The Importance of Exit Interviews: a way to maintain excellence, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

When I started up my tech company in the UK in 1983, I wanted a company that served both clients and staff with kindness, honesty and authenticity, a bit of fun, and lots of learning. I set about hiring employees that would support those values. They became the glue that held us all together.

My first job was to serve my employees so they could then serve our clients. After all, these folks would be the touch point between the people who would buy my product and the company. My employees were my first customers.

EMPLOYEE CARE

To ensure employees remained creative, loyal, and engaged, especially those in the field and who I didn’t regularly see, I called each of the 48 techies monthly to check in and held monthly meetups at a pub (Darts was my Waterloo. I think one needs to be British to win.); weekly, I sat down with the 8 managers, the receptionist (who knew EVERYTHING) and my secretary (ditto) to catch up. And my door was always open.

To keep managers inspired, I gave them an all-expense paid week off a year (besides their annual holiday) to take any course of their choosing (not work-specific). And when I noticed them lagging from working too many intense hours (it was hard to get them to take vacations!) I sent them home for a few days for some ‘mental health’ time after calling their wives (in those days in the UK, men worked, women did childcare) to keep them ‘in bed’ for a while. I even sent meals from a local restaurant. I took care of them with the same thoughtfulness and care I did my clients.

We did well. In just under 4 years, we had a $5,000,000 gross income – with no computers, no web, no email, no urls, no online anything. Just me, a phone, in-person meetings, and my wonderful team who kept clients happy and called me when they heard of a lead within the client’s workplace.

I’m certain our success came from my team: much of our growth came from happy clients giving us repeat business and referrals. We doubled our business every year. That was 40 years ago, and the company is still in business.

In the 5 years I ran the company only one person left, due to a cross-country move. I learned afterwards that most of my folks had been approached by competitors and offered double the salary, but they wouldn’t leave due to the respect and hands-on care I gave them. Plus, they found it great fun to watch me attempt to play darts every month.

HAS IT CHANGED TOO MUCH?

It seems to be different now. Money seems to be an overriding criterion and people don’t seem to matter.

A client recently told me of a colleague – a long-standing sales team member and good producer – who quit due to the disrespect she felt from her manager and COO.

I asked if she’d explained her reasons at her exit interview so the company could fix their internal issues and stop others from quitting also. Seems she was just asked to complete a survey and was not given an exit interview. And, according to my client, he and several team members are looking for jobs due to the disrespect rampant in the company.

Seems the company has no criteria around improvement, obviously committed to maintaining the status quo.

Have times changed and people have become a commodity? Currently only 50% of companies offer an exit interview, while 75% offer a survey. That leads me to wonder how many companies don’t achieve their potential due to unhappy employees or disrespectful management. I can’t understand why they’d prefer to go through the time and expense to rehire and train new employees than fix the problems that caused them.

EXIT INTERVIEWS

Obviously, exit interviews that ask hard questions (“Is there something we’re doing as a company that should be improved? That, if fixed, would have enabled you to stay?”) would offer meaningful insights that could illuminate underlying problems in the culture, employee satisfaction, and the employee lifecycle. But that’s not happening as often as it should.

I’d like to offer a few Facilitative Questions™ to help companies currently not offering exit interviews reconsider their employee practices in hopes they’ll be more aware of their responsibility around serving employees well. After all, they’ve spent time and money hiring and training folks to represent them. Might as well keep them and simultaneously run a respectful company.

• What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to add respect, communication and servant leadership to the skills necessary for management – and include these values in hiring practices?
• How will you know if your managers have the skills to enable employees to thrive, be creative, and feel good about working for you? And how do you ensure they’re supervised around these skills?
• What practices must you put in place to

o  Have continual checks on management skills to ensure employee happiness?

o  Offer management training programs to ensure respect, collaboration, communication, and kindness are part of their daily practice?

o  Put required exit interviews in place led by HR professionals?

o  Develop hiring practices that sort for managers who put employee respect and growth as necessary skills?

• What supervision practices must you maintain to ensure management provides respect, acceptance, and communication with all employees?

I would like to think that employees aren’t considered a commodity, or that companies aren’t above self-examination or willingness to improve. Do your company a favor: make employee retention, satisfaction, respect, and creativity part of your company identity. And commit to doing exit interviews to discover your weaknesses so you can improve your bottom line.

_________________________    

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

Sharon Drew Morgen February 16th, 2026

Posted In: News

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It’s Never About the Money: a case study on facilitating (buying) decisions

After having several conversations with a new prospect and his team in 2015 we all decided to move forward and get them trained in Buying Facilitation® so they could not only close more/faster but use the telephone for the initial prospecting, risk management, and team assembly.

I sent a contract to Joe including the agreed-upon dates and the team’s requirements. I then received an email from him saying he needed to put the program on hold for six months so his new hires could prove their value and start earning money – very different from our agreement. I called him.

“I’m confused. How can your new hires start earning money if they won’t get their training for several months? And how can they prove their value selling the mainstream way when you want them to learn to first facilitate the Buy Side (Buying Facilitation®)?”

WHO IS THE BUYER?

My prospect said that the COO (Frank) called him in when my contract came over his desk saying that if they were going to spend ‘that kind of money’ on sales training they had better have a team in place that had earned it.

Joe was both angry and embarrassed: he had thought he was the decision maker given it was his own budget, the team had agreed to the training, and his boss hadn’t exhibited any interest in sales training before this. He felt his boss didn’t trust him.

What appeared to be a ‘closed’ sale had just become a money objection from a “C” level executive who had no idea who I was, what I was offering, or how to put a value on it, and he was overriding his own Sales Director and the entire sales team. And money seemed to be his only criteria.

But I knew that money is rarely the real objection. I had to find out what was going on and see if I could facilitate the COO to a different decision.

Joe and I put our heads together and decided to have Frank call me to discuss it. We believed that if I could lead Frank through the Buying Facilitation® Method and he could experience it personally, he’d be able to decide for himself.

Sample and Purchase

I knew I’d have to handle both money and phone objections as Frank believed no business could be handled on the phone. I also had to walk an interesting line: not only was Frank superseding Joe’s authority and disrespecting him, his discomfort came from faulty assumptions: I wasn’t delivering ‘sales training’.

CASE STUDY: THERE ARE NO REAL MONEY OBJECTIONS

Below is a transcript of the actual call that employs Buying Facilitation®. It includes commentary on the specific tools I use to help Frank examine, and possibly expand, his own criteria; notice his own incongruences; trust me and trust Joe; and give the green light to the training.

As you read this, note: Buying Facilitation® uses a different set of tools than standard for sales: Meta Listening, Facilitative Questions™, Presumptive Summaries, and the sequence of unconscious decision making and change. It offers no information or pitch; and has a different goal – to facilitate people through their unconscious to their own answers.

Sellers often forget they have nothing to sell if someone has nothing to buy. And since the risk of change is one of the main factors in a buying decision, Buying Facilitation® facilitates people through their hidden risk factors as well as helps them discover their unconscious values and criteria and self-identify as buyers.

As per arrangement, Frank called. His voice was tough, crisp, and in charge.

Frank: I understand you’ve been speaking with Joe and the team about doing some training. I’m OK with that [So why are we having this conversation?]. He’s got his own budget, but with so many new folks, it’ll have to wait until they prove themselves. And if you want to have a discussion with me about it, you’ll have to come here to visit us (A three-hour drive each way.). It would probably be a good idea for us to meet anyway. I’m curious to meet someone who charges that much for a training program. [He obviously has no idea that Buying Facilitation® is original IP and I’m the inventor.]

SDM: Gosh, I hate to drive. Hmmm. How ‘bout if we meet halfway – we’ll each drive one and one half hours?

F: You want ME to drive?? [It’s ok for ME to drive??]

SDM; Oh. You hate to drive also [This puts us on equal footing,]. Hmmm. I have an idea. Since neither of us want to drive, how ‘bout if we spend a few moments on the phone and see where we stand. We might end up hating each other and there won’t be any need for either of us to drive.

F: Sounds reasonable. [I just helped him overcome his objections to using the phone AND his insistence I drive to him. He’s also ceding some control.]

SDM: I hear you are having thoughts about my prices. [I’m now taking over the conversation and starting the Buying Facilitation® process.]

F: Well, they are higher than I’ve ever heard of for sales training. But of course, if we end up getting fair value for it, it would be worth it. [But he objected before he knew that. Obviously money isn’t the issue! And he’s begun trying to sell the idea to himself. Not to mention I’m not running a sales training program.]

SDM: Given you don’t know who I am, what your folks would learn, what about my original model might be worth more than conventional training, or how to know upfront if you’d get value from it, you must be uncomfortable. [Presumptive Summary that names his objections and throws in a bit of information he wasn’t aware of.]

F: Not uncomfortable, exactly, because I trust Joe’s decision making [Really?]. But you’re correct. I’m not happy spending that kind of money for something I believe I can get cheaper. [Good for him. He’s put his cards on the table. But he assumes he understands what I’m offering without considering the possibility that maybe he doesn’t.]

SDM: So how would you know that Buying Facilitation® – the model I’ve developed that facilitates the Buy Side decision-making and will be teaching [Words chosen carefully to build in my presumed contract] Joe’s folks – offers a new set of skills that would actually give you the type of ROI that you’re seeking? [Facilitative Question™]

F: I wouldn’t. I’d just have to take Joe’s word for it. [But he already didn’t, so that’s not the real answer. He’s showing no curiosity or interest in understanding what I’m offering and doesn’t offer any opening to change his opinion. Holding his cards very close to his chest. But I’m still in control of the call.]

SDM: I wonder if there is a way that you could learn enough about Buying Facilitation® to give you comfort, get you to recognize its value, and see if it’s the sort of Model that would get your numbers up to where you want them to be. [That’s all the pitch I need.]

F: I suppose I should know something about the Model. Is there something you can send me so I can learn about it? [He’s now doing business on the phone AND being curious! Not to mention he didn’t ask me – the inventor, who is on the phone with him! – to explain anything!] Obviously if Joe is willing to use his entire training budget to bring you in, it must have value and it would probably be good for me to learn about it. [Note it took only minutes to get here.] What else would you suggest I do? [He’s trusting me! But I must take care to continue helping his decision-making process and avoid saying anything that would bias him. If I pitch now his brain will compare his initial – faulty – assumptions against what I say, and the work I’ve done so far in this conversation to enable his personal discovery would be wasted and I’d have lost the job.]

SDM: I can send you some essays, and Joe has a copy of my book you can read. I understand that before we move forward, you’ll need to figure out what my value is. [I’ve moved the conversation from ‘trusting Joe’ to the real issue: why would he be willing to pay a lot for something he perceived he could get cheaper?] How would you know that my program is worth what I’m charging?

F: I probably wouldn’t know until after the program.

SDM: Then it becomes like a Bungee jump – you won’t know if it’s going to work until after you’ve jumped. And then it’s too late.

We all laughed.

SDM: So, what would you need to know about Buying Facilitation® that would help you understand that it would give your people a new set of tools to double their numbers as you’ve required? [A small pitch that offers reasons working with me would avoid risk. Notice I’m still not trying to sell him as he still doesn’t know what he wants to buy and he’s not aware that I’m the inventor and trainer. Most inventors don’t train their inventions personally.]

F: You’re saying that it’s a different model from sales? That’s interesting. [I hadn’t said that, but my Facilitative Question™ implied it.] I guess if we kept using the same selling model we’d keep getting the same results. [He’s selling himself now.] Different from sales, and yet it will close more. Hmm. Will I be able understand the Model from what I’m going to read? [I was dying to give a pitch somewhere in here, but Frank never asked me to explain anything. All of his learning criteria were based on reading something, not hearing something.]

SDM: Correct. Just to sum this up: you’d like to understand the Model and how it’s different from sales, how it will give you the results you require, and who I am.

F: You’re right. But I bet Joe did his homework already and has this under control. [Seems he’s sold himself and has alleviated his risk.] Besides, it seems the reps want to learn from you. [His level of trust was now pretty high for both me, Joe, and the team. And notice he’s now sold himself… and I’ve given him no pitch!]

SDM: I think we all hope you’re right.

We all laughed again.

SDM: What would need to happen for you to get comfortable enough for us to move forward in the time frame that best suits your company given the revenue increases you’re seeking for next year? [Notice I keep facilitating him toward his own unconscious decision making so his fears of risk are alleviated. And I’m not biasing his response – he can still respond that he wants to read the material and meet me before going forward.]

F: Tell you what. I’ll read whatever you send me. An article would be great. If it’s as good as I assume it must be for Joe to go out on a limb like this, given that he’s had to do some hard thinking to figure out how to meet the objectives I’ve given him, and that the team is excited to learn from you, I’ll give Joe a tacit agreement to move forward. [It seems I’ve proven myself, and the money objection is gone. Note: he still doesn’t know what Buying Facilitation® is, what the values is, or who I am! And I haven’t sold a thing, although I’ll pitch when we meet.] But I’d like to call you with questions if you don’t mind. And, when we’re ready to sign the contract, let’s do it over lunch – my treat – and we’ll each drive and meet halfway.

Joe and I burst out laughing. After a moment Frank starting laughing too. Frank had figured out his own solution, sold himself, trusted both me and Joe, used the phone for business, and had no more objections. He even was willing to drive halfway to buy me lunch!

F: I suppose you just used the model on me, right?? You haven’t sold me a thing – no pitch, no presentation. You just helped me decide how to choose you and manage my own objections. [Smart man.]

I hope this is what you’re going to teach my folks as I see how it will shorten the sales cycle and capture folks who don’t think they need to buy anything. Not only did I not want to sign the contract when I began, I didn’t believe it was possible to use the phone for anything more than getting an appointment. Thanks, Sharon-Drew. I’m excited. I can’t wait to meet you. And I can see this model isn’t only for sales, and more of us in the company could learn your model for difficult conversations with each other and with clients.

MONEY OBJECTIONS

Objections happen only when someone’s criteria are being pushed against their will; money objections occur when folks don’t understand value, or as a stop gap to change (i.e. not about money itself). And explaining value by pitching what you believe needs to be pitched, handling objections the way you think they should be handled, or presenting the information you believe needs to be presented, only presents the seller’s biased viewpoint doesn’t help.

When two things appear equal, the only differential is money. When value is understood, money is not the criteria.

Of course, I still needed the sales model, but only later, after he’d already figured out his own criteria. In this conversation, I did several things to help him decide to buy:

• Frank was smart. He figured it out himself as I guided him through his unconscious concerns. I didn’t pitch, present or propose. I didn’t have to handle objections or prove my value. I used the phone to help him make a six-figure decision and didn’t have to meet him in person to do so. All I did was lead him through his own decision criteria to his own best decision.
• Frank’s fear of spending ‘that kind of money’ on something he thought should cost ‘a lot less’ (He was comparing me against traditional sales programs which do, indeed, cost a lot less than bringing in the inventor of original IP) and over-rode his trust in a senior executive;
• Because Frank couldn’t say that he didn’t trust Joe, he used the excuse of money and proven value – but then they’d be using the same sales skills they used when they weren’t getting the success he wanted;
• Frank hated doing business on the phone and didn’t understand why Joe’s team would be learning how to prospect using the phone;
• Frank had no idea who I was and assumed his comparison of the pricing of Buying Facilitation® with sales (different pricing structure), he wouldn’t be able to figure out the program’s value. There was a good chance he wouldn’t have let the training go forward.

If you go back to the conversation, you’ll note I kept enabling Frank to figure out for himself how to choose me and my material. And the sequencing and wording of my Presumptive Summaries and Facilitative Questions™, both enabled by me listening for systems and patterns instead of content, led him to understand that what I was selling would meet his criteria. Plus I’d proven my value as a Partner because I respected him.

This, btw, is the difference between facilitating the Buy Side and sales. I would still have to ‘sell’ Frank my training over lunch, but I wouldn’t need to offer as much content or manage objections.

Also it was a very ‘pushy’ dialogue. The conversation might appear at first glance to be soft, but indeed it was very controlled and relentless: I kept leading him into making the decisions he needed to make and avoided any pitch or contradiction to his objections.

At no point did I defend my price or change it. Note that if I started pitching product and defending price, the conversation wouldn’t have gotten very far. Price wasn’t the issue: it was his discomfort not knowing how to spend ‘that sort of money’ for something that was new to him.

FRANK MADE HIS OWN DECISIONS

In conclusion: as I led Frank through his own issues, he figured it out himself. I didn’t pitch, present or propose. I didn’t have to handle objections or prove my value. I used Buying Facilitation® on the phone to help him make a six figure decision that he was initially opposed to: He had to recognize his own criteria and make a judgment call as to whether or not it was being met.

Remember: Frank’s criteria were not only hidden from me, but initially hidden from him! Even if I understood what was going on it wouldn’t have mattered. HE needed to understand for himself. And he did. And I didn’t sell a thing. All I did was lead him through his own decision criteria to his own best decision.

I believe that before we sell – the Sell Side, based on placing solutions by finding folks with ‘need’ and introducing relevant product details – we must facilitate buyers through to their own best decisions, using their own criteria, and the internal, unique decision criteria that outsiders can never understand – the Buy Side.

Selling doesn’t cause buying. But it’s possible to facilitate prospects through their change management, risk management, buy-in, and unique cultural impediments, we can position our product as their own solution. It’s ethical, based on win-win, truly supportive of a collaborative Partnership, and uses no manipulation or influencing strategies. Ultimately, it trusts that the Buyer will come up with his/her own best answers, and if me and my product fit into the Buyer’s solution, I’ll be chosen.

Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy. If you wish to learn Buying Facilitation®, please contact me: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_______________________

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

Sharon Drew Morgen January 19th, 2026

Posted In: News

Dignity: the necessary element to ensure happy clients and employees, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

I wonder why I rarely hear the word Dignity used in business. Not only do we each seek to do work and have relationships that encourage and include dignity, we aspire to promote products and have client connections in ways that maintain the self-worth and self-respect of all.

But I’m certain we could all do a lot more to achieve it. Let me share a personal story that first alerted me to the importance of dignity.

In the 1980s I moved to London to start up a tech company and simultaneously started up a non-profit to support folks with the neurological disease my son suffers from (We just had our 40th year anniversary!). The woman I partnered with (Joan) was a long-time sufferer of the illness and had great difficulty opening her eyelids or lifting her neck. But she worked hard to type notes (just a few typos!) to other sufferers sending resources, and setting up ‘meet and greets’ with doctors and medical schools around the UK where we’d travel to share the latest treatment information.

Every Wednesday night Joan and I went to dinner prior to getting down to work. And every Wednesday night I picked up the check, knowing Joan – age 75 at the time and obviously disabled – was living on state assistance. But one Wednesday as I reached for the check, Joan’s hand came down onto mine.

Joan: I’ll pay tonight.

SD: That’s okay. I’m working and have more available cash than you have.

Joan: I said I’ll pay. I may not have money, but I have dignity. Don’t take away my dignity.

I then realized that by always paying I was taking away her agency, her dignity as an equal partner. Seems it wasn’t about the money at all. In fact, my decision to pay for each meal suddenly seemed like a power thing. How many times had I substituted money and power for dignity?

PROMOTING DIGNITY IN THE WORKPLACE

Dignity is a private, personal consideration we each hold that matches our beliefs about who we are; we gravitate toward people who honor it. Through our personal dignity we show up authentically and remove ourselves from people and situations that threaten it.

In our personal lives we observe the dignity of our friends and family. But I am unaware of this term being applied in the workplace with specific actions that will ensure we provide dignity to those we touch. This article discusses how to impart dignity and what to do to achieve it.

As entrepreneurs and business owners we must

• build dignity into our norms, policies, communications and conventions,
• make sure we treat each other, our employees and our clients, with respect at meetings, interactions, emails, etc.,
• act in ways that respect each other’s self-worth,
• minimize the stress our employees feel when being disrespected.

But how do we ‘do’ dignity?

1.    Fair pay: I can’t say this strongly enough. Paying people fairly enables them to feel respected and valued, and take care of their families and their health. Without fair pay, the rest of this article is moot.

2.    A culture of diversity: Diversity is a word thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean? Sure, it means racial and gender diversity in hiring and advancement practices. But what about neurodivergent folks who get ignored because their ideas don’t seem to fit in? What about folks who think or act differently? Each difference expands possibilities and enables a broader range of ideas and promise.

As someone with Asperger’s and highly out-of-the-box ideas, I spent years being ignored and denigrated when in fact my concepts would have prevented many situations, facilitated successful projects without resistance, and closed a lot more sales. How do we create and maintain a culture of real diversity in which everyone’s voice gets appreciated and no one faces indignity?

3.    Transparent communication: Too often management omits making the full data set available, making it impossible to gather the full fact pattern or inspire creativity. Worse, good ideas get dismissed or go unheard and employees end up being disincentivized. The cost is incalculable to companies, employees, and clients: not only does creativity falter, but people lose trust in their employers.

4.    Work-life balance: When we expect our folks to work weekends, long hours, lots of overtime, we take away their dignity as human beings, not to mention their time to destress, think, relax so they can return to work invigorated and creative. We not only harm them, we harm our own productivity and success.

If there’s a frequent problem causing staff to work excessive hours, it becomes a stress/health issue. We need to either hire additional staff or allow the problem a lengthier solution process that doesn’t require employees to regularly give up their private time.

When we exploit our employee’s dignity, we cause folks to go home crying, face sleepless nights, feel disrespected. I know this from the countless interviews I’ve had with unhappy employees: They may not tell us, but their work will fall off and eventually they’ll leave for a job that will respect them.

Sample

PROMOTING DIGNITY WITH CLIENTS

Promoting dignity must extend to clients and customers. Here are a few factors to consider:

1. Communication: Too often we fail to let our clients and customers know if there’s a problem from our end: delivery/time issues; delivering the solutions promised with the same people they’ve become accustomed to. When I ran my tech support company, I checked in with each client for 15 minutes every month. That went a long way to resolving brewing issues. And when some companies find a flaw in their product or service, it’s vital they formally announce the issue and resolution so clients aren’t left in the dark.
2. Value our promises: As per above, our clients and customers must be notified if there are disruptions in service or quality. It’s respectful and maintains the dignity of our promise as suppliers.
3. Respect clients/customers as partners: There are plenty of other providers our clients/customers can go to when/if they feel we’re not respecting them. In other words, no overly long hold times; delivery as promised; follow up to ensure quality as promised; no pushy sales practices.

Remember: without addressing and maintaining our client’s dignity, we wouldn’t even be in business.

DIGNITY IS A PRIMARY BUSINESS PRACTICE

It’s necessary to add dignity as a necessary element for creating and maintaining integrous business practices for our staff and customer base. Here are some Facilitative Questions™ to help you think through any changes you might need to make and inspire compliance:

• How will you know when/if your current business practices need upgrading?
• What criteria will you and your team need to meet to decide on what practices might need improvement?
• What skills/tools will you use to let your clients/customers know of changes or problems, to insure your communication enhances their dignity?
• What skills/tools do you and your team need to learn to ensure you consider Dignity as a standard business practice?

Should you wish to enhance your skill set to include Dignity in your staff training as a soft skill, marketing, promotions, decision making practices and projects, please contact me to discuss: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

______________

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

Sharon Drew Morgen January 5th, 2026

Posted In: News

Sadly, We’re Not As Curious As We’d Like To Be, Part 2 by Sharon-Drew Morgen

This is Part 2 of an essay on curiosity. Part 1 published 10/20 discusses how we’re set up to only notice what we’ve noticed before, obviously restricting our curiosity.

WHY ARE WE CURIOUS?

There are several different reasons for curiosity. I’ve included questions under each category to help you consider each:

1. Need to know something we don’t know. Sometimes we need to know something we have no, or skimpy, knowledge about. How do we know the difference between the ‘right’ or the ‘wrong’ answer? How do we know the most effective resources? How do we pose our query to lead to the broadest range of answers? How do we know that what our brain translates for us is an accurate rendition of new content?
2. Desire to expand current knowledge. We need more data than we possess. How will we recognize when the available, additional data is the appropriate data set? How do we pose an inquiry that offers the broadest range of relevant knowledge? How can we keep from resisting new data if it runs counter to our long-held beliefs (given that new data gets compared against our existing, unconscious judgments)? How can we be certain that we will accurately understand new content?
3. Achieving a goal. We’re missing data to achieve a goal. How can we know the extent of what we’re missing, or know to accept new content if our existing data has been our go-to knowledge and it now might be incomplete?
4. Interest in another person’s knowledge. We suspect someone has knowledge we need, but don’t know how to judge what might be accurate. How can we adopt/adapt new content so we can avoid internal resistance, so we ensure what we think we’ve heard is an accurate portrayal of what was said? How can we language our inquiry to avoid limiting any possibilities?
5. Complete internal reference points. Influencers (coaches, leaders, consultants, sellers) seek to understand the Other’s Status Quo to formulate action points. How can we know if our ‘intuition’ (biased judgment) is broad enough to encompass all possibilities – and be able to go beyond it when necessary – to match the Other’s mental models and existing/historic brain circuits? How can we know for certain that what was said to them was understood accurately?
6. Comparator. We want to know if our current knowledge is accurate, or we’re ‘right’. But we unconsciously compare our query and hear responses against our subjective experiences, running the risk of acquiring partial knowledge, misunderstanding what was said, or blocking important data.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty impossible to seek, find, or receive what we don’t know what we don’t know. When we hear content that doesn’t fit our existing circuitry – regardless of the efficacy of the information – we face:

1. Resistance: By the time we’re adults, our subjective beliefs are pretty much built in and determine how we organize our worlds. When we hear something that goes against our beliefs – whether or not it’s accurate, conscious, or unconscious – we resist. That means new knowledge will be accepted in relation to what we already know and believe, potentially omitting important data and making real change difficult.
2. Restricting data: What we’re curious about is automatically biased, mistranslated, and limited by our subjective experience, ego needs, history, and current data set. We have no way to know if we accurately understand what’s been said, or if we’re posing our search query in a way that will include the full range of possible answers.
3. Restricting knowledge. Because our subjectivity limits the acceptance of new knowledge to what fits with our current knowledge (we’re only curious about stuff that is tangential to current knowledge), our brains automatically defend against anything that threatens what we know. So we unconsciously choose answers according to comfort or habit rather than according to accuracy or need.
4. Intuitive ‘Red Flag’. When our egos and professional identity are curious about something we have assumptions and expectations about, we limit possibility by our unconscious biases. How do we know if there aren’t a broader range of solutions that we’re not noticing or eliciting?

If you’re interested in learning how to consciously generate wholly new circuits to permanently change habits and behaviors I’ve developed a How of Change™ program. Here’s a one-hour sample video.

HOW TO EXPAND YOUR CURIOSITY

In order to broaden our curiosity and allow our unconscious to accept the full data set available, we must evolve beyond our biases. Here’s how to have a full range of choice:

1. Frame the query: Create a generic series of questions to pose for yourself about your curiosity. Ask yourself:

• • how you’ll know your tolerance for non-expected, surprising answers,
  • what a full range of knowledge could include,
  • if your answers need to be within the range of what you already know or something wildly different,
  • if you’re willing/able to put aside your ‘intuition’, bias, and annoyance and seek and consider all possible answers regardless of comfort,
  • if you need to stay within a specific set of criteria and what the consequences are if you don’t.

2. Frame the parameters: Do some Google research. Before spending time accumulating data, recognize the parameters of possibility whether or not they match your comfortable criteria.

3. Recognize your foundational beliefs: Understand what you believe to be true, and consider how important it is for you to maintain that data set regardless of potentially conflicting, new information.

4. Be willing to change: Understand your willingness to adopt challenging data if it doesn’t fit within your current data set or beliefs.

5. Make your unconscious conscious: Put your conscious mind onto the ceiling and look down on yourself from the Observer/Witness/meta position. This provides neutral data, sams your biases and resistence.

6. Listen analytically: Listen to your self-talk. Compare it with the questions above. Note restrictions and decide if they can be overlooked. And recognizing your brain may play tricks on you, be sure to ask if what you think you heard and learned is accurate.

7. Analyze: Should you shift your parameters? Search options? What do you need to shift internally?

Curiosity effects every element of our lives. It can enhance, or restrict, growth, change, and professional skills. It limits and expands health, relationships, lifestyles and relationships. Without challenging our curiosity or intuition, we limit ourselves to maintaining our current assumptions.

What do you need to believe differently to be willing to forego comfort and ego-identity for the pursuit of the broadest range of possible answers? How will you know when, specifically, it would be important to have greater choice? We’ll never have all the answers, but we certainly can expand our choices.

If you’d like some coaching on how to use your conscious mind to get into your unconscious neural circuits, I’d love to help. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com, https://sharondrew1.substack.com/, and https://medium.com/@sharondrew_9898/. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen October 27th, 2025

Posted In: News

Sadly, We’re Not As Curious As We’d Like To Be, Part 1 by Sharon-Drew Morgen

A few years ago I had an incident that illustrated the restrictions of my own curiosity. I’d begun attending life drawing classes as an exercise to broaden my observation skills. In one session I had a horrific time trying to draw a model’s shoulder. I asked the man next to me – a real artist – for help. Here was our conversation:

SDM: Hey, Ron. Can you help me please? Can you tell me how to think about drawing his shoulder?

Ron: Sure. Let’s see…. So what is it about your current sketch that you like?

SDM: Nothing.

Ron: If I put a gun to your head, what part would you like?

SDM: Nothing.

Ron: You’ve done a great job here, on his lower leg. Good line. Good proportion. That means you know how to do a lot of what you need on the shoulder.

SDM: I do? I didn’t know what I was doing. So how can I duplicate what I did unconsciously? I’m having an eye-hand-translation problem.

Ron: Let’s figure out how you drew that leg. Then we’ll break that down to mini actions, and see what you can use from what you already know. And I’ll teach you whatever you’re missing.

Ron’s brand of curiosity enabled me to make some unconscious skills conscious, and add new expertise where I was missing it in places I wouldn’t have looked. His curiosity had different biases from mine. He:

• entered our discussion assuming I already had all of the answers I needed;
• only added information specifically where I was missing some;
• helped me find my own answers and be available to add knowledge in the exact place I was missing it.

My own curiosity would have gotten me nowhere. Here was my internal dialogue:

How the hell do I draw a twisted shoulder? This sucks. Is this an eye/hand problem? Should I be looking differently? I need an anatomy class. Should I be holding my charcoal differently? Is it too big a piece? I can’t see a shadow near his shoulder. Should I put in a false shadow to help me get the proportions right?

Ron’s curiosity – based on me already possessing the skills I needed – opened a wide range of possibilities for me. I never, ever would have found that solution on my own because my automatic assumptions would have limited my curiosity to little more than an extension of my current knowledge and beliefs.

WHAT IS CURIOSITY?

Curiosity is a good thing, right? As you can see from my story, it’s far more restricted than we imagine it would be. But what is it? Wikipedia defines curiosity thus: a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and animal species.

What, exactly, does this mean? What’s ‘inquisitive thinking’? Does it matter that everyone’s inquisitiveness is subjective, unique, and limited by their biases? ‘Evident by observation’? Evident to whom? And by what/whose standards? And ‘observation’? Really?

In this article, I’ll explore what stops us from being curious (and why it’s so difficult to recognize or learn from the data we find),  offer loads of questions that will take you beyond assumptions, and steps to follow to enhance our curiosity.

Sample

IT’S A BRAIN THING

We all see, hear, feel the world through our subjectivity. Our assumptions, what we notice, what we’re curious about, is largely automatic mostly outside our control. Even worse, adding new ideas when we seek out answers to what we’re curious about is not so simple as, well, adding new ideas; it’s a listening problem and a brain problem.

Listening: It’s hard for us to take in new information when it goes against what we take for granted. Because of the way our brain filters incoming words, we end up (unwittingly) restricting what we think we hear Others say according to our own beliefs and history, i.e. subjectively. As a result we may not readily accept new ideas that are different from what we currently believe because we ‘hear’ them through our own biases, even if they offer relevant data on what we’re curious about.

Neural Circuits (brains): We can only be as curious as our existing neural circuits allow. Said another way our curiosity is restricted to what we have stored in memory, and we can’t notice, think, etc. anything we don’t have representative circuitry for. Try as we might, our subjectivity rules our lives.

Since our exploration involves some unconscious ‘givens’, here are some questions to inspire a broader curiosity:

• How can we know that the information we retrieve is accurate, complete, or the most useful data available?
• Can we be certain that our data gathering was sufficiently broad?
• How do we know that a new piece of learning is important, even though it feels uncomfortable and we want to dismiss it?
• Can we supersede our biases that we judge all incoming data against?

Hence, I pose the question: can we really ever be entirely curious?

Part 2 will be published next Monday, 10/27/25. It explains how we’re curious and offers suggestions to enhance our curiosity.

_________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com, https://sharondrew1.substack.com/, and https://medium.com/@sharondrew_9898/. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen October 20th, 2025

Posted In: News