Avoiding Resistance or Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail
Every year, with the best will in the world, we make New Year’s resolutions to make some sort of change, like exercising more or eating healthier. We start off with great gusto and determination, yet by February we begin making excuses to avoid the gym, or convince ourselves pizza would be great for dinner. What happens? We’re approaching change in the wrong way. But we can easily make it right.
BELIEFS DEFINE BEHAVIORS
Here’s the problem. Within each of us are long-held rules and principles, created and maintained by our idiosyncratic belief structure. I call this internal, unconscious collection our system, and (as explained in my new book What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), this system determines our behaviors (including how we respond to/hear others, how we choose friends, our politics and religion) and our behaviors are our beliefs in action. We rarely behave, communicate, or decide in ways that offend our beliefs because we would then be incongruent.
It all operates effortlessly until we attempt to drive a behavior that runs counter to our beliefs – and then we get resistance as our system attempts to maintain balance. [ I’ve written about it exhaustively in Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.] This is why people and teams won’t execute good decisions, users don’t use new software, and why implementations fail: we are ignoring our accepted practice and pushing unapproved behaviors into a system that must resist to maintain it’s status quo and balance.
WHY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FAIL
New Year’s resolutions seek behavior change with no accompanying belief change, potentially causing their own resistance. When my coaching clients seek change, we begin by understanding the systemic baseline beliefs and getting agreement from the system to add acceptable behaviors that will match those beliefs. Here’s a personal example: I’m a healthy person and strongly believe one of my modalities toward health is exercise. But I hate hate hate the gym (Did I say I hate the gym?). I hate it so much I count the steps backward from my house to the gym, and backward again until I’m eventually home. Thankfully I found several classes that are somewhat non-objectionable, and do sweaty country-swing dancing a few times a week. So I get 10 hours a week of exercise and remain congruent with my beliefs: I am a fit, healthy person. And when I find myself making excuses for going to the gym, I remind myself that if I don’t go I won’t be a healthy person. I decide from my beliefs, and act from my behaviors.
I’m aware that there are many models that show how to work with resistance, or behavior change. Yet it’s possible to avoid resistance altogether by first enabling agreement from our beliefs and only then adding behaviors – working from within first, and avoiding ‘push’ from the outside. Then we can maintain our New Year’s resolutions.
If you want some personal or team coaching to manage congruent change, or wish to work with clients in a way that avoids resistance (for sellers, coaches, consultants, negotiators, and decision scientists) contact me to set up a time to pursue possibilities. Sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
To learn more about What? Did you really say what I think I heard? and how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard.
Sharon Drew Morgen January 20th, 2015
Posted In: Listening
Getting To Agreement
We all theoretically recognize that everyone has the right to their own beliefs. But in situations where we have great passion (or the moral high ground, as we would like to believe) we have difficulty being generous with those who disagree with us. Wouldn’t it be nice to persuade others to see the world as we see it? What’s causing the disparity between ideas, goals and convictions?
BELIEFS
People’s viewpoints, values, and world view come from their core beliefs, acquired through the experiences of our lives: from parents and education; religion and what we do for a living; what our parents taught us (implicitly and explicitly) and what we learned from friends. The conglomeration of these experiences create our political views, who we marry, how we raise our children, how we view the world, how we behave in relationships and where we live. I remember in 2000 I called my then-28-year-old son – living in the swing state of Colorado – on election day. I casually asked him what he was doing that day. He replied:
“You wouldn’t be calling me to ask who I’m voting for, would you?”
“Um, well, maybe.”
“Mom: You dragged me to rallies and marches, made me hold signs and go to sit-ins, and had activists over for dinner who became our friends. How could I vote differently than you?”
Our beliefs become the foundation of how we decide/act/live/socialize daily, making it so endemic that it’s hard to fathom that anyone would think differently. As a result of our orientation, anything said outside our beliefs gets runs the risk of being disrespected, disregarded, and discounted, and we often disenfranchise those who don’t believe or act as we do. Those of us who have strong beliefs about the environment, for example, may become angry when others don’t believe we are harming the earth. But if it were so obvious to everyone, if everyone shared the same beliefs, we would all be in agreement.
And so we attempt to persuade those who haven’t yet ‘seen the light’ to agree with us. But getting into agreement with folks whose ideas run counter to our beliefs is difficult: regardless of how rational our argument or the source of data we share, we are heard through biased ears.
HEARING AGREEMENT
It’s possible that by pushing our own agendas and not focusing on what might be common values and consensus, we are perpetuating harm and causing others to defend their beliefs. Isn’t there a middle road to agreement?
Change needs consensus: win-win is key (we know there is no such thing as win/lose). To enable change and facilitate agreement, we must discover common beliefs. NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP) does this by ‘chunking up’ – looking at a broader view beyond biases to more generic beliefs. So instead of focusing on Global Warming, for instance, a chunk up might be discussing ways to diminish natural disasters so less people will be harmed.
A key elements to facilitating agreement is hearing without bias. I’ve just published a book called What? Did you really say what I think I heard? that explains how difficult it is to effectively hear others without the filters, biases, assumptions, and triggers that maintain our world view.
What if we enter conversations listening for common values instead of the typical focus on differences? What if we live with Ands and not Buts? What if we listen for words or ideas that would enable working collaboratively, or finding win/wins? If all we change is how we can hear each other to enable agreement somewhere, we might just be able to discover places of agreement and help us all make the world a better place.
But listening without bias isn’t natural or easy. What? enables everyone to share the material and begin discussing how we can disengage from our listening biases and wend our way to agreement. Get the book on www.didihearyou.com. For a more robust solution, contact me at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com and we can discuss how to use the learning tools I’ve developed to both assess and guide you and your colleagues through change and choice. http://didihearyou.com/learning-tools.
Sharon Drew Morgen January 12th, 2015
Posted In: Listening
Speaker or Listener: Who’s Responsible For Misunderstandings?
There’s been an age-old argument in the communication field: who’s at fault if a misunderstanding occurs – the Speaker communicating badly, or the Listener misunderstanding? Let’s look at some facts:
1. Speaking is an act of translating what’s going on internally into communication that enables others to understand an intent – choosing the most appropriate words for that particular listener in that particular situation. But the act of choosing is unconscious and may not render a full or accurate representation of what is meant.
2. Listeners translate what they hear through a series of unconscious filters (biases, assumptions, triggers, habits, imperfect memory) formed over their lives by their:
a) world view,
b) beliefs,
c) similar situations,
d) historic exchanges with the same speaker,
e) biases on entering the conversation (like sellers listening exclusively for need).
What a listener hears is fraught with so much unconscious filtering that their ability to hear accurately what’s meant is untrustworthy, except, possibly, when speaking with someone known over time.
3. According to David Bellos in his excellent book Is That a Fish In Your Ear?, no sentence contains all of the information we need to translate it. As listeners, are we translating accurately? What parts of what we hear is biased?
Since communication involves a bewildering set of conscious and unconscious choices, accuracy becomes dependent upon each communication partner mitigating bias and disengaging from assumptions; the odds of communication partners accurately understanding the full extent of intended meaning in conversation is unlikely. It’s quite a complicated mess of factors.
My new book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? focuses on listening: how we mishear, misunderstand, and otherwise misinterpret, where and how the gap between what’s said and what’s heard occurs and how to avoid misunderstanding. [My next book might be titled Seriously? Did you really hear what you think I said? that focuses on speakers]. While researching and writing the book I realized that the responsibility for effective communication is heavily weighted in the court of the listener: if listeners don’t have skills to catch or prevent their biases or unhook from all subjective filters, the speaker’s words and intent are moot: they may be misconstrued regardless of their accuracy. And yes, sometimes speakers mis-speak. But when a listener hears precisely what is being conveyed and respond accordingly, a speaker can hear any problems and correct them.
So the answer is: the responsibility for an effective communication lie with the listener.
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Sharon Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Business Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity and 7 books how buyers buy. 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.
Sharon Drew Morgen December 22nd, 2014
We Don’t Really Hear Each Other
Have you ever misheard clients or colleagues, made erroneous assumptions, and lost business as a result?
Have any of your relationships suffered because you misunderstood an intended message – and possibly acted on your misunderstanding as if you heard accurately?
We are not always able to accurately hear what others mean to convey. Sometimes we hear only a fraction of what’s been said and our brains misunderstand or bias the rest – and we might not realize it until it’s too late, causing us to believe we’re right and others are wrong, or moving to action using the wrong assumptions. We’re left with restricted communication and creativity, failed relationships, and lost profit. And none of it is our fault.
We try to attend carefully to what’s being said. Yet our pesky brains do some pretty sophisticated stuff, all without our conscious consent: they
- delete or misconstrue or filter out what sounds wrong or goes against our beliefs or is unfamiliar, then
- matches what’s left with a historic memory of a ‘similar-enough’ conversation and
- throws out what doesn’t match that memory.
Whatever is left is what we believe has been said.
In conversations with familiar folks, there is less of a gap; with folks we don’t know, in dialogues that are outside of our habitual knowledge base, or when we enter conversations with a rigid goal, we accurately understand far less of what was actually meant. A problem occurs when we are convinced – certain – that what we heard is accurate, and don’t know when, if, or how, to take measures to fix a problem we don’t believe we have. As a result we unwittingly compromise relationships, business, partnerships, creativity, and success.
With little control over what our brains tell us we’ve heard, we’re left with the fallout:
- Misunderstandings that remain unresolved because we believe – we’re certain – we’re right;
- Bad feelings and take-aways caused by misheard communication;
- Biased assumptions that cause inadequate responses and failed initiatives;
- Misheard facts that lead to inaccuracies in business, technology, relationships;
- Restricted creativity, laps in leadership, therapy, coaching, and medical advice.
We misunderstand doctors, make assumptions with our teenagers and vendors, bias communications with family members and colleagues, set up filters before conversations with historic relationships. Our lives are influenced by how accurately we hear what others mean to convey.
But a new book is out that will resolve these problems. What? Did you really say what I think I heard? not only describes how, exactly, our brains create the instinctive actions that limit our ability to hear others without bias or misunderstanding, but also shows how to intervene our automatic behaviors and hear others as they intend to be heard.
Different from books on Active Listening which merely enables listeners to hear words, What? focuses on understanding intended meaning. Using exercises and assessments, funny stories and authentic appeal, author Sharon Drew Morgen has written a game changer, a book that thoroughly breaks down every aspect of how we interpret what others mean to tell us, how the understanding gap between Sender and Receiver is created, and the skills to avoid any misinterpretation or bias at all. It’s a book that will be the foremost communication book for decades. Go to www.didihearyou.com where you can get the book, and peruse the learning tools that accompany the book for those wishing to recognize any obstacles with their listening habits (Assessments) or learn how to overcome any bias and misinterpretation issues (Study Guide) that occur during conversations.
To contact Sharon Drew:sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.
Sharon Drew Morgen December 8th, 2014
Posted In: Listening
Assessment: How much do you suck at listening?
Answer these questions to see how accurately you hear what your communication partner intends you to hear.
- How often do you enter conversations to hear what you want to hear – and disregard the rest?
- How often do you listen to get your own agenda across, regardless of the needs of the speaker?
- How often do you have a bias in place before the speaker’s points or agenda are known?
- Do you ever assume what the speaker wants from you before s/he states it – whether your assumption is accurate or not?
- How often do you listen merely to confirm you are right…and the other person is wrong?
- Do you ever enter a conversation without any bias, filters, assumptions, or expectations? What would need to happen for you to enter all conversations with a totally blank slate? Do you have the tools to make that possible?
- Because your filters, expectations, biases, and assumptions strongly influence how you hear what’s intended, how do you know that your natural hearing skills enable you to achieve everything you might achieve in a conversation?
- How much business have you lost because of your inability to choose the appropriate modality to hear and interpret through?
- How many relationships have you lost by driving conversations where you wanted them to be rather than a path of collaboration that would end up someplace surprising?
As I wrote my new book What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard? and asked folks I knew to provide feedback, I received similar notes from all around the world saying that the book was great – for their spouses. The consistent message was that they, themselves, heard every word spoken and had no communication problems around their listening skills. Ah, I thought, but do they hear what’s intended?
It’s physiologically impossible to accurately hear all that our communication partners intend to convey. Here are some reasons why:
- we have biases, filters, triggers, assumptions, and habits that uniquely contort what’s heard.
- people don’t always accurately represent what they say and mean for us to hear, leaving out details they assume will be understood and aren’t, or choosing words that have different meanings than how their listeners define them.
- the situation in which our communication is taking place has any range of situational biases that make shared understanding challenging.
- we all interpret what we hear uniquely, according to our education, family history, religious beliefs, political beliefs, age, and ethnicity.
Are you getting the picture here? Assured understanding is not even close to possible. Yet most of us assume we hear accurately. Sure, we hear the words. But do we understand what’s meant?
When my new book What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard? came out, I got notes from folks around the world telling me they listen accurately. And I wonder if they recognize the difference between hearing words spoken vs hearing what’s intended.
It’s physiologically impossible to accurately hear what our communication partner intends us to hear. We have biases, filters, triggers, assumptions, and habits that get in the way. And people don’t accurately represent what they mean for us to hear, leaving out details that they assume will be understood and aren’t, or choosing words that have different meanings for listeners. Or the situation we find ourselves in has any range of situational biases that make it difficult. We hear according to our education, family history, religious beliefs, political beliefs, age, ethnicity…..
Are you getting the picture here? Not even close to possible. So what is it we are defending? What is so important about believing we hear what’s intended when we don’t – and it’s not even possible?
My new book breaks down the good, the bad, and the ugly of how we hear, why we don’t, where we have problems (lots of assessments and fun exercises), and ways to fix it. Lots of funny examples of just plain dumb conversations between really smart people. And my snarky personality leads you through the process.
Contact me with questions about how to hear others without biases. or how to talk so others will hear what you intend to convey. And, I’ve designed some very affordable learning tools to help you figure out how to know exactly your particular ‘brand’ of bias, as well as one to lead you through the process of diminishing your biases and enhancing your ability to hear others. Let’s make ‘hearing what’s intended’ the new buzz phrase. Because if we all can hear what’s intended, we can make a huge difference in the world.
Sharon Drew Morgen | 512-457-0246 | sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com
www.buyingfacilitation.com
Sharon Drew Morgen October 29th, 2014