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

Going from a successful sales professional to an entrepreneur of a start-up tech company, I realized the problem with sales. As an entrepreneur I tried to tried to resolve problems in-house. When impossible, the next step was to figure out if we were willing to go external and actually buy something, figure out if the ‘cost’, the risk, of making a purchase would carry a greater risk than keeping things as they were.

We ended up fumbling around trying to figure this out, but always moving toward congruent change; I didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And it wasn’t until we figured out how, if, or when to change without major disruption, and until everyone bought in, I never even considered buying anything.

Along the way I tracked my steps and noticed our decision-making process, a change management process with specific stages, each meant to maintain stability, each meant to find solutions and workarounds that would match our goals and norms.

WHO IS A BUYER

I was surprised to discover that regardless of my need, or any available solutions that I could have purchased earlier, I never considered myself a buyer and ignored all sales content.

This process, this change management process I went through, is something everyone does before they become buyers. In other words, the missing piece in sales was the change piece: if sales first sought folks trying to solve a problem in the area my solution would help them with, then facilitated them through the issues they needed to resolve (job descriptions, goals, buy-in, workarounds, and organizational/internal change) before choosing their least disruptive solution, we’d find folks on route to buying and make their process more efficient.

When we attempt to sell our solutions too early, folks haven’t yet determined their full set of needs, don’t have all the stakeholders on board, haven’t yet tried all workarounds, and generally are not ready to buy. The pitching and presenting, waiting and following up, was falling on deaf ears.

I sure could have used help making the process more efficient; if a sales person had helped me understand the issues my decision-making had to include, I would have figured out a lot sooner if I needed to buy something. But unfortunately, this is overlooked by the sales industry because it is NOT purchase-based.

I finally understood the missing piece in the sales model, the cause of the very low close rates: by assuming someone with ‘need’ is a prospect, we ignore the obligatory change management portion that precedes decision making. What if we added a wholly new skill set to first find folks in the process of change, help them address it, and THEN sell once they became buyers?

Turns out selling and change facilitation are two distinct endeavors with two distinct skill sets. I decided to develop a front end tool to add to the sales model.

For years I’d been studying NLP and neuroscience to best understand how brains are organized so I could figure out how to make change more efficient. I combined this knowledge with my newfound understanding of what goes on behind-the-scenes on the Buy Side, and developed a generic change facilitation model called Buying Facilitation® as a precursor (and wholly separate model) to sales.

This article introduces you to Buying Facilitation®, a precursor to sales, and a way to facilitate people along their route to buy-in, decision-making, and change. And buying.

DO YOU WANT TO SELL? OR HELP SOMEONE BUY?

BIG IDEA: People don’t want to buy anything, merely solve a problem at the least ‘cost’ (risk) to their system. Until they understand the risk of bringing in something new, they won’t self-identify as ‘buyers’ regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.

PROBLEM: People don’t consider they have a need until all workarounds are tried and all stakeholders agree. They won’t heed any selling efforts even if the content offered might solve their problem. By seeking out folks with ‘need’, sellers restrict their audience to the low-hanging fruit – those who have completed their 13 step change management process they must traverse before considering they’ve got a need and become buyers.

SOLUTION: It’s possible to find folks who WILL become buyers on the first call, facilitate them through their change steps with a change/decision model (Buying Facilitation®), and then sell. But because the two endeavors are distinct, trying to incorporate change facilitation with selling causes the same resistance and avoidance sellers currently get.

BIG IDEA: People don’t become buyers until they’ve handled all of their internal stuff, the risk of change is acceptable, and everyone involved agrees they’re ready, willing, and able to bring in something new. With a solution-placement focus, sales and marketing finds only those few who have completed their change process.

PROBLEM: The problem is not in getting our solution sold; it’s in getting our solution bought. Before self-identifying as buyers, people have Pre-Sales, change management work to do that doesn’t involve the content we try to push on them. Our sales and marketing efforts seek to ‘get in’, get read, or determine ‘need’, which restricts the prospect base to people who already know what they need (those who have completed their process).

SOLUTION: Before they become buyers they must assemble the most appropriate people, get consensus, try workarounds, understand the ‘cost’/risk of making a change, and manage the actual change. Current tools only create connections with people already seeing external solutions, but it’s possible to enter earlier with a change toolkit:

Because of the selling biases in our listening and questioning, sellers extract partial data, from people who don’t have the full fact pattern yet and who haven’t self-identified as buyers;
promised dates get ignored and we spend huge amounts of time following up people who will never buy because WE think they have a need (and ‘need’ does not a buyer maker);
we lose an opportunity to connect and prove our competitive worth by entering with a change facilitation purpose first;
we waste our time pushing content on folks not yet buyers and waiting, hoping they’ll buy, and cause resistance instead of entering earlier to facilitate the change.

Buying Facilitation® uses a very specific tool kit, the Pre-Sales stuff selling doesn’t handle. Once we help with this, we’ve either helped them help themselves, or they realize they cannot solve the problem internally and they become prospects. For these folks, we then sell. These are the folks we would have ended up trying to sell to anyway, but too often we would have been ignored because they hadn’t been ready. Once they’ve reached this point, they are ready buyers and no longer prospects.

BIG IDEA: The flaw in the sales model: designed to place solutions, sales starts selling to anyone they assume has a need, well before people are prospects, before they are ready/able to buy and haven’t gotten the buy-in or understood the ‘cost’ of making a change. This restricts success to those who finally self-identify as buyers – the low-hanging fruit (5%).

PROBLEM: The status quo is preferred and is the basis of decision making. Regardless of a buyer’s real need (which they often don’t understand until very late in the change cycle), or the relevance of a solution; regardless of relationship or pitch/content/price; it is only when they’ve completed their change and all agree they need an external solution that they consider buying anything. This holds true regardless of type or price of solution.

SOLUTION: Buying Facilitation® is a generic, unique brain-based change facilitation model that facilitates people through the obligatory systemic decision-making steps necessary to manage change. Those who end up solving their problem are fine – we’ve served them quickly and there’s no need to follow up. Those who need our solution become prospects and sellers then shift into selling modality to place solutions. It can be used with small personal products, cold calls, help desks, complex sales, and marketing.

Because BF must be unbiased, I developed a new form of listening (Listening for Systems) and a new form of direction-driven/non-biased question (Facilitative Question) to facilitate someone’s journey through the steps of change. Once folks are at the point of becoming prospects and buyers, sellers are already in place and the buy cycle is quick.

But you must remember not to use BF as a selling tool or you’ll end up with the same results you’re getting now. It’s necessary to understand that a buying decision is first a change management problem before a solution choice issue.

Buyers must handle this stuff, with you or without you: you’ve always sat and waited (and called, sent, called, pitched, prayed, waited) while they do this for themselves and the time it takes them is the length of the sales cycle (And no, there is NO indecision!). If you can collaborate with them first as change facilitators, not solution providers, you’ll serve them from the beginning. [Read my book on this: www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com]

EXAMPLE OF USING BUYING FACILITATION®

Let me lead you through one simple situation from a small business banker I trained at a major US bank. They decided to employ Buying Facilitation® throughout the bank following a successful pilot training:

A. Control group Sales: 100 calls, 10 appointments, 2 closed sales in 11 months.

B. Buying Facilitation®: 100 calls, 37 appointments, 29 closed sales in 3 months.

While these numbers might sound high, remember: interactions proceed differently using Buying Facilitation® because the focus is different: it’s first a call with a change facilitation hat on to (A) find those seeking change, (B) then facilitate them through their entire decision path and (C) then sell to those who become buyers.

Starting by seeking those folks already involved in finding the best route to change, and using ‘change’ rather than ‘need’ as the original focus, there’s different output and the odds of finding and facilitating someone who will become a buyer are high.

Using Buying Facilitation® with a Facilitative Question, my client started like this:

“Hi. My name is John and I’m a small business banker from X bank. This is a sales call. I’m wondering: How are you currently adding new banking resources for those times your current bank can’t give you what you need to keep your business operating optimally?”

Notice he’s not attempting to ‘uncover need’. Here’s the thinking: Given all small businesses have some banking relationship, the only businesses who would want to discuss new banking services were: 1. those who weren’t happy with their current bank, or 2. had bankers who might not be able to provide what they might need.

By helping them figure out where they could add a new resource without disrupting current vendor relationships, my clients vastly expanded the field of possible buyers and instantly eliminated those who would never buy. After all, people have the right to be satisfied with their current vendors!

It proved a winning tactic: 37 were willing to continue the conversation, line up all of the decision factors, figure out who the real stakeholders were, and have everyone meet the seller, just from that opening question (up from 10). During the field visit we helped them get buy-in and consensus to bring in an additional vendor – us. Win/win. Collaboration. True facilitation.

CONCLUSION:

Buying Facilitation® is not sales, not a solution placement tool, not an information gathering tool, and not a persuasion tactic. It’s not content-driven, and sellers don’t try to understand a buyer’s needs because they can’t know their needs until the end of when they’ve become buyers: until they figure out how to manage any change, they are only people trying to solve a problem – not buyers – and they will resist all sales efforts and content. Once all workarounds have been tried, and the ‘cost’ (risk) to the system is understood and found agreeable to all stakeholders, people then self-identify as buyers.

By first facilitating change and decision making before trying to sell, you’ve halved the sales cycle and doubled the folks interested in buying. There’s no manipulation, no persuasion, no influencing. It’s a win/win collaboration, servant leader model that might lead into a sales process: we actually facilitate buyer readiness.

I can’t say this enough: buyers go through this anyway, without us. Let’s use our industry knowledge and be real trusted advisors. Find folks going through change in the area our solution serves, then help them navigate their change before selling. It can be your competitive edge.

And we end up with real prospects who we’ve helped get ready to buy. Not to mention the collaboration, trust, respect, and integrity built into the interaction creates lasting relationships when used throughout the relationship.

The good news is that you can still sell – but only to those who are indeed ready willing and able, rather than waste 90% of your time trying to manipulate, pitch, persuade, push, ‘get through the door’, network, write content, etc. You can help those who CAN buy get their ducks in a row and quickly eliminate those who will never buy because it will become obvious to you both.

I’m not suggesting you don’t sell; I’m merely suggesting you find and facilitate change for those who WILL buy, and set that up by first facilitating prospective buyers down their own buying decision path.

____________

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, https://sharondrew1.substack.com/, and https://medium.com/@sharondrew_9898/. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen November 24th, 2025

Posted In: Listening, Sales

277 Comments

Decades ago I had an idea that questions could be vehicles to facilitate change in addition to eliciting answers. Convention went against me: the accepted use of questions as information gathering devices is built into our culture. But overlooked is their ability, if used differently, to facilitate congruent change.

WHAT IS A QUESTION?

Standard questions gather information at the behest of an Asker and as such are biased by their words, goals, and intent. As such, they actually restrict our Communication Partner’s responses:

Need to Know Askers pose questions as per their own ‘need to know’, data collection, or curiosity.

These questions risk overlooking more relevant, accurate, and criteria-based answers that are stored in a Responder’s brain beyond the parameters of the question posed.

Why did you do X? vs How did you decide that X was your best option?

Manipulate agreement/response Questions that direct the Responder to respond in a way that fits the needs and expectations of the Asker.

These questions restrict possibility, cause resistance, create distrust, and encourage lying.

Can you see how doing Y would have been better? vs What would you need to consider to broaden your scope of consideration next time?

Doubt Directive These questions, sometimes called ‘leading questions’ are designed to cause Responders to doubt their own effectiveness, in order to create an opening for the Asker.

These narrow the range of possible responses, often creating some form of resistance or defensive lies; they certainly cause defensiveness and distrust.

Don’t you think you should consider doing X? vs Have you ever thought of alternate ways of achieving X?

Data gathering When worded badly, these questions limit the possible answers and overlook more accurate data.

What were the results of your search for Z? vs How did you choose the range of items to search for, and what results did you get?

Standard questions restrict responses to the Asker’s parameters, regardless of their intent or the influencer’s level of professionalism, care, or knowledge. Potentially important, accurate data – not to mention the real possibility of facilitating change – is left on the table and instead may promote distrust, bad data collection, and delayed success.

Decision Scientists end up gathering incomplete data that creates implementation issues; leaders and coaches push clients toward the change they perceive is needed and often miss the real change needed. The fields of sales and coaching are particularly egregious. The cost of bias and restriction is unimaginable.

Sample

WHAT IS AN ANSWER?

Used to elicit or push data, the very formulation of conventional questions restricts answers. If I ask ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ you cannot reply ‘I went to the gym yesterday.’ Every answer is restricted by the biases within the question.

Because we enter conversations with an agenda, intuition, directive, etc., the answers we receive are partial at best, inaccurate at worst, and potentially cause resistance, sabotage, and disregard.
There are unknown facts, feelings, historic data, goals, etc. that lie within the Responder’s unconscious that hold real answers and cannot be found using merely the Asker’s curiosity.
By approaching situations with the natural biases inherent in standard questions, Askers only obtain good data from Responder’s with similar backgrounds and thought processes.
Because influencers are unaware of how their particular bias restricts an answer, how much they are leaving ‘on the table’, or how their questions have skewered potential, they have no concept if there are different answers possible, and often move forward with bad data.

So why does it matter if we’re biasing our questions? It matters because we don’t get accurate answers; it matters because our questions instill resistance; it matters because we’re missing opportunities to serve and support change.

Imagine if we could reconfigure questions to elicit accurate data for researchers or marcom folks; or enable buyers to take quick action from ads, cold calls or large purchases; or help coaching clients change behaviors congruently, permanently, and quickly; or encourage buy-in during software implementations. I’m suggesting questions can facilitate real change.

WHAT IS CHANGE?

Our brain stores data rather haphazardly in our brain making it difficult sometimes to find the right answer when we need it, especially relevant when we want to make new choices.

Over the last decades, I have mapped the sequence of systemic change and designed a way to use questions as directional devices to pull relevant data in the proper sequence so influencers can lead Responders through their own change process without resistance.

This decision facilitation process enables quicker decisions and buy-in – not to mention truly offer a Servant Leader, win/win communication. Let’s look at how questions can enable change.

All of us are a ‘system’ of subjectivity collected during our lifetime: unique rules, values, habits, history, goals, experience, etc. that operates consensually to create and maintain us. It resides in our unconscious and defines us. Without it, we wouldn’t have criteria for any choices, or actions, or habits whatsoever. Our system is hard wired to keep us who we are.

To learn something new, to do something different or learn a new behavior, to buy something, to take vitamins or get a divorce or use new software or be willing to forgive a friend, change must come from within or it will be resisted.

People hear each other through their own biases. You ask biased questions, receive biased answers, and hit pay dirt only when your biases match. Everyone else will ignore, resist, misunderstand, mishear, act out, sabotage, forget, ignore, etc.
Due to their biased and restricting nature, standard questions won’t facilitate another’s change process regardless of the wisdom of your comments.
Without the Responder being ready, willing, and able to change according to their own criteria, they cannot buy, accept, adopt, or change in any way.

To manage congruent change, and enable the steps to achieve buy-in, I’ve developed Facilitative Questions™ that work comfortably with conventional questions and lead Responders to

find their own answers hidden within their unconscious,
retrieve complete, relevant, accurate answers at the right time, in the right order to
traverse the sequenced steps to congruent, systemic change/excellence, while
avoiding restriction and resistance and
include their own values and subjective experience.

It’s possible to help folks make internal changes and find their own brand of excellence.

FACILITATIVE QUESTIONS™

Facilitative Questions™ (FQs) use a new skill set – listening for systems – that is built upon systems thinking and facilitating folks through their unconscious to discover their own answers.

Using specific words, in a very specific sequence, it’s possible to pose questions that are free of bias, need or manipulation and guide congruent change. And it requires trust that Responders have their own answers.

Facilitative Question™ Not information gathering, pull, or manipulative, FQs are guiding/directional tools, like a GPS system. Using specific words in specific sequences they lead Responders congruently, without any bias, down their unique steps of change to Excellence. How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle? Or What has stopped you from adding ‘x’ to your current skill set until now?

When used with coaching clients, buyers, negotiation partners, advertisements, or even teenagers, these questions create action within the Responder, causing them to recognize internal incongruences and deficiencies, and be guided through their own options. (Because these questions aren’t natural to us, I’ve designed a tool and program to teach the ‘How’ of formulating them.).

The responses to FQs are quite different from conventional questions. By word sequencing, word choice, and placement they cause the Responder to expand their perspective and recognize a broad swath of possible answers. A well-formed FQ would be one we formulated for Wachovia Bank to open a cold call:

How would you know when it’s time to consider adding new banking partners for those times your current bank can’t give you what you need?

This question shifted the response from 100 prospecting calls from 10 appointments and 2 closes over 11 months to 37 meetings and 29 closes over 3 months. FQs found the right prospects and garnered engagement immediately.

Instead of pulling data, you’re directing the Responder’s unconscious to where their answers are stored. It’s possible Responders will ultimately get to their answers without Facilitative Questions, but using them, it’s possible to help Responders organize their change criteria very quickly accurately. Using Facilitative Questions, we must

Enter with a blank brain, as a neutral navigator, servant leader, with a goal to facilitate change.
Trust our Communication Partners have their own answers.
Stay away from information gathering or data sharing/gathering until they are needed at the end.
Focus on helping the Other define, recognize, and understand their system so they can discover where it’s broken.
Put aside ego, intuition, assumptions, and ‘need to know.’ We’ll never understand another’s subjective experience; we can later add our knowledge.
Listen for systems, not content.

FQs enable congruent, systemic, change. I recognize this is not the conventional use of questions, but we have a choice: we can either facilitate a Responder’s path down their own unique route and travel with them as Change Facilitators – ready with our ideas, solutions, directions as they discover a need we can support – or use conventional, biased questions that limit possibility.

For change to occur, people must go through these change steps anyway; we’re just making it more efficient for them as we connect through our desire to truly Serve. We can assist, or wait to find those who have already completed the journey. They must do it anyway: it might as well be with us.

I welcome opportunities to put Facilitative Questions into the world. Formulating them requires a new skill set that avoids any bias (Listening for Systems, for example). But they add an extra dimension to helping us all serve each other.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen November 17th, 2025

Posted In: Communication, Listening

7 Comments

As influencers we aim to help Others achieve their own brand of excellence, using their own unique values and standards. Sadly, too many of us – coaches, leaders, sellers, consultants, doctors, parents – try to get Others to accede to our viewpoints and suggestions, believing we have information or solutions that offer ‘better’ choices than the ones they’ve made. We’re telling them, net, net, that we’re smarter, that we think our ideas are better than their own.

It’s not our intent, but due to the way we engage with others, and the way brains work, we inadvertently end up restricting possibility and creating resistance, conflict, antagonism, or disregard, regardless of the efficacy of what we have to offer.

In this article I’ll explain how we end up creating the very resistance we prefer to avoid, and introduce new skills to enable us to truly serve.

WE CONNECT THROUGH OUR OWN SUBJECTIVITY

Regardless of the situation, when we try to effect change using our own viewpoint or beliefs (even if they are valid), our unconscious biases and expectations cause us to inadvertently alienate those who might need us. As a result, we ultimately influence only a percentage of those who need our help – those who already basically agree with us.

I’ll explain, below, how we restrict our interactions and then offer new ways to approach influencing to enable others to find their own best solutions:

Biased listening: We each listen to Others unconsciously, through our brain’s unique and subjective filters (biases, triggers, assumptions, habitual neural pathways, memory channels), regardless of our concerted attempts to accurately hear what’s intended. As a result, what we think we hear is often an inaccurate translation of what was meant and not what the speaker intended.

So our Communication Partner (CP) might say ABC but we actually ‘hear’ ABD (And yes, we often hear something quite different than what was said although it shows up as ‘real’. Read my article on how this happens.) and our brains don’t tell us we’re misunderstanding. Unfortunately, it works both ways and Others also wittingly misconstrue what we’ve said.

I wasn’t fully aware of the extent of this until I researched my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? on how to hear others without bias. With the best will in the world we end up only accurately hearing, and thereby responding to, some percentage of the message our CPs intend. It’s outside of our conscious awareness. But it’s possible to remedy by listening with a different part of our brain. More on this later.

Sample

Fact #1. We hear Others through our subjective biases, assumptions, triggers, habituated neural pathways, and beliefs, causing us to unintentionally misinterpret the message intended, with no knowledge that what we think we’ve heard is mistaken. Obviously this effects both sides of a communication (i.e. Speakers and Listeners).

Subjective expectations: We enter into each conversation with expectations or goals (conscious or unconscious), often missing avenues of further exploration.

Fact #2. Entering conversations with very specific and self-oriented goals or expectations (conscious or unconscious) unwittingly limits the outcome and full range of possibility, and impedes discovery, data gathering, and creativity.

Restricted curiosity: Curiosity is both triggered and restricted by what we already know, i.e. you can’t ask or be curious about something you have no familiarity with to begin with. Using our own goals to pose questions that are often biased, assumptive, leading, etc. we inadvertently reduce outcomes to the biases we entered the conversation with; our subjective associations, experiences, and internal references restrict our ability to recognize accurate fact patterns during data gathering or analysis.

Fact #3: We enable Others’ excellence, and our own needs for accurate data, to the extent we can overcome our own unconscious biases that restrict the range and focus of our curiosity.

Cognitive dissonance: When the content we share – ideas, information, advice, written material – goes against our CPs conscious or unconscious beliefs, we cause resistance regardless of the efficacy of the information. This is why relevant solutions in sales, marketing, coaching, implementations, doctor’s recommendations etc. often fall on deaf ears. We sometimes unwittingly cause the very resistance we seek to avoid when we attempt to place perfectly good data into someone’s idiosyncratic, habituated belief system that runs different to our own.

Fact #4. Information doesn’t teach Others how to change behaviors; behavior change must first be initiated from beliefs, which in turn initiates buy-in.

Systems congruence: Individuals and groups think, behave, and decide from a habitual system of unconscious beliefs and rules, history and experience, that creates and maintains their status quo. We know from Systems Theory that it’s impossible to change only one piece of a system without effecting the whole. When we attempt to offer suggestions that run counter to the Other’s normalized system, we cause Others to risk incongruence and internal disruption. Hence, resistance.

Unfortunately for those of us trying to effect change in Others, it’s important to remember we’re outsiders: as such, we can never fully comprehend the ramifications of adding our new ideas, especially when every group, every person, believes it’s functioning well and their choices are normalized and habituated.

Just because it seems right to us doesn’t mean it’s right for another. Sometimes maintaining the status quo is the right thing to do for reasons we can’t understand; sometimes change can occur only when internal things need to shift in ways we cannot assist with.

Net net, we pose questions biased by our own need to know, offer information and solutions that we want to be adopted/accepted, and focus on reaching a goal we want to reach, all of which cause resistance: without buy-in and a clear route to manage any fallout from the potential change that a new element would cause (regardless of the outsider’s belief that change is necessary), congruent change can’t occur. When the ‘cost’ of the change is more than the ‘cost’ of the status quo, people will maintain the status quo.

Fact #5: Change cannot happen until there appropriate buy-in from all elements that will be touched by the change and there is a defined route to manage any disruption the change would entail.

Due to our standard questions and listening skills and assumptions that our terrific information will help, we end up helping only those few whose brains are set up to change (the low hanging fruit) and failing with those who might need us but aren’t quite ready.

INFORMATION DOESN’T FACILITATE CHANGE

We can, however, shift from having the answers to helping others achieve their own type of excellence (regardless of whether or not it shows up looking like we envisioned). In other words, we can help our CPs change themselves. Indeed, by thinking we have the answers, by driving our own outcomes, we lose the opportunity to serve, enable real change, and make a difference.

Don’t take the need to maintain the status quo lightly. Even patients who sign up for prevention programs have a history of non-compliance: with new food plans, or recommendations of exercise programs that challenge the behaviors they have habituated and normalized (for good or bad), they don’t know how to remain congruent if they were to change. (Note: as long as healthcare professionals continue to push behavior change rather than facilitate belief change first, non-compliance will continue.)

It’s possible to facilitate the journey through our CPs own hierarchy of values and rules, enable buy-in and agreeable change, and avoid resistance – but not by using conventional information gathering/sharing, or listening practices as they all entail bias that will touch only those with the same biases.

To enable expanded and managed choice and to avoid resistance, we must first help Others recognize how to congruently change their own status quo. They may have buy-in issues or resource issues; maybe their hierarchy of values or goals would need to shift, or their rules.

By focusing on facilitating choice/change first we can teach Others to achieve their own congruent change and then tailor our solutions and presentations to fit. Otherwise, our great content will only connect with those folks who already mirror the incoming data and overlook those who might have been able to change if they had known how to do so congruently.

THE SKILLS OF CHANGE

I’ve developed a generic Change Facilitation model, often used in sales (Buying Facilitation®) and coaching, that offers the ability to facilitate change at the core of where our status quo originates – our internal, idiosyncratic, and habituated rules and beliefs.

Developed over 50 years, I’ve coded my own Asperger’s systemizing brain, refitted some of the constructs of NLP, coded the system and sequence of change, and applied some of the research in brain sciences to determine where, if, and how new choices fit.

Using it, Others can consciously self-cue – normally an unconscious process – to enable them to discover their own needs for change in the area I can serve, and in a way that’s congruent with the rules and beliefs that keep their status quo in place.

I’ve trained the model globally over the past 30 years in sales, negotiation, marketing, patient relationships, leadership, coaching, etc. Below I introduce the main skills I’ve developed to enable change and choice – for me, the real kindness and integrity we have to offer.

It’s possible to lead Others through

an examination of their unconscious beliefs and established systems
to discover blocks, incongruences, and endemic obstructions
to examine how, if, why, when they might need to change, and then
help them set up the steps and means (tactically) to make those changes
in a way that avoids system’s dysfunction
with buy-in, consensus, and no resistance.

For those interested in learning more, I’m happy to chat, train, and share. Or feel free to use my thoughts to inspire your own model.

Listening for Systems: from birth we’re taught to carefully listen for content and try to understand the Other’s meaning (exemplified by Active Listening) which, because of our listening filters, often misses the underlying, unspoken Metamessage the speaker intends. By teaching the brain to disassociate and listen broadly rather than specifically, Systems Listening enables hearing the intended message at the root of the message being sent and supersedes all bias on either end. For those interested, read my article on how our listening restricts our worlds.

Facilitative Questions: conventional questions, used to gather data, are biased by the Speaker and interpreted in a biased way by the Responder. The intent of Facilitative Questions (FQ) is to lead listeners through a sequential discovery process through their own (often unconscious) status quo; not information focused and not biased, they are directive, and enable our CPs to discover for themselves the full range of elements they must address to achieve excellence. Here is a simple (out of sequence) example of the differences between conventional questions and FQs. Note how the FQ teaches the Other how to think:

Conventional Question: Why do you wear your hair like that? This question, meant to extract data for the Speaker’s use, is biased by the Speaker and limits choices within the Responder. Bias/Bias
Facilitative Question: How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle? While conventional questions ask/pull biased data, this question sequentially leads the Other through focused scans of unconscious beliefs in the status quo. Formulating them requires Listening for Systems.

Using specific words, in a specific order, to stimulate specific thought categories, FQs lead Others down their steps of congruent change, with no bias. Now we can be part of the process with them much earlier and use our desire to influence change to positive effect. We can actually help Others help themselves.

Steps of change: There is a habituated, idiosyncratic hierarchy of people, rules, values, systems, and history within each status quo. By helping our CPs navigate down their hierarchy they can discover and manage each point necessary to change without disruption or resistance. Until they know how to do this – and note, as outsiders we can NEVER understand this – they can take no action as their habitual functioning (their status quo) is at risk. Offering them our information is the final thing they’ll need when all of the change elements are recognized.

To me, being kind, ethical and true servants, being influencers who can make a difference, means helping Others be all they can be THEIR way, not OUR way. As true servant leaders and change agents we can facilitate real, lasting change and then, when Others know how to change congruently, our important solutions will be heard.

____________

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 15th, 2025

Posted In: Communication, Listening

I used to assume that what I hear someone say is an accurate interpretation of what they mean. My assumption was wrong; what I think I hear has a good chance of being inaccurate, regardless of how intently I listen. But it’s not my fault.

During the years I spent reading, thinking, and researching for my book (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I was quite surprised to learn how little of what I think I hear is unbiased, or even accurate. Listening, it turns out, is a brain thing and has little to do with words or intent.

Link to Purchase and Sample

HOW BRAIN’S ‘LISTEN’

When we listen to others, we’re not directly hearing their words or intent but an interpretation of a set of meaningless, automatic neurological activities in our brain that have little-to-no relationship with what’s been said.

What we think we hear is wholly determined by our historic life experiences (education, family, values, Beliefs, mental models) that have been stored in our brain and filter all incoming words:what we hear someone say has been translated by what we’ve heard before, creating biases and assumptions that keep us from translating incoming messages accurately.

Generally speaking, our brain determines what we hear. And it’s not objective. Here’s what happens:

- Words are merely puffs of air that emerge from our lungs, formed by our mouth and tongue – meaningless sound vibrations – that enter a Listener’s brain and get made into signals that get sent to ‘similar-enough’, existing brain circuits for translation. In other words, there’s a high probability Listeners can’t accurately understand what’s been said because their brain has translated what’s been said by what they’ve heard before.
- A Listener’s ears

– capture some portion of incoming sound vibrations,

– conducts them through historic filters (Beliefs, mental models, etc.)

– translate the remaining vibrations into signals that get sent to

– match ‘similar-enough’ existing circuits, which

– discard what doesn’t match.

The remainder – with an undetermined relationship to what was intended is – what we think we ‘hear’.

- Listeners have no idea what has been discarded in the process of hearing/translating what’s been said. Statistically, we accurately hear no more than 35% of what’s been said.
- Both Speakers and Listeners have no idea how a Listener’s brain has interpreted or biased what been said or how close to accurate it’s been received. We all assume what we think we hear is accurate, although it rarely is.
- We speak in run-on sentences, not individual words, and a Listener’s brain must make sense of the variations in vibrations of each word.
- People speak for approximately 600 milliseconds; Listeners begin formulating their response in 200 milliseconds. Approximately two thirds of what’s been said is not even heard.

What we think we hear is some version of our history of hearing something similar. With people we’re in regular contact with and already have circuits to translate, it can be pretty accurate. With others not so much.

DIAGRAM OF HOW BRAINS ‘LISTEN’

Herein lie the gap between what’s said and what’s heard: we all make inaccurate assumptions of what we think we hear, causing us to respond and choose actions from a restricted or flawed knowledge base. Of course, it’s not done purposefully, but it sure plays havoc with communication and relationships.

I once lost a business partner because he misinterpreted something he thought I said, even though his wife told him he had misheard. His comment: “I heard it with my own ears! Are you both telling me I’m crazy??” and stormed out, never to speak to me again.

Unfortunately, and different from perceived wisdom, brains don’t allow us to ‘actively listen’ to accurately understand what’s been said. Sure, Active Listening allows us to ‘hear’ the words spoken but doesn’t capture the intent, the underlying meaning. And given our neurological hearing processes are automatic, mechanical, and thoughtless, we’re stuck with what we think we hear. Here’s a simplified diagram of the process of listening:

Incoming sound vibrations as electrochemical signals get distorted and deleted through the brain’s filtering and transmission processes, eventually getting translated by ‘similar-enough’ existing neural circuits causing us to hear some rendition of what we’ve heard historically. There’s little chance any of us can understand a Speaker’s intended meaning accurately.

GUIDELINES TO MAXIMIZE UNDERSTANDING IN DIALOGUE

Given how vital listening is to our lives, for those times we want to make sure we understand and get on the same page with a Communication Partner (CP) to reach consensus, here are some guidelines:

Get agreement for a dialogue: Often, Communication Partners have different life experiences and, potentially different goals – many of which might be unconscious. Begin by agreeing to find common ground.

“I’d like to have a dialogue that might lead to us to a path that meets both of our goals. If you agree, do you have thoughts on where you’d like to begin?”

“I wonder if we can find common goals so we might find agreement to work from. I’m happy to share my goals with you; I’d like to hear yours as well.”

Link to Purchase and Sample

Set the frame for common values: At a global level, we all have similar foundational values, hopes and fears – for family, food, shelter, health. Start by ‘chunking up’ to find areas of agreement.

“I’d like to find a way to communicate that might help us find a common values so we can begin determining if we share areas of agreement. Any thoughts on how you’d like to proceed?”

“It seems we’re in opposite mind-sets. How do you recommend we go about finding if there’s any agreement we can start from?”
Get agreement on the topics in the conversation: One step at a time; make sure CPs agree to each item and skip the ones (for now) where there’s no agreement. (Put them in a Parking Lot for your next conversation.) Work with ‘what is’ instead of ‘what should be.’

Enter without bias: Unintentionally our historic, unconscious beliefs restrict our search for commonality. Replace emotions and blame with a new bias for this conversation: the ‘bias’ of collaboration.

“I’m willing to find common ground and would like to put aside my normal reactions for this hour but it will be a challenge since my feelings are so strong. Do you also have strong feelings that also might bias our communication? I wonder if we could share our most cherished beliefs and then discuss how we can move forward without bias.”

Get into Observer: To help overcome unconscious biases and filters, here are a few mind hacks that will supersede automatic brain processing: in your mind’s eye, see yourself on the ceiling looking down on yourself and your CP. I call this the Observer (witness, coach) position. It will provide a different viewpoint for your brain, replacing the emotional, automatic response with a broader, far less biased, view of your interaction. Another way is to walk around during the conversation, or sit way, way back in a chair. Sitting forward keeps you in your biases. (Chapter 6 in What? teaches how to stay in Observer and reduce bias.). From your Observer place, notice elements of the communication of both you and your CP:

- - Notice body language/words: Similar to how your brain filters incoming words, your CP is speaking/listening from their filters and assumptions, which will be exhibited in their body language and eye contact. From Observer notice how their physical stance matches their words, the level of passion, feelings, and emotion. Now look down and notice how you look and sound in relation to your CP. Just notice. Read Carol Goman’s excellent book on the subject.
  - Notice triggers: Emphasized words hold beliefs and biases. You may also hear absolutes: Always, Never; lots of You’s may be the vocabulary of blame. Silence, folded arms, a stick-straight torso may show distrust. Just notice where/when it happens for you both. If your CPs words trigger you into your own subjective viewpoints, you’ve gotten out of Observer and must get back onto the ceiling where you have choice. But just in case:

“I’m going to try very hard to speak/listen without my historic biases. If you find me getting heated, or feel blame, I apologize as that’s not my intent. If this should happen, please tell me you’re not feeling heard and I’ll do my best to work from a place of compassion and empathy.”

Summarize regularly: Because the odds are bad that you’ll accurately hear what your CP means to convey, summarize what you think you heard after every exchange:

“Sounds to me like you said, “XX”. Is that correct? What would you like me to understand that I didn’t understand or that I misheard?”

“I’ statements: Stay away from ‘You’ if possible. Try to work from the understanding that you’re standing in different shoes and there is no way either of you can see the other’s landscape.

“When I hear you say X it sounds to me like you are telling me that YY. Is that true?”

“When I hear you mention Y, I feel like Z and it makes me want to get up from the table as I feel you really aren’t willing to hear me. How can we handle this so we can move forward together?”

Get buy-in each step of the way: keep checking in, even if it seems obvious that you’re on the same page. It’s really easy to mistranslate what’s been said when the listening filters are different.

“Seems to me like we’re on the same page here. I think we’re both saying X. Is that true? What am I missing?”

“What should I add to my thinking that I’m avoiding or not understanding the same way you are? Is there a way you want me to experience what it looks like from your shoes that I don’t currently know how to experience? Can you help me understand?”

Check your gut: Notice when/if your stomach gets tight, or your throat hurts. These are sure signs that your beliefs are being stepped on and you’re out of Observer. Get back up to the ceiling and then tell your CP:

“I’m experiencing some annoyance/anger/fear/blame. That means something we’re discussing is going against one of my beliefs or values. Can we stop a moment and check in with each other so we don’t go off the rails?”

Get agreement on action items: Simple steps for forward actions will become obvious; make sure you both work on action items together.

Get a time on the calendar for the next meeting: Make sure you discuss who else needs to be brought into the conversation, end up with goals you can all agree on and walk away with an accurate understanding of what’s been said and what’s expected.

COMPASSION, EMPATHY, AND RESPECT

Until or unless we all hold the belief that none of us matter if some of us don’t; until or unless we’re all willing to take the responsibility for each (inadvertent)act of harm; until or unless we’re each willing to put aside our very real grievances to seek a higher good, we’ll never heal.

It’s not easy. But by learning how to hear each other with compassion and empathy, by closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, our conversations can begin. We must be willing to start sharing our Truth and our hearts and find a way to join with another’s Truth and heart. By hearing each other accurately, it’s the best start we can make.

______________________

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 25th, 2025

Posted In: Listening

With untold millions of sales professionals in the world, sellers play a role in any economy. As the intermediary between clients and providers, sales can be a spiritual practice, with sellers becoming true facilitators and Servant Leaders (and close more sales).

The current sales model, directed at placing solutions and seeking folks with ‘need’, closes 5% – only those ready to buy at point of contact. Sadly, this ignores the possibility of facilitating and serving the 80% of folks on route to becoming buyers and not yet ready.

Until people have tried, and failed, to fix their problem themselves, understood and managed the risk and disruption that a new solution might cause their environment, they aren’t buyers. It’s only when they:

know how to manage the risk of bringing in something new,
can’t fix the problem themselves,
get buy-in from whomever will touch the final solution,
understand that the cost of bringing in something new is lower than the cost of maintaining the status quo,

will they self-identify as buyers and be ready to buy.

Indeed: buying is a risk/change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue, regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. All potential buyers must go through this process anyway – and the sales model doesn’t help.

WHY PEOPLE BUY

People don’t start off wanting to buy anything; they merely seek to resolve a problem at the least ‘cost’ (risk) to their system. Even if folks eventually need a seller’s solution, until they understand how to manage the change a new solution would generate, they won’t heed our outreach, regardless of their need or the efficacy of the solution. As a result, sellers with worthwhile solutions end up wasting a helluva lot of time being ignored and rejected.

Selling doesn’t cause buying. Sales focuses on only the final steps of a buying decision and overlooks the high percentage of would-be prospects who WILL become buyers once they’ve addressed their possible risk issues. After all, until they’ve recognized that the risk of the new is less than the risk of staying the same they won’t do anything different.

It’s not the solution being sold that’s the problem, it’s the process of pushing solutions before first helping those who will become buyers facilitate their necessary change process. Instead of a transactional process, sales can be an expansive, collaborative experience between seller and buyer.

Sample

As a result, sellers end up seeking and closing only those ready to buy at the point of contact – unwittingly ignoring others who aren’t ready yet, may need our solutions, and just need to get their ducks in a row before they’re prepared to make a decision.

Imagine having a product-needs discussion about moving an iceberg and discussing only the tip. That’s sales; it doesn’t facilitate the entire range of hidden, unique change issues buyers must consider – having nothing to do with solutions – before they could buy anything. Failure is built in.

But when sellers redirect their focus from seeking folks with ‘need’ to those considering change and lead them through their change management process before selling, they can facilitate them through the issues they must resolve (politics, relationships, resource, budget, time), help them assemble the right stakeholders from the start, and help them figure out how to address the disruption of bringing in a new solution. Then sellers become true servant leaders, inspire trust, and close more sales.

WHY SALES FAILS

Seller’s restricted focus on placing solutions, and listening for needs (which cannot be fully known until the change management process is complete) all but insures a one-sided communication based on the needs of the seller:

Prospecting/cold calling – sellers pose biased questions as an excuse to offer solution details omitting those who will buy – real buyers! – once they’re ready. Wholly seller-centric.
Content marketing – driven by the seller to push the ‘right’ data but really only a push into the unknown and a hope for action. Wholly seller-centric.
Deals, cold-call pushes, negotiation, objection-handling, closing techniques, getting to ‘the’ decision maker, price-reductions – all assuming buyers would buy if they understood their need/the solution/their problem, all overlooking the real connection and service capability of addressing the person’s most pressing change issues. Wholly seller-centric.

To become a spiritual practice, sellers must use their expertise to become true facilitators that become necessary components in all buying decisions. Indeed, the job of ‘sales’ as merely a solution-placement vehicle is short-sighted.

Buyers can find products online. They don’t need sellers to understand the features and benefits.
Choosing a solution isn’t the problem. It’s the time it takes to manage the risk. – it’s the buyer’s behind-the-scenes timing, buy-in from those who will touch the solution, and change management process that gums up the works.
The lion’s share of the buying decision (9 out of a 13 step decision path) involves buyers traversing internal change with no thoughts of buying. They don’t even self-identify as buyers until they understand their risk of change.

Since the 1980s, I’ve been an author, seller, trainer, consultant, and sales coach of the Buying Facilitation® model. And though I’ve trained 100,000 sales professionals, and wrote the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, sales continues to be solution-placement driven. By ignoring a large population of potential buyers who merely aren’t ready, sales unwittingly ignores the real problem: it’s in the buying, not the selling.

SERVE PROSPECTS, CLOSE MORE SALES

It’s possible to truly serve clients AND close more sales.

Aspiring to a win-win

Win-win means both sides get what they need. Sellers believe that placing product that resolves a problem offers an automatic win-win. But that’s not wholly accurate. Buying isn’t as simple as choosing a solution. The very last thing people want is to buy anything, regardless of their apparent need.

As outsiders sellers can’t know the tangles of people and policies that hold a problem/need in place. The time it takes them to design a congruent solution that includes buy-in and change management is the length of their sales cycle. Buyers need to do this anyway; it’s the length of the sales cycle.

If sellers begin by finding those on route to buying and help them efficiently traverse their internal struggles, sellers can help them get to the ‘need/purchase’ decision more quickly and be part of the solution – win-win. No more chasing those who will never close; no more turning off those who will eventually seek our solution; no more gathering incomplete data from one person with partial answers.

Sellers can find and enable those who can/should buy to buy in half the time and sell more product – and very quickly know the difference between them and those who can never buy.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

There are several pieces to the puzzle here.

The buyer and the environment the prospect lives in, including people, policies, job titles, egos, relationships, politics, layers of management, rules, etc. that no one on the outside will ever understand. It’s never as simple as just changing out the problem for a new product; they will buy only when they’re certain they can’t fix their own problem.
Resolving the problem needs full internal buy-in before being willing to change (i.e. buy) regardless of the efficacy of the fix. A purchase is not necessarily their best solution even if it looks like a fit to a seller.
The ability of the buyer to manage the disruption that a new purchase would incur on the system, people, and policies. A fix, or purchase, might be worse than the problem.
The seller and the seller’s product may/may not fit in the buyer’s environment due to idiosyncratic, political, or rules-based issues, regardless of the need.
The purchase and implementation and follow up that includes buy-in from all who will experience a potentially disruptive change if a new solution enters and shifts their job routines.

There is no right answer

Sellers often believe that buyers are idiots for not making speedy decisions, or for not buying an ‘obvious’ solution. But sales offers no skills to enter earlier with a different skill set to facilitate change or manage risk.

Once buyers figure out their congruent route to change, they won’t have objections, will close themselves, and there’s no competition: sellers facilitate change management first and then sell once everything is in place. No call backs and follow up and ignored calls. And trust is immediate: a seller becomes a necessary partner to the buying decision process.

No one has anyone else’s answer

By adding Buying Facilitation®, collaborative decisions get made that will serve everyone.

Let’s change the focus: instead relegating sales to merely a product/solution placement endeavor, let’s add the job of facilitation to first find people en route to becoming buyers, lead them through to their internal change process first, and then using the sales model when they’ve become buyers.

We can help people self-identify as buyers quickly, with fewer tire-kickers, better differentiation, no competition, and sales close in half the time.

BUYING FACILITATION®

As a seller and an entrepreneur (I founded a tech company in London, Hamburg, and Stuttgart in 1983), I realized that sales ignored the buying decision problem and developed Buying Facilitation® to add to sales as a Pre-Sales tool.

Buyers get to their answers eventually; the time this takes is the length of the sales cycle, and selling doesn’t cause buying. Once I developed this model for my sellers to use, we made their process far more efficient with an 8x increase in sales – a number consistently reproduced against control groups with my global training clients over the following decades.

Buying Facilitation® adds a new capability and level of expertise and becomes a part of the decision process from the first call. Make money and make nice.

Sellers no longer need to lose prospects because they’re not ready, or cognizant of their need. They can become intermediaries between their clients and their companies; use their positions to efficiently help buyers manage internal change congruently, without manipulation; use their time to serve those who WILL buy – and know this on the first contact – and stop wasting time on those who will never buy. It’s time for sellers to use their knowledge and care to serve buyers and their companies in a win-win. Let’s make sales a spiritual practice.

____________

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 11th, 2025

Posted In: Communication, Listening, Sales

Do you enter conversations to listen for what will confirm your assumptions? Do you assume the responses to your questions provide an accurate representation of the full fact pattern from which to base follow-on questions? Do you assume your history of similar topics topics gives you a more elevated understanding of what your Communication Partners (CPs) mean?

If any of the above are true, you’re biasing your conversation. By entering conversations with assumptions and personal goals, and listening through your historic, unconscious filters, you unwittingly direct conversations to what you expect to hear and may miss a more optimal outcome. But it’s not your fault.

OUR BRAINS BIAS WHAT WE HEAR

The most surprising takeaway from my year of research for my book (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard was learning how little of what we think we hear is unbiased, or even accurate. Indeed, it’s pretty rare for us to hear precisely what another intends us to hear: our brains don’t allow us to.

Sample

Our brains listen through our existing neural circuitry, reducing our ability to accurately translate what’s been said to what we already know, leaving us unaware there might be a misunderstanding regardless of how carefully we listen.

Here’s a simplified explanation of how brains listen. Sound actually enters our ears as meaningless sound vibrations which become electrochemical signals that are dispatched to a similar-enough synapse. Unfortunately, whatever doesn’t match exactly gets deleted. We’re left assuming that what we think we’ve ‘heard’ is accurate even though there’s a good chance it’s not.

So your CP might say ABC and your brain tells you they said ABL without even mentioning it omitted D, E, F, etc. I once lost a business partner because he ‘heard’ me say X when three of us confirmed I said Y. “I was right here! Why are you all lying to me! I KNOW she said that!” And he walked out in a self-generated rage. This makes it tough for any communication where mutual understanding is so important.

Indeed, as outsiders – as sellers, leaders, or influencers of any kind – with different beliefs/values, backgrounds, etc., and entering conversations with our own goals and unconscious biases, we end up unintentionally misunderstanding, mistranslating, or mishearing, but believe what we think we’ve heard is true. In other words, our natural inability to hear accurately causes us miscommunication and flawed understanding. Not to mention lost business and lost relationships.

Net net, we unwittingly base our conversation, questions, and intuitive responses on an assumption of what we think has been said, and succeed only with those whose biases match our own. [Note: for those who want to manage this problem, I’ve developed a work-around in Chapter 6 of What?)

ENTERING CONVERSATIONS WITHOUT BIAS

I want to go back to the problems incurred by entering conversations with personal biases:

by biasing the framework of the conversation to the goals we wish to achieve, we overlook alternative, congruent outcomes. Sellers, coaches, leaders, and managers often enter conversations with personal expectations and goals rather than collaboratively setting a viable frame and together discovering possibility.
by listening only for what we’re (consciously or unconsciously) focused on hearing, we overlook a broader range of possible outcomes. Sellers, negotiators, leaders, help desk professionals, and coaches often miss real opportunities to promote agreement and discovery.

Here are some ideas to help you create conversations that avoid restriction:

As an influencer, shift your goal from information gathering (for you) to facilitating the route to change (for them).
Enter each conversation with a willingness to serve the greater good within the bounds of what you have to offer, rather than meet a specific outcome. Any expectations or goals limit outcomes.
Enter with a blank brain, as a neutral navigator, servant leader, change facilitator.
Trust that your CP has her own answers. Your job is to help her find them, as they are often unconscious. This is particularly hard for influencers who believe they have ‘the answers’. (And yes, all influencers, sellers, leaders, negotiators, and coaches are guilty of this.) I’ve written an article to specifically address this.
Your biased questions will only extract biased answers. Use questions that make their journey to discovery more efficient, like “What has stopped you from making the change before now?”. [Note: I’ve developed Facilitative Questions that lead folks through their unconscious thinking patterns.]
Enable Others to discover their own route to Excellence rather than attempt to influence a specific behavior you might deem important.
Get rid of your ego, your need to be right or smart or have the answers. Until your CP finds a way to recognize their own unconscious issues, and design congruent change that matches their idiosyncratic ‘givens’, you aren’t helpful regardless of how much you know.

By listening with an ear that hears avenues to serve, to understand what’s been said without unconscious bias, you can truly serve your Communication Partner.

____________

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 4th, 2025

Posted In: Listening

Have you ever wondered where your thoughts come from? Everything we think – and notice, are curious about, believe in – emerges from our neural circuits that have been developed throughout our lives. It’s a brain storage thing, causing us to bias and restrict our entire lives.

From birth, our parent’s beliefs become part of our unconscious, very personal, ecosystem; the cultural norms of our youth begin creating our lifelong beliefs, habits, behaviors, and identity; the schools we attend introduce us to the way the world works and how to behave accordingly; our professions are chosen to comfortably maintain the biases we’ve accrued and person we’ve become.

Net net, our lives are a conglomeration of our history and unconscious biases, causing us to live and work, marry and spend time with people whose norms, interpretations, and beliefs are very similar to ours.

Our normal skill sets and brain neurology aid and abet us: we unwittingly listen through biased filters and hear restricted versions of what was said (I wrote a book on this: What? Did you really say what I think I heard?); we play and read and watch according to what we’re comfortable with and rarely venture far afield; and aided by the way our brains filter and prune incoming data, we notice what we notice in response to our personal norms, values, and learned habits.

Sample

Our lives are lived in a reality of our own making to maintain our status quo. And yet, regardless of our natural biases, we seem to believe, with certainty, that what we see, hear, and feel is ‘real’. We even restrict our lives accordingly – our politics, our curiosity, what we read, our professional choices. In other words, we each live in a unique reality that gets maintained every moment of every day.

Our personal ‘reality’ is the basis of our unconscious biases and interpretations; so automatic and habituated, so accepted by all around us that we’re often unaware that our actions may harm others whose world views are different from ours.

WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND OTHERS

Given the subjective nature of our lives we cannot help but judge others accordingly. I, for one, never lock doors. My car is always unlocked. My house is always open even when I travel. Many people would find this unthinkable, but they don’t know my reality. As an incest survivor and a rape victim, I always need a quick way in and out. If a door is locked around me, I hyperventilate, panic. Terrifying. But without understanding my reality, you might have judged my actions as being unsafe.

Given the givens, it’s obvious that none of us can truly understand another’s interpretations of anything, or their resulting behaviors. And even though it’s difficult to even notice anything we’re not programmed to notice, we judge each other’s actions against our own.

A problem emerges when we run into others with different lifestyle choices, or communication styles, or education, or assumptions, or race, or political beliefs and behave automatically in ways that inadvertently harm them. We may not have the skills to connect with them in ways they understand or wrongly misinterpret their intent or judge their choices.

I believe that most people don’t intend to harm anyone. But without common ground, the best we can do is act from our habituated interpretations and assume because we ‘mean well’ that we’re not causing harm.

NEED FOR CHANGE

Historically, we’ve done a bad job resolving the problems of inherent bias that may ultimately harm others. I think this might be changing. Companies and public servants are now taking unconscious bias seriously and requiring unconscious bias and diversity training in the hopes of giving people new choices and eradicating harm. Good. But I have a concern.

As someone who has spent decades coding and scaling the stages of how human systems change, I know it’s not possible to cause change from the outside, by merely trying to change a behavior. To change, we must each find a way to shift our own core norms and biases from within (i.e. inside/out).

Current training approaches offer information, practice, scientific data, videos, etc., assuming that the offered data will cause behavior change (outside/in). But that’s like asking a forward moving robot to move backwards by showing it videos of other robots moving backward! Obviously the change must come from new programming. You can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior.

Merely assuming that people can change when offered ‘good’ or ‘rational’ reasons to change cannot fix the problem permanently because it:

doesn’t get to the root of someone’s unconscious, and very subjective, biases;
tries to persuade and change behaviors with subjectively chosen information that doesn’t address the neurochemistry that triggers the originating bias;
has no way of knowing the full range of unconscious biases within each individual learner;
doesn’t teach how to transcend someone’s habituated ‘unconscious triggers’ that go off automatically when their beliefs are invaded;
fails to install permanent, instinctive, alternative neural circuits that cause new behaviors.

Current unconscious bias and diversity training assumes people can learn enough from recognizing problems and practicing ‘real’ situations, etc. to recognize their unconscious bias in hopes they’ll know when it’s time to change behaviors. But with our choices arising in five one-hundredths of a second from automatic and electrochemical neural circuits, it’s hard to know exactly how to change a possibly offending behavior in time.

In other words, just when our brains are unconsciously registering ALERT, we are supposed to tell ourselves ‘Nope. Wrong thinking. Don’t do that. Do something different. NOW!’ just as it’s occurring. It’s possible to do so, but not with the training currently offered.

WHAT IS BIAS? AND WHY IS IT SO HARD TO CHANGE?

Bias is the unconscious, habitual, involuntary, and historic reaction to something deemed ‘different’ (skin color, gender, lifestyle choices, etc.) that negatively triggers someone’s largely unconscious beliefs and values causing an immediate, unconscious, and automatic reaction.

Our reactions to external stimuli follow our brain’s historic and habituated neural pathways whenever our unconscious triggers go off. To alter these, it’s necessary to go to the source where they occur in the brain; it’s not possible to permanently change behaviors by merely changing behaviors.

Changing core biases permanently is not a behavior change issue; it’s a core Identity/Belief problem that must be resolved at the source, within the system that created it. Basically, this level of change is a systems problem. To consider real change we must understand the system that created it.

WE MUST UNDERSTAND SYSTEMS TO ADDRESS BIAS

A system is a conglomeration of things that all agree to the same rules. For us, our system keeps us who we are as unique individuals, a composite of our physiology and neurology mixed with our norms, culture, history, values, beliefs, dreams that we hold largely unconsciously and formed during our lifetimes. Systems always seek stability; as a way to maintain balance, they define our politics, our mate selection, even how we listen to others with an unconscious structure of filters that get triggered by situations that make us uncomfortable.

When we try to get others to change by merely requiring behavior changes, their internal systems resist as there is no neurological, physiological foundation from which to act. For permanent change to occur, for new behaviors to be chosen, there must be a change in core beliefs before new skills or situations are offered.

Here are the elements necessary to include in bias or diversity training to trigger permanent behavior change:

Listening: our habituated listening filters and neural pathways automatically bias whatever anyone says to us; we set up our lives to avoid discomfort, and uniquely interpret differences in what has been said so our brains can keep us comfortable. When information is offered as evidence, our historic, habituated, biased listening filters kick in and uniquely interpret incoming data, often differently than the intended meaning. Indeed, it’s not even possible to hear anyone without bias; when what we hear (or see, or feel) makes us uncomfortable, we react historically regardless of how far the intended meaning is from our interpretation.
Questions: all normal questions are biased by the Asker’s subjective curiosity, thereby restricting the Responder’s replies to the Responder’s reaction and interpretation of what was heard, and potentially overlooking real answers.
Historic: biases are programmed in from the time we’re born. Every day we wake up with the same biases, kept in place by our choice of friends, TV, neighborhoods, professions, reading materials, etc. To permanently shift our biases, we’d have to change our historic programming.
Physiological: who we ‘are’ is systemic; our beliefs and norms, character and values have been programmed in and become our Identity, creating the behaviors and responses that will unconsciously maintain our status quo in everything we do and every action we take.
Triggers: because of our lifetime of inculcated beliefs, values, norms and outlook, our brains react chemically, unconsciously, and automatically when there is an untoward activity.
Information: our training programs typically tell, show, explain, offer stories, videos, etc. etc. using our biased choices, in our favored formats, in our languaging, in hopes that our information triggers recognition, or new behavior adoption to people who may not process what we’re telling them in the way we would prefer. They may not interpret, or know how to recognize a need for, or understand, how to make sense of whatever we’re telling them.
Behaviors: as the expression and execution of our beliefs and status quo, behaviors translate our core systemic beliefs and norms into daily action. Behaviors represent us; they are not ‘us’.

To change behaviors permanently it’s necessary to change the system, the programming, that created them to begin with. And this cannot be accomplished by merely trying to change the behaviors that created the problem to begin with. Remember Einstein?

CHANGE IS A SYSTEMS PROBLEM

Change is the alteration of something that has existed in a certain way, using specific and accepted norms, in a specific configuration, for a period of time. To amend our responses to bias, we must first recognize, then modify, the specific triggers (historically produced for a reason) that have been developed to operate unconsciously as the norm.

It’s basically a systems problem: for permanent change to occur, we must reconfigure the system that has created and maintains the status quo. Anything new any problem to fix, any new information that creates disruption, any new activity the system is asked to take, demands changing the status quo.

Indeed, any new decision is a change management problem. The way we are addressing the problem now doesn’t enable permanent change. Change means that a system must go through a process to become something different:

a trigger alerts the status quo that something may be awry;
a careful examination by all elements within the status quo must occur to find any incongruence;
agreement within the system (rules, stakeholders, identity, etc.) that change is necessary and that a fix won’t cause permanent disruption;
an initial attempt to fix anything missing on its own (using the same elements that created the problem to begin with);
the realization that the problem cannot be fixed from within the system;
an examination by everything that created the problem of any new possibilities that will create Systems Congruence;
an understanding and acceptance of the downside and disruption of a change (i.e. if politics change, how do we speak with family? If same-sex relationships, what happens with our church group?);
a fix is found that is agreeable, with full knowledge of how to circumvent any disruption it will cause;
new habits, new triggers, new neural pathways, etc. are developed in a way that incorporate the ‘new’ with the old to minimize disruption.

If all of the above aren’t managed, the system will fill in the blanks with something comfortable and habituated (regardless of its efficacy). In other words, if there is not systemic agreement, no known way to resolve the problem using its current givens, no known way to incorporate something new with the existing system so the system doesn’t implode, no change will happen regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution.

Indeed – and I can’t say this often enough – you can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior. And all current bias and diversity training involves a focus on getting behaviors changed without addressing the source that created the behaviors and triggers to begin with.

WHAT IS A BEHAVIOR?

Current bias training attempts to get behaviors changed by offering information: showing and telling people what’s wrong with what they’re doing and what ‘right’ would look like – all of which can be misinterpreted, misread, or objected to, regardless of our intent.

While it certainly can make people more aware, these attempts will not cause permanent change: they develop no new habituated triggers or neural pathways to set off a new response to a stimulus. Let’s delve into this a bit.

Behaviors are what we do – transactions automatically initiated by our core system of beliefs, norms, and experience – to express who we are. We all develop behaviors that ‘be’ who we are, to represent us. Behaviors are the output, the forward movement of the robot, the actions others see.

To permanently change a behavior, a system must:

shift the core beliefs that inform any habituated, unconscious bias and develop additional beliefs, assumptions and triggers;
create new neural pathways to the brain that lead to choosing more respectful outputs, habits, behaviors;
listen with a different listening filter than the habituated ones;
enable the person to change themselves, using their own unconscious system of norms to design new behaviors that won’t offend the system;
interpret another’s actions in a neutral way that doesn’t offend our own beliefs – or change our beliefs.

To change our unconscious, automatic responses that cause us to respond defensively, the system that has created and maintains the status quo must be reconfigured to produce alternate outputs while still maintaining Systems Congruence. Offering any sort of information before the system knows why, how, when, or if to do anything different – a belief change – will only inspire resistance as the system won’t know how to apply it. It’s a belief change issue: when we change our habituated beliefs and norms (our programming), our behavior will automatically, and permanently, change.

CHANGE IS A SYSTEMS PROBLEM

Real change demands a systemic shift to create new triggers, new assumptions, new neural pathways, and ultimately, as an outcome, new behaviors. No one, no information, no person, from outside is able to go into someone’s unconscious to (re)create all these things. And permanent change will not happen until it does.

The goal is not to train someone to rid themselves of unconscious bias; it’s to help their system discover the underlying beliefs that cause them and enable them to develop new beliefs and responses.

Over the past decades, I’ve coded the 13 steps that constitute the route to systemic, human change so people can make their OWN internal changes that will lead to new choices, i.e. new behaviors. I’ve taught this model in sales as Buying Facilitation® to global corporations (KPMG, Morgan Stanley, IBM, P&G, Kaiser, etc.) for over 30 years, and written several books on it. The book that details each of the stages is Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell.

We must become Facilitators, not Influencers. We must teach folks to create and habituate new neural pathways and filters.

Listening: We must avoid habituated neural pathways when listening to others. I have a whole chapter on this in What?. Not difficult – you just need to develop triggers that will alert you to the need to do something different before you get triggered into a biased reaction.
Questions: I developed a new form of question that doesn’t interrogate and is not biased by the needs of the questioner, but instead acts like a GPS to guide people through their own unconscious. These Facilitative Questions are systemic, use specific words, in specific order, that traverse through the steps of change sequentially so others can note their own incongruencies. So: What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to take an extra step and consciously choose to listen from a ‘different ear’?
Beliefs: by shifting the focus from changing behaviors to first changing beliefs and systems, we end up with permanent core change, new triggers and habits.
Information: we make several types of information available for the learner to choose from, to fit their own learning criteria and styles, and needs to fit into their unique areas of deficiency.

I’ve developed a new way to train that facilitates self-learning and permanent change from within the system. For those wishing a full discussion, I’ve written an article on this that appeared in The 2003 Annual, Volume 1 Training (I’m happy to send you a more specific discussion of this if you’re not already bored) Just note: my process leads people, without any bias, to those places in their brains, into their system of beliefs and cultural norms, which made the decisions to employ their biased behaviors to begin with, and teaches them how to reconfigure their system to adopt something new (so long as its aligned with their beliefs). We are making the unconscious conscious and developing more appropriate triggers and behaviors.

How will you know that by adding systemic change elements to your training that you can enable more people to make more appropriate behavioral choices around their bias?

If you would like my help in designing a program that resolves unconscious biases permanently, I’d love to help. I believe it’s an important task. I believe it’s time we had the tools to enable learners to permanently change and become non-judgmental, accepting, and kind. And above all, cause no harm. All of our lives depend on it.

______________________________________________________________

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 June 30th, 2025

Posted In: Change Management, Communication, Listening

Trust. The big kahuna. The sales industry seeks it; doctors assume it; couples demand it; change can’t occur without it. But what is it? Why isn’t it easier to achieve? And how can we engender it in relationships?

I define trust as the awareness of Another as being safe, similar, and sane enough to connect with, and occurs when they

have core beliefs that align and seem harmonious with mine,
feel heard, accepted, respected, and understood by me,
feel compatible or safe as a result of our interacting,
believe their status quo won’t be at risk when connected to me.

Unless these criteria are satisfied, trust can’t occur no matter how kind, professional, necessary, or well-intended another person or message is. It’s a Belief issue.

BELIEFS DEFINE US

Every one of us has Beliefs unique to us. Our Beliefs are the norms and rules we live by, developed over our lifetimes to make decisions and act against. We gravitate to, and trust, folks with similar foundational Beliefs and world views that match well-enough with our own to proclaim “safety”.

Largely unconscious, illogical to others and hard to change, our Beliefs regulate us, define who we are and enable us to show up congruently in the world. We even listen through ears biased by our Beliefs.

Sample

Beliefs instigate our habits and assumptions, restricting our life choices such as our occupations, politics, values, mates – even our child rearing practices. And our Beliefs are the initiators of our behaviors – behaviors being Beliefs in action, the expressions of our core systems.

Sadly, because everyone’s Belief systems are unconscious and idiosyncratic, and because we each view the world through our own Beliefs and perceptions, it’s difficult to accurately perceive Another’s internal world view. It’s here, in our Beliefs, where our world views collide.

For those folks whose jobs are to influence, there’s an immediate problem. The content they share, or even their unique delivery style, may unwittingly offend the Belief system of the Communication Partner (CP). Bad news for sellers, coaches, managers, etc. who attempt to promote change or buy-in by pushing their ideas and instead cause resistance and distrust.

DRIVERS FOR TRUST

I’d like to offer thoughts on some of the ways we fail when trying to engage trust, then provide some ideas of how to stimulate it.

Relationship Building: We’ve been led to believe that having a relationship encourages buy-in to new ideas. But it’s a conundrum: polite as an interaction appears or how necessary our message, we can’t easily build a relationship with folks with divergent Beliefs, or fight their automatic filters that react to us immediately. In other words, “pushing in” doesn’t work, even if our data and intent are accurate, and even if we think we have a relationship that entitles us to ‘share.’ We might have a superficial connection, but not a relationship; “making nice” does not constitute a relationship, or engender change or trust.

Information: As influencers we often attempt to “get in” with the information we assume our CPs need, without accounting for how it will be perceived. Sometimes the “right” data inadvertently tells our CP that they’re wrong (and we’re right). We fail to realize that our CPs only understand our intent to the degree it matches their Beliefs, or how their listening filters translate it for them. With the best will in the world, even with good data to help folks who need what we’ve got to share, we aren’t heeded.

In fact, information is the last thing needed to facilitate change or buy-in since people unconsciously defend their status quo. It’s our brain’s fault! Because all incoming data is translated for us automatically by our historic neural circuits, new ideas aren’t always interpreted accurately and run the risk of causing resistance. (See my book WHAT? on this topic.) So save the information sharing for when a clear path to mutual Beliefs and trust has been developed.

Think about it: if you’re an environmentalist, the “rational/ scientific” data you offer to “prove” climate change won’t persuade those who disagree; if you’re a proponent of the medical model, you won’t use alternate therapies to manage an illness no matter how strong the data for changing your nutrition.

Clear Communication: We all think we communicate clearly, yet we’re not as effective speaking in ‘Other’s language’ given our CPs unconscious, biased listening filters that end up preventing our “risky” data from being heard accurately. Certainly we believe we’re choosing the “right” words and approach to convey our intent. Yet our message is heard accurately only by those with similar Beliefs and resisted by the very people who need our information the most.

FACILITATE BELIEF CHANGE FIRST

Since our great ideas and eager strategies don’t engender trust in folks with different Beliefs, and without trust we can’t change minds, what should we do?

As coaches, sellers, and leaders, we must carefully initiate conversations based on them discovering their own answers, with a goal to match their Belief criteria before offering new ideas. In this way we can help our CPs open up new possibility that actually creates trust:

Enter each conversation with the goal of assisting your CPs in discovering how their Beliefs instigated their behaviors. Entering with the goal to offer information, or get your question answered, or extract promises of action will automatically engender distrust and resistance.
Ask the type of questions that facilitate and enable internal discovery; conventional questions merely pull data biased by the needs of the Asker. I designed Facilitative Questions (see below) that enable congruent change without bias by leading the CP through their unique route to discovery.
There is a specific series of steps that change entails. I’ve spent decades coding the steps of change for decision making and new habit generation. These promote congruent change by leading Others down their own choice points. Learn the steps, and help your CP traverse the steps to match Beliefs and encourage acceptance prior to mentioning your idea.
Trust that your CP has her own answers and that she’ll shift toward excellence as appropriate for her. It won’t show up exactly as you’d hoped; but there will be a new opening for collaboration without resistance.
Understand that until or unless your CP can recognize his own incongruences, there is no way he’ll welcome comments from you that sound like you’re saying he’s wrong or insufficient.

In other words, create a Beliefs-based bond that will open the possibility of you offering information later, once they’ve discovered exactly where they need it and how to use it.

FACILITATING TRUST THROUGH QUESTIONS

I’ve developed a new form of question (Facilitative Questions) that teaches others to scan their own internal state. These questions are unbiased, systemic, formulated with specific wording, in a specific order, and based on systemic brain change, not information gathering. They also take our CPs into a Witness state, beyond their automatic responses, and from which they can have a neutral, unbiased look at their status quo to notice if it’s operating excellently, and consider change if there might be a more congruent path.

Take a look at a conventional question vs a Facilitative Question:

Conventional: Do you think it’s time for a haircut? or Why do you wear your hair that way?
Telling someone they need a haircut, or asking them if they noticed they need a haircut, or giving them an article on new types of hair styles – all based on your own need to convince your CP to change – will cause defensiveness and distrust.
Facilitative Question: How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle?
This leads your CP

into a Witness state,
beyond their resistance and reaction,
outside of their normal unconscious reactions,
to notice the exact criteria they need to consider change and
to open the possibility for new choices that match their own Beliefs.

By using this type of question we offer a route for the CP to discover their own best answer that aligns with their Beliefs and engenders trust. No push, no need for a specific response. Serving another by helping them discover their own Excellence.

I designed these questions as part of my Buying Facilitation® model, a generic change facilitation model (often used in sales) that enables congruent change. Sounds a bit wonky, I know, and it’s certainly not conventional. But worth researching. I’ve trained large numbers of sales folks and coaches over the past 40 years against control groups and consistently have a 40% success rate. When we facilitate our CPs down their path to conscious choice, we

help them discover their incongruencies,
help them understand the areas at risk,
help them develop their own route to managing risk (i.e. change) and where they can’t do it themselves,
enable buy-in from the elements that will be effected.

Until your audience is able to accomplish this in their own way, using their own Beliefs, they will hear you through biased ears, maintain their barriers, and engender trust only with those who they feel aligned with – omitting a large audience of those who may need you.

Stop using your own biases to engender trust: facilitate your CPs in changing themselves. Then the choice of the best solution becomes a consequence of a system that is ready, willing, and able to adopt excellence. And they’ll trust you because you helped them help themselves.

____________

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 June 2nd, 2025

Posted In: Change Management, Listening

Using current negotiation models, people feel they are giving up more than they want in exchange for receiving less than they deserve. As part of standard practice, negotiation partners going into a negotiation calculate their bottom line – what they are willing to give up, and what they are willing to accept – and then fight, argue, cajole, or threaten when their parameters aren’t met. People have been killed for this. But there is another way.

In 1997, Bill Ury (author of Getting to Yes) and I had to read each other’s books (my book was Selling with Integrity) in preparation for working together for KPMG. A week before our introductory lunch meeting, I read his book where BATNA – Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement – originated, marked the areas I disagreed with in red, and sent the marked book back to Bill.

There was a lot of red: his book teaches how to get what you want (potentially win-lose) rather than how everyone can walk away satisfied (win-win) and I was quite pointed in my annoyance with win-lose. The next day I realized what an ass I was and called him, telling him not to open my envelope and I’d explain all when we met. But he had already received, reviewed, and agreed with my corrections!

We had a long chat comparing our models, concluding with a very interesting discussion about the different outcomes between a win-win and a win-lose negotiation. And net net, he agreed with me and we worked with KPMG using a win-win model.

Sample

BELIEFS

Win-lose is an incongruity. Using benchmarks for ethics and integrity, if one person loses, everyone loses – hence there is only win-win or lose-lose. Yet in the typical negotiation process it’s hard to find a win when the ‘things’ being bartered are not ‘things’ at all but representations of unconscious, subjective beliefs and personal values without either negotiation partner understanding the underlying values these items represent to the other: i.e. a house in the country might represent a lifetime goal to one person, and just a place to live to another; a $1,000,000 settlement might illustrate payback for a lost, hard-won reputation to one person, and extortion to another.

It’s possible to take a negotiation beyond the ‘things’ being bartered, away from the personal and chunk up to find mutually shared values agreeable to both – and then find ‘things’ that represent them. So it might be initially hard to agree who should get ‘the house’, but it might be possible to agree that it’s important everyone needs a safe place to live.

FOCUS ON SHARED VALUES FIRST

Try this:

enter the negotiation with a list of somewhat generic high-level values that are of foundational importance, such as Being Safe; Fair Compensation;
share lists and see where there is agreement. Where there is no agreement, continue chunking up higher until a set of mutually comfortable criteria are found. A chunk up from Fair Compensation might be ‘Compensation that Values Employees‘;
list several possible equivalents that match each agreeable criterion. So once Compensation that Values Employees is agreed upon during a salary negotiation, each partner should offer several different ways it could be achieved, such as a higher salary, or extra holidays, or increased paid training days, or a highly sought-after office, or higher royalties;
continue working backward – from agreement with high-level, foundational criteria, down to the details and choices that might fulfill that goal, with all parties in agreement. The more time you spend getting agreement on foundational criteria, the easier it will be to get into agreement.

Discussions over high level values are often more generic, and far less likely to set off tempers than arguments over ‘things’: if nothing else, it’s easier for negotiation partners to listen to each other without getting defensive. And once values are attended to and people feel heard they become more flexible in the ‘things’ they are willing to barter: once Compensation that Values Employees is agreed to, it’s possible to creatively design several choices for an employee to feel fairly valued without an employer stretching a tight budget.

Think about negotiations as a way to enhance relationships rather than a compromise situation or a way for someone to win. There is nothing to be won when someone loses.

____________

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 5th, 2025

Posted In: Listening, News

Last week I was locked out of my Paypal account. With no explanation offered on why this was happening, I called them to get it fixed. This is the conversation I had with the Customer Service rep:

SD: Hi there. I’m attempting to have money sent to a vendor but am getting an error message saying that my business isn’t verified. What does that mean? And what must I do to correct it?

Rep: You need to verify your business.

SD: OK. What does that mean? I’ve had my account with you for 10 years without doing anything like this!

Rep: You know, verify.

SD: What?

Rep: You know, verify. Like send us documentation that you’re a business.

SD: But I’ve been set up as a business from the beginning. What type of documentation do you need?

Rep: You know, verification.

SD: What type of verification? All I have is my EIN. Here it is…that’s legal verification.

Rep: Please hold while I check out if we can use this….. I’m sorry. We don’t consider that verification.

SD: But it’s a government verification number. What else would you need?

Rep: You know, like a court order. Just make a copy and put it in the mail.

SD: [now talking loudly] A COURT ORDER? What are you talking about?

Rep: That’s the only verification we can accept.

SD: WHAT??? Let me speak to your supervisor.

Rep: You don’t need him. I’m giving you accurate data. If you can’t send it we’ll have to close your account.

SD: [now screaming] CLOSE MY ACCOUNT??? I WANT YOUR SUPERVISOR!

Rep: You’ll have to wait for an hour. Just do what I said. He’ll tell you the same thing I told you.

SD: [still screaming] I WANT YOUR SUPERVISOR!

The rep put me on hold; the Supervisor got on the phone in 2 minutes. He said, “The rep said WHAT?? He said he’d close your account? Did he explain what he needed verification for? I’m so sorry! I can understand you’d be upset! Not only is what he said inaccurate, but I don’t even know what he was talking about! We had a systems failure here a few days ago and just need to verify your Soc Sec# to make sure we have you listed accurately!

“Thanks for giving me the number. Ok. You’re good. We appreciate your business. Again, I’m so very sorry you had to go through that. And yes, we’ll supervise that employee.”

The rep not only didn’t know what he was talking about or tell me the issue they were handling, but rather than excuse himself to get the right information, he assumed he was ‘right’ and was willing to close my account! And he didn’t want to pass me on to the supervisor for fear of getting in trouble.

This man put his ego above caring for a screaming customer. Not to mention he didn’t even have a desire to learn the real data.

Do you know what your reps are saying to your clients? When was the last time you listened in to any of their conversations? Or call an unhappy customer to make sure the problem wasn’t caused by one of your own reps.

Remember: without customers, you’re not in business. Make sure your reps are properly trained, and understand they’re there to serve, not admonish. Good customer service is good for business.

_____________________

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 April 21st, 2025

Posted In: Listening

What is Buying Facilitation®? What sales problem does it solve?, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Questioning Questions, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Influencing Congruent, Unbiased Change: serving with integrity, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Bridging the Gap between What’s Said and What’s Heard, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Sales as a Spiritual Practice

Unconscious Listening Biases: how influencers unwittingly restrict possibilities, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Resolving Unconscious Bias: why training may not eliminate intolerance, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Trust: what it is, and how to initiate it

Making Negotiation Win-Win, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

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