying Facilitation® finds folks trying to solve a problem in the area of your solution, then leads them down their decision path and turns them into buyers in one-eighth the time it would take them to close.

I’ve been quite successful teaching it to global corporations ( i.e. 100,00 sales professionals at companies such as IBM, Kaiser, Wachovia, P&G, KPMG, etc.) to increase their sales. In fact, over 30 decades, my client’s pilot training groups close 8x more sales on average over the control groups, regardless of product or price.

Currently you’re now wasting 95% of your time running after those few who have finally arrived at step 10 – the low hanging fruit – ignoring the much larger pool of those who are on route, and fighting for a competitive advantage.

By adding new functionality to the front end of your sales model, you can enter earlier, be a Servant Leader, and facilitate congruent change and THEN be on board as a provider as they go through their buying decision process.

Buying Facilitation® is NOT sales; it’s NOT selling/purchase-based; it IS change- and decision-based. Right now you’re waiting while buyers do this anyway (or merely running after those you THINK have a need but end up fixing the problem in other ways) because all people must manage their change before they are buyers. Why not add a skill set, stop wasting time/effort, and close more. Then you’ll never be ‘misaligned.’

____________

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 14th, 2024

Posted In: Communication

What’s the Cost of Team Miscommunication?

Is your team communicating effectively? Do you reach goals on time and without resistance? Are all voices included during brainstorming to assure the full fact pattern is collected that will inspire a set of agreeable possibilities? How are communication breakdowns handled?

I thought of these questions during a recent client chat that prompted me to remember a situation I had with Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico some years back. While the tale is a bit outdated, it will serve as a starting point for my belief that team miscommunication is costly for both productivity and people, and happening more often these days with new-forming teams, remote relationships, and distance meetings.

Here’s my Los Alamos Labs case study that might provide a few thoughts. I’ll follow it with ideas and suggestions.

LOS ALAMOS LABS

               Case study

In the 1990s, Los Alamos Labs had a mailroom [Yes! We used snail mail in those days!] that sorted and delivered incoming mail – contracts, client letters, invoices, etc. It took them 6 days (6 days!) to distribute it; leadership wanted it done in one.

After months of failing to shorten the time line, leadership decided to contract out the work and fire the 26-person mailroom team. Before they took that drastic step, they brought me in to see if I could solve the problem with a team-building training program.

Speaking only to the client who hired me (Big mistake, it turned out) I created a nifty program. I arrived at the client site an hour early to observe the team in action before delivering the training. I immediately noticed much larger problems than merely team issues.

To begin with, the racial disparity was glaring: as the company was in New Mexico (a largely Hispanic population), there were 24 Hispanic (LatinX) people and two Anglos (White); it was quite obvious they didn’t speak to or listen to each other. The two Anglos stayed to themselves, never connecting in any way with the other 24 in the hour I watched them.

Next, there were cliques that operated in sort of a ballet, speaking, connecting, moving within their small groups with none of them going outside their cliques for questions, discussions, or sharing. So either their jobs were unique to each person, or there was massive inefficiency.

Didn’t seem like my team building program was an answer. I promptly threw away the program, went into the assigned training room down the hall, and put two facing chairs in the middle of the room with the rest of the chairs in a circle facing the two middle ones.

When the group came in, I told them I noticed some communication issues that I found disturbing, so before we did the real ‘training’ I wanted any personal issues resolved.

I invited whoever was having a personal issue – a grudge, an annoyance, a distrust – to sit in one of the middle chairs and invite their colleague to sit in the other and discuss the problem. I sat on the floor between the two chairs as the interpreter.

Nothing happened for 15 minutes. Silence. Then I stood up and announced I’d sit there all day if need be, but maybe the manager should begin. Surely he was annoyed with someone!

Roberto reluctantly came and sat on one of the chairs and said that instead of sharing his annoyances, he invited anyone annoyed with him to sit across from him and share their feelings.

After a few minutes, a young Hispanic woman came and sat down.

Theresa: I thought so hard about the delivery problems we were having and came up with what I thought was a great idea. But you gave me five minutes and basically didn’t listen. This has happened before when I’ve brought you new ideas. I’ll never bring in any new ideas again. And now we might all get fired because nothing has changed. I tried.

Roberto: I was annoyed too because I thought you were complaining about…

I stopped him so I could translate what she was actually saying:

SD: I heard Theresa say she’s having trust issues because she spent time and care presenting ways to try to resolve the problem and felt you ignored her. As the manager your job is not only to make sure your folks trust you but acquire as many ideas from your team as possible. Try a different response.

Roberto: OK! Um. Theresa: I’m so sorry I didn’t hear you as you deserved to be heard. And I’m sad I’ve not heard your ideas. I’m sure all of your ideas are certainly worth discussing. I sometimes am focused on other issues and don’t listen properly. What can I do to regain your trust? And can we set a time later this week to discuss any ideas you have that might help the group be more efficient?

After Theresa came one of the two Anglo people saying he felt the group had a racial bias against him. (Note: racial bias in New Mexico was a long-term cultural issue that affected everyone. I lived in Taos for 11 years and bear the scars.) Again, Roberto started off defending himself, but with my intervention opened up a race-based dialogue that continued within the group most of the day.

Turned out, most of the team members had grievances they shared. By the time everyone was finished discussing angers, annoyances and biases, it was 11:30 at night.

To their credit, there was great authenticity, honesty, and quite a few tears and hugs. Ideas were shared, brainstormed, listened to by all. When there were misunderstandings people were asked to clarify. Ideas seemed to have wings, flying around the room. Everyone was listening attentively and respectfully. We even had a few laughs (A few in-jokes of course, but mostly I was the ‘butt’ of the jokes for sitting so long on the floor. No idea why I didn’t sit on a chair for god’s sakes!).

On Day Two, I led the newly-formed collaboratory through ideas and plans for better communication, more productivity, sharing, and task efficiency. Within days after our time together they brought the 6-day delivery time down to one day and kept their jobs. Problem solved.

Sample

Sample

One more thing: following our program, the team took those 2 chairs and put them outside their manager’s office. Every time there was a confusion or disagreement, the people involved went to the chairs: “Let’s discuss this. Meet you at the chairs at 2:00.” The next year they sent me a photo of all of them next to the chairs. On one of the chairs sat a Malcolm Baldrige Excellence Award. They were holding a banner that said, “THANK YOU SHARON-DREW!”

Ahhhhh. I love my job. Although next time I used that strategy I did sit on a chair. 😊

Take Aways

I’d like to think that the skills involved with the final excellence were ones any team could adopt.

1. Willingness to be honest and authentic regardless of the ‘politically correct’ rules of social conversation.
2. Willingness to be vulnerable, admit wrong-doing and apologize.
3. Willingness to be honest about racial issues and hold Truth above feelings or fears.
4. Willingness to look at the problem and recognize what was working, what responsibilities they had to take to make it right, and willingness to fix it.
5. The necessity of the whole team being present as witness and judge, through discomfort and exhaustion. There was no place to hide – everyone knew the truth, and it had to be spoken for the greater good, separate from roles or personalities.
6. Patience to sit for whatever time it takes to resolve all the issues.

The role I played as translator was also vital. Not only did I provide safety and listen from a Witness (i.e. non-judgmental) place, safety, but it took the sting out of any blame and played a role in a meta understanding, away from unconscious human/racial biases or personal traits. Because I didn’t know any of these folks, I was not tangled in any past relationship, role, or status issues. I suspect that another outsider, from another department maybe, could have done the job. But bringing in a consultant isn’t a bad idea when an impartial eye/ear is needed.

SELF-CORRECTING TEAMS

This team was so comfortable with their long-standing cultural norms that their communication problems were endemic and led to ineffective work habits.

How many companies face the same problem? How many groups just keep on keepin’ on in ignorance or denial, making excuses and playing the blame-game with their resultant failures? How many groups only collect data from a chosen few and omit the entire population that would yield imaginative ideas that conventional leadership seems to ignore? How many important, creative, and valid ideas get ignored because of gender or race or sexual preference issues?

The cost of doing nothing is high:

1. 1. A minimization of good ideas. Client-facing employees are often omitted from company change and problem-solving because they’re not ‘on the leadership team.’ Yet they have great ideas that leadership doesn’t think of. Use these folks. You hired them each for a reason. Put their ideas into action. Your employees are your competitive edge.
   2. A minimization of collaboration and job effectiveness. With cliques, lack of diversity, teams bound by job descriptions and hierarchies, there’s no opportunity to pollinate new ideas, try new actions, make new norms. And without these, the company dies from its core.
   3. A continuation and exacerbation of problems. Accepted communication practices get factored in to the culture and become built in forever, taking failure along for the ride and causing fall-out to become normative. A well-known global software company I worked with saw no problem with treating staff and clients from a win/lose position. “I need to have control and make people do what I want. I was told to do this on my first day here.” It was endemic. Brought in to get the leadership team to work from integrity, I mentioned that Win/Win was the goal. They were confused when I said Win/Lose equaled Lose/Lose, which cost them trust and creativity and ultimately business. “But what do I need Win/Win for? I’m the one in control. They have to do what I say regardless”. Hmm. How’s that working for you?
   4. A colossal time waste. I recently went through a State Tax Review that prompted an enormous overcharging due to a glitch in the system from 1994. There were 6 departments involved, and none of them spoke to the others. If I didn’t call the other 5 when something occurred, I got caught up in the lag between departments, dates, paperwork. By the time we were done we all hated each other. They asked what the rush was, that it usually took 6 months not 6 weeks (I bet!) and I just didn’t understand their system. Nope. I did not. Talk to each other! Make sure there are systems set up so everyone has the same data at the same time. In 2022 that’s simple, no?
   5. Unnecessary resistance: Without everyone’s buy-in, without everyone who touches the proposed solution having a say in the outcome, there will be resistance that costs unknown time, money, personal fallout. With proper communication up front, everyone is on board and has a stake in the success of the project. There is absolutely no need for resistance. If you’re getting resistance, you’re doing it wrong.
   6. Dimished results. Until or unless
   7. the full set of facts are known and gathered from the full spectrum of resources,
   8. the full complement of possible ideas are tried,
   9. the downsides are factored in before completion,

a project will not be successful. Nothing else to say.

THE TOOLS YOU NEED

Here are the necessary skill sets for effective team communication:

Unbiased Listening. This sounds much easier to do than it is. Let me start by saying that nothing has meaning – no words, no dialogues, no sounds – until our brains translate it. Like the earth has no color – color is a function of the rods and cones in our eyes translating incoming vibrations – words have no meaning until the incoming sound vibrations get translated within our neural circuitry (I wrote a book on this: What? Did you really say what I think I heard?).

In other words, we only understand what someone says according to our existing brain circuits. Listening is a neural/brain thing: we can’t hear others without bias.

For those who are curious, sound enters our ears as vibrations without meaning (i.e. not words!). They become signals that seek out ‘close enough’ circuits already existing in our brains from some prior experience and get translated accordingly.

In other words, everything we hear gets translated by our subjective experience. Sad but true. And we think we listen attentively, but can only hear/understand what our brains listen for. Obviously this is where misunderstanding and miscommunication come from. People DO listen. They just hear what their brains interpret for them according to their historic, subjective beliefs.

The easiest way to fix this problem is to say during a conversation:

I want to make sure I understood what you said. I will say what I think I heard, and ask that you please correct me so I can get it right.

This way you can take away an accurate understanding without guesswork, even if you initially thought what you heard was accurate.

Gather data from every person or you’ll not have the full fact pattern. Too often we gather data from the folks we consider ‘obvious’. not necessarily the full set of stakeholders who are part of the problem and hold some very necessary data.

So many customer service initiatives are developed without the input of the customer facing folks and omit addressing real customer needs. How many times are HR folks omitted because, well, why use HR (except that the initiative will transfer, fire, reorganize people)? Think of everyone who will be touched by the final solution and bring them in at the start.

Ask the right questions. This one is a head scratcher because conventional questions are meant to gather data biased by the needs, language choices, and goals of the Asker and which subsequently gather very restricted data from the Receiver. Obviously, the odds are good that the question will be misinterpreted. So using conventional questions will only discover some percentage of an answer.

To manage this problem, I’ve invented a new form of question (took me 10 years!) I call a Facilitative Question. Different from a conventional question that seeks answers for the Asker, FQs lead Others into their brains to discover a much, much broader set of possibilities beyond the biases of the Asker. After all, retrieving good data is a mind-brain issue. It takes a while to learn to formulate as specific words in specific sequences are used so the brain peruses its unconscious. But once you learn how it changes the arc of all conversations.

Do a congruence check. Are all team members contributing? If not, there’s a reason. Are they feeling unheard, that their ideas aren’t ‘big’ enough? Do they feel powerless? Do they feel any gender, race, or ability bias?

All voices are necessary. Bring them in or you risk restricting all that’s possible, not to mention setting up the initiative for failure and resistance.

Only hold meetings if ALL members are present! Do not hold a meeting if someone is ill or can’t make it. It biases the outcome, causes resistance, and leaves out important ideas.

IS YOUR COMMUNICATION WORKING?

I have some questions for teams to consider:

1. 1. • Is your team is functioning optimally? What would suboptimal communication look/sound/act like?
      • Do you have any vehicle in place to take a meta stance and discover problems without biases or defense?
      • What do you have in place to ensure you’re not operating with any racial, gender, or ability prejudice? It’s inherent and unconscious. How do you test it?
      • Do you regularly get resistance – either from your own team or during client initiatives? What are you willing to do to develop strategies that enable group buy-in from the full set of stakeholders (i.e. including ‘Joe in accounting’)?
      • If you regularly notice dysfunction, during an initiative or with less-than-steller results, what are you doing about it?

I believe this is a problem that needs focus, especially with so much change occurring in our organizations now. Make it a priority. Your productivity, creativity, stability and integrity depend on it. And if you’re seeking a consultant or coach to facilitate your meetings, please contact me at  sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

____________________________________

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 August 5th, 2024

Posted In: Communication

Questions: the new superpower, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

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 sort of assumption is a normal reaction: 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 what is it, precisely, we’re assuming? I’d like to take a few moments and delve into the larger idea here: Have you ever wondered what a question actually is?

Conventionally, questions are posed to elicit a response, to gather data from a Responder, like “How many children do you have?” or “Why are you doing that?” Parents and spouses sometimes use questions to point out insufficiencies or annoyances, as in “Didn’t you notice the dishes haven’t been done?”

Sometimes we use them rhetorically to demand fairness in the world, like in “Why is this happening to me??” Sometimes questions are posed to elicit a specific response so the Asker can cause the Responder to admit something, like “Don’t you think there are better ways to do that?” Sometimes questions are deemed ‘closed’, like in, “What time is dinner?” Sometimes they’re ‘open’, like in, “What do you want to eat?”

But there is a unifying feature to all standard questions: they’re biased by the needs, words, and goals of the Asker. More specifically, questions:

• 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 I believe we are underutilizing questions. I believe it’s possible for questions to serve a higher purpose – to collect accurate data, of course, but also to help others discover their own answers and path to decision making and change.

What if it were possible to use questions to actually lead people through their unconscious discovery process to uncover their own best answers – without any bias from the Asker?

WHAT QUESTIONS DO

There’s a reason questions don’t necessarily unearth accurate data. Using words uniquely chosen to represent the needs and curiosity – the bias – of the Asker, standard questions extract only a portion of the available responses stored unconsciously in a Responder’s brain. Indeed, standard questions can end up being misunderstood or interpreted badly. There are several reasons for this.

1. 1. 1. Information: because information is elicited as per the requirements of the Asker, 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 annoy causing partial or inaccurate responses.
      2. 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?). Given these natural biases, it’s likely that what we think we’ve heard is some degree different from the Asker’s intent.

   

          Sample

3. Biased question formulation: Askers use words meant to elicit good data 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 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.

Yet we all have examples where these assumptions have proven false. Sometimes the Influencer doesn’t trust the Other to have the ‘right’ opinions or ideas; sometimes they pose questions that elicit incorrect data, or worded in a way that unwittingly creates resistance.

Sadly, when Responders share answers that prove unhelpful or inaccurate, Influencers blame them for being non-compliant. And worse, 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. I wondered if questions could be posed with no bias, no ego, no personal needs for a particular solution – only the trust that Others had their own answers and merely had to discover them inside themselves.

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 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 that addresses the above problems. But before I introduce it I’d like you to consider your own willingness to do go beyond your habitual questioning patterns: What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to add a new skill to your toolkit? Because the hardest bit is to change the mindset of the questioner.

To achieve more consistent, helpful, and permanent results, Askers must begin by changing their criteria from having answers to being facilitators and trust that the Other has their own answers and not assume they possessed the solutions.

I actually thought about this for 10 years as I tried to figure out how words could uncover exactly where in the brain answers reside. I eventually came up with a new form of question I labeled a Facilitative Question. With a goal of helping Others consciously enter their unconscious brains, they use

1. 1. • 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 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. With 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.

1. 1. 1. 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?
      2. 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.]
      3. 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.]
      4. 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.

1. 1. • 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.

______________

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 May 27th, 2024

Posted In: Communication

I am a Victim of Chat GPT

A friend of mine looked up Buying Facilitation® on ChatGPT and sent me its response. It was frightening. The problems began immediately:

“Buying Facilitation. A sales model invented by Sharon-Drew Morgen”

Well, at least they spelled my name right. But they forgot the ®, the registered trademark, for starters – an important omission as the ® assures the accurate definition of the term. Without it, Buying Facilitation® gets lumped in with conventional sales thinking and the substantial differences are lost.

Buying Facilitation® is not a sales model, but a generic Change Facilitation model useful in Pre-Sales decision making. It’s quite different from sales and uses Facilitative Questions to lead would-be prospects through their internal (non-buying) change management factors before they self-identify as buyers. Calling it a sales model negates the definition and function of the process.

Sample

LOST IN TRANSLATION

The downside doesn’t end there. Being cited as a sales model will cause ChatGPT followers to miss the fundamental distinction between Buying Facilitation® and sales.

The succeeding pages were mesmerizing and heartbreaking. The, um, good news is that it accurately named terms I carefully created and coined over decades; the bad news is it misdefined them according to the biases inherent in conventional sales thinking.

Instead of having tools to facilitate Others through their 13 steps of change, to ChatGPT Buying Facilitation® becomes just another sales ploy; the very concept of facilitating the necessary change management process (before addressing ‘need’ or ‘solution placement’) gets lost in translation. Brutal.

The frightening part is that while the representation offered by ChatGPT sounds plausible, it nullifies my wholly original concepts and a lifetime of design and development, assuring the sales community won’t have additional skills to better understand a buying decision from the Buy Side.

BUT CAN I FIX IT?

Obviously, it’s not okay that ChatGPT is offering an erroneous interpretation of my work. But herein lie the rub that all of us will have to address: how to fix it.

Is there someone I can call to get this fixed? Nope. Can I get a techie to reprogram the program that created it? Nope. Can I link a note to whoever reads this? Provide accurate content? No, and no.

Is there anything I can do to represent my own invention accurately – an original idea that is already often misunderstood (What do you mean, ‘Pre-Sales Change Facilitation?’)? Again, no.

So, for those who only use ChatGPT as their resource, they’ll now – and forever – not have access to my ideas or a wholly new (and Servant Leader) way to sell. What to do? God knows. I don’t. But I’m sad and angry. And feeling very very helpless.

__________________

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 7th, 2023

Posted In: Communication