Thank You. We Appreciate You: a case study in caring for employees

Early this morning I went to my favorite ‘big box’ supermarket, WinCo. If you’re not in one of the 5 states where it operates (Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, and Oregon), you may not be familiar with it and I’d like to introduce you. WinCo is an employee-owned food-supply chain that cares as much for its employees as it does for its customers. As a result, the customer service and store care is exceptional: the stores are spotless, well-stocked, and employees are easy to find if you have a question, not to mention always kind, informed, and personal. And it’s always a surprise to find items I purchase in more specialty stores – even Amazon! – at least 40% cheaper! Who knew my favorite Roasted Salsa Verde (Herdez) was available at half the price! I love this store and am willing to drive out of my way to shop there. As I was walking down an aisle I noticed a tall woman and young man walk over to a much older man as he was cleaning the floors:

Woman: We’d like to give you a gift (She handed him an envelope – I assume it was a check.) for all the hard work you do and how well you take care of us all. You always go the extra step to make this store even better. We deeply appreciate you and all do you for us. We all thank you.

I must admit I stopped in my tracks and began crying a bit. I had never heard this in any store, nor have I been aware of supermarkets gifting and thanking employees for their service. I sought the woman (his manager?) out.

SD: Do you choose an ‘employee of the month’ each month and hand out checks to the winners?

Woman: No. It’s on an individual basis. Sometimes we hand out a few in one month, sometimes only a few a year. It depends. When we notice someone doing a great job we reward them and let them know they’re important to us. It’s pretty simple. We take care of each other and show our appreciation when one of us shines.

‘We take care of each other’. So simple! When was the last time you let an employee, one of your staff or team, know how much they were appreciated? Went out of your way to take care of them? OUR EMPLOYEES ARE OUR FIRST CUSTOMERS When I started up my tech company in 1983 in London I had never run a business before. But even without knowing ‘the rules’ I knew it was as important to care for my team as well as I cared for clients. To that end I put in place some initiatives to make sure they felt taken care of. Every year I gave the management team a fully paid week off and a $3,000 check for tuition and travel to take any type of course they wanted (Photography? Pottery?), even if the subject matter had nothing to do with their jobs. The goal was to help them keep their brains creative and curious. Certainly a way to let them know I appreciated them. I also didn’t give them vacation time per se but told them to take off whatever time they needed (so long as they covered their responsibilities) when they felt they weren’t operating on all cylinders. I told them I trusted them to know when they needed rest – it wasn’t about the time. Surprisingly I had to force them to take time off. I would call their wives – and in those days (1980’s) the team was mostly men and the women were usually at home doing child care – tell them to give the kids to the grandparents for a few days, and keep their husbands in bed. To make sure they had plenty of time to relax, I had restaurants deliver food to them so no one had to cook or shop. My folks would return rested with happy faces. Because it was quite important to me that we all meshed even though in scattered locations, I took my inside and outside folks to a pub once a month for beer and darts. I always lost (I never figured out darts in all my years in London!); out of pity, I suspect, they then bought the next round. FIELD FOLKS BROUGHT IN BUSINESS To keep abreast of the field folks (the techies) and make sure they felt like part of the company, I called each of them once a month to check in. Sure, I only had 40 people in the field so it was doable (My secretary would schedule the calls to make sure we connected). One of the pluses of my check-ins was they would tell me when our client was preparing to upgrade the program/package we supported. I knew the vendor had a team that installed it, but that would have taken business away from us and we could easily do the installation. I certainly wanted to be involved with any follow-on work. I would then call my client before the new software was installed and asked if they’d be willing to continue working with us if they brought in new software. Of course they were happy to have us do the work, given my staff’s excellence. This factor alone caused my business to explode. I once even got a call from the vendor: “You’re killing me. Clients order an upgrade but don’t hire us to do any programming because you’re already handling it. How do you get in there so fast?” My colleagues chided me when they found out how well I took care of my peeps: “Are you running a spa?” they’d ask. “Don’t you think your folks will take advantage?” I think they were jealous, but that didn’t stop them from trying to hire my staff away from me. I would hear grumbles at conferences, gossip that they were offering big bucks to lure my folks away. But nope, I never lost an employee to anything other than relocation in four years. They were happy. Together we grew the business from zero to almost $5,000,000 in under four years – with no internet (1984 -1988), no websites, no email, no Twitter, no LinkedIn. Just me – a rookie entrepreneur – and my team remained dedicated to caring for our clients and each other. WHO IS YOUR CLIENT? I believe our employees are our first customers – happy staff happy clients. Why do we forget this? How is it possible that some of the larger companies are known to have high turnover, low pay, and very strict hours with rules designed to minimize variance and kill the creative spirit rather than maximize kindness and respect? Why are companies willing to harm employees, to be disrespectful and unkind, just to save a buck? When did money become more important than values or humanity? What are they saving, anyway? When I did consulting work at KPMG I noticed a bravado about working all night, or 80 hour weeks. No surprise that many of the partners were on their third marriages – almost all on their second. Working that hard – hard enough to ignore sleep, relationships, food – was a highly valued part of the culture. Why? Why don’t we take care of our employees better? Trust them and their ideas? Take time to listen to them? Make them understand that without them we can’t be successful? How did people become expendable to save money at all costs? I know a very large, successful multinational that forces all levels of employees to spend hours preparing for meetings with senior managers where they’d have to make a case to receive modest funds – even $200! – for an online skills course or money for needed coaching. It’s a misuse of everyone’s time, disrespectful, and not even rational. Why not give mid-level managers a slush fund to have on hand when someone needs something and trust their judgement!? Why not hire people you can trust and let them decide what their folks need? We all put so much energy into our clients and customers so we can make money. Why don’t we offer our staff the same respect? We spend a fortune hiring and training the ‘right’ people and then create rules and restrictions to control them. We treat them like chits, like cogs in a wheel and make them replaceable, ‘things’ without value. And yet we want them to deliver for us and complain about turnover, about their lack of ownership. What we lose is not only ideas and loyalty, but the spirit of a man, the heart of a woman. We too often make our employees objects. I’ve interviewed middle managers in large corporations who tell me they’ve stopped bringing in new ideas because they don’t get heard, or live only for their vacation time because they’re so miserable and stay only because they’re getting paid so well. Let’s take as good care of our employees as we do our clients and customers. Let’s make sure everyone is given the time, the respect, the remuneration, to work in an environment that is filled with kindness, trust, creativity, collaboration and ideas so they can’t wait to come to work each day. Let’s treasure each of our employees. They are, indeed, special. That’s why we hired them. What’s the cost? What’s the cost if we don’t?

__________________________

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

Sharon Drew Morgen May 1st, 2023

Posted In: News

13 Steps of Change

Change management is one of those core competencies that seems to mean different things to different people. Whatever the methods used, however, the process of achieving change is fraught with problems: resistance; failure of user or leadership buy-in; time delays. And those who notice the problems don’t take responsibility for fixing them, stating “It’s not my job.”

Currently many projects are defined, level-set and lead by ‘leaders’ who don’t touch the problem daily, nor whose jobs will be most disturbed by the new solution. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but unless

• the lion’s share of the data gathering is from those who intimately know the problem, and
• those who execute the new have a real voice in creating the change,

challenges will arise. And without buy-in from these folks, without a real voice in the design of the transformation, they have no desire to take an extra step when a problem crops up.

THE CAUSE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS

Let me describe what I believe are the issues that account for the problems:

1. Problem definition: Too often only chosen ‘leaders’ define the problem and set the goals without gathering the full problem description from those who work with it daily. That means the solution will be skewered to the assumptions of those without first-hand involvement and the proposed solution may not address the full problem set. It goes without saying that if problems arise, those on the front line won’t ‘own’ it when it goes wrong.

I had a persistent cable issue. To fix it, Xfinity sent out 8 techs over the course of 5 months. Each stayed exactly 20 minutes. The problem never got resolved until the last tech, Tom, who said he would stay as long it took to fix it. But he admitted he feared losing his job as corporate regs allowed only 20 minutes per house. Tom said he and several other field techs had tried to explain the field issues to leadership but they wouldn’t take feedback from the service techs.

Net-net, Tom resolved the problem permanently in 40 minutes. Let’s do the math: 8 people at 20 minutes each = 160 minutes, instead of 40 minutes for one person. Xfinity spent an additional hour, squandering the time of 7 extra people, including their travel time, salaries and expenses. And I’m one customer. Multiply this waste by millions. How much money, time, resource, and reputation are they wasting by putting time (such as it was) before people?

2. Front-line users overlooked at project start: Without immediately involving the people with the most knowledge (details and nuances) and who would be most impacted by the new solution, it’s impossible to

• gather the full set of facts to define the problem,
• understand the possible risks to the project or long-term operations,
• generate efficient buy-in or willingness to take responsibility to own a problem,
• avoid resistance and time delays,
• develop a full range of ideas and choices for resolution.

In other words, when the full stakeholder group isn’t involved until midway through the process, when the folks needed to carry out the new solution are overlooked at the early stages of development, they resist.

I recently got a call from one of the leaders of the Business Process Management field. He wanted to learn my 13 Steps of Change model as an antidote to the resistance, time delays, and lack of buy-in that has plagued the field for decades. When he showed me the BPM model I noticed that front-line workers weren’t brought into a process until Step 6! Why so late? “Leaders know enough about the issues to set the goals and expectations. We give these folks a say when we tell them what we expect.” But by then the overall solution had been established! “It would take too much time to do all that! Far more efficient for the leaders to do it themselves. They know the problems well-enough.” Seems he’d rather handle the time delays and resistance at the back end than spend time upfront and risk not getting great results with a collaborative team that owns the problem.

3. Risks unknown: Until the risks of change are understood and accepted by those who face altered jobs, the people needed to perform the new solution will resist. When brought in at the beginning they have a voice in defining and creating a solution and time frame they approve of. As an integrated part of the project, they’re then happy to take responsibility for any problems that show up going forward.

It’s possible to avoid these issues with a different approach and mindset.

CHANGE FACILITATION

In 1983 I started up a tech company in London, long before technology was ubiquitous, long before any of us knew the optimal environment for tech startups. Coming from a sales background I had no knowledge of running a company, merely a belief that if I served both employees and customers with integrity in an environment of trust, kindness, collaboration, and creativity, we’d be successful. But I had no idea how to achieve it.

I decided to tweak my mind->brain decision making/change model, originally developed as Buying Facilitation® for sales, to a 13 Step Change Facilitation model that involves assembling the relevant people in initial data gathering, problem-solving discussions, timeline determinations, implementation, and solution design. This helped us work together as partners to define and resolve problems very efficiently with maximum buy-in and ownership. Because of the full team collaboration we were able to

• gather most of the complete data set the start;
• include everyone’s feedback, ideas, and needs in the goal;
• work as a collaborative unit throughout the length of the initiative as we trialed and re-trialed possibilities;
• avoid time delays and resistance, and minimizes risk;
• inspire ownership so we all took responsibility when a problem showed up;
• make changes easily with everyone’s buy-in so the end product was creative, useful, and easy to modify when necessary.

Our change initiatives and problem solving made us stronger as a team. Together we became a $5,000,000 company in just under 4 years – with no computers, no email, no internet, no websites, no LinkedIn, no brand reputation, and no social media.

13 STEPS OF CHANGE

Here are the 13 Steps of Change that all people, all buyers, all team members, all coaching clients go through as they seek successful change:
1. Idea stage. Someone has an idea that something needs to change and begins discussing the idea with colleagues.

2. Assembly stage. The originator assembles a meeting of those who have hands on the problem, leaders and colleagues. We include those who will touch the final solution right at the start to insure they’ll buy in and be comfortable taking ownership of the change design. All discuss their knowledge of the issues and problems, consider who to else to include to understand the full fact pattern, chat about ideas for possible fixes and the fallout each might entail. Small groups are formed to research ways to fix the problem with known resources.

3. Consideration stage. Full group meets to discuss research findings and consider ways to fix the problem either themselves or with known resources (known vendors, other departments). Discuss the type of fallout/risk from each.

4. Organization stage. Steps to go forward are tentatively considered as trial possibilities, with the understanding that unknown issues might crop up and need to be included. Responsibilities get assigned to research the possibilities. All must agree on the initial path or offer alternate suggestions.

5. Change Management Risk stage. Using the research there’s a meeting to determine

a. if more research is necessary (and who will do it),

b. if all appropriate people are involved (and who else to include),

c. if all elements of the problem and solution have been included (and what to add),

d. the level of potential disruption and risk to jobs (and how to handle each),

e. possible workarounds or alternatives.

Determine what might be missing. Each subgroup must submit a report explaining the tasks and specific risks of each of the above.

6. Addition stage. Add new ideas and findings including the needs of new members. Discuss upsides and downsides of each possible choice and the risks involved for people, policies, job descriptions, finances, and politics. Whatever gets added now must be approved by all. Any resistance must be addressed here. Subgroups now own a specific portion of the solution.

7. Research and change stage. Members research their assigned part of the solution including

* online research—webinars, etc.,

* possible vendors and external solutions,

* risks from their portion of the solution, to include management, policies, job descriptions, implementation, technology, HR issues, etc.

and prepare a report to share with group.

8. Consensus stage. Members meet to share their research. Again, discuss the risks of each possible solution. Now that details are available, vote whether to fix the problem themselves, go ‘outside’ for a solution, or decide if the ‘cost’, the risks, of the change are too high (massive reorg needed, people would be let go, etc.) and if it’s best to remain with the status quo. If it’s determined to fix the problem themselves, the folks thoroughly discuss any problems that might show up and assign responsibilities.

9. Choice stage. Once it’s decided to go either ‘outside’ for a solution (make a purchase, hire a consultant), fix the problem inhouse, or keep the status quo, action responsibilities are assigned to manage and mitigate risk: write and share a report that states the

* tasks/jobs that will change and resultant fallout;

* templates to manage and maintain outcomes;

* providers/products/solutions;

path to actions, choices, job descriptions, necessary rule changes, risk mitigation, etc.

10. Transformation begins. All that has been agreed upon gets put into action. Permanent leaders are assigned in each subgroup. Activity plans and schedules are aligned between groups. A subgroup is formed to oversee the activities and report back to main group.

11. Vendor/solution selection. If going outside for a solution, vendors are contacted and interviewed or solutions trialed. For internal fixes, phased plans finalized. Each choice must match the team’s criteria; the risks of the solution must be noted.

12. New solution chosen. Review data from application trials and vendor interviews. Choose solution or vendor. Have a plan to incorporate change management issues and risk possibilities and share with the vendor. Everyone agrees. Plans of change must be approved by each stakeholder involved.

13. New solution implemented.

How different is this from what you’re currently doing? What would stop you from adding any elements you’ve missed? Until or unless everyone who touches a problem is part of the solution, costly problems will show up. If you’re in need of an external consultant to facilitate your change process, please call me. I’d love to help: 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 the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen April 24th, 2023

Posted In: News

Stop Trying to Persuade; Facilitate Decision Making Instead

I recently heard a project manager in a software services company mention a ‘very important’ book on persuasion that she passed on to her team. I was curious why she liked it.

S: It’s vital we persuade our clients. My team must learn to use the right words to convince them they’re wrong, and get them to change their thinking so we can do what we need to do.

SD: You convince your clients they’re wrong and want to change their thinking so they’ll agree for you to do what you want, even if they don’t agree? And use persuasion strategies rather than maybe facilitate them through a collaborative decision making process and find ways to meld ideas and agree together?

S: They don’t want to agree and we don’t want them to collaborate. They start off wanting it their way. From years of working with these sorts of problems, we know what they need better than they do. That’s why we need to use the best persuasion techniques to change their minds.

I found the conversation unsettling. WHAT IS PERSUASION – AND WHY IS IT DISRESPECTFUL? When I looked up persuasion, seems Aristotle defined it with the terms Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Google defines it as an ‘act of convincing’ ‘to put his/her audience into a state of conflict’. The concept has been around a long time – probably since God persuaded the Serpent to eat the apple. Sales strategies employ persuasion to convince people to buy; doctors and healthcare professionals employ biased stories to encourage patients to act, or behave, in ways the docs consider beneficial; coaches use influencing strategies to persuade clients to make the changes the coach recommends. But these strategies are largely ineffective: Not only will people not do what the influencer wants them to do, but they’ll most likely distrust the influencer even if it turns out the influencer is accurate. By persuading another to do what you want them to do you’re taking away their agency, their personal power, and usurping it for your own need to be right. Not to mention preventing a more robust, and dare I say more creative, outcome to emerge. My definition is a bit different: persuasion is an influencer’s attempt to get another person to do what the influencer wants, regardless of its efficacy, regardless of the omission of a potentially more creative solution, and even when it goes against the person’s wishes. Persuaders assume they’re ‘right’. I once ran a Buying Facilitation® training program for the Covey Leadership Center. They were the most manipulative sales folks I’d ever met. Given that Covey espoused spiritual values, I was surprised. When I questioned their use of persuasion tactics I was told: “Of course we use persuasion tactics! It’s our responsibility to convince people to use the practices we espouse!” PERSUASION BREAKS SPIRITUAL LAWS For me, trying to convince another to do what you want them to do breaks a spiritual law: everyone has the right to their own opinions, beliefs, choices, and actions, and the right to behave according to their own self-interest and values. I believe it’s disrespectful and an act of hubris, even if I think – especially if I ‘know’! – I’m right. No one, no one, can be ‘right’ for another person. Not to mention being ‘right’ is subjective and not necessarily ‘right’. I looked up ‘persuasion strategies’ to learn what ‘experts’ suggest. They all include finely honed tactics and subliminal convincer strategies:

* Find common ground! * Use their names often! * Prepare for arguments! * Make it seem beneficial to them! * Be confident! * Flatter them and appeal to their emotions! *Motivate action!

Ploys to manipulate, to influence at all costs. But what’s the cost? A disgruntled, resentful buyer. A client or patient who won’t use your services again and becomes distrusting. The loss of collaboratively thinking together that can discover an outcome that’s win/win for both and potentially even more effective over time than the influencer’s suggestions. Regardless of the outcome, win/lose just doesn’t exist. It’s either win/win or lose/lose. If everyone doesn’t win, everyone loses. By using force instead of real power to enable the Other to discover her own route to excellence, you’re disrespecting them. Why, I ask, would anyone want to persuade another to go beyond their own beliefs, or choices, or intentions? Maybe because it’s the only way they can get what they want? Maybe because they believe the other is harming themselves? Maybe because of a political, or scientific, argument? Whatever the case, persuasion is not only disrespectful, but ineffective.

1. An ‘I’m right so you should listen to me’ framework operates from win/lose, disrespect, and distrust (‘I obviously know better than you’).
2. Persuasion uses judgmental language based on an ‘I know/you don’t’ framework, making the other person ‘stupid’ or ‘unaware’ – certainly ‘less-than’.
3. Persuasion ignores another’s needs, feelings, and considerations, and offers no room for a more robust solution based on the knowledge the Other has of their own environment.
4. Persuasion assumes only one person understands the full fact pattern of what’s going on, thereby ignoring the Other’s knowledge and reality that can never be fully understood by an outsider. Indeed, the only person who understands the full fact pattern is the Other.

Persuasion is one-sided and makes false assumptions when influencers believe their suggestions are the best options; that the internal relationships, politics, values, history, of the Other are not worthy of consideration; that the persuader ‘should’ be heeded because they’re ‘in authority’; or – worse of all – that the person isn’t capable of figuring out their own route forward. CASE STUDY My neighbor Maria came to my house crying one day. 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 spent time persuading her to stop eating whatever she was eating because his list of foods was essential to her health. 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. She’d tried to listen to her doc, she didn’t want to be sick, but she just couldn’t do what the doc requested. 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: I know your doc wants you to change your eating habits for health reasons. I’ll ask you some questions that might lead you to ways to help you figure out how to eat healthier. I’ll start at the very beginning. Who are you?

Maria: I’m a wife, mother and grandmother.

SDM: As a wife, mother and grandmother, what are your beliefs and values?

Maria: I believe I’m responsible for feeding my family in a way that makes them happy.

SDM: What is it you’re doing now that makes them happy?

Maria: My family all live nearby. Every morning I get up early and make 150 tortillas. When they go to work and school in the morning, they stop by and I hand them out to each for their breakfast and lunch. I always make enough for me and Joe to have for breakfast. The doctor says they’re bad for me with all the lard in them and that I must stop eating them. I’ve tried to stop, but they’re a big part of my diet. When the doctor said to stop eating them, I felt he doesn’t want me to love my family.

SDM: So I hear that tortillas are the way you keep your family happy. 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 enchiladas. They don’t have lard, and my family loves them. And my daughter Sonia makes tortillas almost as good as mine.

Then we figured out a terrific plan. Maria invited her entire family for dinner and presented Sonia with her tortilla pan outfitted with a big red bow. She told her family she couldn’t make tortillas any more due to health reasons, but Sonia, the new “Tortilla Tia,” would make them tortillas every day just like Maria did, and she’d make them enchiladas once a week instead. Maria then proceeded to lose 15 pounds, kept the weight off, and is no longer pre-diabetic. WHAT PERSUASION MISSES In this case study, the doctor attempted to persuade Maria to do what he thought best with a conventional one-size-fits-all food plan. Yet with the proper questions, an intent to facilitate collaboration and discovery, he could have led her to figure out for herself how to solve the problem her own way, using her own history and values. The diet the doc gave her went against her lifestyle, but he was so intent on doing what he thought ‘best’ he overlooked Maria’s own power to figure out her own solution. Ultimately, she didn’t need persuasion, she needed a facilitated conversation that enabled Maria to discover her own best choices. Imagine your job is to facilitate folks through their own route to Excellence. Persuasion tactics seek to meet the needs of the persuader, without accounting for the Other’s discovery through their personal beliefs and lifestyle realities:

• the questions persuaders pose are biased by their own needs and omit/ignore large swathes of potentially applicable, and certainly private, data points that are important to the Other;
• listeners interpret what they hear as per historic matches in their brain circuits (see my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) causing a limited and biased understanding, regardless of what influencers are trying to share;
• persuaders work from subjective criteria and don’t take into account the values, beliefs, lifestyles, of the Others, unwittingly causing the Other conflict that the persuader cannot know, and overlooks more creative and workable options that they could discover together.

Regardless of how ‘right’ you or your solution might be, if the Other feels like you’re pushing, or forcing, or manipulating; if you’re asking biased questions based on YOUR need to know so you can use it against them; it’s pretty hard to persuade anyone without there being resentment. Not to mention can you truly believe that YOUR way is the BEST way for another person, and they have no agency to figure out their own route? COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATION Here are a few tips to guide an unbiased conversation that eventually leads the Other to discovering a path forward using their own values.

1. Goal: your goal is to help the Other discover their own criteria and actions for change, NOT to get the Other to do what you want!
2. Intent: your job is to facilitate another through to their own discovery by directing them down their own trajectory of change, not toward the result the influencer seeks.
3. Understanding: you can never, ever, understand what’s going on for Another. Ever. But you can lead them to understand themselves through facilitated discovery.
4. Questions: I invented a form of question called a Facilitative Question that walks Others down the trajectory of their own self-discovery with NO bias from you. They are based on the steps people go through when deciding to change and NOT based on your need-to-know, assumptions, or curiosity. Properly formulated, they have no bias but enable bias-free discovery in a way that the Other’s system will not reject.

Instead of trying to persuade, why not try collaborative conversation and facilitated questioning so you both can discover, together, a win/win that serves you both. Instead of it being either/or, why not both/and? And just maybe, use your connection to trust Others to discover their own answers.

_____________________________

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

Sharon Drew Morgen March 6th, 2023

Posted In: News

Seeking Appointments is Costing You Sales

Have you ever wondered why people agree to an appointment from your prospecting calls? Obviously, it’s not because they need your solution or they wouldn’t incur an 80-90% fail rate (higher if you count from your first prospecting call). You’re charming, your solution great, your pitch deck is creative and your content informative. So it’s not you or your solution.

But ask yourself: if people agree to a meeting but are not likely to buy, why did they take the meeting? Choose one from below:

• They needed information to help them resolve their problem internally.
• One or two people from a team are gathering information to convince others of possible solutions for a need not yet fully established.
• They’re comparing your information against your competitors.
• One or two people are representing the team as they progress toward resolving a problem and they need ideas to discover their own workarounds.

With a goal to get an appointment, you’re wasting valuable time chasing after folks who aren’t ready to buy, or aren’t buyers at all. You’re:

1. creating a double sale – the first being to get them to buy the appointment;
2. calling people who haven’t (yet) self-identified as buyers, are in the middle of their discovery process, and don’t see a need for an appointment;
3. placing hundreds of calls to get one appointment when you could use the same time/effort to actually find a real buyer and make a sale.

By seeking anyone who will take an appointment, you’re making it possible for folks to use you to glean information. But there’s a bigger downside: you’re not recognizing or serving people on route to becoming buyers – real prospects who WILL buy when they complete their change/decision process.

WHAT YOU MISS WHEN SEEKING AN APPOINTMENT

Have you ever wondered how many real prospects you discard on route to seeking an appointment? With a ‘need’ and ‘appointment’ focus, you’re missing real prospects on route to becoming buyers but haven’t completed their journey. And it’s costing you sales.

Instead you could be using your time finding folks who will be buyers and facilitating their necessary Pre-Sales change management journey through discovery and buy-in – what I consider the Buy Side. Until then, they won’t even look at marketing or sales content!

By seeking an appointment you’re missing an opportunity to find pre-prospects, facilitate them through their essential change work, then sell to them once they’re self-identified buyers. All buyers must go through this process anyway! Unfortunately, the sales model overlooks helping this entire group of highly viable prospects because they don’t yet recognize ‘need’. But when you facilitate their journey to discovery (and they’re easy to find – but not with a ‘need’ focus) they very quickly and easily buy.

The missing piece here is the difference between the two buying processes: the Sell Side and the Buy Side. To facilitate buying, to find people on route to becoming buyers but not yet ready to engage with you, you need to think from the Buy Side. And the Buy Side has very specific considerations currently overlooked by the Sell Side.

THE SELL SIDE VS THE BUY SIDE

By contacting people with only a sales hat on, before they’ve

• completed their stakeholder assembly,
• recognized the full set of criteria that defines their problem,
• tried familiar workarounds,
• assessed their risk and found it manageable,

you’re discarding highly qualified prospects (40%) who won’t take a meeting but could use your help. By focusing on the Sell Side and overlooking the Buy Side decision process, you’re missing your sweet spot: helping people as they fumble through their factors to determine if their risk of going ‘outside’ (to buy something, to bring in a consultant, etc.) is worth the disruption that bringing in something new causes.

Turns out that risk is the deciding factor if someone buys, not need; defining and controlling for it constitutes 70% of their decision path! And this must occur before they can buy anything, regardless of need.

SELLING DOESN’T CAUSE BUYING

The sales model has no relevance in the Pre-Sales change management decisions all people take before self-identifying as buyers. Consequently, selling doesn’t cause buying as they are two wholly different concepts: A buying decision is relational – change management and risk driven; sales is tactical – solution placement driven.

When people have a problem they don’t BEGIN by considering or making a purchase (tactical), but by figuring out all the systemic stuff they need to figure out (relational) to end up with a change that aligns with internal norms. No one wants to buy anything, merely resolve a problem at the least risk to their culture/system.

By focusing on getting appointments, you’re not only overlooking and discarding these very viable prospects, you’re neglecting a perfect opportunity to get on their side of the table and provide value-add that would facilitate them through the steps they must take before they’re buyers. It’s only when their

• change management work is complete
• AND all (all!) stakeholders are involved
• AND they’ve realized they cannot resolve the problem on their own
• AND they have the buy-in to proceed
• AND they understand the ‘cost’ (risk) of any change caused by a new solution,

that they’re buyers.

This is where they ‘go’ when you think they’re dragging their feet or having ‘indecision’. By helping them precisely where they need help, you’re collapsing the sales cycle by at least half and creating a competitive advantage. And most of my clients end up on the Buying Decision Team because they’ve been so helpful.

But this requires you begin with a different goal and new skills, seeking people on route to change in the area you can support. Because their Pre-Sales change work is based on people, policy, buy-in, change, and resource, you’d be meeting them on the Buy Side.

Remaining on the Sell Side and limiting your skills to trying to making appointments or place solutions ensures you’ll only find the low hanging fruit – people who are ready to buy – when it’s so easy to find folks on route to buying and facilitating their journey. Not finding or facilitating folks on route to becoming buyers is costing you sales; limiting your role to seeking appointments in search of closing sales is wasting your time.

DALE CARNEGIE DID IT SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

In 1937, Dale Carnegie told you to make face-to-face sales calls. In those days, there was little choice: cars were rare and quite expensive, phones were party line, and advertising was the Sears Catalogue that came out once a year.

These days, the internet transmits your content making your pitch unnecessary. But it’s much bigger than that; buying decision teams are no longer in one venue; people have partners and old vendors willing to help them resolve problems; and the time it takes them to understand if the risk of change carries too much disruption is the length of the sales cycle.

Before anyone becomes a buyer they have internal change work to do. To truly facilitate this end of the buying decision path, it takes a new goal at the beginning (find folks IN their change process instead of trolling for ‘need’ or appointments) and wholly new skills.

I’ve invented a facilitation model (Buying Facilitation®) that begins with a ‘change’ focus and finds and serves these folks on route to becoming buyers but can’t consider themselves buyers until they’ve managed all the change issues and understand their internal risk.

With a goal of finding people during their change/decision cycle, Buying Facilitation® closes 40% from first call by facilitating them down their essential change/decision steps and then selling: Once they’ve discovered ALL the stakeholders, understand the full fact pattern, gotten buy-in and establish risk tolerance, then they’re ready to buy. They might even ask you to visit them and will have 10 people present. Then you’re a true servant leader.

I’m suggesting you expand your skill set to add ‘facilitate the Pre-Sales buying decision path’ before you sell. You can use this on your cold calls and close 40% from first call. Otherwise, you’re wasting so much of your valuable time seeking appointments with people who aren’t buyers.

__________________________

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

Sharon Drew Morgen February 13th, 2023

Posted In: News

Can We Know When We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know?

Years ago I visited a spa where 4 magnificent macaws stood on individual perches, each with a long, not necessarily heavy, chain around one of its legs. Yet the chains were not attached to anything: if the birds had known what they didn’t know, they could have easily flown away.

I was reminded of that recently when sitting with a close friend starting up a company. I suggested he write down 1. What he knew he knew; 2. What he knew he didn’t know; 3. What he didn’t know he didn’t know (This being impossible, but the column needed to be there as you’ll see.). A long-time friend, James was always up for my mischief. He promptly began writing a list of what he knew that he knew. As I looked on, knowing him as long as I did, I noticed two items I knew for certain he did NOT know.

I told him I had doubts about some of the items he thought he knew and that they belonged in the ‘don’t know that I don’t know’ column. I asked him how he’d know if thought he knew something but in fact was mistaken.

“Oh. I guess there’s no way to know unless I fail. Without knowing there’s any other option, I wouldn’t even know when I need help or the kind of help I needed.”

A similar situation came up recently when a colleague explained how his sales team ‘truly cared’, and ‘truly served’ prospects. When I asked him what skills he was using to care and serve, he rattled off the same skills he used when selling. And even though we’d known each other for some time and he’d read a couple of my books, it never occurred to him to contact me to learn additional skills he knew I’d developed specifically for what he was doing. Why? Because his results were ‘wildly successful’ – a close rate ‘higher than others’ (10% success vs 5% industry standard – but still a 90% failure). He never stopped to consider that he could have been much more successful with additional skills. He didn’t know what he didn’t know.

OUR BRAIN

So how do we know when we don’t know what we don’t know? We don’t even know how to think or consider something outside our assumptions or beliefs, or something not already in our neural makeup. There’s just no way to know what outcomes, risks or rewards, skills, comparators, or thought processes are possible. So how do we attain the courage to do something different when we have no way to even think about it?

Let’s consider how we do anything at all. Our brain instigates our actions, thoughts, what we hear, how we decide and choose, how we behave. When we have an idea or goal, hear a lecture or are given a directive, our brain

• receives and filters (some deletion involved) incoming vibrations – words being meaningless puffs of air until our brain translates them – and
• turns them into electrochemical signals that
• get sent down well-worn pathways (superhighways) that
• lead to existing, ‘similar-enough’ circuits (some deletion involved) that
• instigate habitual behaviors and outcomes.

In other words, whatever we think, hear or read enters our mind as sound vibrations that end up being (mis)translated through some conglomeration of synapses, pathways, circuits, etc. and we end up ‘hearing’ little more than something we have previously experienced, regardless of the facts. And our brain doesn’t tell us what havoc it’s played: we just assume what we think we heard is accurate.

I was once meeting with a couple who were licensing some of my material. I made a comment that John interpreted what I said as X when I actually said Y. I carefully explained, again, what I’d said. Here is what followed:

John: You didn’t say that! I heard you say X with my own ears!

SD: No, John. You misheard. I said Y.

Wife: John – she really said Y. I was standing right here. You heard her wrong.

John: YOU’RE BOTH LYING!

And he stomped out of the room, and never spoke to me again.

Listening is a brain thing, causing us to interpret incoming sound vibrations according to where among our 100 trillion neural circuits the sound vibrations get sent. [See my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard?] Indeed, we hear some rendition of what a Speaker means to say, and rarely ‘hear’ accurately. Let me explain.

The way our brain turns signals into behaviors, ideas, or thoughts, determines everything we hear, think, and do. Usually it’s a good thing. It’s how we know to get up in the morning, put our slippers on, and brush our teeth. It’s how we make our decisions, go on our diets, make our New Year’s resolution. But it’s restrictive. In fact, and I still get annoyed about this, our brains automatically pretty much keep us doing what we’ve always done and we have very little say in the matter.

Indeed, we live our lives restricted and directed by how our neural circuits translate for us. And certainly, that provides a lifetime’s worth of choices. But: our curiosity, our ideas, are restricted by what’s already there.

I’ve developed a model to make it possible to change habits and behaviors by consciously adjusting your unconscious hierarchies and neural pathways. It includes wholly new skills, tools, and thought process with a hands-on learning and Belief change process.

Can we know what we don’t know that we don’t know? Because when we can’t, we’re left with the results of fewer choices with no way to know what to look for if we need to add something new.

WHAT’S IN THE WAY OF ENCOURAGING ‘NOT KNOWING’

Don’t get me wrong. none of us ever intends to mishear, or misunderstand, or restrict ourselves. But we’re basically out of choice, never told what our brain has edited or deleted, or what other choices were possible if our brain chose different circuits to translate the incoming vibrations.

Let me share my thoughts on some of the reasons I think people have a hard time getting beyond what they know (or don’t know they don’t know):

1. Ego. People have a hard time acknowledging they are ‘deficient’. I’m not sure why. My question is: “What would stop you from seeking assistance at those times you’re aware that you are missing knowledge? Those times you have a pattern of failing and have no additional options?”
2. Assumptions. When we presume we know something, we have no reason to think differently. Unfortunately, when failure occurs we have a ‘blame’ response since we, obviously, can’t be wrong and the Other, obviously, must be the culprit. Entire fields are based on Others being wrong because they don’t heed the provider (healthcare, sales, coaching, etc.).
3. Denial. Wrong? I’m not doing anything wrong. Better? I already know how to do that. I really don’t want to change. I know my stuff is better. Why should I want to know what I don’t know when I already know what’s best? Sometimes people prefer their own ideas and ignore incoming content that would lead them to greater success.
4. Listening Bias. Sometimes we are so committed to a specific outcome and approach that we consider successful that we listen to others through very biased ears and allow our brain to tell us what we want to hear…without question. I try to avoid this by seeking answers from people from different industries, or countries. But when we enter a situation with the end in mind, whatever we hear, whatever we take away, will be biased by our history.
5. Fixed Views. We become attached – both emotionally and neurologically – to what we know. With a habituated superhighway that leads us straight to oft-used answers and beliefs, we dislike going through the decoupling process to accept and adopt a new answer.

Net net, due to our lazy brain and idiosyncratic personalities, there’s no way to naturally recognize when we don’t know what we don’t know. This makes it quite difficult to learn anything new until we fail and it becomes obvious.

HINTS

Here are a few ideas that might lead to more choice:

1. When you face confusion, it’s because your brain’s dispatch unit (the Central Executive Network) can’t find an existing set of circuits to translate or interpret new ideas – a perfect time to recognize there’s something you don’t know.
2. When you’ve had repeated failure, there’s something you’re missing. What needs to happen for you to get curious? Assume there are better answers somewhere?
3. Ask others who know more than you do. Here is where a good friend or coach comes in. People who are outside your field will ask questions that you may not have answers to. And you need to find them!
4. Research. When I’m developing a new model I do broad research – reading sample chapters or whole books on unfamiliar topics (Picking Up by Robert Nagle about the New York City garbage collection provided new ideas about systems), researching papers and articles on topics adjacent to my ideas – to find new concepts that I hadn’t heard before to stimulate further thinking. I’ll never forget how my world shook when I learned that no input (no ideas, words, sounds) could be interpreted outside the circuits I have in my brain already. That upset me for a week! And it absolutely shifted my thinking.

Entire fields are missing information and doing nothing to discover what they don’t know:

• Healthcare professionals don’t know why patients ignore their directives. For instance, handing someone a new food plan without them knowing how to change habits and neural circuits congruently will instigate resistance. Instead of doctors blaming themselves for not knowing how to facilitate congruent change, they blame patients for not having motivation.
• Coaches, managers, leaders, supervisors assume their mandates will be followed. Clients who don’t follow them are said to ‘not really want to change.’ At no point do they acknowledge that their approach may be the problem.
• Sellers and marketers continue to push solutions, overlooking the way people actually buy and face lower and lower success rates (now 5% rate) that should alert them there’s something they don’t know. What other industry believes that a 95% failure rate is ‘success’?
• The training model fails 80% of the time. Pushing new content into a brain that might not have circuits to translate it accurately causes confusion, resistance, and disregard causing trainers to assume learners are ‘unmotivated’. Learning how to design programs that generate wholly new circuits for the new knowledge is not anything instructional designers know they need to know.
• Business Process Management uses a flow chart that invites front line workers into the process halfway through the flow! Obviously this leads to implementation problems, such as insufficient data collection and resistance when people are pushed to be compliant against their will. One of the leaders in BPM recently approached me about adding the Steps of Change (a model I invented that facilitates the flow of change and decision making) to help them, but he became agitated when I suggested he needed to begin at Step One by assembling everyone who touches the problem. He left our discussions, not realizing he was following the exact failed format he called me to change.
• OD and Change management relies on standard questions which are biased and restricted by the thoughts of the asker – and ignore the foundational Beliefs and norms that shift in the Other’s brain for congruent change to occur. And they don’t question why they get resistance, time delays, lack of buy-in. They just blame the Other.

So I leave you with these questions:

–  How committed are you to having the full set of data you need for success?

–  How willing are you to forego your ego and Not Know?

–  What would you need to know or believe differently to recognize when you don’t possess the full data set you need?

Imagine how successful we could all be if we knew what we didn’t know and had the right attitude to find out.

___________________________

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

Sharon Drew Morgen February 6th, 2023

Posted In: News

Facilitative Questions: Questions that facilitate change

There’s a universal assumption that well-crafted questions will result in ‘good’ responses. But as leaders, coaches, sellers, and search-developers know, that’s not necessarily true.

Sometimes questions end up gathering incomplete or flawed data. Or the questions unwittingly cause resistance because they’re not interpreted by the Responder as we intend. Or they are worded in a way that’s biased by the Asker’s unconscious beliefs and miss better answers that would lead to different, possibly better outcomes.

WHAT ARE QUESTIONS AND WHAT DO THEY DO?

Have you ever wondered why the questions we use often don’t achieve what we want them to achieve? Here’s why:

• Conventional questions seek to extract information. But due to the unique word choices and specific goals of the Asker, they can miss the real answer that’s sometimes lodged within a Responder’s unconscious, or the LLM’s database, and outside the scope of the question posed.
• Conventional, or information-based, questions are biased: by the Asker seeking or assuming a specific type of response; by the Responder whose responses are dictated by the biases and assumptions within in the question.

Conventional questions – even those we ask ourselves! – are great for simple queries, but may not uncover good answers. After decades of brain research, systems thinking, and figuring out the gap between what’s said and what’s heard (Read my book WHAT?) I’ve discovered a way to formulate questions that finds the precise neural circuitry where accurate answers are stored.

Sample

What if it were possible to formulate a question that would:

• extract accurate data,
• influence change,
• promote efficient implementations, buy-in, and sales cycles,
• avoid resistance and bias, maintain personal integrity,
• act as a filter and conductor for good decision making,
• facilitate permanent learning and habit change,
• help Responders (buyers, clients, patients) and search Users discover the unconscious criteria that evoke accurate answers?

Certainly it’s quite possible to pose good questions. But sometimes conventional questions lead to inadequate, biased, or reactive responses.

I suggest it’s possible to use questions in a way enables Responders to discover their own answers based on their own unique beliefs and mental models, reducing inaccuracies and reactions, and making real change and decision making possible.

INFLUENCING CHOICE

My life’s work involves studying the brain for ways to impact unconscious choices, with a focus on unbiased ways into the brain to help people uncover their own answers and generate new choice.

In other words, in addition to helping us discover ways to change personal habits or make good decisions, coaches could lead clients to where their best answers are stored; sellers could facilitate buyers through to decision making without bias; search could prompt the right questions to summon the best answer.

In 1988 I read Roger Schank’s The Creative Attitude that discusses how our brains store data in memory that can only be discovered by using exact words that get sent to the exact brain circuitry where they’re stored. Interesting, I thought. But how is it possible to get to specific brain circuits?

I already knew that we unwittingly listen through biased ears due to the way brains process and dispatch incoming sound vibrations. Was it possible to use questions to unlock the unconscious drivers, the beliefs, the values, the emotions at the core of all decisions? Could questions be formulated in a way that gets to the exact part of someone’s brain where their answers were stored amidst their 100 trillion neural connections?

Using my knowledge of the mind->brain connection I began experimenting with new forms of questions that would avoid bias altogether. It took me 10 years to break down the elements necessary. I eventually developed a new form of question (Facilitative Questions) that eschews information-gathering, and instead leads Asker’s to the exact brain circuits – congruent with their values and beliefs – to facilitate their accurate unconscious choices, unbiased by wording or intent, for personal decisions and change.

THE PROBLEM WITH INFORMATION

Conventional questions seek information as per the needs of the Asker. They cause retrieval, translation, and relevance issues in the Responder:

1. We each translate incoming words (called puffs of air by neuroscientists) according to our mental models, beliefs, history, and existing neural circuits, causing misinterpretations and misunderstandings that may be quite different from the intent of the Asker, producing unintended reactions and responses.
2. Because of the way our brains uniquely hear and interpret incoming words, incoming information may be misinterpreted, potentially affecting people’s beliefs negatively, regardless of the intent of the Asker.
3. Real answers are unique and held in Long Term neural circuitry within a Responder’s brain, sometimes stored in ways that aren’t conscious or easily accessed.
4. We can only hear, see, feel, think, notice, etc. what exists in our neural circuits, causing each of us to live in worlds biased and restricted by our histories. It’s the same with current AI, which restricts responses to the way it interprets questions – not necessarily as intended by the asker – and captures and shares content accordingly.

With a data elicitation focus, conventional questions often cause failure:

• Sellers gather information to ‘recognize’ a buyer with a ‘need’ they can pitch to – often leading to false assumptions and interpretations by the seller – when they can use the same time to actually find and lead prospective buyers through their decision making steps based on their own criteria and avoid rejection;
• Coaches, consultants, facilitators and leaders pose questions biased by their assumptions and desire to influence. To that end, they risk causing resistance and certainly miss the opportunity to direct the Other’s brains to where their own answers are stored, eschewing resistance and enabling permanent change along the way.
• Change Management professionals generate their goals, processes and implementations when gathering incomplete data from only a subset of folks involved in the initiating problem, causing resistance, delays, and failed outcomes when asked to apply the new activities.
• Search queries are reduced to how LLMs interpret them, often in a manner biased by the search engine or AI, and often missing the real intent of the User. It’s possible to lead users to their specific circuitry to guide search to the most appropriate response.
• Decision analysts and tech developers use their own biased curiosity to gather, weight, and analyze needed data, potentially extracting incomplete or inaccurate information when it’s possible to evoke accurate answers by formulating differently worded questions.

Eventually I invented a wholly new form of question that gets to the exact neural circuits where accurate, values-based answers are stored.

FACILITATIVE QUESTIONS

Facilitative Questions (FQs) are brain-directional and go to specific parts of the brain that will capture the appropriate, most relevant, unconscious content from a Responder’s memory or LLM’s database.

Facilitative Questions differ from conventional questions in their intent and scope. They are brain-directional and don’t seek information, but formulated in a way that mirrors how brains process, store and retrieve personal, unconscious, belief-based and historic data   from a Responder’s memory – great for making complex personal decisions, buy-in, and for making habit and behavioral changes; great for helping search capture the most appropriate content that matches the real, often unconscious needs of a User.

Using specific wording and sequencing, FQs shift the onus of responsibility from the Asker wanting answers to enabling Responders and AI to find and generate answers based on their history, norms, beliefs, and mental models. In other words, influencers – (sellers, coaches, therapists, friends, clients – even search engines!) become facilitators who enable Others to discover their own Excellence, with no guesswork or resistance.

But they are complex, outside conventional thinking, and can’t be formulated without additional learning. [If you’re interested in learning how to formulate them, get the Learning Accelerator or my MP3 series where I use, role play, and explain them for sales, coaching, and fundraising.] Without using precise wording or sequencing, without enabling Responders to listen from a Meta position, FQs become highly manipulative, fail to retrieve important ideas or information, and miss an opportunity to enable Others to change.

Facilitative Questions:

• use specific words in a specific order to reach the specific place in the brain that stores the best answers;
• put the Responder into Observer/coach/witness to reduce any natural biases and expand brain search;
• open new choices within the unconscious of the Responder to make it possible to fix discover their own excellence;
• construct new awareness, new choices, new behaviors based on unconscious belief/values-based criteria;
• are non-manipulative and non-biased;
• offer change agents a new skill to engage the right people, address the right problem, and manage change without resistance;
• eschew information gathering;
• eliminate resistance by eliciting commitment and buy-in at the very beginning of any project or initiative; 
• enable Responders to simultaneously uncover the unconscious core of the problem and create the necessary change on their own.

Here’s a very simple example of the differences between conventional questions and Facilitative Questions:

Information-based question (conventional question based on the goals, word choices, word usage of the Asker): Why do you wear your hair like that? This question is an information gathering question based on the needs of the Asker and capture oft-used, habitual, automatic responses. Also, all ‘why’ questions cause a Responder to defend current choices and underlying beliefs. If a question invades the Responder’s beliefs, the response will be biased and resistive. There’s a good chance a conventional question would gather incomplete or inaccurate data.

Facilitative Question (sequential navigational question that directs Responders to the exact brain circuitry where their unconscious information is stored): How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle? This question begins by putting the Responder into a Meta position to have an unbiased, broader expanse of their neural circuits to peruse for answers, and uses words in the order that brains can dispatch them to the proper circuits. With no intent to capture information, with no bias or manipulation, the Asker becomes the facilitator/change agent/servant leader.These cause no resistance. Specifically:

• users of search and AI can find their best answers with less guesswork and minimal bias;
• buyers can recognize issues that would help them make decisions, assemble the right people, and instigate buy-in to ready them to buy;
• coaching clients can be led to they’d need to address for permanent change and eschew resistance;
• doctors can elicit natural, permanent behavioral change in patients rather than push to try to cause change, etc.

By helping Others discover their own criteria for change and decision making, by enabling search to efficiently find accurate responses, by finding accurate answers for researchers and influencers, Facilitative Questions provide an expanded scope to cull accurate answers and increase the probability of quality responses.

FACILITATING CHANGE

The big idea here is the change in the intent of the questions: FQs are brain directional. They trust that accurate answers are stored in unique places in brains that may not respond to conventional questions that are biased by the needs and wording of an Asker. After all, there really is no way for an outsider to ever know the full extent – the connections, history, values, complications, etc. – of how someone’s internal system is set up. The differences are important:

• from seeking and pushing content to achieve the influencer’s goals to facilitating the person’s own discovery of beliefs, values, identity issues and systemic drivers, and eliciting (not causing) change;
• from guessing at answers based on an algorithm or an Asker’s needs and beliefs to enabling the discovery based on a Responder’s unique criteria;
• from bias and resistance to participation and creativity;
• from directing change and creating resistance to discovery, buy-in and participation.

To use Facilitative Questions requires a different sort of thinking and a different level of control. Most of all it requires that influencers change their goal to truly serve the other, to help Others initiate and manage change from within – not with any content or directive from the Asker, but true buy-in.

What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to add a new questioning technique to your already superb questioning skills? How would you know that adding a new skill set would be worth the time/effort/cost to make you – and your clients – even more successful?

____________

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

Sharon Drew Morgen February 5th, 2023

Posted In: News

You Can’t Lead If You Can’t Follow

A friend of mine delivers leadership training in police departments. On the first morning, he has the partners dance with each other, taking turns for an hour at a time as leader and follower. As most of them are men, they start off very uncomfortable as the ‘follower’, usually a woman’s role in dance. But follow they must; he tells them if they can’t follow, they can’t lead.

As leaders with specific goals we’re responsible for, we operate from the assumption we’re in charge. But what, exactly, are we in charge of? I believe our job is to set the tone, and enable our followers to create a path to a successful goal. As they say in Argentine Tango, if you notice the leader, he’s not doing his job.

WHAT IS OUR JOB

With unconscious blinkers, limited by our biases and assumptions, leaders often begin with a plan, an idea, a fantasy if you will, of how to achieve an outcome. We then work at creating and driving the path to execute it. But this strategy faces several unknowns:

1. We really have no way of knowing beforehand if it could succeed.
2. We don’t know the follower’s unspoken beliefs, creative capabilities, or dynamics, how their process factors in, or the range of ideas they might come up with if encouraged.

Even with an aim to be inclusive, we too often carry our plan into the initial sessions with the group and, maybe unconsciously, try to persuade them to adopt the path we imagine. This route might yield resistance at best; at worst, it restricts the full range of possible outcomes.

I recently heard Presidential Candidate and Senator Amy Klobuchar say: “I haven’t gone on TV for interviews much before now. But my team told me I needed the exposure. So here I am.” Was she the follower? Or the leader? While smart enough to be considered to be leader of the free world, she didn’t have the foresight of her team to expand her publicity. That makes her the leader AND the follower.

I contend that as leaders using our own assumptions, ideas, and expertise, it’s not possible to achieve an optimal result: until followers develop their own values, vision, and voices; until the group discovers a path through their own group dynamics; until the group works collaboratively to develop creative outcomes that they can all buy into; there’s no condition for success as the outcome will be restricted.

So here’s the question: do you want to facilitate a route through to the best result? Or drive the path to the result you’ve imagined? You can’t do both.

• What would you need to believe differently to trust you can achieve the best outcome if it’s driven by the followers?
• What is your role if the followers are in charge of the route to a successful outcome?

I believe that leading and following are two sides of the same coin. And I believe it must be an interdependent process.

CONTROL

I once trained a group of executive leaders at a company with a reputation of having values. They were the most manipulative group I’ve ever trained. Getting them to consider any form of leadership that didn’t involve them having total control was a herculean task. Seeing my frustration one of them said: “But our message is values-based. Of COURSE it’s our job to convince them to do it our way! It’s the RIGHT way.” Having a great outcome does not give license to push our agendas to get it done OUR way.

As leaders, we must give up our egos, our needs for control, our perceived value of being ‘right’, of being The One to exert power and influence. We obviously need to have some sort of control given we’ve got a job to do. But control over what?

There are two components to our job: reaching a goal, and getting there; we cannot control both unless we do it alone. To work with a group of followers, I suggest we manage the goal and supervision of the journey through change; the process of getting there, the details and actions along the route, must be managed by the followers. It’s an interdependent process. On a day-to-day basis that means the leader

• controls the space that will enable all voices to be heard, giving rise to creativity, collaboration, and mutual responsibility for planning and delivery;
• leads the group through forming, failure and resistance, discovery and confusion, trials and success;
• guides the group through the route they designed and helps them maintain equilibrium.

Here I’m reminded of another great Argentine Tango expression: The leader opens the door; the follower dances through using her own unique steps; the leader follows.

STRUCTURE VS CONTENT; CONTEXT VS COMPONENTS

I contend that we must assure results, but hand over the control of the journey to the followers.

Let’s look at the two components, the goal and the route, from a systems perspective. Considering the result we seek to achieve from the viewpoint of the structure – the context, the boundaries that define the goal – the goal is clear and unadorned. The structure is the headline that identifies what’s within, so a headline that reads: Sandals are Worn in Summer, would have an article about shoes, not recipes for spaghetti.

I refer to the components within the structure as the content – the details, the story line, the items that fit within the parameters of that specific structure. Using the above headline, the content might include different types of sandals, shoes worn in summer vs those worn in winter.

Another simple example would be the structure defines the size and use of a room, while the content includes the size and type of furniture that will fit into it; so an 8’ by 10’ room to be used as a bedroom would not hold a 12’x12’ living room couch.

The structure strictly limits, controls, defines, and identifies the content. Any content is acceptable so long as it fits within the confines of the structure.

If leading a team through an initiative to enhance customer service, for example, the leader is responsible for ending up with happier customers and supervising the journey to get there, while the followers are responsible for

• the route taken to get there,
• the choice of the components of the new services,
• what these services will do, the planning to get there, and the rules that will maintain them,
• what each team member will do,
• how it will be delivered.

Here’s the deal: we can only have real control over a single factor – the structure OR the content. Sadly, leaders too often try to control both. The real control and power is in controlling the structure:

• By controlling the structure, any components that fit would be acceptable so long as they clearly meet the goal’s criteria. By controlling the structure, we’re a problem seeking a solution. If we have a 3 foot box, we can choose whatever we want to put into it – balls or bananas – so long as it fits. Improved customer service might mean more reps, better phone coverage, more focused email responses, year-end gifts, better website access. Humana offers televisits for patients who can’t get to a doctor’s offices. Whatever fits, whatever the group agrees to within the parameters of the structure, is up for discussion. The content will correspond with the structure.
• By controlling the content, by focusing on the components, it’s necessary to find a structure that confines them. We become a solution looking for a problem – obviously limiting the field of possibilities. With 12 green 10” balls, we need a very specific-sized box. Using our example, we might train reps to answer phones by the third ring and lower prices; then must define a goal to match that. And of course the full range of options for improving customer service would be overlooked. Obviously, starting from the components, the content, is the less flexible, less creative route.

It’s by controlling the structure we can plant a stake in the ground with the rules and criteria for success that all else emanates from. Our job then becomes to maintain the tone and vision; how we get there is the job of the followers, tasked with creating the content.

When followers control the content, they create a collaboration amongst themselves, use their combined imaginations to develop a set of behaviors and outcomes that will fit within the rules and structure, and take ownership of the process and journey to success. Each follower is a leader who buys-in to the change and process, owns the solution, manages any resistance, and takes responsibility for implementation. The leader then maintains the space the followers created.

STARTING UP A COMPANY AS A LEADER/FOLLOWER

I’d like to share a story of my own journey as an entrepreneur of a tech start up in London. I began with no knowledge of business and even less of technology (Those were early days, remember?). I was smart enough to know my range of content knowledge – nil. So I wrote an outline of what I wanted to achieve (the structure):

• a company that would take great care of the needs of customers in the area of 4^th Generation Languages (Really early days!) with integrity, honesty, and win/win values;
• be seen as a premier provider by charging high prices and great service expertise;
• have my staff be as happy and cared for as my clients;
• make money and have fun.

That was my structure. I had no idea what would be in the content. I did my best to research, speak with people, read a few books. Then I realized that it would be best if I hired good people who designed their own jobs. My hiring process included asking applicants to bring in a P&L that included their salary and the route, within the confines of their job and the structure I put forth, to getting their salary AND bringing in a profit for the company. We ended up providing programming, training, and consulting services to users and teams. But I didn’t know that when I started.

The applicant for the job of receptionist was quite creative. Ann Marie wanted a small salary and a percentage of the gross income. For this, she would make sure the company ran efficiently and staff and clients would be thoroughly taken care of to the point they wouldn’t want to go anywhere else and would have the time to do their best job. Wow. I hired her. And she did exactly what she said. She made us write these daily TOADs – I don’t remember what the acronym stood for…something like Take what you want And Destroy the rest… but it took us an extra hour each night to write them up (No computers in daily use in the early 80s, remember?). Each morning we found the full set of everyone’s TOADS on our desks when we arrived. They involved current initiatives, our frustrations, any good/bad issues with clients and prospects, any good/bad issues we had with each other.

As a result of us all knowing ‘everything’, on any given day, if a phone would ring and the person wasn’t there to answer, anyone could answer it and be able to help. As the receptionist, Ann Marie would take the time to make kind comments to whoever was calling, making every caller feel wanted and comfortable. Office squabbles and gossip didn’t have a way to fester as we knew who was mad at who and the argument dissipated. Team members helped each other by coming up with creative solutions, or sharing resource. We had the knowledge to introduce clients to each other for follow-on partnerships. Frankly, Ann Marie terrified me. Tall, officious, unsmiling, we all did what she told us to do (Talk about leaders!). And she walked away with pockets full of money as she helped the business double each year.

I hired John as a ‘Make Nice Guy’ to bridge the divide between technical and people skills. He wanted a $100,000 salary (in 1985!) to make sure techies, their code, and how our contractors maintained relationships with the teams they worked with, all ran smoothly. That was a no brainer. With John taking care of all outside stuff, I was left with no fires, no problems, no crashes, no personality issues, no client problems, and I could grow my business. He even found out when a client was buying new software that we could support well before it arrived on site; when the vendor came to install it, my folks were there waiting, well before the vendor tried to sell their services.

The team worked hard to get me to say “We’re doing WHAT??” I was once walking down the hall and ran into my Training Manager. When I asked where he’d been hiding since I hadn’t seen him in days, he told me he was busy scouting out extra office space for the new training programs being developed. “We’re doing WHAT??” And fill the seats he did, bringing in new clients and new programs. Including me as a trainer. “I’m doing WHAT??” Apparently, the team believed I supervised techies so well as a non techie that I should teach other non-techie managers how to supervise their techie staff. I would never have thought of that myself. So they got me to run monthly programs which were always packed.

As part of my commitment to creativity and growth, I told the management team to take risks but to let me know if a disaster was imminent at least three feet before they fell off the edge (If they waited until they were already off the cliff there wouldn’t be a thing I could do but wave). And they did. As a result they created unique programs, processes, and initiatives that I could never have dreamed of. And they mostly got it right.

By setting a tone of authenticity, I regularly discussed my failures and got input from the team as to how to make things better. This obviously opened the door for us all to discuss failures as part of our job. Also my maintaining control of the structure, by trusting the staff and enabling them to be leaders and innovators, I was able to double the company income every year. With no computers, no internet, no email, no websites, we had a $5,000,000 revenue (and 42% net profit) within four years. Everyone made money, loved coming to work, and grew individually. We controlled 11% of the market (the other 26 competitors shared the other 89%), had loads of fun, and we changed the landscape of what was possible.

TRUST

I could never, ever have been that successful if I hadn’t trusted my followers to create their jobs. I controlled the structure. They controlled the content. Win/win. Interdependent. Trust. Respect. Their joke was that they were the ones with the brains, and I was the one with the mouth. Cool beans. I opened the door, they danced through it, and I followed.

Leadership is an interdependent process with followers and leaders working together from the inside and outside simultaneously to inspire trust and reach the best possible outcome. Here are the givens:

• The process is always transforming and dynamic, rendering pockets of success, confusion and failure, creativity;
• There’s no way to know until the end what the trip will include so it’s necessary to build in trust, collaboration, and openness;
• The result will be what everyone wants. The process will not be what the leader envisaged;
• The process will proceed according to the values, creativity, and needs of the followers;
• The leader will be respected so long as s/he uses her/his power to shepherd the process;
• Failure is part of the process and can be used to inspire creativity;
• Resistance will be visible and managed by group with no fallout;
• The result will be the best amalgam of everyone involved bringing their values and hearts.

A real leader enables their followers to operate interdependently, using their own values, their own creativity, their own vision. As leaders we must stop trying to exert influence over the entire process, and begin trusting followers to lead us.

THE HOW

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you know that I always include a ‘how’ so readers can use the ideas I espouse. In this case, my suggestions will be a bit challenging: the necessary skills to implement this style of leadership includes rethinking and enhancing two skills we all believe we’re good at and take great pride in – our listening and our questioning.

The reality is that no matter how professional, how fair, how honorable, how impartial we believe ourselves to be, when we use our conventional questioning and listening skills there’s a high probability we’ll be (unconsciously, unwittingly, automatically) biased by our words, ideas, needs, beliefs, and history. I’ve developed ways to listen and question that avert bias and indeed facilitate transformation and expanded possibility. I train these skills to leaders when I train in organization

1.    Listening. The biggest problem is that it’s just not possible to listen without bias no matter how hard we try to show up as good listeners, or how carefully we listen to every word. We just cannot separate our intent from our physiology.

Words, as sounds, come into our ears as electrical/chemical signals, devoid of meaning. Simplistically, these signals go down neural pathways in our brains to find the nearest synapses that carry similar signals – assumed, sometimes wrongly, to be a match, regardless of the accuracy of the underlying meaning. So our brains might find a match with ABL when the speaker actually said ABC. Listeners actually hear ABL with no recognition that there’s a misunderstanding; our brains don’t tell us it omitted D, E, F, G… Net net, we unwittingly listen with biased ears and ‘hear’ what our brains tell us has been said…often some degree ‘off’ of the speaker’s intended message.

There is a way to mitigate this. (My book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? teaches how.) By listening in Observer/Coach, on “the ceiling” we supersede our normal neural pathways and enable our brains to find a more accurate match. Using normal listening, it’s only possible to hear what is most comfortable and habitual. For those who don’t get a chance to read the book and learn how to listen to whole conversations without bias, I suggest you at least take this shortcut and say: “I want to make sure I understand you accurately. I’m going to tell you what I think I heard; can you please tell me if I’ve got it right and correct me where I’m wrong?” That will keep the conversation on track.

2.    Questioning. Conventional questions elicit information as per the Asker’s curiosity. Of course given our unconscious biases, our curiosity is restricted by our beliefs and life histories, resulting in questions limited to what we think we need to know (certainly not the full universe of available information). It goes without saying that there’s no way an outsider can know what’s going on within someone else’s life experience. It’s even more difficult within a group setting. Hence, normal questions can only gather information that’s some fraction of what we need, and an unknown level of accuracy.

Of course often people need information to act from, and normal questions are necessary. But for those times change is part of the process, people/followers need to understand their own motivation, values, and beliefs to act from. For this I invented a new form of question called a Facilitative Question that makes it possible to enable Others to mentally (unconsciously) aggregate their own values and needs to make their own best decisions, define their own outcomes, recognize their own success criteria, and chart their own next steps, with no bias or influence from the leader.

So: Why do you wait for six rings before answering the phone? would be replaced with What would need to be willing/able to answer an incoming call by the third ring? Instead of gathering information, facilitate people through to their own actionable answer and non-resistant choice, using their own criteria. Used in a group setting this process enhances creativity and responsibility for action.

For those wishing to learn how to formulate these questions, read this article, and take a look at this learning module I developed. Formulating Facilitative Questions employs listening for systems, understanding word usage and word placement, and the sequence of decision making in the brain. A much different process than posing normal questions.

As leaders, our job is to facilitate a collaboration with our followers to interdependently create a successful goal. It demands that leaders enter with a different outcome, a different mindset, and a different tool kit. But it’s worth it. We’ll end up with the real power of spearheading harmony, integrity, creativity, and excellence. And have a greater success than we ever could have achieved alone.

____________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen is a thought leader, original thinker, consultant, trainer, and speaker. Sharon Drew trains leadership teams and sales forces. She is the author of 9 books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and 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’s award winning blog www.sharondrewmorgen.com carries original articles on topics such as sales, leadership, decision making, questions, collaboration, and values.

Sharon Drew is the inventor of Buying Facilitation® the first new paradigm that gives sales people, healthcare professionals, leaders, and managers, the tools to enable others to generate real change based on their own internal beliefs, rules, systems, and vision. She has spent her life decoding how brains decide and how to generate real change at the core neurology of synapses and neural pathways. She has also designed innovative training models to facilitate learners in producing permanent change. Sharon Drew lives on a houseboat in Portland OR.

Sharon Drew Morgen December 12th, 2022

Posted In: News

Our Brains Cause Resistance: why change management initiatives get opposed

After listening to folks complaining about getting resistance during a needed change initiative, I decided to write an article explaining how resistance gets triggered from our brain. You see, people don’t make a conscious choice to resist; their brains are perceiving risk and automatically rebelling as protection. As I’ll explain, it’s possible to avoid resistance altogether. But we’d have to alter the way we’re going about change.

I’ll begin by saying that behaviors don’t just pop up, arise like Venus from the sea. Before we ‘do’ anything our brain goes through a series of neurological, biological, and electro-chemical reactions that automatically trigger and instruct behaviors.

Everything we do, think, see, feel originates in our brains, including our behaviors. And in current change management models, we overlook the brain bit. Resistance is caused by brain chemistry; to avoid it we’ll need to think differently about how we construct our change initiatives.

RESISTANCE IS A (WRONGLY) ASSUMED CONSEQUENCE OF CHANGE

I’ll begin by naming the elephant in the room: ‘resistance management’ has become integral to change management. Frankly, my ideas in this article may cause resistance because they go beyond perceived wisdom and current academic research which both concentrate on behavior change rather than where behaviors get triggered in the brain. And because it’s believed to be endemic, resistance is naturally incorporated into change practices.

A friend of mine (a Harvard professor and MacArthur Genius) was writing a book on how to manage resistance. When I sent back my edits following his request to look at his draft, he opposed my ideas about avoiding resistance altogether: “This is just aspirational thinking, Sharon-Drew. Resistance is endemic no matter what models you use.” As I said, it’s built in.

Remember the adage: if you always do what you’ve always done you always get what you’ve always got? Indeed, the expression “change is hard” has become the perceived wisdom and various forms of coercion (persuasion, convincer strategies, rewards, manipulation) have cropped up to mitigate it.

In John P Kotter’s change bible Leading Change he says it’s necessary to ‘win hearts and minds’,

encourage them to make sacrifices to support the change and persuade them that the change is achievable and that the rewards are beneficial to both the business and themselves.

In other words, resistance is such an integral part of the change culture that the reason it occurs is overlooked. We assume:

• change is hard (It’s not hard. We’re just approaching it as a behavior change issue rather a brain triggering problem.);
• there will be obstacles (The existing norms and current activities have been the status quo. To make a change, a new set of norms must be developed that match the values of the old, and those involved in the status quo must determine this.).
• the efficacy of ‘urgency’ to involve Others (We ask folks to adopt OUR urgency without helping them design something THEY feel urgency around and then push them to full OUR needs!);
• when change is led by someone respected, Others will be compliant soldiers (Think of your mom telling you to wear that horrid outfit to Grandma’s. Nope. And it’s not about the clothes.);
• all will go smoothly once we win ‘hearts and minds’ (The initiatives created may not match THEIR hearts and minds!).

Resistance is avoidable and change is not hard at all. We’re just doing it wrong.

In this article I’ll explain how our brains cause our reactions/responses, and how conventional change processes cause the very resistance it works to overcome.

WE UNCONSCIOUSLY RESIST WHEN OUR IDENTITY IS THREATENED

Let me say a bit about my mindset and thinking. I’ve dedicated my life to developing change facilitation models used in coaching, behavior change, and sales that enable mind-brain connections to have conscious choice over our unconscious behaviors. Along the way I’ve discovered that our brain neurology is set up to create and maintain our core identities; as such, all of our actions and responses, attitudes and convictions are nothing more than unconscious, automatic outputs of who we are. To explain how we end up resisting, I’ll begin by introducing you to how we ‘be’ who we are.

Each of us is an amalgam of generations of family history, education, religion, friends, employment, life experience. Together, these mental models – the system of ‘me’, or SOM – carry electro-chemical signals (without meaning) that link together as neural circuits, or ‘cell assemblies’, that inform our actions: the way we look at, judge, and operate in the world; our assumptions, our politics. They inform our identity, our values, our beliefs. And signals from these circuits instruct our choices, our behaviors, in a way that maintains our system.

All of us act, make choices, decide from our mental models, our SOM; our behaviors arise unconsciously and automatically to represent and maintain who we are. In other words, we’re always ‘doing’ who we are, making us all victims of our unconscious.

Personally, I’ve been a liberal and activist since my first protest as a freshman in college when I chained myself to a crane and ended up in jail (Mother: ‘You’re calling from WHERE?’). I’ve continued my liberal activity during my life, taking great pride in who I am, believing fervently that my map of the world is the ‘right’ one. I’ll defend this to my death, regardless of what anyone else wants me to do, regardless of whether I’m considered right or wrong. I’ve lost jobs, book deals, friends, husbands, rather than make choices that will put my core identity, my SOM, at risk. I think I’ve been ‘right’ more often than not. But I’ve always respected my unique system, made the best choices I knew how to make based on my values, and followed my vision. It’s who I am.

And so we all are: our behaviors – our choices, our actions, our unconscious automatic triggers – are our beliefs in action. It’s here we must begin when considering resistance.

HOW BRAINS CAUSE BEHAVIORS

Given we are always DOing who we are, let me explain (in simplified fashion) how our brain accomplishes this so you’ll see how defiance might be a natural, albeit unconscious, choice.

Behaviors are the end result of several neural processes, generated from a sequence of neurological, biological, and electro-chemical actions that get triggered by incoming vibrations (as words, thoughts, messages, instruction). Here’s the sequence in words:

• input vibrations (all sound/words enters ears without meaning) that get
• filtered, massaged, shortened and
• automatically turned to signals
• that get dispatched among
• 86 billion neurons, 1,000 trillion neural connections to seek a match
• with ‘similar-enough’ cell assemblies that then
• translate the signals uniquely and
• send instructions to act (behave).

Here’s another way to explain what happens from start (input) to an action (output):

Input (message, vibration) -> Filters (Beliefs, norms) -> CUE (Signal creation) -> CEN (Dispatch to ‘similar-enough’ existing circuits) ->Output (Behavior, action, decision)

For those who want more detail, here’s a video of me explaining the entire process of how we make decisions with visuals.

Notice that the input (message) and the filters (beliefs, norms) drive the output (behavior). It’s impossible to have an output without an input that triggers it. Indeed, everything we do, think, feel, see, hear has been instructed by our neurology. An easy way to think of this is how Alzheimer’s sufferers die because their brain forgets to instruct their organs.

BEHAVIORS ARE BELIEFS IN ACTION

Resistance begins at the input stage: If the incoming instructions, the initiatives and goals we provide at the start, match the norms/values/beliefs of the existing system being targeted, the filters will accept it.

If the incoming message is in conflict with the system, the filters (automatically, unconsciously) discard, mistranslate, or resist it. It’s biologic and of out awareness, an act performed by dopamine.

Since our unconscious brain is the instigation point that causes us to ‘do’ who we are, our behaviors arise from the way our brain translates (mistranslates) incoming vibrations (words, messages). So a behavior is nothing more than a response, the output of a chain of events set up to comply with the norms and values of the system – the person – they represent. Behaviors (outputs) are the very last element that arise from a string of commands from our brain.

Simply put: When people receive inputs that are out of alignment with their SOM, they resist. Resistance is merely a reaction from the part of the brain that thinks it’s at risk. It has nothing to do with intent. It’s not malicious. It’s neurologic.

This is what we overlook during change initiatives: when we get an unwanted reaction from an initiative, we end up trying to change a behavior by trying to change a behavior – push change from an output that’s already been programmed! It’s like trying to change a chair into a table!

Unfortunately, by the time there’s a reaction it’s too late. Here’s my podcast series on change without resistance.

It is possible, however, to avoid the problem altogether. To get a different response, a new output, we just need to create a different input.

STAKEHOLDERS MUST DESIGN THE INITIATIVE

To make sure new directives are approved, carried out, and enlist buy-in; to make sure we achieve goals that produce Excellence; our change initiatives must comply with people’s mental models and personal beliefs or the brain thinks it’s at risk and balks to protect the system.

When leadership tries to elicit behaviors before enlisting the brain circuits that protect the SOM, the belief-based filters that check incoming messages will discard or resist anything that doesn’t match the existing norms of the system.

There’s a simple way to fix this problem, but I’m going to ask that you don’t resist what I’m saying out-of-hand: We can bring in the stakeholders, the folks who will be performing the new initiative, before the initiatives are developed, before the goals have been established and have them design the initiative. (Note: no problem set can be fully understood without the input, the knowledge. of the entire stakeholder body anyway.)

This ensures that the values, the SOM, of the stakeholders will become part of the new initiative and the brain will happily generate the new behaviors with passion and creativity, responsibility and ownership. And no resistance!

By starting with a goal in mind, by beginning with outcomes and targets and proposed action, by designing initiatives to conscientiously overcome resistance by including users somewhere – too late! – in the process, current change management models unwittingly instigate the very resistance they seek to overcome.

And note: it’s not possible to attempt to ‘gather data’ to capture the SOMs to include in the initiative as the both the questions and answers will be biased by the direction already set; and conventional questions don’t get into the unconscious anyway.

Everyone involved (or a very comprehensive set of representatives) must sit down together – maybe for an offsite day with an outside consultant – and brainstorm ideas, needs, fears, feelings, job descriptions, collective goals, and dreams.

I’d even suggest there be only representation from leadership, with the bulk of the participation coming from the users. After all, folks in leadership have different jobs, different goals and viewpoints, different knowledge of the day-to-day ops, different SOMS than the managers and staff who will carry out the initiative.

A NEW GOAL: EXCELLENCE

Here are a few starter questions to create compliance and joy throughout the life of the initiative:

• What’s the best idea, the best aspiration, to begin from that will result in goals that match the beliefs, the integrity, the vision, of those who will carry out the change?
• What if we begin with a goal of Excellence, not specific actions?
• How can we design initiatives in a way that expands possibility and invites buy-in, creativity and vision over time?

Will goals be met in the exact way the leadership team originally envisaged? Nope. But they never are anyway. The goals will be met, just differently and with long-term follow through and universal buy-in.

I’ve written extensively on this and developed several models and tools that create comprehensive teams, unearth the SOMs, and design goals and action items that lead to Excellence far beyond anything originally envisaged. Please contact me to either help you design a new initiative or coach you through one you’re currently involved with. Here’s how an article on how I’ve used my thinking in one industry (sales) to facilitate change and avoid resistance.

For now, here’s an example of how I enlisted the buy-in of a resister who wasn’t even compliant with the coach hired to help him keep his job.

EXAMPLE OF FACILITATING A RESISTER THROUGH TO CHANGE

I once got a call from a very noted coach (once on the cover of Inc Magazine) who had a problem he needed help solving. He had been hired by a senior manager (Susan) from a company going through change. She was having difficulty enlisting the agreement of one of their top, well-respected managers and asked Ed to coach the guy (Lou) to perform the new behaviors or he’d be fired. Ed said he’d tried for three months to get Lou to do what he’d been asked to do – set agreed-upon target actions and goals for Lou – only to have Lou miss deadlines and overlook entire segments of his agreements. Ed thought that maybe I’d have a different way to think about helping Lou and save him from losing his job.

Ed agreed to do a role play with me during which I used my facilitation process that targeted Lou’s underlying, baseline sentiments. With no real knowledge of what Lou would say, Ed responded using bits he’d heard from Lou. We had the following conversation (Note: I knew nothing about either Lou or the initiative.).

SD: Hi Lou. Before we begin, I’d like to thank you for being willing to speak. Seems you were not given a choice about speaking with me. Do I have your approval? I don’t want you to be forced to speak if you don’t want to.

Lou: You’re right. So much seems to be going on that I have no say about. But I know Susan is trying to help me keep my job. So I’m happy to speak. Thanks for asking.

SD: I hear both Susan and Ed have been trying to encourage you to take on new tasks and there seems to be a glitch in your uptake. What has stopped you from being comfortable doing what they need you to do?

Lou: I have some questions. I was hired to do my original job and I’ve done it well. Over the years I’ve come up with creative solutions, hired terrific people, and have been successful. I’ve gotten promoted and rewarded, and by now part of my identity is based on my success. Now they want me to do X. Who will take over my old job and do it as well as I did? Maintain the relationships with my staff and clients? And what happens to me? Given it’s a wholly new job description, how do I know I can do it? And no one will be teaching me because it hasn’t been done before. What happens if I don’t succeed? I’ve never been unsuccessful before. Seems they’ve given me a lose/lose situation. If I do what they want me to do, I’ll end up being fired for incompetency anyway.

SD: Wow. So you had no input into this new role before it was given to you, weren’t included in the creation and description of it, don’t know if you know how to do the work, don’t know how to be good at it, and might end up losing the success you had in your current job! That’s a lot. What has stopped you from telling this to Ed or Susan?

Lou: I tried to tell Susan but she told me they trusted me and just concentrate on doing the new job. But that didn’t handle my fears or loss of identity. When I started working with Ed he just gave me targets for each part of the new job and never discussed my personal challenges.

SD: Oh! So if Susan could make sure your current job will end up in good hands with continued great results, and you could have someone guide you through the new job with an agreed-upon learning curve, it would be easier for you.

Lou: Right. But I’d also need to have a say in how the new job is defined. As I can’t know what I don’t know before I start, I can’t know what would need to change in the job description they’ve provided. If I can have a say in how I will accomplish what they need accomplished, and have the time to get good at it, AND my original job is being done well, I have no problem being compliant.

When we were done, I asked Ed why he hadn’t considered my line of questioning since he apparently had all the data.

Ed: I heard him say those things, but because they seemed to have nothing to do with my job of getting him to ‘do’ the necessary behaviors, I ignored them!

This is a true story. How many people have been fired because they didn’t ‘do’ what they were told to do, and this type of conversation hadn’t occurred?

The belief that a change initiative must be agreed-with as per leadership’s vision has caused great harm in corporations and people. In 2004 I spoke with the then-CEO of Kinkos who traveled to all U.S. sites to visit 30,000 employees to announce the FedEx/Kinko’s merger. He used a multi-million-dollar deck to make his announcement. How did it go? You decide.

Kinkos: I had trouble convincing about 10% of them to get onboard.

SD: What happened to them?

Kinkos: It became a retention issue.

SD: You fired 3,000 people because they didn’t like your dog-and-pony show??

Kinkos: Yes, but it wasn’t a big loss. They were the folks who had been around from the beginning and were expendable.

He fired the very core, the very foundation of his business, the folks who carried the history and heart of the company, because he had no capability of enabling collaboration and a joint vision.

Indeed, there is a way to create productive routes to outcomes that carry passion, ongoing success, and happy people. I’ve dedicated my career to creating mind-brain, conscious-to-unconscious models that make systemic change possible and very easy. Contact me and we can 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 the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.    

Sharon Drew Morgen September 26th, 2022

Posted In: News