Listening – Page 5 – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

Why do people prefer behaviors that obviously lead to less-than-stellar results, especially when our sage advice, rational evidence, well-considered recommendations, and expert knowledge can offer them more successful choices?

Whether we’re parents of kids who sometimes need guidance, sellers with great pitches to offer folks who need our solution, coaches helping a client make changes, or doctors offering lifesaving wisdom, we too often sit by helplessly while folks who need our important data ignore us; our brilliant direction, ideas, and advice fall on deaf ears and we fail over and over again to get through to them.

It’s actually our own fault. We’re entering the wrong way, at the wrong time, with the wrong vehicles. Advice, thoughts, recommendations, persuasions – I’ll refer to external data as ‘Information’ – is the very last thing needed. Our communication partners have no idea how to apply it, how to hear it, or what it means to them. To make matters worse our attempts to facilitate change from our own biases and professional beliefs potentially cause resistance and non-compliance where we seek to promote excellence. But let’s start at the beginning.

HOW DO BEHAVIORS CHANGE?

Permanent, congruent change is rarely initiated through the route of changing deficient behaviors. Behaviors are merely the expression of the underlying structure that created and normalized them over time; they can only change once the underlying structure that created and maintains them change in a way that maintains Systems Congruence. It’s a systems problem, as you’ll see. Indeed, actual behavior change is the final element in the change equation.

To help think about this, let’s parallel behaviors with the functionality – the ‘doing’ – of a software app. The functionality of any app is a result of the internal coding; the programming uses lines of code to spell out the specific rules that define and enable specific functionality. To get a function to behave differently – to ‘do’ something different – the underlying programming must change its coding. It cannot change otherwise. Even programs such as Alexa can only behave within the limits of their programming. (And yes, I wish Alexa could wash my windows.)

It’s the same with human behaviors. Behaviors are the ‘function’, the output, the expression, of our mostly unconscious system of beliefs, history, internal rules, culture, goals, etc. – the lines of code – that define our Identity. All of our behaviors have been ‘coded’ by the system to express who we are, just like the function of an app expresses the internal coding. So what we do, how we behave, the choices we make, are defined, regulated, and governed by our system to demonstrate that idiosyncratic set of elements – our personalities, our politics, our job choices, our ethical standards. It’s our Identity. We’re all ‘doing’ who we ‘are’, even when incongruent. Behaviors are how we show up in the world. And it’s impossible to change the functionality via the function.

WHAT IS A MALFUNCTION?

Any problems in our behaviors – our functionality – must be changed by the system that created/maintains them – the programming. When we believe there to be a malfunction in another’s functionality and a behavior change might be optimal, it can’t be fixed by trying to change the place where it’s broken (Hello, Einstein.). Trying to change someone’s behavior, regardless of the need or efficacy of the solution, is a waste of time and in some instances might cause trust issues.

For those of us who influence Others – sales folks, managers, doctors, coaches, consultants – we’ve got to redefine our jobs. Our job as influencers isn’t to push the change we think is needed, but to enable Others to find their own route to their own idiosyncratic, internal congruent change and change their own internal coding.

For that to happen, the internal coding – the entire set of rules that created the current programming malfunction and set of suboptimal behaviors – must shift to reorganize, reprogram itself around a new set of rules that will create a new set of behaviors to match. The problem is that much of this is unconscious and hidden (like in an app), certainly too unique for an Outsider to fully comprehend.

Therein lies the rub: while we may notice (and potentially bias the explanation of) another’s behavioral glitches, it’s not possible to see or understand the underlying coding that caused them or the systemic change issues that would have to be addressed for them to change their programming. I cannot say this enough: It’s not possible to change another’s behavior from the outside; an internal coding change is required from within the person’s system to design different rules that would carry a different expression. We can’t change behaviors: behaviors will change themselves once the program has changed.

How, then, can we, as outsiders, empower Others to make their own changes? Indeed, it’s a both a systems problem and a spiritual one. We can never change another person, but we can serve them in a way to enable them to create congruent change for themselves, using their own brand of Excellence.

OUR INFORMATION CANNOT CAUSE CHANGE

So now we know that Others cannot change their behaviors merely because we (or even they) merely think they should (i.e. the problem with diets, smoking cessation, etc). How, then, can we reconcile the approach we’ve used to effect change? Until now, we’ve used information as our major tool. We offer what seems the most relevant data (a biased process) using our own personal, intuitive approach to influence (a biased process) where we believe the Other needs to be (again, biased by our own beliefs) and wonder why we get push back or noncompliance.

Somehow we believe that if we offer the right data, at the right time, in the right way, it will encourage action. We’ve developed entire professions based on outside ‘experts’ spouting ‘important’ ‘relevant’ ‘rational’ ‘necessary’ data, assuming these brilliant words and rational, sometimes scientific, arguments, carry ‘the answers’. But the information we offer pushes against the status quo, telling the status quo that it’s ‘wrong’, and

causes resistance and a tightened grip on the behaviors that continue to express the coded, accepted, and maintained, functionality (even when it’s problematic),
threatens habitual behaviors that have functioned ‘well enough’,
leaves a breach in functionality,
offers no new programming/coding to replace the beliefs, rules, etc. that capture the current ‘code’,
cannot shift the unconscious rules that caused the current functionality.

The information we offer cannot even be understood, heard, or fully utilized used by those we’re intending it for, regardless of our intent or the efficacy of our solution, until the underlying rules, beliefs – status quo – are ready, willing, able to change congruently and be assured there will be no systems failure as a result of the change (Systems Congruence). This is why people don’t take their meds, or buy a solution they might need, or sabotage an important implementation. We’re asking them to do stuff that may (unconsciously) run counter to their systemic configuration, and not providing a route through to their systemic change, hoping that they’ll behave according to our vision of what their change should look like, rather than their own.

As outside influencers, we must facilitate Others to find their own Excellence by changing their own system; we must stop trying to change, influence, persuade, sway, manipulate, etc. Others using our own biased beliefs to inspire them. [Personal Note: My biggest gripe with sales, coaching, training, management, leadership, etc. is that there is a baseline belief that they have the ‘right’ information that the Other needs in order to be Excellent. I reject that; we can only understand what Others are telling us through our own biases. Not to mention trying to ‘fix’ another is disrespectful and goes against every spiritual law.]. Indeed, as we see by our failures and the low adoption rate, it’s not even possible.

There are two reasons for this: because we filter everything we hear from Others as per our own programming and listening filters (biases, habits, assumptions, triggers, neural pathways, etc.), we can’t be certain that what we think is needed is actually what’s needed; Others can’t understand what we’re trying to share due to their own filters and programming.

Indeed, when we share information before the system has already shifted its internal rules and programming to include a possibility of congruent, alternate choices, it will be resisted and rejected (and possibly shut down the system) as the system has no choice but to defend itself from possible disruption.

THE STEPS OF CHANGE

I have Asperger’s, and part of my life’s journey has included making the personal changes necessary to fit in, to have relationships, to work in conventional business environments without being too inappropriate. To this end, and in the absence of the type of information available now (i.e. neuroscience, brain studies, etc.) I’ve spent decades coding how to change my own brain, and then scaling the process for others to learn. [Personal note: After working with one inside sales group in Bethlehem Steel for two years, I was introduced to the head of another group I’d be working with. Behind me, I heard the new director say to my client: ‘Is she ALWAYS like this??’ to which Dan replied, ‘Yes. And you’ll learn to love her.’ So apparently, I am still a bit odd, although it seems normal to me.]

The steps of change I’ve coded are systemic (i.e. points of activity, not content-based) and are involved in any human change (see below). Each stage is unique, and designate the touchpoints into the unconscious that enables the brain to discern for itself where, if, or how to reexamine itself for congruency. I know there is no referent for it in conventional thinking. But I’ve trained this material, with simultaneous control groups, in global corporations, to 100,000 people and know it’s viable, scalable, highly successful, and useful in any industry or conversations that encourage change. This includes sales, coaching, management, marketing, health care, family relationships and communication, negotiation, leadership.

I start with understanding that I have no answers for Another, as I’ll never live the life they’ve lived; if it’s a group or company, I’ll never understand how the internal system has been historically designed to design the output that shows up. But I trust that when systems recognize an incongruence, they will change (A ‘rule’ of systems is that they prefer to be congruent.). My job as a change agent is to teach a system how to recognize an incongruence and use its own rules to fix itself. I use this thinking to facilitate buyers through their Pre-Sales change management issues, enable coaching clients to determine how to recognize their own systemic elements to change, help leaders obtain buy-in and Systems Congruence (and notice all potential fallout points) before a project.

There are 13 steps to systemic change, all of which must be traversed before a systems is willing/able to change. Here are the 3 main categories of the steps [Personal Note: I explain each step and the navigation of change in Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell]:

1. Where am I; what’s missing. The system must recognize all – all – elements that have created and maintain its status quo so it can determine if/where there are incongruences. Until or unless ALL of the elements are included, there’s no ability to recognize where any incongruence might lie: when you’re standing in front of a tree, you can clearly see the leaves and veins on any particular leaf. But you cannot see the fire 2 acres away. Until the system has an ability to go into Witness/Observer, it cannot assemble the full set of relevant elements, and therefore cannot see the full fact pattern and will continue doing what it’s always done.

RULE: for any change to occur, the system must have a view of the entire landscape of ‘givens’ involved without restriction. To do that it’s necessary for both Influencer and Other to be in Observer – with no biased attachment.

2. How can I fix this myself? Systems are complete as they are and don’t judge ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. They show up every day and re-create yesterday as a way to maintain Systems Congruence. When there is a recognition of an incongruence (as per #1), all systems attempt to fix the problem themselves rather than allow anything new (and by definition incongruent) into the system.

RULE: it is only when a system recognizes it cannot fix an incongruence by itself is it willing to accept the possibility of bringing in an external, foreign solution (i.e. information, advice, new product). First it MUST first figure out how to maintain Systems Congruence and get buy-in from the elements that will be effected.

3. How can I change congruently without disrupting the functionality of the system? What elements need to shift, how do they need to shift, and what needs to happen so the system ends up congruent after change? Using the programming metaphor, the system must understand how it will still end up as a CRM app, or a toaster, if some of the coding needs to change.

RULE: until all elements that will be effected buy-in to any proposed change, the system will continue its current behaviors regardless of its problematic output (After all, that’s the way it ‘is’.)

Once you understand the steps to congruent change, you realize the inefficiency of trying to create change through information sharing, or the impossibility of trying to shift behaviors from outside.

CHANGE FACILITATION

The model I developed is a Change Facilitation model (registered decades ago as Buying Facilitation®) that teaches Others to traverse the steps of change so each element is assembled and handled sequentially. While I often teach it (and write books about it) in the field of sales to enable sellers to facilitate buyers through their ‘Pre-Sales’ steps to change management, the model is generic.

It includes a few unique skill sets that enable Others to recognize unconscious incongruence, and change themselves congruently using their own internal system. They’re different from what’s conventionally used, and need training to learn as we’ve not been taught to think this way. Indeed, there is no referent for these in conventional thinking, and like anything that threatens the status quo, often misunderstood or rejected. I can teach these skills through self-learning (Guided Study for complete knowledge, or Learning Accelerators for spot skills), group or personal training or coaching. I offer a caveat to those who try to add my ideas to their current thinking: when you add any of my ideas on top of what you’re already doing, you’ll end up with more bias, continuing the failure you’re experiencing. Here’s a description of the skills, with links to articles that offer a further explanation:

1. Systems listening: Without listening for systems, and using the conventional listened we’re trained from birth, we can only notice/listen for the content we want to hear. But everything we hear, leading to the assumptions we make, is biased. Indeed, we all speak and listen through biased filters. Always. (When I wrote/researched my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? I was horrified to realize how little it’s possible to truly hear what others mean due to the way our filters cause us protect our status quo for stability.) Without getting into Witness/Observer to listen for systems, our listening is restricted to our own beliefs and we cannot expand the scope of what’s being said outside of our own systemic belief systems.

2. Facilitative Questions: This is not a conventional question. It does NOT gather data, or use the biases of the questioner, but point the Other’s conscious mind to the specific memory channels that direct the Other to where the most appropriate answers are stored. So:

How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle? Uses ‘how’ ‘know’ ‘if’ ‘time’ ‘reconsider’ as routes to specific memory channels, create a step back – a Witness overview – that enables the full view of givens and an unbiased scrutiny of the system.

These questions use specific words, in a specific order, to cause the Other to traverse down the steps of unconscious change by putting them into Observer and enabling them to peruse the entire landscape of givens in the order their brains won’t feel pushed or manipulated. It takes my clients about a month to learn how to formulate these. And to do so, it’s necessary to listen differently, since bias is an enemy.

3. Presumptive Summaries: These are one route to enable Others to get into the Witness/Observer stance. Used carefully, they bring our communication partners outside of their own unconscious thinking.

Patient: I just stopped taking my meds.

Doctor (Using a Presumptive Summary): Sounds like you’ve decided that either you’re no longer sick and are now healthy, or you’ve chosen to maintain your status quo regardless of the outcome.

Different from “Why do you do that?” or “But you’ll get sick again.” comments that enlist resistance or defensiveness, Presumptive Summaries just offer a mirror and allow the Other to make conscious what might have been unconscious. These must be used with knowledge and care or they can become manipulative, and will break trust.

4. Traversing the route to change: I pose Facilitative Questions down the steps of change (iteratively, sequentially) so the brain can recognize how, what, when, why, if to change, have no resistance, notice incongruences without defense, and get the buy-in and route design, for congruent change.

All of these require the influencer to have a goal of facilitating their own congruent, systemic change without the biases we usually impart (and get resistance).

I know that most change agents truly want to enable congruent, permanent change. But it’s a crap shoot if you’re using your ‘intuition’ (biased judgment), line of questions (restricting the range of possible answers), biased listening, or ‘professional’ knowledge (biased by the scope of the academic culture) to the change you believe is necessary. It’s truly possible to help Others find their own route to Excellence. It just can’t happen any other way.

If you’re interested in learning how to facilitate congruent change in others – for sales, coaching, therapy, leadership, healthcare, etc. – please let me know. I’d love to help you learn. As I face the aging process, I’m quite keen on handing over this material, developing new apps that use it, designing training, or coaching. Please contact me at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

If you wish further reading: Practical Decision Making; Questioning Questions; Trust – what is it an how to initiate it; Resistance to Guidance; Influencers vs Facilitators.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a Change Facilitator, specializing in buy-in and change management. She is well known for her original thinking in sales (Buying Facilitation®) and listening (www.didihearyou.com). She currently designs scripts, programs, and materials, and coaches teams, for several industries to enable true buy-in and collaboration. Sharon Drew is the author of 9 books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestsellers Dirty Little Secrets – why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and What? Did you really say what I think I heard? Sharon Drew has worked with dozens of global corporations as a consultant, trainer, coach, and speaker. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512 771 1117

Sharon Drew Morgen June 10th, 2019

Posted In: Change Management, Communication, Listening

I wasn’t diagnosed with Nonverbal Learning Disorder – NLD, similar to Asperger’s – until I was 61. For most of my life it’s felt like I live in a quarantined room with glass walls, watching people live seemingly normal lives on the other side, but unable to touch them. But my world, although far less social, is rich; every day I awake filled with curiosity and visions of possibility, with ideas to write about and share so others can use; every day my heart aches with the need to use my abilities to make a difference and help everyone have the tools to be all they can be.

Since I was a kid I’ve had to navigate social situations that render me confused and obnoxious: expected social norms are often incomprehensible to me (I’ll never understand why strangers ask “How are you?” when it’s such a personal question.). My listening skills, apparently, aren’t conventional either: I hear, and respond to, the meaning behind words rather than those spoken. [Note: Like many Aspies, I hear whole circles/systems when spoken to, and often respond to the metamessage intended instead of the words spoken. It gets to the heart of any communication quickly. Clients love it, friends tolerate it, strangers mock it or call me ‘rude’.]. The world’s just different for me.

As a kid my grades suffered until someone figured out I should be given essays instead of multiple choice tests (Then I got A’s). I couldn’t make friends (no sleepovers, or parties, either in high school or college!) even though I was a cheerleader, the school pianist, and editor of the school paper. And everyone, including my confounded parents, tried to make me ‘normal’ when I did something ‘odd’ or ‘bad’. [In those days there was no diagnosis]. Why couldn’t they see/hear/feel me and appreciate my ideas and heart? Why didn’t anyone just accept and encourage me? I knew I was smart and kind. It confused me that others couldn’t see me because I was different.

I prayed to be normal, to understand what responding ‘appropriately’ meant. I longed to join the world, to fit in when I wanted to, but didn’t want to lose my authenticity or ideas. I was determined to figure out how Others made choices, how I made mine, and note the differences. I remember telling myself that since I was in trouble all the time anyway I might as well be in trouble for doing what I thought was right, so long as I knew the difference. This formed the foundation of my life’s work: figuring out how people could make new, congruent choices. In retrospect, I cannot imagine what made me think I could accomplish this. But I did. I just did it my way.

HOW DO WE CHOOSE WHAT WE CHOOSE?

Starting at age 11 I stole away to a large, flat rock in a nearby reservoir to think. From 1957 – 1963 I filled notebooks with ideas, drawings and doodles, and fantasized possibilities: how do people choose? What exactly, is choice, and how do people know when to choose to do something different? Do one thing over another? These questions have filled my entire life. [No Google, no computers, no neuroscience or behavioral science or Daniel Kahneman. Just me, a rock, some paper and pen, and intense curiosity.] It became my ‘topic’: What caused people to think, and act, differently from each other, sometimes with the same set of ‘givens’? Could people be taught when, if, or how to make different choices? Could I change? Could anyone?

I also wrote down conversations – with my parents, and those I overheard – noting similarities and differences in words, responses, and intent; I noted when Others’ behaviors and dialogues were confusing, and when I got in trouble for not making the right choices. I wrote down my own internal dialogue when I was apparently out of step, and noted the social situation when I noticed others said something different than they meant.

It was obvious that people reacted differently to the same stimulus. Seemed everyone’s subjective experience (I call it a system of unique rules, norms, beliefs, experience, history etc.) creates the unconscious biases that cause their habitual choices.

1. Everyone’s choices come from their unique, historic, subjective internal realities (their ‘system’) and are largely unconscious.

I collected data in my jobs: From 1975 – 1979 I ran pre-discharge groups and family therapy in an in-patient state psychiatric center giving me an invaluable opportunity to learn about group communication, hidden agendas and veiled meanings, and the vulnerability of maintaining the status quo. 1979-1983 I was a stockbroker on Wall Street. From 1983-1989 I founded a tech company in London, Hamburg, and Stuttgart and had the opportunity to negotiate and have clients/staff from different countries and cultures. I’ve run Buying Facilitation® training programs in 5 of the 7 continents. I founded a Not-For-Profit around Europe that helped kids with my son’s disease get the resources to lead functional lives. Then, and to this day, I have mapped communication, choice, and belief-based decision making.

HOW WE MAINTAIN OUR STATUS QUO

One of my persistent bewilderments was why people behaved in destructive ways even when they had relevant data suggesting they try something else. As I got better at mapping the elements behind my own decision making process and matching it to what I noticed in Others, I realized the complexity of the problem: there’s a broader set of considerations involved than just ‘fixing’ it, or weighting choices. Seems there are iterative, sequential steps that must occur internally before any system is ready for change (Read Dirty Little Secrets for a complete discussion.) including:

2. A. assembling the full, unique data set that comprises the status quo. Includes rules, values, goals, relationships/people, history, events, etc.;
B. a recognition of anything and everything missing in the status quo that might lead to a problem or a lack [omitting anything causes incomplete, possibly inaccurate data; attempting to push anything in prematurely causes resistance to avoid system destabilization.].

Given the subjectivity and sophistication involved in this process, any change we each to through obviously must be initiated, defined, and accepted from within our indvidual systems; change being pushed from outside gets resisted because it potentially offends the system. Our human systems are sacrosanct.

3. Change must come from within the elements of the system that created the problem to ensure the status quo is maintained.
4. Any potential change must be agreed upon (i.e. buy-in) by the system of rules, experiences, history, people, values (etc.), that hold the initiating problem in place.

Here is the question that has ruled my thinking for decades: How could I, or anyone (given we’re each operating from unconscious subjective biases), facilitate change in Others if their change factors are unconscious and fight to maintain the status quo?

PUSHING CHANGE VS FACILITATING CHANGE

In the mid-1980s I discovered NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP – the study of the structure of subjective experience) and studied for three years (Practitioner, Master Practitioner, and a unique Beyond/Integration year) because I found their unwrapping of human systems cogent and important. While it’s not scientifically accepted, NLP is quite important as a way to unpack how/why we do what we do and is the most important communication tool of the twentieth century. I loved the depth of the discovery process through their codified systems of human criteria. Unfortunately, like other influencer models (sales, leadership, coaching, healthcare etc.) the NLP practitioner is trained to use this knowledge to push change from outside, when it’s far more consistent, relevant, accurate and integrous to enable Others to traverse, repair, and integrate the route of their own change; NLP practitioners, like doctors and sales folks, attempt to cause change (obviously using their own personal biases), rather than trusting that people must elicit their own change to remain congruent.

5. Until the system determines how to garner buy-in and consensus in a way that’s congruent with its own rules, and make room for something new in a way the system won’t face disorder, change will be resisted rather than threaten the status quo.

In the late 1980s I discovered the books of Roger Schank who said questions could uncover unconscious criteria. Really? Conventional questions were biased, restricting responses to the bias of the Asker. Since change is an inside job, how could questions enable choice?

I played with this problem for a year and eventually developed a new form of question (Facilitative Question) that uses specific words, in a specific order, in sequenced steps, as an unbiased directional device (much like a GPS, with no bias), giving Outsiders (influencers) the ability to efficiently and congruently help Others traverse the route to change, and make quick decisions and shifts in ways that their system deems tolerable. In other words, a form of question that can be used by doctors, sellers, coaches, leaders – anyone who seeks to enable change in others. An example: ‘How will you know if it’s time to reconsider your hairstyle?’ instead of ‘Why do you wear your hair like that?’ – leading Others directly to the route down their own unconscious change criteria, rather than manipulating the change sought by the Questioner. After all, an Outsider can never fully understand the makeup of someone else’s unique, unconscious system. Why not lead them through to their own change steps?

6. As neutral navigation devices, Facilitative Questions direct the Other’s unconscious down the sequence of change without bias, enabling consensus from the system, congruent to their own norms. In others words, influencers can help people make permanent, congruent change, so long as they eschew leading from their own biases.

Used in sales, coaching, negotiating, leadership, healthcare, decision making, and management, these questions help the Other get straight to the heart of their own decisions, enabling influencers to quickly determine how – or if – to proceed with integrity, collaboration, and authenticity. {In sales, Facilitative Questions quickly eliminate those who would never buy, discover and teach those with a need (initially recoznized or not) AND an ability to buy, and close sales in half the time. Buyers need to take these steps (Pre-Sales) prior to any buying decision anyway, and usually make them behind-the-scenes while sellers wait.}

In the 80s and 90s, I found the books of Benjamin Libet and Maurice Merleau-Ponty who confirmed my early theories that behavior comes from subjective experience. I’ve met with, and read close to a thousand books and papers from, communication experts, behavioral scientists, neuroscientists. I even interviewed for a PhD in Behavioral Sciences, but was told my work was 20 years ahead of the current research at the time so I couldn’t use my own work as my PhD thesis. I did begin an experiment at Columbia with a behavioral scientist on the criteria people used to make decisions with (behavioral vs belief), but our funding got cut as we were set to begin. And in all of my sales/Buying Facilitation® training programs, we have a pilot group compared with a control group.

THE BIRTH OF BUYING FACILITATION®: WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?

Putting all of my learning and ideas together, it presents a very different picture than the one we currently use to influence, lead, or serve others. Here’s a recap.

1. Everyone makes decisions based on their own unique, unconscious subjective biases. External data will be resisted, accepted, misunderstood accordingly, regardless of the need or efficacy of the information.
2. Everyone, and every team, exists within a system of idiosyncratic rules that create and maintain the status quo, and will resist change (buying anything, shifting behaviors) until the system has bought-in to shifting congruently.
3. Conventional questions are biased by the Questioner, and lead to restricted data collection and responses. Facilitative Questions lead the system through it’s own path to assembly, and change management so it can make its own best decisions and discover its own type of Excellence.
4. People can only hear/listen according to the parameters of their internal biases, and will misunderstand, mishear, forget, filter any data that is not aligned. I wrote a book on this: What? Did you really say what I think I heard?
5. Change can only happen from the inside, regardless of the external ‘reality’ or need.
6. Information cannot teach anyone how to make a new decision; all change/choice comes from shifts within the existent, systemic beliefs. Information is only useful once all elements of change are in place; otherwise it gets misheard, misinterpreted, or ignored.
7. Until a system knows how, if, when, where to change congruently, no change will occur regardless of any external reality.
8. It’s possible to facilitate Others through congruent change, be part of their decision making process, potentially expand their choices, and work with those who are ready, willing, and able. This enables influencers to truly serve rather than depend on ‘intuition’ or their own biases.

I know we spend billions creating pitches, rational arguments, data gathering, questionnaires, training, Behavior Modification, etc. But this only captures the low hanging fruit – those who have gotten to the place where new ideas, solutions, training’s fit. People who

think differently,
have rules, expectations or beliefs that run counter to the offered information (but can be recalculated), or
have not yet reached the realization that they need what you’ve got on offer (but do need it)

will either mishear, misunderstand, or resist when presented with any outside push or data. That means we’re offering our solutions before the system is set up for change, finding only the low hanging fruit who have already determined their route to change. Conventional models that push/offer/pull information – rational or otherwise – cannot do better than be there when the fruit’s ready to fall. But by adding some skills that first facilitates change readiness, it’s possible to become part of the decision process and a place on the Buying Decison Team.

My core thinking remains outside of conventional thinking because it’s not academic (although it’s more accepted these days). But after 60 years of study and mistakes, 35 years of training clients and running control groups, I’ve accomplished my childhood goal. My generic facilitation model (Buying Facilitation®) has been taught globally since 1985; it does just what I always wanted to do: offer scalable skills to anyone seeking to truly serve others by facilitating their own brand of excellence. In other words, I can teach influencers to help Others know how, when, if to make new choices for themselves. It’s an unconventional model, and certainly not academic. But it’s been proven with over 100,000 people globally.

These days, I continue to learn, read, study, and theorize. Should anyone in healthcare, sales, leadership, OD, or coaching be interested in learning more, or collaborating, or or or, I’m here.

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Sharon Drew Morgen has been coding and teaching change and choice in sales, coaching, healthcare, and leadership for over 30 years. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation®, a generic decision facilitation model used in sales, and is the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. Sharon Drew’s book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? has been called a ‘game changer’ in the communication field, and is the first book that explains, and solves, the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. Her assessments and learning tools that accompany the book have been used by individuals and teams to learn to enter conversations able to hear without filters.

Sharon Drew is the author of one of the top 10 global sales blogs with 1700+ articles on facilitating buying decisions through enabling buyers to manage their status quo effectively. To learn Buying Facilitation® contact sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512-771-1117 and visit www.newsalesparadigm.com

Sharon Drew Morgen April 29th, 2019

Posted In: Change Management, Listening, News

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

I contend that current Behavior Mod approaches are not only faulty, but seriously harmful to a large population of people who need to consider permanent change. You see, Behavior Modification does NOT instigate new behaviors or permanently change existing ones. In diet, smoking cessation, and exercise maintenance alone, there is a 97% failure rate for ongoing adoption of altered behaviors.

Now let’s be honest here. If you’ve ever tried to keep lost weight off, or habituate a new exercise routine, or stop smoking, or… you’ve probably tried to modify your current behaviors by doing the same thing differently, or doing a different thing the same. Diets always work. It’s when we try to return to ‘normal’ that our lost weight returns. The problem isn’t the diet.

This essay is about conscious behavior change. For this, I must take you to the source – into your brain – to not only understand why you behave the way you do or resist new behaviors, but HOW to actually elicit the behaviors you want. Conventional thinking usually explains the WHAT and WHY, but fail to teach the HOW. In this article I’ll lead you through HOW your brain causes your behaviors, and where the inflexion points are so you can intervene and consciously design your own behaviors (or lead your patients and clients through to their best choices). I’ve tried to make the more procedural stuff fun and relatable so you’ll barely notice. Enjoy.

BEHAVIOR

There are two major problems with Behavior Modification:

1. Behavior 2. Modification.

I suspect most people haven’t considered what a ‘behavior’ denotes. Behaviors are our identity, our beliefs, our history/norms/life experience in action, in the service of representing us to the world, to show people through our actions what we stand for. It’s how we show up as ‘us’ every day – the demonstration, the expression, the translation of who we are – the external actions that portray our internal essence, beliefs, and morals. Like an autobiography is the written representation of a life but not THE life. Like going to church represents us practicing our faith but not FAITH. Behaviors are the visible depictions of each of us.

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

In our brains, behaviors are the output of physiological signals, much as words and meaning are the output of our brain’s interpretation of electrical signals coming into our ears. In other words, it’s all happening unconsciously through brain chemistry: behaviors are merely the end result of a very specific sequence of chemical signals in our brains that traverse a series of congruency checks that ultimately agree to act.

Below is a summary of the physiology of what happens in our brains – the step by step path – that ultimately leads to behaviors. Here you’ll recognize exactly where and why Behavior Mod fails. For those wanting to skip the brain stuff, go directly to the CASE STUDY below. But don’t forget to peek at the great graphic of the HOW of decision making just below.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF BEHAVIOR

For those of you who love to learn esoteric stuff, here is an overview of the physiology of our brain’s path to a behavior: from an Input/Cue that starts the process and signals that an action is requested, through our filters and trials that check the signal for risk, through to a STOP or an Output/Behavior. It’s what our brain does to cause us to behave, or not.

SIGNAL/CUE/MOTIVATION/INPUT: We start by giving ourselves some sort of CUE, an instruction or request, to take action, whether it’s to brush our teeth, or move our arm, or eat a salad. This signal traverses a neural pathway to get to the next stage, the CEN.

CEN/BELIEF FILTER: Our Central Executive Network, or CEN, filters all requests through our beliefs, morals, and norms. If the incoming cue is congruent with our beliefs and determined to have no risk, we peruse our lifelong history and trillions (literally) of neural pathways to find an existing behavior we’ve used before that matches the request. If one is found, there’s an immediate GO and you get a CUE –> BEHAVIOR, or in other words, INPUT –> OUTPUT match immediately. This happens when you get into your car and automatically put on your seatbelt, for example.

But if the motivating cue is incongruent with our norms and beliefs there is a STOP or resistance. This happens a lot when people try to do something they dislike, like add working out to their schedules, for example, because they believe they should – and they hate the gym, hate working out, and hate taking the time out of their day. Or something they’ve tried and have failed at. Or something that goes against their beliefs.

For the past 10 years, after decades of unsuccessfully trying to convince myself to get to the gym, I finally created a new habit and now go 8 hours a week – AND I HATE THE GYM. First I changed my cue. I told telling myself that as a healthy person, I believed (CEN) I am fit in mind, body, spirit. Now, if I want to be a slug, I ask myself if I want to be a healthy person today. Thankfully, I do 90% of the time.

The job of the CEN is to let in the good stuff and stop the bad. Behavior Mod doesn’t have the ability to change cues, and address belief filters.

TRIAL LOOP: If the CEN is congruent with the signal and there’s no behavior already in place, the signal goes into a trial loop where it

assigns/weights/determines the risk of the new against the beliefs and norms (CEN);
seeks new knowledge/learning tools to trial and practice behaviors that conform with the cue;
while comparing against the filters in the CEN for congruence;
develop a new neural pathway/synaptic connection for a new behavior if congruent (i.e. GO) or
STOP a signal if a risk uncovered, and no new behavior is formed.

Obviously our brains are set up to filter out what they believe will harm us. And anything new that has not been bought into, or tested to fit in with our other norms, will be deemed a risk, regardless of the efficacy of the new or need for change.

When our cue gets stopped and doesn’t lead to a behavior it’s because

We’re giving ourselves a cue that’s incongruent with who we are;
We’re trying to use a pathway already developed for a different behavior;
We’re attempting to change a behavior by starting from the output (behavior) end without going through the congruency process of weighting risk and getting Buy In.

Input (signal, cue, stimulus) –> CEN (beliefs) –> trial loop (congruency check) –> output (behavior)

You can see that behaviors are at the end of a chain of physiological events, the final step along the neural pathway between the input cue and action. The end. The response. The reaction. Nowhere do they occur on their own.

THE PROBLEM WITH MODIFICATION

Behavior Mod attempts to effect change at the output where an existing behavior is already in place, hoping that by practicing a preferred behavior over and over and over, different results will emerge. Obviously it can’t work. New behaviors activate and will permanently take hold ONLY once instructed by an input stimulus that has then been approved by your beliefs and weighted for risk and congruence.

In other words, when you try to change a behavior by trying to change an existing behavior, you’re trying to change the output without getting necessary Buy In for change. It’s not even logical. It’s why diets and exercise regimens fail: people try to change their existing habits rather than form wholly new ones with different signals that lead to wholly different – and more successful – routines.

Consider a robot that has been programmed to move forward but you want it to move backward. You tell it why ‘backward’ is best, you pitch it reasons it should want to move backward, you tell it a story about why moving backward is advantageous, and you even try to push it backward. But until you reprogram it, it will not go backward. It’s the same with us. We must create new incoming cues, go through a trial loop that weights risks/tries/fails/tries/fails, gathers necessary data along the way, and gets agreement to develop a wholly new neural pathway to a new action that’s congruent. You cannot change a behavior by changing a behavior.

It’s also impossible to expect permanent change when we omit the entire risk-check element of our Buy In process. The risk to our system of becoming imbalanced by shoving in something foreign into a system that’s been working just fine, is just too great, regardless of the efficacy of the new, and any new inputs will stop behaviors that haven’t been vetted. And Behavior Mod supersedes these tests by trying to push the change from the output end, before it’s been vetted.

HOW TO CHANGE BEHAVIORS PERMANENTLY

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

SYSTEMS CONGRUENCE. The role of systems here cannot be underestimated because they’re the glue that holds us together. I am a system. You are a system. Your family is a system. Every conglomeration of things that follow the same rules is a system. Every system has its own status quo – its own unique set of norms, beliefs, identifiers that show up, together, and are identified as Me, or My Family, or My Work Team. The system of people working together at Google will be different from the system of people working together at Kaiser Permanente, with unspoken rules that apply to dress codes, hiring practices, working hours, relationships, the way meetings are run.

The job of our status quo is to maintain Systems Congruence (You learned that in 6^th grade. It means that all systems, all of us, seek balance, or Homeostasis.) so we can wake up every day being who we were yesterday. And all day, trillions of signals enter into our brains and lead us to behaviors that have met the criteria of systems congruence and safety. These are our habits. Indeed, our brains check all incoming signals for incongruence before behaviors are agreed to, making sure we remain in balance minutely.

Any time you try (and try and try and…) to behave in a way that unconsciously causes imbalance within you – when you push against an existing habit or action and try to get a different behavior – you’ll experience resistance or sabotage. For any proposed change, to maintain congruence, your system must agree, Buy In, in a way that matches your beliefs, identity, and norms. And it’s physiologic, chemical, automatic, and unconscious. Our brains do this for us every second of our lives. Behavior Modification supersedes this process, trying to induce behavior change in a way that risks generating imbalance, or Systems Incongruence – and inaction.

INPUT. Any new input signals will only become a behavior if they are congruent with the beliefs, identity and norms of the person’s system. When you wish to change a behavior, it’s necessary to input the correct message as all that follows is a response to the input cue. I recently asked a friend with a long history of trying to lose weight permanently what she tells herself to begin (her stimulus). ‘I tell myself I’m a disgusting slob.’ Since different inputs will be assessed by the CEN uniquely and each achieve different outputs, being a ‘disgusting slob’ will invite the same behaviors that caused her to be a ‘disgusting slob’ to begin with, and she’ll fail over and over; she’s inputting the same signal expecting a different response, but her brain will only seek/find the old response.

TRIAL LOOP. Because a new input seeking a new output/behavior demands a congruence test in the CEN to assess risk, there’s a trial process that includes

adding new knowledge (education, books, coaching, lessons, etc.) to achieve new skills to trial;
continual comparisons against the CEN, or against our beliefs and identity, as each iteration progresses, to test for congruence;
Buy-In so our CEN, our beliefs and identity, concur with each iteration of trialing and failing as our brains go about weighting any risk;
trialing any new behaviors for congruence, that result from adding the new knowledge.

If at any point a risk is determined to put the system out of congruence, it will stop the new behavior. If the input cue is determined safe, it will agree to create a new behavior. Not to kick a dead horse, but Behavior Mod does not address this at all. That’s why it fails so often.

So if my friend wanted to permanently lose weight, she’d input something like “I’m a healthy person”, discover which of her beliefs are connected to that (“As part of my health practice, I eat nutritionally healthful food that works well with my lifestyle.”), and go through a trial loop that would include her doing research and possibly blood tests to see what types of food best align with her being healthy, and end up with a new set of healthful eating behaviors. Ultimately she’d have a lifetime food plan that kept her healthy, congruent with her beliefs about herself and habituated into her life. And her eating would become part of her system and become habituated.

CASE STUDY

I’ll share a recent experience I had using this process with my neighbor. In it I’ll label each element within the Buy In process in the chart above.

My neighbor Maria once came to my house crying. Her doctor had told her she was borderline diabetic and needed to eat differently. He gave her a printed list of foods to eat and foods to avoid and sent her on her way. At my house she told me she’d been trying for months, lost some weight, but finally gave up and went back to her normal eating habits and gained back the weight. But she was fearful of dying from diabetes like her mother did. Apparently the fear of death wasn’t enough to change her eating habits. She asked if I could help, and I told her I’d lead her through to finding her own answers. Here was our exchange.

SDM: Who are you? [RESPONSE TO DOCTOR INPUT/CUE]

Maria: I’m a mother and grandmother. [CEN FILTER, IDENTITY]

SDM: What are your beliefs that go with being a mother and grandmother?

Maria: I believe I’m responsible for feeding my family in a way that makes them happy. [CEN FILTER, BELIEFS]

SDM: What is it you’re doing now that makes them happy? [CEN FILTER, IDENTITY]

Maria: I make 150 tortillas each morning and hand them out to all my children and grandchildren who come over on their way to work and school in the morning. They love my tortillas. But I know they’re bad for me with all the lard in them, even though I eat them. I’ve tried to stop, but since I’m making them for everyone, they are a big part of my diet. When the doctor told me I can’t eat them anymore, it felt like he asked me to not love my family. [NO BUY IN FROM CEN/STOP]

SDM: So I hear that tortillas are the way you keep your family happy but the lard in them is unhealthy for you. Is there any other way you can keep your family happy by feeding them without putting your own health at risk?

Maria: Hmmmm… I could make them corn tacos. They don’t have lard, and my family loves them. [TRIAL LOOP, BUY-IN]

Maria then invited her entire (huge) family for dinner and presented her daughter Sonia with her tortilla pan outfitted with a big red bow. [TRIAL LOOP, NEW BEHAVIOR] She told her family she couldn’t make tortillas any more due to health reasons, and proclaimed Sonia the new “Tortilla Tia”. She could, she said, make them corn tacos whenever they wanted and she would happily try out whatever they wanted so long as they were happy. [TRIAL LOOP, KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION]

That simple switch in her food choices and her handover to Sonia helped her begin a healthy eating plan. It inspired her to research other food substitutions [TRIAL LOOP, KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION] she could make to avoid having a chronic illness. Eventually, she lost weight and had a food plan more closely aligned with what her doc suggested. And of course, she could still make her family happy with her food and meet her beliefs. [NEW NEURAL PATHWAY, NEW BEHAVIOR]

As you can see, just from entering the problem with a different hat on – helping patients figure out their own route to change and Buy In instead of trying to drive it – using a different curiosity and a different questioning system, it’s quite possible to guide people to discover their own best choices that are congruent with who they are.

FACILITATE BUY IN THEN ADD BEHAVIOR MOD

I realize my ideas aren’t in the mainstream at the moment. But just because Behavior Mod has such a stronghold in the healthcare field doesn’t mean it can’t be reexamined or appended. And just because Behavior Mod has been the accepted model to induce change doesn’t mean it’s successful. Remember when we believed top down leadership was the way to go? Millions of books sold? Billions spent on consultants? I’m offering something new here that deserves consideration.

And it’s not either/or; it can be both/and. You don’t have to throw away what you’ve got, just add a front end to stimulate Buy In. I’ve used this approach to train a large number of sales folks globally to facilitate buying decisions and it was quite successful. And here’s an article I wrote on adding my change facilitation concepts to Behavior Mod, should you have interest.

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

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

Contact me to put you on an advance list for a Buy In program I’m running in June with Learning Strategies. In it you’ll learn how to design your own flow chart from Cue to Behavior to have conscious choice whenever you want to make a change. And if you have any interest at all in testing this model, or just sharing ideas, I welcome the conversation. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

______________

Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker and thought leader. She is the author of 9 books, including the New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestsellers Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and What? Did you really say what I think I heard? She is also the inventor of the Buying Facilitation® model which is used by sellers, leaders, and coaches, to facilitate others through all of the steps of their decision making and change to lead them through their steps to purchase or change. Sharon Drew is a trainer, coach, speaker, and consultant in the areas of sales, healthcare, leadership, and coaching. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen February 18th, 2019

Posted In: Communication, Listening

I started up a tech company in London in 1983. I never meant to. And I certainly didn’t know what I was doing.

I was brought across the pond by a tech company as a sales director. But after a few days and a few conversations with my husband Ben (brought over by the same company to do contract tech work), I realized there was a far greater opportunity than just selling services for the first Fourth Generation Language (4GL) Database Management software FOCUS we supported: programming support, of course. But what about users? Since it was a user-focused tool, and users weren’t techies, I envisioned two problems: they might not have the knowledge to cull, organize and manage their data; they might not have the skills to communicate effectively with the techies they had to collaborate with. (As a non-techie married to a techie, I was well aware of the communication challenges of different types of brains.) What if we could be a decision support group that provided a broad range of services for users?

I somehow convinced my new manager to let me ‘go’ with my ideas. But truth be told, I didn’t know what I was talking about. That wasn’t a problem: because I think in systems, I had a high-level understanding of the problems but none of the details. In other words, I understood the structure but not the content (and it’s always easy to find the right content once you’ve got the structure). Never occurred to me I wouldn’t succeed.

None of us were smart enough to know what we didn’t know, although they must have known something: I became their most successful group, bringing in 142% of the gross profit of their 5 companies. Me? I ended up an entrepreneur, starting a tech group (which became its own company) in two countries (UK, Germany), with no experience; making a whole bunch of money for me and my investors; serving a large, diverse client base; traveling extensively around Europe; having full expression of my creativity; and living in London. But it didn’t start that way.

As I share my experiences, I’d like you to consider that this was the early 1980s: there was no internet, no Google, no email, and no websites with phone numbers and names. It was necessary, in general, to call Information to get a phone number, and they needed the address before they gave you the number. True story. Computers weren’t even used for much – think Commodore, with floppys; Macs weren’t even introduced until 1984; Google not until 1996. So in the pre-internet,pre-information age, selling and marketing were decidedly different than today. And yet I found a way, in a country strange to me, in an industry I knew nothing about, selling a product I didn’t understand, to be quite successful. Just a bit of old-timee caring, trust, and integrity. Let me begin.

WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW

I’d never been an entrepreneur. With only 5 years as a successful salesperson (and 12 years prior as a social worker and journalist), I had no idea what ‘business’ meant. In fact, I didn’t know:

How to hire anyone.
How to find anyone – to hire, to sell to.
The rules: of tech, London, business, corporate politics, start-ups. Nothin’.
What was going on in the field, what the field was comprised of, the nature of my competition.
What I was selling – what my service provided, what it did differently than my competition.
What clients needed, how they took care of the problems without my solution, why they would buy anything rather than keep doing what they were doing.
How to explain, pitch, or present what I was selling (because I didn’t understand it).
How to run a business – the jobs needing to be done, how they got apportioned.
How to manage staff; how to recognize when I needed to hire/fire staff.
What success or failure looked like and how to know in advance if either was happening.
How to put together a budget, how much money I needed to run a company (I didn’t know I could run on a loss, so I thought I’d need to earn money before spending it.)
Expectations, time frames, problems, problem resolutions.

I was ignorant. But I did understand people, systems, structure, hard work, risk-taking, communication, and integrity. And I knew who, what, and why to trust. I was on my way.

I began in a tiny, tiny office (Obviously once a closet, it was so narrow I had to move the chair so the door would open; the ‘desk’ was a plank of wood attached to the wall.) in a group office space. I sat, that first day, and stared at a British phone not even knowing how to dial out or get Information. I had to hire people, obviously. But for what? And how did I find them? I had to get revenue, but from who? This was in 1983 before the ‘tech’ boom. No one knew what was going on; I had no one to even ask these questions to.

Should I start selling first to bring in revenue? or hire support staff? Should I hire techies to go into client environments – for when I made a sale? But how could I hire anyone before I knew what prospective clients needed? What criteria should I use to hire techies – since the 4GL was for users, techies needed both tech skills and people skills, no? What percentage of each was necessary? How would I know what to pay them?

It was a conundrum. I couldn’t pay anyone until I was getting revenue; I couldn’t get revenue until I got clients; I couldn’t get clients until I had people to do their work. Where to begin? I could design a path forward once I figured out the elements. And as I later realized, starting with no expectations, no biases, no knowledge, and no comparators, was a blessing. I was given a clear road on which to travel, using any means of transport I could develop within a miasma of confusion, to get wherever I wanted to go. Best fun ever.

EMPLOYEES RUNNING THE COMPANY

I took on all the tasks concurrently: afternoons interviewing techies and hiring staff, mornings on sales calls. I decided to be my own salesperson so I could learn the components of the underlying system and understand the full range of givens going forward. I needed to know where I was at so I could get where I was going. (Did you ever try to get directions when you didn’t know the address where you were?)

I solved the ‘which comes first’ problem by initially hiring contract techies (who I later made permanent). This also solved my cash flow issue so I needn’t lay out money until I landed a client. But who was a good hire? I had Ben design a tech test I could score myself using an overlay with answers; I personally added some client service questions to understand their people skills. Between this test and the interview, I knew exactly the pluses and minuses of each person.

To hire staff, I had to determine the job scope and potential outcome that each hire would offer, certainly hard to do when I had no way of knowing what jobs were necessary; it was a year before we realized we needed a training group, for example. So I made a lot of (mostly good but not always) guesses. Before our interviews, I told prospective hires to determine how much they wanted to earn (I trusted people knew how much they were worth; I sure didn’t.) bring a P&L (Someone said I needed that. No idea what it was.) to the interview with a plan to illustrate how they could earn their salary, cover their costs, and make a profit. The ones who came in with creative ideas were hired. I didn’t know until years later what a crazy idea this was. But not that crazy, turned out.

Since I didn’t know the difference between a cost center and a profit center, I hadn’t realized ‘obvious’ things, like you can’t make Reception a profit center. But I didn’t know I couldn’t, so I did. A bit more about that in a moment. Suffice it to say, by making each person their own profit center, everybody ran their own companies and became wholly committed to being successful because that’s how they got paid. Plus they were having such fun creating. Sounds silly now, but it worked: I hired people who wanted to be creative, take responsibility, and work from the same parameters of ‘excellence’ that I wanted the company to exemplify:

Take whatever risks you deem necessary, so long as you stay within the parameters of integrity and have a good shot at succeeding.
Always trust clients, care for their well-being, never never never lie.
Always do what you say you’ll do.
Never leave clients compromised, regardless of time or situation. And always stay on top of how clients are doing.
If you’re going to fail, tell me before you fall so I can get involved; if you are already failing, there’s nothing I can do but watch you fall. Note: my team always, always told be well before a potential failure, and together we always fixed the impending disaster. We didn’t mind making mistakes.
I don’t believe in giving people X weeks vacation. If you’re running your own company, you take the time off as needed to be healthy, creative, and happy. Ultimately, I had to pry folks from their seats to get them to take time off. Sometimes I had to call their wives (and they were all men, except the sales team), tell them to send the kids to Grandma, and keep the tired husbands in bed for a few days. I even sent meals to the house so no one had to cook. This small thing alone kept my folks loyal enough to not take other job offers of twice the salary. I really cared about them.

So now I knew how to hire staff and techies when I needed them. But that was the tip of the iceberg.

SELLING AN UNKNOWN

Because I had a successful history of taking on challenges without knowing anything, I didn’t think twice about selling something I didn’t understand. And truly, although I had very general knowledge, I knew nothing of the specifics – what I was selling, who used it, the need for it, or the buying environment for it. I didn’t even know how to get phone numbers or company names (1983, remember? No Google, no information ‘online’. Think about it.). Reception gave me a phone book to look up American companies that I knew had offices in London and who possibly might be using FOCUS. But it was all a guess; I was flying blind. My first call was to the Receptionist at American Express:

SDM: Hi. I wonder if you could help me. This is a sales call, and I have a product that will help the folks using a new Fourth Generation Language get better reports. But I’m new in London, and new in the business, and haven’t a clue what groups are using this or who to ask for. Do you have any ideas for me?

REC: Interesting. I’ll give you the names of a few group heads and you can call and see if they fit. If these don’t work, call me back and I’ll keep digging. My name is Ann.

First on her list was Jim. No idea what he did or his title; I just had a name and extension number.

SDM: Hi Jim. My name is Sharon Drew Morgen. Ann gave me your name and suggested you were a good person to speak with but neither of us was sure. This is a sales call. I’m selling support services for the Fourth Generation Language FOCUS, and I wonder if you’re using the language or need any help. Is this a good time?

JIM: How refreshing! Thanks for telling me it’s a sales call. Can you tell me more about what you offer (No idea.) because we are using FOCUS but because it’s so new I don’t know what I don’t know (Hahahaha. That made two of us).

SDM: (I was in trouble here. My only option was to keep putting the focus on him.): I have an idea. Rather than me tell you what I can do for you, tell me exactly how you’re currently using the software, what your target goal is and if you’re reaching it, where you’re not, and I’ll put it all together in my head (with Ben’s help!) and see if there is anything I can do to support you, then get back to you if I can. I do have a curiosity: what’s stopping you from knowing more than you do about using the software to its fullest capability? (This was curious to me. As a systems thinker, I always want to know the parameters of any problem. What was going on that Jim didn’t know them?)

JIM: Wow. I should know more, right? Let me tell you how I’m using it (and so began my learning!) and we can schedule another call once you’ve had time to think. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to give you the names and phone numbers of my colleagues so we can all be on the same page here. I also havea friend at DEC with the same problems I’m having, so I’ll give you his number as well. I suspect you can help us all.

And so began my journey to success. Helping people figure out how to take care of their own needs first, and then helping where I could add something, was so much easier than pitching what I thought would be meaningful, especially since I had no earthly idea how to discuss a product I didn’t yet have.

GROWING THE COMPANY WITH PEOPLE

I soon began selling contract services for systems engineers, programmers, project leaders, and managers. When visiting them in the field at their new jobs, I began to understand the ‘need’ not only for technical support but as I had originally guessed, for ‘communication management’ within their teams and with the users who had no clue how to manage or direct techies. I quickly realized that merely putting techies into client teams wouldn’t keep the core communication issues, inherent in this first report tool, at bay.

I needed to hire someone with tech skills, communication skills, and people skills. A tall order that few could do. But unless someone could take that on, I could foresee plenty of innate problems that could crop up and cause fires and lost time and business.

Thankfully, I found John to hire as a ‘Make Nice Guy’. John had it all; I paid him a fortune (around $100,000, which in 1984 was a huge salary – just about broke the bank) and gave him this job description:

Make sure the code in every program, on every client site, is good so there are no systems failures. A shut down at any time of day or night, at any site, would be his to fix;
Make sure our techies fit into the client teams and the relationships were smooth. If our techies stayed in their position for the length of the contract John got a bonus;
Make sure the client is happy, and check to see if they need additional help on other teams;
Find other groups on client sites bringing in FOCUS before the vendor sent in their own contract team. (I had a team already sitting and waiting to begin as the vendor implemented the new software before they even pitched their consulting services.)
And oh – take as much holiday time you need, so long as I have no fires.

I never wanted my phone to ring with problems; I had a company to grow. John’s job was to run all operations. And he was so good at everything that our projects almost always got done ahead of schedule and under budget, causing clients to keep us around for far longer than the initial contract as their trust grew. And because we were so reliable, clients began giving us whole projects to do on our own, freeing up their own people for more creative work. We were in Bose, British Airways, Amdahl, DEC, for years, causing me to hire more and more tech staff. We grew to about 43 techies in under 4 years. And there was very little ‘beach’ time.

I had very high criteria around keeping staff happy; without them, I didn’t have a business. Since so many folks were in the field and I couldn’t see them regularly, I called each and every techie at least once a month to check in, discuss birthdays and holidays, share gossip. I offered current staff a new job opening before seeking anyone from outside to fill it. I let them trial the job for 3 weeks, and if they wanted it and we all agreed, it was theirs. And because I thought it important that those in the field didn’t feel isolated, once a month I treated the whole team of techies and staff to a darts night with a few pints at a local pub. I always lost. I still can’t play darts.

As we grew, my growing group of employees were coming up with their own ideas, certainly better than mine. One of the running jokes became the ability to get me to say “WE’RE DOING WHAT?????” When I said those words, someone would gleefully shout out, “SHE SAID IT! SHE SAID IT!” It was never little stuff either. They sure took risks.

SDM: Hey Harold. Nice seeing you. I’ve not seen you for days. Where’ve you been?

HAROLD: We needed to expand our training programs so I was scouting out new venues. I’m just getting ready to sign a contract to rent about 1000 feet of space in an adjoining office.

SDM: WE’RE DOING WHAT????”

Damn if he didn’t rock out. He’d put together user training, tech training, and even a manager training that he somehow got me to teach (I’M TEACHING WHAT????). Harold figured that since I did such a good job managing techies with no technical experience myself, I could teach user managers how to work with techies. He was right. And it was a very popular program. Who knew!? All I had to do was do what I was told.

The other prominent wish I heard from the managers was an admonishment: “Please, please don’t sell anything we don’t have today please!” Yeah, right. As a salesperson, I always can think of things I can sell someone when I hear what I think is a need. And once I knew how flexible our services were, I could promise something could be delivered. Immediately.

STAFF PERSON SEEING MY FACE AS I RETURNED TO MY OFFICE: She’s done it again!!

SDM: [as the team hustled into my office, arms crossed, scowling, knowing]: I couldn’t help it. Sorry guys. It’s not a big deal. We only need to do X. Won’t be bad.

STAFF: And when did you promise we’d deliver this?

SDM: Monday.

STAFF: BUT IT’S WEDNESDAY!!!!! We’ll need to work all weekend!!!! My wife will kill me!!!!

SDM: I’ll run the Xerox machine, keep you in Pizza and Coke, edit while you’re writing. I’ll buy the beer! I’ll help you!

And so we stayed up to the minute in our offerings and program designs and had a steady flow of new solutions. What a blast we had, albeit a missed birthday or two. Sorry kids.

One more fun thing. The technical training guy wanted to be able to see into the work the students were doing at their desks and correct their errors from his front computer. He needed a computer with a large screen, capable of connecting to, and viewing, multiple computers at once. You might shrug at this now, but in 1985, no one had ever heard of such a thing. Julian made a bazillion calls and actually found a man in Amsterdam to come over, raise our training room floor to organize all the cables, and built Julian the computer he wanted. Done and done.

THE PROFIT CENTER RECEPTION AREA

I promised you this story. And it’s quite wonderful. Shows what can happen when you really trust your staff.

I hired a woman named Anne-Marie as the receptionist. She had run a car dealership and was accustomed to dealing with aggressive men, without an ounce of need for any social relationships.

Anne-Marie’s pitch to me during our interview for the job of Receptionist was that she wanted a percentage of our net profits (and this was in 1984!); for this, she would create an environment run like a well-oiled machine, with everyone intent on taking care of customers with nothing getting in the way. I didn’t know what that meant; I just trusted her.

She was imposing in every way: very tall – about 6 feet – and wore very tidy, officious, crisp suits. She wore bright red, severe lipstick; she walked with lowered eyes, with a sort of strut; her brown hair was tied up in some 1920s hairstyle that increased our perception that she knew what she was doing. And I can’t say often enough that she was terrifying. It was like having a dictator around all the time, watching, watching. We did whatever she said. Seriously. No one, no one, messed with her. We didn’t even want to find out what the ‘or else’ was.

Anne-Marie figured out what needed to be done within a month on the job. As the person in the front, Anne-Marie overheard staff gossiping about each other, obviously taking time away from their work and her profit; she noticed phones being unanswered, which didn’t serve customers; she overheard people saying they ‘didn’t know’ something, which didn’t serve customers either. She wasn’t having it.

She put us to work. EVERY DAY Anne-Marie made us write up what was going on with our clients, problems with our job and caseload, our conflicts with each other. We had to leave these pages on her desk before we left at night, and she would come in early and distribute them by 7:00 A.M. She wanted everyone to have all the knowledge necessary to serve clients and each other, every day.

She called these things TOADS. Take what you want and destroy…. I don’t remember what the blasted acronym was, but trust me, I still have nightmares. Those bloody TOADS. We hated them. EVERY DAY we all had to stay an extra hour at night to write the damn things – and remember, there were no computers and many of the staff couldn’t type on the typewriters, so mostly we wrote them by hand. Pages. They went on for pages. And in addition to staying late EVERY NIGHT to write the dratted things, we had to come in early every day to read the ten or twelve sets of TOADS that Anne-Marie left on our desks from our teammates. One of the things I did when designing our new offices was to install glass walls so we could all see each other (Open plan offices weren’t a Thing yet.). We would glumly look up from our writing at 6:30 or so at night, see each other sitting there writing, give each other grim smiles, chuckle, and put our heads back down to write. We suffered together.

What happened was astonishing. All internal conflicts stopped, since everyone knew, and aired their grievances. Office communication became more intimate. Staff knew each other’s challenges and shared resources and ideas, creating a collaborative environment filled with new possibility. We all got a much deeper appreciation of our clients and their challenges. And any time a phone rang, whoever was closest picked it up.

Oh Hi, Mr. Jones. I’m SO sorry that happened to Martin! How’s he doing! Jane isn’t here now, but is there something I can help you with? I know our folks are just finishing up your project. Is there a problem?

We fixed problems immediately. We all had all the information we needed to see a problem coming and fix it before it happened. Clients trusted us even more and gave us more business. She’d accomplished her goal: customers were happy, and we all made money. Between Anne-Marie taking care of the inside, and John taking care of the field, I had absolutely nothing to do but grow my company.

HAPPY CUSTOMERS, SAD COMPETITION

But in truth, my clients grew my company for me. I did whatever it took to keep them satisfied. And this became my brand. One month in 1986 or so, I decided to place a full-page ad in The Financial Times of London. Very expensive. But I wanted to be on record as a company with a commitment to serve. Instead of writing copy, I left the page blank except for these words written right in the middle of the empty page:

The Quality Is Free

and at the bottom of the page, in small print, my company contact details. One day after submitting the copy, I got a surprise visit from the Times Editor. He brought with him a page of copy that he’d written for me (He assumed I wasn’t smart enough to write my own copy?).

EDITOR: You can’t have just an empty page. But don’t worry. I wrote you some content.

SDM: Naw. I’m good, thanks. Want some tea?

An hour after he left, I got a call from the big big boss in the States who suggested I take the Editor’s offer for content (The Editor went around me to call the big boss? Awwww what a silly woman! Obviously she needs a man! With brains! Awwww.).

SDM: I got a better idea

Geoff: Why not fly over, take my job, and you can do anything you want. No? You don’t want that? So what else would you like to discuss. How the hell are you?

In those days, Brand Marketing wasn’t a thing. I certainly had no idea what it was. I just wanted potential customers to know what we stood for and elevate my brand in the larger market. One thing I quickly learned: let the people who knew what they were doing ‘go’ and learn whatever I could from them. My wonderful team, my lovely customers, taught me everything. They certainly all had their own answers so long as I helped them figure out how to figure it out. In fact, this process of helping others figure out their own answers was the foundation of my Buying Facilitation®model that I’ve taught to 100,000 sales folks globally since 1987. How naïve I was as a salesperson before that to ever think I had an answer for prospects.

Ultimately, our customers were so happy the following resulted:

We captured 11% of a field with 26 competitors. You do the math.
Our pricing was much higher than any of our competitors; clients never minded because we were known to be meticulous. (Price is never a selling point. My pricing actually put me into my own market, which obviously changed our competitive standing. After I left the company I heard that my nickname was Sharon Drew Blood J)
Remember Mr. Make Nice Guy? What a good job he did! We avoided user, programming, and relationship problems. Hiring us was problem-free for clients.
We had a revenue of $5,000,000 in just under four years. Remember: no email marketing, no websites, no social media. Just good work and lots of referrals. And gobs of integrity and care.
We had a 42% net profit. Anne-Marie was very happy. See? Reception as a profit center!
I didn’t have to send tech resumes to clients. I was able to carefully listen to what they needed after asking the right questions, and say something like:

I can send you someone with those exact specifications in seven weeks, or I you must have someone sooner, I can send someone with the X skill set but not the Y skills, and you’d need to get that part covered yourself.

I never ever lied or hyped and my track record was perfect. Clients trusted us. I even had situations where our team got to a new client site to begin a project and the client was on vacation (“Dave where are you???” “Sharon Drew, your folks are so good they’ll figure it out. Talk in two weeks when I’m back.”). I once got a call from someone who said, “What, no resume? You’re going to tell me who I need, and you think you’re going to get it right?” Yup.

My revenue doubled every year. I lost no staff in four years even though they were approached regularly from my competitors and offered higher salaries. I was as successful in Germany as I was in England. And I learned a lot: how to run a company; how to choose staff – and let them do their thing and get out of their way; to trust that clients had their own best answers; to trust my ignorance to find the most integrous route to a solution.

CONCLUSION

My years in London gave me the ability to exercise my own creativity, serve a bunch of people, and get paid for it (difficult for a woman to achieve in America still). And I never had so much fun in my life. One more personal note: while in London I also started up a non-profit (The Dystonia Society) that served kids with my son’s disease. I set up local support groups around the United Kingdom and Europe and raised money for mobility implements. By day I was an entrepreneur, by night I ran a non-profit, and on weekends Ben and I traveled around Europe (and simultaneously brought in a bunch of new clients) and hiked in the Lake District.

After I left my company in 1988, I was contracted by the vendor of FOCUS to get the business back that I had taken from him. True story. In England, that was called ‘Getting money for old rope.’

And after I left my company, it went downhill. During my years there, the big boss regularly tried to get me to lower my prices so I’d be ‘competitive’. “But I’m not IN a price competition, I’m in a quality competition.” Didn’t stop him from haranguing me: “You’d get a lot more business if your prices were reasonable.” He was thinking mainstream, but I wasn’t running a mainstream company. Different rules. When I left, he not only put up blinds on the glass walls so no one could see each other, stopped the ‘time wasting’ TOADS and dart games, and fired John Make Nice Guy because of his ‘exorbitant’ salary, AND he lowered our prices.

Guess what happened. You got it. In a short time, the company actually became mainstream like the others: From having our own 11% market share to sharing the market equally among the 27 competitors – each company getting their 4%. Lesson: when the magic sauce has a recipe, don’t change it.

I then moved back to the States to a ranch in Taos, N.M. After sleeping for a year (Seriously.) and traveling a bit, I wrote my first book (Sales on the Line) published in 1992 followed by 8 more (one, on the NYTimes Business Bestseller’s list called Selling with Integrity, one on the Amazon bestseller’s list called What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), and developed my Change Facilitation model Buying Facilitation® that I’ve trained globally to sales folks, coaches, and leaders ever since. And while many of my coined terms have become part of mainstream sales thinking (buy cycle, buying patterns, buyer’s journey, helping buyers buy, buying decisions – coined to define the change management steps necessary before people become buyers) I’ve done it all my own unique way, never trying to be, or compete against, the mainstream.

I hope that my story offered some ideas to budding entrepreneurs. And I do realize the environment is different in 2018 than it was 35 years ago. But maybe parts of it are not that different.

Receive Sharon Drew’s original articles and essays on Mondays: http://sharondrewmorgen.com/subscribe-to-sharon-drew-morgens-award-winning-blog/

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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, and author of 9 books, including the New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestsellers Dirty Little Secrets – why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and What? Did you really say what I think I heard? She is the developer of Change Facilitation, used in sales (Buying Facilitation®), coaching, leadership, and management – any influencing situation in which integrity, ethics, and collaboration are involved. Sharon Drew is a speaker, trainer, consultant, and coach for sales and listening. She can be reached atsharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com; her award-winning blog has thoughtful articles on change, systems, decision making, and communication. www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen November 5th, 2018

Posted In: Communication, Listening

80% of your prospects will buy a solution similar to yours within 2 years of your connection, but not from you; your relationship-building, price breaks, marketing campaigns, etc. are irrelevant until they have their ducks in a row and are ready to bring in a solution.

Indeed: the time it takes buyers to manage changes they’ll face from bringing in your solution is the length of the sales cycle. And you’re not helping them manage the change.

A purchase is the last thing a buyer needs. But since sales only addresses the solution placement portion – the last steps – of a buyer’s journey, sellers have no control over the comprehensive change management issues that precede a solution choice.

We sit and wait, and are unfortunately out of control, as buyers: decide between an external solution, a current provider, or an internal workaround; get buy-in from all relevant touch points; manage any potential disruption. And so we close only the low hanging fruit when they call to buy after they’ve completed their behind-the-scenes elements – and we’re totally at effect of their timing.

It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible to enter earlier and help them address the many issues that must be handled between an idea and a purchase.

I developed Buying Facilitation® to manage that problem for my own sales team. It’s a decision facilitation tool that helps buyers address all decision/pre-sales issues they must address internally to get consensus and manage change. My clients with 8 figure solutions brought 3 year sales cycles down to 4 months; smaller solutions from, say, 6 months to one month, and avoided presentations and RFPs.

Buying Facilitation® employs a novel listening system, a new form of question, and uses the decision points of change to facilitate the pre-sales/decision/non-solution-related systems issues buyers need to manage before they can even consider buying anything. Should the HR person share budget with L&D? Is the merger going to meld departments? Sales doesn’t get involved with these issues, yet these are the systems issues buyers must address that affect buying.

We can help buyers manage these issues and either make or expunge a buyer very quickly. Let me teach you a new skill set – if you want real control over your pipeline and don’t want to merely wait for the low hanging fruit.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Business Bestselling author of Selling with Integrityand 7 books how buyers buy including Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a decision facilitation model used with sales to help buyers facilitate pre-sales buying decision issues. She is a sales visionary who coined the terms Helping Buyers Buy, Buy Cycle, Buying Decision Patterns, Buy Path in 1985, and has been working with sales/marketing for 30 years to influence buying decisions.

More recently, Morgen is the author of What? Did you really say what I think I heard? in which she has coded how we can hear others without bias or misunderstanding, and why there is a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She is a trainer, consultant, speaker, and inventor, interested in integrity in all business communication. Her learning tools can be purchased: www.didihearyou.com. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com ; 512-771-1117. www.didihearyou.com; www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen June 11th, 2018

Posted In: Listening, News

How do we manage change in our organizations? Not very well, apparently. According to statistics, the success rate for many planned change implementations is low: 37 percent for Total Quality Management; 30 percent for Reengineering and Business Process Reengineering, and a whopping 97% for some software implementations. Regardless of the industry, situation, levels of people involved, or intended outcome, change seems to be sabotaged in unknown ways, causing the real possibility of failure:

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

Is it possible that our approach is causing some of the problems? I submit that we’re omitting some of the foundational elements to congruent change, change that can be successful in:

its comfortable transitions between phases;
its ease of buy-in;
enabling all participants to embrace leadership roles and be a part of designing and developing the Rules and Beliefs that will define the emerging, new system;
reducing fallout and cost;

eliminating resistance,
encouraging creativity.

But we’ll need to do something different from what we’re currently doing.

THE SYSTEMS ASPECT OF CHANGE

Let’s begin at the beginning with my definitions of change and systems.

CHANGE: Change is a new set of choices within a system that cause the elements of the system to exhibit altered Behaviors while still maintaining homeostasis. No change can occur unless the system reorients (i.e. re-organizes, re-prioritizes etc.) itself in a way that incorporates and maintains its core accepted norms (i.e. homeostasis, Systems Congruence). In other words, all change must include a way for the elements to ultimately buy-in to, and incorporate, new functioning while maintaining the rules and Beliefs of the status quo.SYSTEM: Any connected set of elements that comprise a homeostatic entity, held together by consensual rules and Beliefs that then generate a unique set of Behaviors that exhibit its unique identity. All systems must maintain Systems Congruence or they lose their identity and become something else. Because change represents the disruption of the status quo in unknowable ways, systems defend themselves by resisting when feeling threatened. In order to facilitate congruent change, it’s necessary to get the agreement, and a recognized path forward (There are specific, sequential steps in all change processes.), of all of the bits that will be effected by the final solution to ensure it maintains its core identity, Beliefs, and rules.

As a lifelong student of systems thinking and theorizing (50+ years), I’ve recognized that change is often approached with an eye on altering activity and Behaviors without addressing the vital need for the core system to maintain homeostasis. And when we tie our understanding of the functionality of a system to its Behaviors and attempt to push Behavior change before eliciting core Belief change, we

overlook the ability to facilitate the system down its own path through to it’s own version of congruent change
are relegated to managing the fallout when the stable system reaches Cognitive Dissonance and is forced to defend itself.

Herein lie the problem: until or unless the full complement of relevent elements (that not only created the problem but holds it in place daily) agrees to congruently alter, and get buy-in from, the elements that caused the problem and will be effected by any change, it will resist change regardless of the underlying problem that needs fixing. The system is sacrosanct. And it applies whether trying to get a teenager to pick up his socks, a diabetic patient to exercise, a team to work harmoniously, or a person to figure out if/when she needs to buy something. In general, outsiders cannot effect congruent change because they cannot know the core elements that have created and maintain the status quo, nor how to re-orient them congruently around any proposed change. It’s an inside job.

With our focus on changing Behaviors, we’ve overlooked the need for a system to maintain Systems Congruence – the foundational rules, Beliefs, relationships, etc. that define the system. Outside influencers – regardless of their initiatives or rationality or persuasiveness or authority – can never understand a system they’re not a part of. Change must begin by teaching the system how to change itself. I’ve written this article to:

Explain how current approaches to change management lead to resistance,
Introduce the elements of change and need for buy-in,
Introduce a route to change that can achieve goals without resistance while maximizing leadership and creativity through buy-in and congruent change.

In my forthcoming book (tentatively titled Facilitating Change) I’ll explore this topic thoroughly. In this article I’ll introduce the important elements and lay out my thinking. And I look forward to your feedback.

ALL PROBLEMS START WITH SYSTEMS

Most influencing professions (leadership, coaching, consulting, sales etc.) begin with a goal to be met, adopt an outside-in approach that uses influence, advice, ‘rational’ scientific ‘facts’, and various types of manipulation to inspire change – while ignoring the fact that anything new, any push from outside the system, any dissimilar element not already within it, represents disruption and Cognitive Dissonance. We put the cart before the horse, attempting to change Behaviors and elicit buy in before the system is certain it won’t be compromised and knows how to make sure it survives. Until the necessary steps of change are completed and the system knows it will maintain Systems Congruence, the identified problem will continue as is: it’s already built into the system:

The full complement of elements and that created the problem and represent the status quo must be assembled and recognized [Note: this applies to making an individual decision since each of us is an individual system.];
Everyone/everything within the system must accept that it’s not possible to fix the problem with known resources;
All of the elements (people, policies, rules, relationships, etc.) that will be effected by a new solution – i.e. change – must begin by understanding, buying-in to, and accounting for, the ways they’d be changing to ensure the path they design for better funtioning leads them to homeostasis.

Until all that happens the system will resist change (or buying, or learning, or eating healthy or or) regardless of the level of need or the efficacy of the solution. And because of the unconscious, historic elements involved, for congruent change to occur, those inside the system must design their own route to acceptable change. And as outside influencers we actually cause our own resistance by pushing our agendas, when we can actually lead Others through to their own change.

By assuming a Behavior addition/subtraction is ‘rational’ or necessary, without accounting for whatever workaround the system has already adopted and built in to its daily functioning, we end up with far more failure and resistance than we should have given the efficacy of our solutions. Indeed, it’s necessary to elicit buy-in for each element that will be changed: to maintain congruence throughout the change process, systems must

Maintain Functional Stability. Systems must maintain homeostasis. Their current functioning, even when problematic, has been finely honed over time, waking up every day maintaining the Behaviors, rules, goals, etc. that created the problem to begin with. Change is not so simple as shoving in a new Behavior. Remember: a system doesn’t judge itself as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It just is. And it keeps ticking over the same way day after day.
Achieve Buy-In. Whether consciously or unconsciously, a system will resist anything from outside that threatens the status quo, regardless of the efficacy of the change. For successful change to occur, the system must recognize exactly what fallout will occur when anything shifts or is added, and how each affected element must modify itself in a way that maintains the integrity of the system (i.e. Systems Congruence). I can’t say this enough: the system is sacrosanct, quite separate from whatever reasons an influencer uses to change it.
Maintain Underlying Rules and Beliefs. Great data or solutions, important needs or dangerous consequences do not influence the change if they run counter to the system’s homeostatic Beliefs and rules, overt or covert. (It’s why your Uncle Vinny still smokes with lung cancer, and why training doesn’t cause new behaviors.) Note when we attempt change a set of Behaviors without changing the underlying Beliefs that created those Behaviors to begin with, we cause resistance. And here’s a tip: when you start from inside out, from eliciting any change within a system’s Beliefs and rules (i.e. rather than ‘Eat your broccoli,’ start with ‘I’m a Healthy Person.’), new behaviors will automatically accompany them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way ‘round: when we attempt to push a new Behavior into the system – say, asking a heart patient to change her diet or exercise program – before eliciting Belief change from the entire (and largely unconscious) system, we will achieve resistance as it may be seen as a threat. It cannot be otherwise.

The issues are the same regardless of the focus, whether it’s a company resisting reorganization, a patient refusing meds, a user group resisting new software, a buyer who hasn’t figured out when, if, how to buy, or a group not taking direction from company leadership. As outsiders we too often push for our own results and actually cause the resistance that occurs.

It’s possible to use our positions as outside influencers eschew our bias and be real Servant Leaders and teach the system how to traverse each step of its own change.

CASE STUDY: SYSTEMS ALIGNMENT

Here is a case study that exhibits how to enable buy-in and congruent change management by facilitating a potential buyer through her unique systems issues en route to a purchasing decision. Note: All change situations (whether coaching, leadership, software implementations, family problems, healthcare initiatives, etc.) must go through a series of steps to change to achieve buy in. Until now, we’ve left Others to manage the route through to the steps of change on their own as we push, advocate, advise, influence, manipulate for our own agendas and then we blame them when they resist – not to mention potentially not even reach their own internal route to change.

I was with a client in Scotland when he received a call from a long-standing prospect – a Learning and Development manager at a prodigious university with whom he’d been talking for 11 months – to say, “Thanks, but no thanks” for the product purchase. After three product trials that met with acclaim and excitement, an agreed-upon price, and a close relationship developed over the course of a year, what happened? The software was a perfect solution; they were not speaking to any other providers; and price didn’t seem to be a problem.

At my client’s request, I called the L&D manager. Here is the conversation:

SDM: Hi, Linda. Sharon Drew here. Is this a good time to speak? Pete said you’d be waiting for my call around now.
LR: Yes, it’s fine. How can I help? I already told Pete that we wouldn’t be purchasing the software.
SDM: I heard. You must be so sad that you couldn’t purchase it at this time.
LR: I am! I LOVE the technology! It’s PERFECT for us. I’m so disappointed.
SDM: What stopped you from being able to purchase it?
LR: We have this new HR director with whom I share a leadership role. He is so contentious that few people are willing to deal with him. After meeting with him, I get migraines that leave me in bed. I’ve decided to limit my exposure to him, discussing only things that are emergencies. So I’ve put a stop to all communication with him just to keep me sane. He would have been my business partner on this purchase.
SDM: Sounds awful. I hear that because of the extreme personal issues you’ve experience from the relationship, you don’t have a way to get the necessary buy-in from this man to help your employees who might need additional tools to do their jobs better.
LR: Wow. You’re right. That’s exactly what I’ve done. Oh my. I’m going to have to figure that out because I’ve certainly got a responsibility to the employees.
SDM: What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to work through the personal issues and figure out how to be in some sort of a working relationship with the HR director for those times your employees need new tools?*
LR: Could you send me some of these great questions you’re asking me so I can figure it out, and maybe use them on him?

I sent her a half dozen *Facilitative Questions to both teach her how to design a route to her own sanity and a path to healthy collaborative partnership with the HR Director. Two weeks later, Linda called back to purchase the solution. What happened?

1. While the university had a need for my products solution, the poor relationship between the HR director and the L&D director created hidden, ongoing dysfunction. The information flow problem could not be resolved while the hidden problem remained in place – details not only hidden from the sales person (outsider) but used as a deterrent by Linda (who didn’t know how to resolve the problem other than to walk away because her own internal system had been violated). So yes, there was a need for the solution and indeed a willing partner, but no, there was no systemic buy-in for change.

2. I stayed completely away from attempting to resolve the problem by sharing, gathering, pitching information or my reasons why change (i.e. buying my solution) was necessary. (Not only is information not needed until the system knows what information it needs – if you haven’t figured out what type of car you want to buy there’s no need to hear a pitch about a Lamborghini – but the bias involved in sharing it and gathering it restricts success. There’s plenty of time to offer our solutions when we can pitch it relevantly, according to the way the system is set up to use it.). The only viable route was to help her figure out her own route to a fix.

3. This was not a sales problem (It’s always a ‘systems change’ problem, rarely a ‘coaching’ problem or an ‘implementation’ problem) – the Behaviors/outcomes were merely representing a broken system. I had to facilitate the change by enabling Linda to resolve her own system. This is how current change management models fail: they attempt to rule, govern, constrict, manage, influence, maintain the change, rather than enabling the system to recognize and mitigate its own unique (and largely unconscious) drivers and change itself congruently.

4. There was no way for the system to fix itself as long as the L&D director – merely one piece of the systemic puzzle that created the problem to begin with – didn’t know how to develop additional choices for herself. Her choice to do nothing was an ode to Systems Congruence.

5. In Linda’s unconscious decision to forgo a problem fix to maintain her own personal homeostasis, she unconsciously weighted her personal criteria above her criteria for doing her job. In order to buy the solution, she’d need to find a way to ensure personal Systems Congruence.

Linda was willing to separate her work-related decision from her personal issues and reevaluate her choices once she realized there was a way to maintain her internal homeostasis AND fix the problem.

Rule: Until or unless people grasp how a solution will match their underlying criteria/values, and until there is buy-in from the parts that will be effected from the change, no permanent change will happen regardless of the necessity of the change, the size of the need, the origination of the request, or the efficacy of the solution.

Current change management models assume that a ‘rational’, information/rules-based change request and early client engagement will supplant the system’s need for homeostasis.

Focusing instead on effecting Behavior change as per the route, goal, assumptions, needs of the influencer. Indeed, even when change agents attempt to include clients into the software design or change implementations, their questions and info sharing strategies are largely biased by their personal outcomes and unwittingly overlook the interdependency of core Beliefs, historic roles, unspoken rules and relationships, and unconscious drivers within the user’s unconscious system.

Rule: Whether it’s sales, leadership, healthcare, coaching or change management, until or unless the folks within another’s system are willing to adapt to, and adopt, the requested change using their own rules and Beliefs, they will either take no action or resist to maintain the homeostasis of the system. The system is sacrosanct. And information push, rational argument, leadership directives, or any outside-in model threatens the system.

HOW BELIEFS, BEHAVIORS, AND BUY-IN EFFECT SYSTEMIC CHANGE

Fortunately, it’s possible to highlight each pivotal element of change and get buy-in before attempting a change initiative. It requires an understanding of what, exactly, is a Behavior, and why starting by attempting to change the Behaviors/output of the system can only cause resistance.

Behaviors are merely Beliefs in action – the physical transaction that exemplifies the underlying rules and values of the system. In other words, they’re the means a system uses to operate and perform its purpose – the end point, and certainly an ineffective place to begin change.

Think of it this way. If you want your forward-moving robot to go backwards you might tell it why moving backward is beneficial, order it to move backward, offer scientific proof why moving backward is best, or push it. But until the internal programming is changed from the core, it cannot change regardless of how you position your request or push the robot backwards. Indeed, you might even break the robot in your attempts to get it to behave the way you want it to behave.

Since it’s not possible for an outsider to lead from inside, we must teach the system how to lead itself, much like a GPS system leads a driver to a destination without actually being in the car or noticing the landscape. Like a GPS system, we begin by leading the system through its own idiosyncratic route to design its own change (i.e. like I helped Linda figure out her core issues (i.e. not our products) and how to communicate with the HR director) to ensure Systems Congruence, buy-in and leadership from within. Here are my rules to facilitating congruent change and buy-in:

1. Enter with no bias. Help the system define the elements that created the status quo and must buy in to the change. These include anything – jobs, people, initiatives, relationships, departments – that the new solution will touch. Rule: Entering the decision-navigation portion of the change experience with bias or a personal outcome will impede the process and create resistance. Change agents must listen for systems without a biased ear (see my new book on this topic – What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) and eschew attempting to introduce information until the system is set up to change, knows what it needs to know (usually quite different from what we think it needs) and has achieved buy-in.

2. Help the system recognize all of the parts – the people, rules, relationships, presuppositions, workarounds – that created and maintain the status quo. Rule: Until or unless the system recognizes all of the factors, knows how they have contributed to the problems in the status quo, and ensures that they buy in to the change, it will not be able to give agreement.

3. Help the system figure out how to reorganize around the new change so it will not face disruption and will have all of the pieces in place to accommodate the change. Rule: The change cycle is the time it takes for the system to figure out its own trajectory so there will be minimal disruption during the change process.

BUY-IN: A REAL WORLD EXAMPLE

Joseph, a coaching client of mine, was a CMO in a small company (around 150 employees) had a problem: He wanted to implement a new customer-service initiative but had just joined the company and was fearful of making waves. He initially wanted to design the project, issue edicts, and fire those who didn’t comply with the initiative. After casually speaking with a few people about it, he got huge resistance.

He called me in when he realized he had to choose between enforcing the Behaviors and outcomes he had in mind, or creating the structure and teaching the employees how to become creative leaders who would design their own congruent process. I helped him build a creative structure for congruent change, which meant giving up some of the details of his plan while maintaining the congruence of what the outcome looked like. Joseph put together a list of his baseline criteria and then left open the financials, job descriptions, activities, and other decisions:

1. Maintain the company’s integrity, professionalism, and level of service;

2. Design a mix between technology and human interaction;

3. Provide customers with better access to more data, have ease of use for any information they needed, and meet their needs more proactively;

4. Create award-winning service that would differentiate the company from all competitors and keep customers over time.

He called a meeting with the entire company – even groups that the change process wouldn’t necessarily touch – and told them that he was thinking about expanding the customer service operations. He asked everyone to take a few hours to discuss, think about, and brainstorm what it could look like if they had an unlimited budget (which they didn’t have, but it would eliminate the money piece from their brainstorming), and said he’d meet with them the next week to get their ideas.

He told them that this process was highly important, and he wanted it to be part of people’s daily discussions over the next week. He asked that each group have a spokesperson and historian to keep track of all ideas.

The next week, Joseph met with employees again and asked for their input. He captured the ideas by audio and put them all up on an interactive website for the new ideas and told people to add their thoughts. He then sent them back to consider the ideas offered and generate even more.

At the next meeting, he asked workers to take all of the ideas now floating around and use them to brainstorm what the new initiative would look like, who might do what, what would have to change, and what the change would look like for those involved. He asked them to consider:

1. What jobs would change? What jobs would be added/subtracted – and what would happen with the people whose jobs might be affected?

2. What needed to stay the same internally, no matter what? And how could this be included in the new initiative?

3. What might be the possible fall-out from the staff and from customers?

4. What could get in the way of a successful change initiative?

Eventually, employees got into teams and developed solid implementation plans. Those folks who had to change jobs or had their work significantly restructured in a way that might cause resistance joined a management team or focus group and became part of the solution. And throughout the process, I listened carefully to hear points of discontinuity so we could stop and go through their internal examination of their steps to change.

Did Joseph get everything he wanted? Well, yes and no. The new organization ended up far exceeding anything he had conceived. It had more creativity and leadership. It also cost more than he realized (time and money) to put everything in place. But it elicited buy-in from everyone: there was no resistance because everyone had bought in to the idea and made it their own. And over a short amount of time, the change paid for itself.

This is only one method of facilitating change and avoiding resistance. I’ve developed a Change Facilitation model, used often in sales as Buying Facilitation®, that uses a unique skill set to enable core change. I’ve trained this to Senior Partners at recognized consulting firms, farmers in Iowa, tech people in Hong Kong, coaches in Kansas. It’s a generic model that influencers can use to elicit real change. I’m happy to discuss it with you (Sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com).

Conclusion

Before introducing any change initiative, give up the need to push the change, listen without bias, and enable Others to traverse their route to discovery:

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

Until now, we’ve assumed that resistance is a normal part of the change process. But we’ve effectively been pushing our own biased needs for change into a closed, hidden system. We’ve ignored the rule of systems and forgotten that the change we are suggesting will encounter a status quo that is trying to maintain homeostasis. But as we’ve explored above, it is possible to get buy-in without resistance. We don’t have to throw out the many wonderful change models out there. But we first need to get buy-in, and then the change will be welcomed rather than spurned or sabotaged.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, systems theorizer, and developer of a change facilitation model used in sales as Buying Facilitation®. She is an award-winning blogger (www.sharondrewmorgen.com), and the author of 9 books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestsellers Dirty Little Secrets
and What? Did you really say what I think I heard? Sharon Drew has trained Buying Facilitation® to coaches, leaders, healthcare providers, in many global corporations such as KPMG, Wachovia, Bose, Kaiser, Morgan Stanley, IBM. She is currently working on a new book tentatively titled: Facilitating Change: the route to congruent decision making, buy-in, and compliance.
www.sharondrewmorgen.com; sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen May 14th, 2018

Posted In: Change Management, Listening, News

When researching my book on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I was surprised to learn how little of what we hear someone say is unbiased, or even accurate. Seems we hear what we want to hear, and not necessarily what’s been meant; too often we don’t know the difference. There are several elements that conspire against accuracy. And sadly, it’s largely out of our control.

THE PROBLEM WITH LANGUAGE

Let me begin with my definitions of ‘language’ and ‘communication’:

In dialogue, language is a translation process between a Speaker’s thoughts – translated and verbalized into a delivery system of ideas, words, voice (tone, tempo, pitch), and the unspoken goal/bias of the outcome sought – and the Listener’s filtering system.

A completed communication is a circle – Speaker -> Listener -> Speaker: the Speaker translates an internal thought/idea through language to their Communication Partner (CP) who listens through their own unique and subjective filters, and responds to what they have interpreted. Until or unless the Speaker’s message has been received accurately, the communication is not complete.

Language itself is one of the problems we face when attempting to accurately understand what a Speaker means:

We speak in one unbroken stream of words (Spaces appear only between written words.) that can be differentiated only by those familiar with the language and vocabulary (Have you ever asked a question from a language book in a foreign country and get a response in a continuous stream of sounds that can’t be isolated to allow you to look up words to translate?) Since everyone speaks in word streams, our ears have become subjectively habituated to listen for patterns within them; our brains continue down those pathways even if the Speaker’s intent isn’t matched.
Words have uniquely nuanced meanings for each of us. The words a Speaker chooses that impart understanding may not be the best word choices for our Listener whose subjective filtering process may not match, or indeed instigate the wrong interpretation.
Our brains only remember spoken words for approximately 3 seconds. By the time our brains separate the individual words to glean meaning, we’re lagging ‘behind’ the speaker, so we rely on our unconscious habits and thinking patterns to bridge, or fill in, gaps in understanding. Obviously, it’s easiest to accurately understand people we’re similar to.

Arguably the largest detractor of accuracy for understanding our CPs intended message are the cultural, experiential, belief, education, and intimacy gaps that create subjective and unconscious filters in us all. These filters – biases, assumptions, triggers, habituated neural pathways, and memory channels – unconsciously and automatically sift out or transform what our CP says that’s uncomfortable or different from our beliefs, our lifestyles, etc., or aren’t in line within the goal of what we’re actively seeking in the exchange.

While we each assume that what we ‘hear’ is an accurate representation of what’s been said, often it’s not. With our subjective listening filters uniquely interpreting what others say, we can’t help but

bias their intended message subjectively,
make inaccurate assumptions, miss important ideas, requests, and emotional cues,
follow established memory channels and neural pathways that lead us to wrongly interpret what was meant,
mishear directions, rules, warnings, nuance, names etc.,
take away mistaken comprehension,

and on and on. As sellers we ‘hear’ that people are buyers; as coaches we ‘hear’ people complain of stuff we know how to fix; as leaders we ‘hear’ our teams convey they’re on-board (or not) with our ideas; as change agents we ‘hear’ rejection rather than alternate approaches or shared concerns; as parents we ‘hear’ our teenagers making excuses.

OUR BRAINS TRICK US

Simplistically, here’s our unconscious listening process:

We first listen through a hierarchy of historic and habitual filters, unconsciously seeking a match with our biases, beliefs, and values – and delete or alter what seems incompatible.
With what’s left from the initial round of filtering, our brains seek a match with something familiar by sorting for a similar memory, which could focus on just a term or one of the ideas mentioned, or or or, and throws away what doesn’t match without telling us what’s been omitted or misconstrued! We might accurately hear the words spoken, but unconsciously assign a vastly different interpretation from the intended meaning.

And because we’re only ‘told’ what our brains ‘tell’ us has been said, we end up ‘certain’ that what we think we hear is actually what’s meant. So if someone says ABC we might actually hear ABL, without knowing what our brains added, subtracted, or muddled. I once lost a business partner because he ‘heard’ me say X when three of us sitting there, including his wife, confirmed I said Y. “I was right here! Why are you all lying to me! I heard it with my own ears!” And he walked out in a self-generated rage. His brain actually told him I said something I never said and he never questioned it, even though three people told him he misheard.

I know this is disconcerting but it’s important to understand: Listeners always assume what they (think they) hear is what has been said. And where this diverges from the Speaker’s intended meaning, we end up responding to an inaccurate understanding, blaming our CP for miscommunicating, and never consider that just maybe we unwittingly got it wrong.

It all happens automatically and unconsciously, and we end up involuntarily misunderstanding without realizing, until too late, that there is a problem. Indeed we have no conscious ability to tell our brains what to search for when we’re listening, causing us to potentially hear a fraction of a fraction of what’s meant; we then compound the problem by responding according to what we THINK has been said. So we might get self-righteously angry, or perceive we’re forgiven; we hear people as racists or healers or sarcastic or buyers; we feel slighted or complimented or ignored; we think ideas are stupid and opinions absurd. And in each instance, we miss the possibility of a partnership, or a new concept, or a conversation or relationship that might have been.

In summary: the structure of language itself causes confusion when listening to Others; our subjective filters – biases (of which there are hundreds), assumptions, and triggers – are unconscious impediments to what we think we hear; our neural pathways, habitual associations, and memory channels automatically, and subjectively, get triggered by a word or phrase and go down their own well-traveled path to seek a match, potentially eschewing more relevant or accurate routes to understanding; our brains don’t tell us what it’s omitted or transformed, leaving us potentially misunderstanding – without question – what our CP meant to impart.

And it’s all unconscious. According to Sarah Williams Goldhagen in Welcome to Your World, our unconscious (or ‘nonconscious’ as she calls it) is approximately 90% of our attention, and only 10% “…patterned and schematized in a way we can interact with others.”(pg 59) So misunderstanding is virtually built into our communication.

LISTENING FOR METAMESSAGES INSTEAD OF WORDS

Unfortunately we have no automatic capability to hear a Speaker’s intended message accurately, regardless of the Speaker’s word choices or the Listener’s commitment to listening ‘carefully’, regardless of the costly wordsmithing done in many industries to lure Listener buy-in. But as Listeners can take an active role in consciously managing our listening filters to encourage greater understanding. For this we must circumvent our biased listening; we must learn the skill of avoiding listening for meaning solely from the words.

From birth, we’re taught to carefully listen for words (and Active Listening has a part to play in this predisposition), assuming, falsely, we’ll translate them accurately. We can, however, circumvent our normal filtering process by shifting our attention from listening to words to listening for meaning; listening for what’s meant, rather than for what’s said; listening less to the words and more for the Speaker’s underlying intent.

Let’s walk this back. Remember that Speakers speak to impart an underlying thought (I call this the Metamessage) and then unconsciously select the most precise words – for that situation, for that Listener – to do so. But these word choices might not be the best ones to garner accurate understanding in that particular Listener. Certainly, a Speaker has no idea how a Listener’s filters will interpret the sent message. This becomes more obvious when speaking to a group and some members understand, others misunderstand. To circumvent misunderstanding, to have a greater chance of hearing what’s meant and eliminating the factors causing misunderstanding, we must take filters out of the listening process.

There’s a higher probability of hearing others accurately if Listeners bypass the normal filtering process and instead focus on the Speaker’s intended meaning. I learned the basic concept while studying NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming – the study of the structure of subjective experience) and expanded it in my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? When listening we can actually go beyond the brain and experience a broad view (not intimate details) of what’s being meant.

To avoid our listening filters, to get the broader meaning behind the idea intended, we must go ‘up to the ceiling’ and listen as a Witness/Observer. A very simple example would be if someone said ‘I wish you would be on time more often’, the Metamessage might be ‘I hate that you’re late again. And I’m getting tired of waiting for you all the time!’ We do this naturally when speaking with a small child, listening with for what they mean to tell us, rather than focus on their possibly unskilled wordsmithing. Or when we overhear a conversation in a Starbucks. In both instances we’re Observers.

We don’t know how to consciously choose; the problem is we don’t know how to consciously choose to do so. To choose the Witness/Observer viewpoint, think of a time when you’re aware you were listening without any personal agenda and break down how you did that – how you knew when it was time to disengage from the words, what you noticed that was different, how it shifted your communication exchange. If it’s something you want to learn, I’ve written an entire chapter on this (Chapter 6) in What?.

LISTENING FOR MEANING VS WORDS

Here are two cold call interactions that exemplify the difference between listening for words vs for Metamessages. The first is a dialogue of a coaching client in which I was teaching him how to sell with integrity. He started out fine, but then dissolved into his old push technique when he interpreted the prospect’s words according to his own filters:

BROKER: Hi My name is Jeff Rosen. I sell insurance and this is a cold call. Is this a good time to speak?

CLIENT: Hi Jeff. Thanks for calling but I’m just walking out the door.

BROKER: “IonlyneedtwosecondsIwouldliketocomeandseeyounextweek.”

The prospect hung up.

SDM: What was that????? You started off great! And he responded kindly.

BROKER: I had to talk really fast because he said he was busy.

Listening for the spoken words through his filters, my client only heard a time constraint and didn’t ‘hear’ that the prospect stayed on the line and didn’t hang up. Listening from a Witness/Observer position he would have heard that the prospect was polite and hanging in with him, and made another choice: “I’ll call back when it’s convenient.” Or “Thanks. What’s a better time?”

In a very similar situation, I made a cold call to the Chief Training Officer at IBM; you’ll notice that both of us listened for the Metamessage instead of the words:

NANCY: [The world’s fastest] HELLO!

SDM: You sound busy. When should I call back?

NANCY: Tomorrow at 2.

And we both hung up.

This continued for 3 days with the exact same dialogue. Finally we had this exchange on day 4:

NANCY: HELLO!

SDM: You still sound busy.

NANCY: Who are you?

SDM: Sharon Drew Morgen, and this is only a cold call. I can call you back when you’re not so busy.

NANCY: What are you selling?

SDM: Training for a facilitated buying model to use with sales.

NANCY: I’ll give you 5 minutes.

SDM: Not enough.

NANCY: 10 minutes.

SDM: Not enough.

NANCY: OK. I’m yours. But I want to know how you just did what you did. How did you get me to speak with you? How do I feel so respected when you’re cold calling me? How did you get me to give you so much time? And can you teach my sales team how to do that? Can you come next month? [Note: I ended up training with them for two years. I didn’t even have to pitch.]

Both of us listened with our Witness hats on. Nancy heard my Metamessage: by immediately hanging up after getting a time, she ‘heard’ me say that I respected her time. Calling back at the requested time told her I was responsible. Telling her it was a sales cold told her I was honest and wasn’t going to manipulate her. And by me abiding to her time frame she abided to mine. Indeed, I ‘said’ none of those things in words; the meaning was the message I intended to send. My goal was to connect if possible and serve if able. To connect, I’d have to value her time, not push; to serve I’d be honest and responsible. So she ‘heard’ me, beyond the words. It was win/win.

So here’s a suggestion: For those times it’s important to understand the underlying meaning of another’s communication, and you cannot risk biases and assumptions that might significantly alter the outcome, I suggest you go up to the ‘ceiling’ and listen from Witness/Observer.

This is a great tool for those of you who are Active Listening proponents. When listening to correctly capture the words spoken, understand your brain will bias how you interpret them and you may not achieve clarity as to the intent of the message. In my experience, AL doesn’t ensure understanding and too often puts the ‘blame’ of misunderstanding on the Speaker.

Try listening from the ‘ceiling’ from Witness/Observer. It might make a difference. And if that’s not comfortable at least clear a way to understanding in each important conversation:

Before we continue, I just want to make sure I understand what you mean to say.
Here’s what I heard…. Is that accurate?

Communication is delicate, as are relationships. Take the time to ensure you and your Communication Partner are on the same page. And delight that a shared understanding inspires possibility.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, and author of 9 books, including the New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestsellers Dirty Little Secrets – why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and W hat? Did you really say what I think I heard? She is the developer of Change Facilitation, used in sales (Buying Facilitation®), coaching, leadership, and management – any influencing situation in which integrity, ethics, and collaboration are involved. Sharon Drew is a speaker, trainer, consultant, and coach for sales and listening. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com; her award winning blog has thoughtful articles on change, systems, decision making, and communication. www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen April 24th, 2018

Posted In: Communication, Listening

In 1937 Dale Carnegie published his celebrated How to Win Friends and Influence People – the first book suggesting sellers build relationships as a route to closing sales. 1937: with primitive transportation, sellers found clients closer to home; telephones were emerging (FYI – Morse Code was preferred for 40 years after the telephone was invented!); marketing avenues were limited, as was advertising (Sears Catalogue, Life Magazine, The Farmer’s Almanac, the local paper or general store). Obviously there was no technology, or global competition, and it was difficult to sell to prospects outside of local markets.

Selling focused on natural customers – face-to-face relationships with neighbors and friends, without whom sales would suffer. And buyers, needing sellers for information and relevance, automatically trusted them. Relationships were vital.

It’s now 2018. We have a plethora of options to present our solutions. Our communications capability is global, cheap, and ubiquitous. With safe payment and delivery options, global competitors are pervasive. And – here’s the big one – our prospects have the ability to receive the information they need to easily choose a solution without us. Buyers contact us only when they’ve done their Pre-Sales change work and are ready. They don’t need a relationship with us.

Connections with strangers proliferate online; we have a far broader reach than ever. But because we don’t know these strangers intimately, we don’t consider them real relationships and don’t automatically trust them – especially when they abuse the connection by attempting to push product. Indeed, the ‘relationship’ angle is now specious, and the Carnegie missive is defunct. Buyers don’t need the relationship to find what they need online. But as you’ll see below, they sure could use a hand becoming buyers.

THE PLOY OF BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

When sellers now attempt to use ‘relationship’ as a ploy to sell, they encourage distrust; the Carnegie dictum is invalid. Here’s the reality:

Everyone knows you’re pretending. Until you’ve known people over time, through the good times and bad, you’re not in a relationship with anyone, especially when you’re trying to be nice so you can meet your own agenda.

A ‘relationship’ will not facilitate a sale. Buyers cannot buy unless they have managed their internal change management journey that

assembles all the people needed to be involved and hears their voices/concerns/criteria;
gets buy-in from the Buying Decision Team that something must change;
figures out how to meet everyone’s needs and make adjustments that fit without internal disruption.

Buyers can’t buy until they’re ready, willing, and able to bring something new into their status quo regardless of how ‘nice’ you are. In other words, until or unless change is planned for in a systemic way that touches all the right people and policies and garners buy-in and assures non-disruptive change, buyers cannot buy or they risk disrupting whatever IS working regardless of the problem they should resolve, or the efficacy of the solution. Buying doesn’t cause selling.

Change is based on systemic success factors; they cannot buy until they understand the full complement of risk factors involved, regardless of their problem or the efficacy of the solution. [Sometimes, fixing an existent problem is more costly than bringing in a new solution. In all cases, the status quo has been normalized and resistant to change, even though it has caused, and maintains, the problem needing fixing. Buying is a change management problem.] It is possible, however, to develop a real relationship quickly by facilitating a buying decision down the steps of change.

Buyers aren’t swayed by niceness. Buyers aren’t swayed by niceness. It will, however, make you a preferred vendor WHEN ALL ELSE IS EQUAL and WHEN THEY HAVE REACHED THE POINT OF CHOICE when they’re ready, willing, and able to consider buying something (i.e. Step 10 of the 13 step buying decision journey).

It doesn’t work when your focus is a sale. Here is a real dialogue:

SELLER: HI SHARON! AND how are YOU today??
SDM:[picking up the phone in tears] My name’s not Sharon! And I’m rotten. I just put my dog down!
SELLER: Hangs up the phone.

I offered an ‘authentic’ relationship moment, useful as an opportunity to connect: he should have said ‘I’m sorry that happened. Obviously you can’t speak now. Is there a better time? This is a sales call and I’d like to discuss X when you’re feeling better. Again, I’m so sorry about your dog.’

Whether for a large, complex sale, or a small personal item, buyers cannot buy until they have their internal ducks in a row, and know their route and risks through the change they’ll face when altering their status quo with a new solution, regardless of its efficacy. (Step 10 of a 13 Step process). Because the sales model focuses on placing solutions – possible only after buyers have completed their systemic, and very idiosyncratic, Pre-Sales change management issues – we don’t have the focus to discern where buyers are along their Buying Decision Path and end up waiting for buyers show up seeking a transactional connection. Our ‘niceness’ (which I’m differentiating from real customer service) is irrelevant; we just sound like everyone else trying to sell them something. We enter each discussion asking and listening for only what we want to hear, causing distrust.

DIFFERENTIATION?

Following acceptable marketing criteria of the era – words and phrases that are in vogue, graphics and colors that are deemed ‘what everyone is doing’ – it’s hard to be unique. And the myth of being a ‘Relationship Manager’ or ‘creating a relationship’ is supposed to show buyers why they should choose us over the competition. See?? I’m NICE!

Here’s the truth: buyers don’t start off wanting to buy anything whether or not the responses from your (biased) questions makes it sound like they have a need. They merely want solve a problem in the most effective way possible, with an assurance that they won’t face internal disruption if a change is needed. It’s only once they’ve determined their systemic change management requirements (that an Outsider can never know or understand) that they’ll buy – but by then they’ll have chosen their list of vendors and solutions from online data or referrals.

By focusing on attempting to influence people to buy because you’re nice, you’re left out of their behind-the-scenes decision process where you CAN enter and make a difference that creates a real relationship, reduced to running around trying to ‘be there’ when/if they finally show up as buyers (the low hanging fruit, or 5%). Not to mention chasing bad leads with folks who you think should be buyers (Prospects are those who WILL buy, not those who SHOULD buy.) vs offering true leadership to help them through their change management journey.

You can mitigate this and REALLY be nice by entering enter early (and before trying to sell) and facilitating buyers through the confustion route of their systemic change. I’ve coded the steps in their decision sequence and developed a model that facilitates Pre-Sales Buyer Readiness (Buying Facilitation ®). You don’t have to use my model – create your own! But entering the buyer/seller interaction as a change facilitator will differentiate you and enable a true relationship.

Buyers would never buy from anyone else when a seller has taught the prospect how to assemble ALL of the folks necessary to be part of the Decision Team, or HOW to get everyone on board for change. Remember: they will do this anyway before they buy – they might as well do this with you.

CASE STUDY: HELP BUYERS BUY AND DEVELOP TRUST

Here’s an example. Years ago, working with KPMG, I spoke with my regular client (Dave, a Senior Partner/Consultant) who said he designing a large presentation with this team of Senior Partners for a first call with Boing for a $50,000,000 global tax solution they thought Boing needed. They were merely working off of what they assumed the prospect ‘need’ was and carefully presenting what KPMG could offer, assuming their facts and professionalism would build a relationship. They had a history of a 3 year sales cycle with their solution, and the first presentation to the Tax Director was crucial for any forward movement of their relationship (usually the second conversation with the CFO occurred 6 months after the first).

I suggested to Dave that before meeting, they should call the Tax Director with one of my Facilitative Questions to help Boing begin the Pre Sales process of discovering where their systemic issues lie, and if they could resolve them internally— the understanding being that when/if they couldn’t, they’d need to buy KPMG’s solution. Here’s the conversation they had.

KPMG, using a Facilitative Question to help Boing begin understanding of where the ‘holes’ were in their system: How are you currently ensuring that your full global management team are communicating in a timely fashion so they all have the same data at the same time to facilitate quick decisions and team buy-in across countries and time zones?

Boing Tax Director: What? I have no idea how to answer that, but I suspect we’re not managing this very well. Hang on a minute. [He left the call for several minutes and returned with the CFO on the other end of the phone thus eliminating the first 6 months of the sales cycle.] Jim, this is Dave from KPMG. He’s asked a very important question that I don’t think we have an answer to but we should have. Dave, can you say that again?

Dave repeated the question, to which Jim replied: Wow. Yes. We need the answer to that. Do you have any more questions we need answers to?

Dave then went through the list of Facilitative Questions I had developed for him that began the process of leading Boing through the internal issues they’d need to determine to figure out if they could resolve their global tax situation themselves (in which case they didn’t need KPMG, but they’d consider this before considering spending $50,000,000 with an outside group). By the time KPMG got to the presentation a month later, it wasn’t needed: the entire Buying Decision Team was present (cutting off another 6 months of the sales cycle) and ready with questions for them. The sale was closed in 4 months rather than 3 years.

The time it takes buyers to discover their own best answers is the length of the sales cycle, regardless of your relationship. In this case, my Facilitative Questions ultimately led them to global buy-in and change management in a fraction of the time – questions used to facilitate their understanding and ability of the effects of the change a new solution would involve, and assemble the right people and considerations, not gather information from a biased mind-set, or be ‘nice’ to build a relationship. The very focus on helping prospects enable their own change develops trust and relationship.

As sellers we forget that buyers have to go through this anyway, with us or without us. We sit and wait for long periods of time while they go through this process, and then compete for the 5% who finally show up. Why not add a skill set and help them make this process efficient AND build relationships!

There’s a way to make money AND make nice. It’s by being a true Servant Leader and change facilitator; by entering into a WE Space in which there is a tracit agreement that everyone will be served. Stop using ‘nice’ as a sales ploy. Stop focusing on the low hanging fruit. Add a change management focus and find real buyers who’ve already recognized a problem, and first facilitate them through their route to inclusive, congruent, systemic change. Then you can become part of the Buying Decision Team, make a difference, close more, waste less time, and act with integrity.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a thought leader and visionary in Change Facilitation, change management, sales, decision facilitation, and win/win collaboration. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® and the author of 9 books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, Dirty Little Secrets, and What? Did you really say what I think I heard? She teaches, consults, speaks, and coaches sellers in getting on to the Buying Decision Team and helping buyers buy. Sharon Drew has worked globally with many of the Fortune 500 sales departments. She has also developed online learning for sellers and those seeking to communicate without bias. She can be reached at: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com or 512 771 1117.

Sharon Drew Morgen February 26th, 2018

Posted In: Communication, Listening

Starting with my confusion: I will never understand what it is about women that men are willing to get stupid over, become abusive for, lose integrity over; to be willing to harm or violate or ignore; to deny rights or pay or work opportunities (or remain silent when these things happen). I just don’t get it. Men treat pets with dignity. Take care of their cars. Respectfully attend to their jobs. Why are women in a separate category that makes us a potential object of harm when we’re merely people who want the same things men do?

Don’t get me wrong. A vast majority of men are kind, responsible, ethical, and integrous in their treatment of women. Until they get to work and unconsciously don’t hear a creative idea that comes from a woman (but welcomes that same idea from a man minutes later). Or fail to object when a colleague or business practice discounts women. Or inadvertently overlooks an applicant because her skill set ‘doesn’t seem right.’ Or rejects a funding proposal because the company is woman-run. I was once on a plane that had a 100% female crew; when it was announced, a male passenger grabbed his carry-on and got off the plane, not trusting that he’d get where he was going because women would be flying him there.

MY STORIES

Like many women in business I’ve spoken with, I’ve had my share of misogyny – innovative ideas ignored, sexual favors required, positions lost, funding denied. (I was denied funding for a killer idea in 1996, at the height of the tech boom when 4% of funding went to women. Now it’s up to 20%.). My pioneering ideas have been discounted; I’ve even been left out of conferences at which my original, and published, ideas were featured. SiriusDecisions included my model Buying Facilitation® in their deck discussing the future of sales – sans ®, and sans attribution. “Come on, Sharon Drew. Let us use it like that. We’ll tell you if we get calls on it.”

Indeed, some terms I coined were attributed to men 30 years after I coined them. After one particularly innovative article I published I received an email from a man who said, “Well, you’re certainly full of yourself, aren’t you?” (I cheerfully responded, “Yup.”). I wonder if he would have sent that to a man. Or if the Chairman of the Board would have offered to stop a Board meeting when I teared up with rage: “Oh! Um, shall we take a break for Sharon Drew?” I’m not an object of pity, you nitwit. I’m just livid. That’s what women do. We have visible feelings. (How did ‘no visible feelings’ become the standard anyway?)

I’ve been overlooked for positions I was well-qualified for as some unqualified man got the job. I’ve had prospective clients who actually said they wouldn’t choose me because I was a woman, even after a successful pilot. Years ago, following a pilot training for Morgan Stanley, the MD sent one of the brokers around the country to trial several sales training methods to see if they were anything like my Buying Facilitation® model. Why seek someone else when the results were so terrific, the broker asked? ‘She just doesn’t fit.’ Boston Scientific wouldn’t do further training when the pilot study brought a 53% increase in sales in ONE MONTH because I was too ‘controversial’.

I’ve had company-saving ideas ignored, project schedules countermanded. In 1985 I took out a full page ad in the London Financial Times that was blank except for the words The Quality is Free across the middle (company details in a small font on the bottom); an FT editor actually came to my office unannounced with content he’d written ‘for me’ to fill the page, saying he ‘wouldn’t let me make the mistake’ of wasting my money on an ad that size to only print a few words (Let’s see: was brand marketing wrong? or was it just that I was a silly woman?). I told him I wouldn’t discuss it but we should have a cuppa and talk football. The ad ran my way.

And don’t get me started on the sexual thing in the workplace. Clients showing up at my hotel room the night prior to a training program for a ‘nightcap.’ Or being harassed and taunted and pranked on the floor when I was the only woman stockbroker. One well-known speaker told me he’d get me some big gigs if he could touch my breasts. Imagine telling a man who’d written a New York Times Business Bestseller that he could get a speaking gig if the recruiter could touch his genitals. Not only do these things happen, but somehow we live in a world where it’s even thinkable.

WHY DO GENITALS MATTER?

How is it even possible that a particular set of genitalia ensures a human being will enjoy cleaning house or changing dirty diapers? I once witnessed the CEO of a large company hand his infant daughter back to his wife to change: “I don’t do that” he said, smiling as if it were obvious. Nobody LIKES doing it, you knucklehead! As a grown up you do what needs to be done! How is it that some men live in a world in which they only ‘need’ to do what’s convenient or fun?

And why is it a viable option to walk out on children without offering support? How many children grow up with no responsible male figure loving them? I knew a man who left his newborn son and partner because he ‘told her I never wanted a child.’ And yet, there he was, a son he never once held or supported in any way – the assumption being that the woman would do it (or the child would die?), and that the child would never mind that he was abandoned at birth and never know his father. And why don’t men ever know their kids’ shoe size? Betty Freidan once told me that until men did half of the childcare and housework, women would never be equal. Current statistics I’ve seen say men, on average, do one third of household and childcare tasks, even in two earner families (and that men actually cause 7 hours of additional housework).

What’s the deal? Women are strong, intelligent, fierce, creative, kind, loving, sexy, empathic, collaborative and responsible. We give birth (Men should try that sometime just for a bit of reality testing.), are the glue that holds together families and traditions and companies and lives. In business we think outside the box, are organized and compassionate, and fix relationships on teams, yet are historically underpaid in every industry, as well as under-represented as mayors, or CEOs, or leaders. Male colleagues have told me countless times they prefer hiring women because they cost less and over-perform. Companies suffer when women’s ideas aren’t heard or integrated into the mix; it’s a well-known fact that women managers are better leaders bringing heart and a unique view of the world that men can’t fathom. Seems men would rather suffer financial and creative loss than allow women to participate.

I’ll never, ever understand why any of this is ok, why silence prevails and why there isn’t a higher level of public outrage when one class of people denigrates and harms another. Although it shows up differently in each culture, each industry, each country, and each household, the need for ‘power’ and ‘control’ are said to be the cause. Seriously? Men don’t know the difference between real power and force? Men can only be powerful by putting down, harming, restricting, ignoring, or humiliating another human because her genitals are different? We’re human beings for goodness sakes – the other gender that populates the world, remember? Your wives and mothers and daughters and friends; your partners in life and work; inventors and poets and CEOs and factory workers – people with brains and hearts and passions and hopes for the future, just like men.

But my underlying wonderment is How. How can it be right to denigrate another human being? How is it possible that more than one half of our population is ‘less-than’ because we were born with a one set of genitals instead of another? How is it possible that this isn’t a political cause, like opioid addiction, or football injuries? That being female is an automatic filter that allows treatment in a one-down position?

Stop it, guys. Put on your big-boy pants and grow up. Seek, accept, respect, communicate, hear, and partner with the women in your life. You’ll be better for it. So will the world.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker and thought leader, the author of 1700 articles and 9 books including NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and two Amazon bestsellers: Dirty Little Secrets – why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and the game changing What? did you really say what I think I heard? the explains, and fixes, the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. Sharon Drew is the inventor of a Change Facilitation model that gives influencers a unique set of tools to facilitate congruent change for buyers in sales (Buying Facilitation®), leadership, coaching, and management. She is an inventor, speaker, trainer, consultant, and coach. Sharon Drew currently lives on a floating home in Portland, OR. Her award-winning blog www.sharondrewmorgen.com carries articles on communication, leadership, decision making, change, sales, and buying. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen October 16th, 2017

Posted In: Listening

At a neighborhood picnic recently, I introduced myself to five people standing together:

SDM: Hi. I’m Sharon Drew Morgen, and I use both names “Sharon Drew” as my first name. What’s your name?

JIM: Hi Sharon, I’m Jim. Nice meeting you.

SDM: Hi Jim. But, um, no. Actually my first name is Sharon Drew. I use both names.

JIM: Oh, that’s right, you just said that. Sorry. Nice meeting you, Sharon Drew.

SUSAN: Hi Sharon. I’m Susan.

SDM: Hi Susan. Actually, my first name is Sharon Drew and I always use both names.

SUSAN: Oh. Right. You just said that to Jim. Sorry. Hi Sharon Drew.

FELIX: Hi Sharon. I’m Felix.

SDM: Um, actually, my first name is Sharon Drew……

And so it continued around the circle. FIVE people – standing next to each other, and looking directly at me – didn’t ‘hear’ me explain repeatedly that I used two first names. Well, actually, they heard it. But because the name isn’t within their brain’s recognition of ‘typical’, it was filtered out of their conscious understanding. And we all do this on a regular basis.

WHY WE RESTRICT WHAT WE HEAR

We love, live, work, and play amongst those with similar values and beliefs, cultural norms and politics. We choose partners, jobs, neighborhoods, and friends that maintain our world views and allow us to lead relatively uncomplicated lives, seeking, avoiding or battling against ideas and people who challenge us. To accomplish this our brains filter what other say to us (regardless of the situation) biasing the message, making inaccurate assumptions, or following our brains through inappropriate memory channels and neural pathways to places that were unsaid and not meant. We hear what we want to hear and filter out the rest: it’s not our fault; our brains do it to us through filters and language itself:

Pattern habituation:
a. We speak in one unbroken stream of words (Spaces appear only between written words.), that are differentiated only by those familiar with the language and vocabulary (Have you ever asked a question from a language book in a foreign country and get a response in a continuous stream of words that can’t be isolated to allow you to look them up to translate? Everyone speaks in word streams.);
b. Our brains only remember spoken words for approximately 3 seconds. By the time our brains separate the individual words to glean meaning, we’re ‘behind’ the speaker, so we rely on our unconscious habits and thinking patterns to bridge, or fill in, gaps in understanding (as in my name issues in opening story). Obviously, it’s easiest to accurately understand people we’re similar to.
Subjective filters: Bias, assumptions, triggers, habituated neural pathways, and memory channels sift out what’s being said that’s uncomfortable or different from our beliefs, our lifestyles, our status quo, or are not in line within the realm/goal of what we enter the conversation actively sorting for.

We hear others uniquely and subjectively, making lots of guesses and habitual (and potentially incorrect) connections and assumptions; we end up mishearing directions, rules, warnings etc., take away mistaken comprehension, make agreements we’re not aligned with, ignore important or relevant ideas or requets, and on and on. As sellers we hear people in a way we construe they’re buyers; as coaches we hear people complain of stuff we know how to fix; as leaders we hear our teams convey they’re on-board (or not) with our ideas; as change agents we hear rejection.

We set up our worlds to hear what we want to hear regardless of what Others actually mean. When researching my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? about the understanding gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I discovered the complicated set of physiological elements involved.

FILTERS

We unwittingly listen through our unconscious, subjective, and predisposed filters. Unfortunately our brain omits to tell us what it has altered, keeping us unconsciously rooted in what’s comfortable and familiar. Biases (of which there are hundreds), assumptions, and triggers are major impediments to what we think we hear: our neural pathways, habits, and memory channels automatically get triggered by a word or phrase regardless of the efficacy of the choice and when there might be more relevant memory channels available. To fill in the language gaps, to garner understanding or to recognize a fight or flight situation, our brains unconsciously go through stages of filtering. Simplistically, here’s our unconscious process:

We first listen with filters for familiarity and sameness, seeking a match with our unconscious biases, beliefs, and values – and delete or alter what seems incompatible.
With what’s left from the initial round of filtering, our brains seek a match with something familiar by sorting for a similar memory, which could focus on just a term or one of the ideas mentioned, or or or, and throws away what doesn’t match (like what happened with my name above) without telling us what’s been omitted or misconstrued! We might accurately hear the words spoken, but unconsciously assign vastly different implications from the intended meaning.

And because we’re only ‘told’ what our brains ‘tell’ us has been said, we end up ‘certain’ that what we think we hear is actually what’s meant. Listeners always assume what they think they hear is what has been said. And where this diverges from the speaker’s intended meaning, we end up responding to an inaccurate understanding and never consider that just maybe we got it wrong. [Note: I’m always amused when men tell me they hear what their wives mean ‘better than they do.’]

It all happens automatically and unconsciously, and we have no conscious ability to tell our brains what to search for during the filtering process. In other words, we hear a fraction of a fraction of what’s meant (I’ve got an entire section in What? that thoroughly describes this nasty process.) and we then respond according to what we THINK has been said. So we might get self-righteously angry, or perceive we’re forgiven; we hear people as racists or healers or sarcastic or buyers; we feel slighted or complimented or ignored; we think ideas are stupid and opinions absurd. I lost a potential business partner who was adamant that I said something he found offensive, although both his wife and I assured him I’d never said that. ‘You’re both lying to me! I heard it with my own ears!’ And that was his truth. His brain did tell him I said that, even though I didn’t.

COMMUNICATION

Communication itself is a piece of the problem. We assume our Communication Partners (CPs) assign words the same meanings and assumptions we do, further restricting success, understanding, and relationships. It’s obviously problematic when our CPs operate from different norms (another reason we contain our lives to what’s familiar), especially when they’re unspoken or haven’t been agreed upon. When I travelled in Japan, for example, I found it disconcerting that my CPs would quickly gauge my reactions while they spoke, then added a “NOT” at the end of the sentence if my response wasn’t what they were after, negating everything that they’d said to make it more ‘palatable’ to me. Different industries, different cultures, different educational backgrounds, and even different neighborhoods, have different assumptions built in to their listening filters and communication habits. This, too, limits our worlds, leading to disastrous, or funny, results. Listen to this dialogue:

After an Identity Theft problem, my bank account had to be closed and a new one reopened. This is the conversation I had with the bank rep when he called to get me a new set of checks.

BANK: What number would you like your checks to start with?

SDM: Cool. Let’s see. One half? Hahahaha. Maybe 4,962?

BANK: Let’s start with Check #1.

SDM: Oh no. I’ve already used up about 100 or more checks.

BANK: Why didn’t you say that?

SDM: You never asked.

BANK: Yes I did. That’s exactly what I asked you.

SDM: No, you asked what number I’d like to start with.

BANK: Same thing.

Obviously, it wasn’t the same thing to me. In order to have understood what he ‘meant’ I would have to have recognized that this was ‘bank language’ and have implicitly ‘agreed’ to cooperate with his assumption. But I didn’t. I really never heard him ask for the check numbers I used. Indeed, I actually found his question fun until he pointed out that he meant something different than what I heard.

My bank story is a fun example of how uniquely and subjectively we hear each other. And due to our universal assumption that our CPs are intent on cooperating in a dialogue, we feel rule-bound to continue cooperating, nodding our heads, or say ‘uh huh’ to imply agreement and understanding. Whole industries train folks on what to listen for. Sellers listen for any modicum of need and ignore the underlying impediments to buying ability; coaches and therapists listen for the roots of a problem that they’re familiar with, asking biased questions that potentially miss the real problem; leaders listen for glitches in compliance and miss the underlying mismatch in beliefs that will cause implementation issues. Net net it’s difficult to fully understand what others intend to tell us unless we know our CP very well and understand their world view and reference points. And even then it’s iffy.

I’ve devised an approach I call Listening Systems to circumvent all listening filters and biases (see chapter 6 in What?) to hear what our CPs actually mean. For those who don’t want to learn how to do this but want a simple take-away, use this question at the end of an important dialogue or meeting: Do you mind if I check that what I heard you say is accurate? And remember: it’s just not possible to fully understand your CP in many conversations. Pick the conversations most important to you and continually check in. It will make the conversation a bit unwieldy, but at least it will be accurate. Or contact me – I’ve got a one day program that teaches teams to hear each other and their clients, accurately, without bias or filters.

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For those interested in learning how to recognize or avoid your listening biases, and ensure you’re hearing what your Communication Partner intends to convey, here are some options (Note: programs are for individual or team learners. The on-line How to Listen program is for teams reading What? together and follow the chapters in the book to install learning.).

On Line: Bias Assessment, How to Listen without Filters; Face-to-face ‘one day program’: How to hear what’s meant

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a thought leader in Change Facilitation, in sales (Buying Facilitation®), coaching, communication (www.didihearyou.com), and leadership. She is the author of 9 books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and the Amazon bestsellers What? and Dirty Little Secrets and the inventor of Buying Facilitation®. Sharon Drew’s award winning blog www.sharondrewmorgen.com carries interesting articles on change, decision making, leadership, coaching, and how buyers buy. She has trained over 100,000 people in global corporations over the past 35 years. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen September 25th, 2017

Posted In: Listening

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Starting a Tech Company in 1983

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Why Change Seems So Hard: Essay on facilitating buy-in and avoiding resistance

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Our Listening Restricts Our Lives: understanding our listening filters