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

I used to live in Taos, New Mexico, where I bought everything I ate from a small grocery called Cid’s Market. Run by Cid and Betty Backer, they always offered fresh organic produce, freshly cooked healthy meals, and a health/vitamin section that had everything I wanted. The store environment was happy and very obviously committed to the Taos community. It felt like MY STORE each time I went in. Any question I had was answered; anything I needed was procured, even if it meant they went out and bought me the item at a different store! I was a rabid fan.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who loved them. In the 11 years I lived there (1989-2000) I watched as they grew from a small store to a three story building taking up half a city block. Their service to customers was exceptional. Every morning as the store opened, Cid held a brief meeting with the entire team. “Who pays your salary?” he’d ask. They’d respond “The Customer!” And then they’d start their day.

Everyone’s job was to take care of customers, whatever that entailed. They didn’t need to ‘follow the rules’: that WAS the rule. And creativity and service ensued: In the health department, the manager created free evening community programs for different groups – diabetes sufferers, parents with kids who wouldn’t eat veggies; the produce manager created free cooking classes and lessons on growing organic veggies. Everyone was trusted to make their best decisions and the customers felt their commitment and respect. And in 1993 that was unusual.

One year, on a plane to Mexico to give a keynote address about Servant Leadership, I noticed Cid and Betty.

“Are you going on vacation?” I asked?

“No. We’re going to a conference on Servant Leadership.”

“Oh. I didn’t think a grocery store would seek out that sort of thing.”

“We’re going mostly to learn what we need to learn to serve our employees. If we can’t give them the respect they deserve, and create an environment in which they thrive, we can’t run a business that will also serve our customers. We go to one conference a year to learn all the tools we can so we all have the best knowledge available to serve with.”

They understood that their success came from serving people, community, customers and staff. And they actively made it a priority.

WHAT ARE OUR JOBS?

When corporations consider what their jobs are, they sometimes think Profits, or Products, or Shareholders. But I think it’s something else. Think about it: there’s no job that doesn’t include serving:

Sell more? Serve customers.
Grow the business, be respected in the industry, and retain clients? Serve the company.
Retain and inspire good people with tools to inspire creativity? Serve employees.
Maintain optimal skills and health? Serve ourselves.
Maintain communication skills? Serve each other.

Without hiring and retaining good people that know how to lead collaboratively; without the skills to help managers, sales folks, team leaders, facilitate buy-in; without the creativity from an entire group that, working together, can develop top notch solutions that produce competitive and imaginative solutions; none of us are in business. No matter what our jobs, our core business is to serve.

Unfortunately, too many of us unwittingly follow trends that take us away from our core business of serving. For example, too many companies have chosen the trend of using their websites to collect names. They embed pop ups to retrieve email addresses, making it impossible to find answers to questions and rendering the site unusable (unless you agree to the cookies) and annoying folks with real interest who might even be customers.

Obviously they’re putting their own goals before those of a possible customer. Why would a company do that? Especially the smaller companies who truly depend on offering information as a sales strategy. Is acquiring my name to push out marketing materials that important? Don’t they know I’ll leave the site rather than agree to accept more spam? That they’ll lose my business because I don’t want my name captured? Those companies have lost their way: they are only serving themselves.

OUR JOBS ARE TO SERVE

What if our real jobs weren’t to collect data, or create content, or push products? What if our jobs were merely to serve? That requires a new skill set, a different viewpoint that produces very different results:

Leaders wouldn’t be getting resistance because they’d attain buy-in and work collaboratively to engage all voices before making change.
Sellers would only pitch to those ready to buy, and use the bulk of their now-wasted time to facilitate people them through their buying decision path as they figured out how to achieve their own type of excellence (and possibly buy solutions).
Managers would hire people whose goal was to serve and retain them because the company’s practices facilitated their excellence.
Coaches would use Facilitative Questions to guide folks to their own answers, trusting each person had their own type of excellence to achieve without the biases of an outsider.
Tech folks would save a great deal of time on projects because they’d be curious without bias, gathering the most accurate data the first time and avoiding biased assumptions that caused flawed results and user complaints.
Companies would be aware of the environment, the role they play in it, and factor in climate issues as a way to serve the planet while serving customers.
Senior Management would dictate that each employee, as well as customers, be cared for respectfully. When an employee isn’t happy, it’s difficult for them to care about customers.

By maintaining focus on ourselves, on our individual needs, we miss the larger picture. By using our jobs and companies as the vehicle to serve others and the planet, we will all live in an excellent world.

__________________________

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 August 1st, 2022

Posted In: News

I often get wonderful ideas during my daily walk. Today I was musing on the implications of Speakers as the arbiters of understanding between Communication Partners. And then I came upon what I think may be an exception. My first name.

Because brains have a hard time accurately interpreting content different from what’s familiar, people generally don’t ‘hear’ my name accurately. But it shouldn’t be THAT difficult. We’re comfortable with Mary Ann. But not, apparently, with Sharon-Drew.

In this article I’ll discuss how incoming words get translated by our brains, but first I’ll give you a few examples of my daily tribulations. And make no mistake: it’s quite obvious to me that since I’m the one responsible for being understood, I’m the one failing. I just don’t know how to do it better.

NOPE. NOT SHARON

I’ll begin by sharing how I introduce myself (If you can think of a better way to say this, PLEASE let me know!) and how a typical introductory conversation goes:

SD: Hi. I’m Sharon-Drew. That’s my first name. Sharon-Drew. Both words. Like Nancy Drew but Sharon-Drew. Both words. Together. Sharon-Drew. It’s my whole first name. What’s your name?

Hi Sharon. I’m Betty.

SD: No, actually it’s Sharon-Drew, Betty. My first name is Sharon-Drew. I use both words. Not Sharon please.

Right. Got it. Hi Sharon.

SD: No. There are 2 words in my first name. Sharon-Drew. And I always use them both and never shorten it.

Then what’s your last name?

SD: Morgen.

I thought it was Drew-Morgen.

SD: Nope. First name Sharon-Drew, last name Morgen.

Huh. So your first name is Sharon-Drew? Gosh, I’ll need to remember that.

This happens, or some semblance of it, about 25 times a week, year in, year out, everywhere in the States. In Europe and Asia, and in my neighborhood where 5 people have double-barreled first names, there’s no problem so I know it’s possible. But the rest of the time, 100% of every person, every day, refers to me (the first time) as Sharon. Here are more stories:

SD: Hi. I’m Sharon-Drew. That’s my first name. Sharon-Drew. Both words. Like Nancy Drew but Sharon-Drew. It’s my whole first name. What’s your name?

Hi Sharon. I’m…

SD: No, actually my first name is Sharon-Drew. Both words together. Please don’t refer to me as Sharon. I don’t like it.

If you don’t like Sharon, then what’s your name?

SD: Sharon-Drew. Two words. Last name Morgen. Sharon-Drew, first name. Then Morgen second name.

Wait, you want them together? Can’t I just call you Sharon? Or Drew?

I could go on: The time at a party when I introduced myself to 5 people in a circle and they each called me Sharon – including the 5th person who’d heard 4 previous name interactions. The time the bureaucrat changed my form so Drew would be under M.I. (middle initial) and I had to show her my license to prove Sharon-Drew was my legal first name and I actually don’t have a M.I. Or the editor that labeled my picture Sharon Morgan (double insult. Last name morgEn) and refused to correct it (“I didn’t get the name wrong. You must have sent it to me wrong.”). It stops being funny after a while.

Of course most people – maybe 70% – remember it after the first time we have this interaction. (My god, who could forget it by then!) Only once did it go on for so long I ended a budding business partnership because the man refused, refused, to call me by my name. Here was our final conversation

SD: I am going to have to walk away from our work together. I can’t figure out how to tell you my name in a way you’ll understand although I’ve tried and failed 9 times (for real). And you can’t figure out that my first name is Sharon-Drew no matter what I say. I don’t see a way forward for us.

R: I still don’t get it. You’re ending because I call you by your name? But I guess you’re right. We just can’t communicate.

Really. Sounds funny in these hilarious stories, but while it’s happening, not so much. And to make matters MUCH worse, my daily defeat is causing me to question my own ability as a Speaker to take responsibility for an interaction. And I’ve written a book extolling this for goodness sakes!

HOW BRAINS TRANSLATE INCOMING CONTENT

The reason people can’t ‘hear’ my name is a great example of how incoming words get (mis)understood by Listeners. It’s actually a brain circuit thing and has nothing at all to do with words or intended meaning.

All incoming words enter our brains as mere sound vibrations – puffs of air with no meaning – that go through several chemical/electrical processes and get dispatched to a circuit of historic and ‘similar-enough’ (A neuroscience phrase! Similar-enough to what??) signals that translate them into what we think we hear.

We’re left thinking we’ve heard accurately, but sometimes it’s nowhere near reality. So when folks don’t ‘get’ my name, they just don’t have the brain circuitry translate an unusual double-barreled name and it’s not their fault.

From my own writing and research, I know it’s my responsibility to use words in a way they’ll be translated accurately. But frankly, even after developing mind-brain models for decades, I still have trouble getting my name understood. Sometimes, when I say ‘two words, together’ or ‘I know it’s odd but…’ folks can add a codicil to their current circuitry. But when people have NO circuits to translate, I fail.

MIND-BRAIN HACKS

That brings up a question: Since we can’t control how our brains translate incoming content, and our listening/understanding capability is restricted by our history, the mental models, experience, and beliefs that shape our Identity, can we have choice?

As Speakers we can help enable accurate comprehension by saying things in several ways, using different metaphors, different words, different tones. Or begin with a summary statement, asking if anything like that is familiar… like, “I’d love to discuss the way we communicated last night. Do you remember any of our history of those sorts of conversations?”

We can also check if what we think we’ve heard is accurate. Ask our Communication Partner:

“I’d like to tell you what I think I heard you say. Can you please check that it’s accurate and correct me if I missed something?”

One of my favorite mind hacks is listening in Observer; meta listening that captures the essence, the metamessage, of what’s being said rather than the exact details. Remember when your small children used crayons on the new wallpaper and you needed a deep breath to remind them to use their pads instead of the wall? Or that time your partner forgot your birthday and you decided to have patience? You were in Observer. Observer offers choice.

As a meta position, Observer enables you to go beyond your standard listening, avoid standard reactions, and enable your brain to do an expanded search. You’re metaphorically going up to the ceiling looking down at the situation with a broader, much-less subjective viewing range, less emotion, and more conscious choice.

When coaching and communicating with clients, in negotiations, or gathering data, I remain in Observer to make sure I listen with as little bias as possible. I have a whole chapter on this in my book on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard (WHAT?). It’s a nifty tool to expand choice and minimize bias.

But as with my name, I suppose there are just those times when nothing works. So long as we don’t blame the Listener, it’s our own responsibility as Speakers to be understood and acknowledge we all live in restricting brains.

____________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen July 5th, 2022

Posted In: News

Is your team communicating effectively? Do you reach goals on time and without resistance? Are there subgroups that (unwittingly) restrict the outcomes? Are all voices included during brainstorming to assure the full fact pattern and set of possibilities emerges? How are communication breakdowns handled?

I thought of these questions during a recent client chat and remembered a situation I had with Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico some years back. While the tale is a bit outdated, it will serve as a starting point for my belief that team miscommunication is costly for both productivity and people, and happening more often these days with new-forming teams, remote relationships, and distance meetings. And it’s not a difficult problem to fix with a few new skills.

Here’s my Los Alamos Labs case study that might provide a few thoughts. I’ll follow it with ideas and suggestions. LOS ALAMOS LABS

Case study

In the 1990s, Los Alamos Labs had a mailroom [Yes! We used snail mail in those days!] that sorted and delivered incoming mail – contracts, client letters, invoices, etc. It took them 6 days (6 days!) to distribute it; leadership wanted it done in one.

After months of failing to shorten the time line, leadership decided to contract out the work and fire the 26-person mailroom team. Before they took that drastic step, they brought me in to see if I could solve the problem with a team-building training program.

Speaking only to the client who hired me (Big mistake, it turned out) I created a nifty program. I arrived at the client site an hour early to observe the team in action before delivering the training. I immediately noticed much larger problems than merely team issues.

To begin with, the racial disparity was glaring: as the company was in New Mexico (a largely Hispanic population), there were 24 Hispanic (LatinX) people and two Anglos (White); it was quite obvious they didn’t speak to or listen to each other. The two Anglos stayed to themselves, never connecting in any way with the other 24 in the hour I watched them.

Next, there were cliques that operated in sort of a ballet, speaking, connecting, moving within their small groups with none of them going outside their cliques for questions, discussions, or sharing. So either their jobs were unique to each person, or there was massive inefficiency.

Didn’t seem like my team building program was an answer. I promptly threw away the program, went into the assigned training room down the hall, and put two facing chairs in the middle of the room with the rest of the chairs in a circle facing the two middle ones.

When the group came in, I told them I noticed some communication issues that I found disturbing, so before we did the real ‘training’ I wanted any personal issues resolved.

I invited whoever was having a personal issue – a grudge, an annoyance, a distrust – to sit in one of the middle chairs and invite their colleague to sit in the other and discuss the problem. I sat on the floor between the two chairs as the interpreter.

Nothing happened for 15 minutes. Silence. Then I stood up and announced I’d sit there all day if need be, but maybe the manager should begin. Surely he was annoyed with someone!

Roberto reluctantly came and sat on one of the chairs and said that instead of sharing his annoyances, he invited anyone annoyed with him to sit across from him and share their feelings. After a few minutes, a young Hispanic woman came and sat down.

Theresa: I thought so hard about the delivery problems we were having and came up with what I thought was a great idea. But you gave me five minutes and basically didn’t listen. IT’s happened before when I’ve brought you new ideas. I’ll never bring in any new ideas again. And now we might all get fired because nothing has changed. I tried.

Roberto: I was annoyed too because I thought you were complaining about…

I stopped him so I could translate what she was actually saying:

SD: I heard Theresa say she’s having trust issues because she spent time and care presenting ways to try to resolve the problem and felt you ignored her. As the manager your job is not only to make sure your folks trust you but acquire as many ideas from your team as possible. Try a different response.

Roberto: OK! Um. Theresa: I’m so sorry I didn’t hear you as you deserved to be heard. And I’m sad I’ve not heard your ideas. I’m sure all of your ideas are certainly worth discussing. I sometimes am focused on other issues and don’t listen properly. What can I do to regain your trust? And can we set a time later this week to discuss any ideas you have that might help the group be more efficient?

After Theresa came one of the two Anglo people saying he felt the group had a racial bias against him. (Note: racial bias in New Mexico was a long-term cultural issue that affected everyone. I lived in Taos for 11 years and bear the scars.) Again, Roberto started off defending himself, but with my intervention opened up a race-based dialogue that continued within the group most of the day.

Turned out, most of the team members had grievances they shared. By the time everyone was finished discussing angers, annoyances and biases, it was 11:30 at night.

To their credit, there was great authenticity, honesty, and quite a few tears and hugs. Ideas were shared, brainstormed, listened to by all. When there were misunderstandings people were asked to clarify. Ideas seemed to have wings, flying around the room. Everyone was listening attentively and respectfully. We even had a few laughs (A few in-jokes of course, but mostly I was the ‘butt’ of the jokes for sitting so long on the floor. No idea why I didn’t sit on a chair for god’s sakes!).

On Day Two, I led the newly-formed collaboratory through ideas and plans for better communication, more productivity, sharing, and task efficiency. Within days after our time together they brought the 6-day delivery time down to one day and kept their jobs. Problem solved.

One more thing: the team took those 2 middle chairs and put them outside their manager’s office. Every time there was a confusion or disagreement, the people involved went to the chairs: “Let’s discuss this. Meet you at the chairs at 2:00.” The next year they sent me a photo of all of them next to the chairs. On one of the chairs sat a Malcolm Baldrige Excellence Award. They were holding a banner that said, “THANK YOU SHARON-DREW!”

Ahhhhh. I love my job. Although next time I used that strategy I did sit on a chair. 😊

Take Aways

I’d like to think that the skills involved with the final excellence were ones any team could adopt.

Willingness to be honest and authentic regardless of the ‘politically correct’ rules of social conversation.
Willingness to be vulnerable, admit wrong-doing and apologize.
Willingness to be honest about racial issues and hold Truth above feelings or fears.
Willingness to look at the problem and recognize what was working, what responsibilities they had to take to make it right, and willingness to fix it.
The necessity of the whole team being present as witness and judge, through discomfort and exhaustion. There was no place to hide – everyone knew the truth, and it had to be spoken for the greater good, separate from roles or personalities.
Patience to sit for 14:30 hours to resolve all the issues.

The role I played as translator was also vital. Not only did I provide safety, but it took the sting out of any blame and played a role in a meta understanding, away from unconscious human/racial biases or personal traits. Because I didn’t know any of these folks, I was not tangled in any past relationship, role, or status issues. I suspect that another outsider, from another department maybe, could have done the job. But bringing in a consultant isn’t a bad idea when an impartial eye/ear is needed.

SELF-CORRECTING TEAMS

This team was so comfortable with their long-standing cultural norms that their communication problems were endemic and led to ineffective work habits.

How many companies face the same problem? How many groups just keep on keepin’ on in ignorance or denial, making excuses and playing the blame-game with their resultant failures? How many groups only collect data from a chosen few and omit the entire population that would yield imaginative ideas that conventional leadership seems to ignore? How many important, creative, and valid ideas get ignored because of gender or race or sexual preference issues?

The cost of doing nothing is high:

1. A minimization of good ideas. Client-facing employees are often omitted from company change and problem-solving because they’re not ‘on the leadership team.’ Yet they have great ideas that leadership doesn’t think of. Use these folks. You hired them each for a reason. Put their ideas into action. Your employees are your competitive edge.
2. A minimization of collaboration and job effectiveness. With cliques, lack of diversity, teams bound by job descriptions and hierarchies, there’s no opportunity to pollinate new ideas, try new actions, make new norms. And without these, the company dies from its core.
3. A continuation and exacerbation of problems. Accepted communication practices get factored in to the culture and become built in forever, taking failure along for the ride and causing fall-out to become normative. A well-known global software company I worked with saw no problem with treating staff and clients from a win/lose position. “I need to have control and make people do what I want. I was told to do this on my first day here.” It was endemic. Brought in to get the leadership team to work from integrity, I mentioned that Win/Win was the goal. They were confused when I said Win/Lose equaled Lose/Lose, which cost them trust and creativity and ultimately business. “But what do I need Win/Win for? I’m the one in control. They have to do what I say regardless”. Hmm. How’s that working for you?
4. A colossal time waste. I recently went through a review of my state taxes due to a glitch in the system from 1994. There were 6 departments involved, and none of them spoke to the others. If I didn’t call the other 5 when something occurred, I got caught up in the lag between departments, dates, paperwork. By the time we were done we all hated each other. They asked what the rush was, that it usually took 6 months not 6 weeks (I bet!) and I just didn’t understand their system. Nope. I did not. Talk to each other! Make sure there are systems set up so everyone has the same data at the same time. In 2022 that’s simple, no?
5. Unnecessary resistance: Without everyone’s buy-in, without everyone who touches the proposed solution having a say in the outcome, there will be resistance that costs unknown time, money, personal fallout. With proper communication up front, everyone is on board and has a stake in the success of the project. There is absolutely no need for resistance. If you’re getting resistance, you’re doing it wrong.
6. Dimished results. Until or unless
  - the full set of facts are known and gathered from the full spectrum of resources,
  - the full complement of possible ideas are tried,
  - the downsides are factored in before completion,

a project will not be successful. Nothing else to say.

THE TOOLS YOU NEED

Here are the necessary skill sets for effective team communication:

Unbiased Listening. This sounds much easier to do than it is. Let me start by saying that nothing has meaning – no words, no dialogues, no sounds – until our brains translate it. Like the earth has no color – color is a function of the rods and cones in our eyes translating incoming vibrations – words have no meaning until the incoming sound vibrations get translated within our neural circuitry (I wrote a book on this: What? Did you really say what I think I heard?).

In other words, we only understand what someone says according to our existing brain circuits. Listening is a neural/brain thing: we can’t hear others without bias.

For those who are curious, sound enters our ears as vibrations without meaning (i.e. not words!). They become signals that seek out ‘close enough’ circuits already existing in our brains from some prior experience and get translated accordingly.

In other words, everything we hear gets translated by our subjective experience. Sad but true. And we think we listen attentively, but can only hear/understand what our brains listen for. Obviously this is where misunderstanding and miscommunication come from. People DO listen. They just hear what their brains interpret for them according to their historic, subjective beliefs.

The easiest way to fix this problem is to say during a conversation:

I want to make sure I understood what you said. I will say what I think I heard, and ask that you please correct me so I can get it right.

This way you can take away an accurate understanding without guesswork, even if you initially thought what you heard was accurate.

Gather data from every person or you’ll not have the full fact pattern. Too often we gather data from the folks we consider ‘obvious’. not necessarily the full set of stakeholders who are part of the problem and hold some very necessary data.

So many customer service initiatives are developed without the input of the customer facing folks and omit addressing real customer needs. How many times are HR folks omitted because, well, why use HR (except that the initiative will transfer, fire, reorganize people)? Think of everyone who will be touched by the final solution and bring them in at the start.

Ask the right questions. This one is a head scratcher because conventional questions are meant to gather data biased by the needs, language choices, and goals of the Asker and which subsequently gather very restricted data from the Receiver. Obviously, the odds are good that the question will be misinterpreted. So using conventional questions will only discover some percentage of an answer.

To manage this problem, I’ve invented a new form of question (took me 10 years!) I call a Facilitative Question. Different from a conventional question that seeks answers for the Asker, FQs lead Others into their brains to discover a much, much broader set of possibilities beyond the biases of the Asker. After all, retrieving good data is a mind-brain issue. It takes a while to learn to formulate as specific words in specific sequences are used so the brain peruses its unconscious. But once you learn how it changes the arc of all conversations.

Do a congruence check. Are all team members contributing? If not, there’s a reason. Are they feeling unheard, that their ideas aren’t ‘big’ enough? Do they feel powerless? Do they feel any gender, race, or ability bias?

All voices are necessary. Bring them in or you risk restricting all that’s possible, not to mention setting up the initiative for failure and resistance.

Only hold meetings if ALL members are present! Do not hold a meeting if someone is ill or can’t make it. It biases the outcome, causes resistance, and leaves out important ideas.

IS YOUR COMMUNICATION WORKING? I have some questions for teams to consider:

Is your team is functioning optimally? What would suboptimal communication look/sound/act like?
Do you have any vehicle in place to take a meta stance and discover problems without biases or defense?
What do you have in place to ensure you’re not operating with any racial, gender, or ability prejudice? It’s inherent and unconscious. How do you test it?
Do you regularly get resistance – either from your own team or during client initiatives? What are you willing to do to develop strategies that enable group buy-in from the full set of stakeholders (i.e. including ‘Joe in accounting’)?
If you regularly notice dysfunction, during an initiative or with less-than-steller results, what are you doing about it?

I believe this is a problem that needs focus, especially with so much change occurring in our organizations now. Make it a priority. Your productivity, creativity, stability and integrity depend on it.

____________________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen June 27th, 2022

Posted In: News

On 5/13/2022 I received an apology from Gordon Hogg for plagiarizing my work. For several years he lifted my exact words from my writings that explain my original thinking on sales, listening, questioning, and training in his own articles, website, posts, and client offerings. Below you’ll find Hogg’s apology to me and the sales community. Note: it does not contain his continued belief that any published content is freely available for anyone to copy.

I’m heartbroken. Not only did Hogg crib my original IP that I worked tirelessly over hours, years, decades to write, invent, and develop, but he misconstrued my innovative thinking, specifically my Buying Facilitation® model, to be used as a sales ploy rather than the change management, servant-leader front-end I intended.

I ask that Hogg’s readers visit www.sharon-drew.com where I explain and offer the original material with the accurate intention.

Sharon-Drew Morgen

_________________________

To the sales industry:

Many years ago, I came across a number of books and articles written by Sharon-Drew Morgen who is an original thinker and inventor of systemic brain change models that are often used in sales as Buying Facilitation®. Sharon-Drew has spent the past 40 years developing, inventing, writing, thinking, testing, and trialing, to create Buying Facilitation® and get it published into books, articles and delivered in corporations. I was fascinated by the sheer brilliance of how Sharon-Drew articulated, and developed, models to assist the buying process.

There is nothing like it in mainstream business. I have been involved in sales and marketing for as long as Sharon-Drew has been developing her material. I have always struggled with trying to explain why salespeople are so out of sync with how their buyers buy but could never find the right words to explain why sales merely tries to push their products rather than enter at the other end to first help people go through their decision process to become buyers. I found Sharon-Drew’s words and insights could help me convey the right message.

Unfortunately, while developing a message to salespeople, I plagiarized Sharon-Drew’s words, slogans and phrases directly from her articles, books, titles and neglected to attribute them to Sharon-Drew. And unfortunately, I misunderstood the true import of her original thinking and misappropriated her concepts as an improved way to get people to buy, totally overlooking the change focus (i.e. instead of buying focus) and the spiritual nature of Sharon-Drew’s intent, to truly serve people in making the decisions needed to actually become buyers.

This misunderstanding caused Sharon-Drew’s decades of work to also be misunderstood and misappropriated as I used her exact words with a different intent. As a small example, I misappropriated her terms buying patterns, helping buyers buy, steps in the buying journey, traversing the 13 steps of change, workarounds and stakeholders, selling doesn’t cause buying, the ‘cost’ of change, change management. While some of these words are words in common usage, in her writing Sharon-Drew defines them uniquely, in a narrow definition of how brains make decisions and I used them in service to selling solutions.

I wrote blog posts using her words and ideas directly from her blogs (including words that she used to define her Buying Facilitation® thinking, and the new forms of question and training she invented), including titles from her already published articles.
I have misinterpreted her words to explain the failure in sales processes rather than their original intention as a model to facilitate systemic change.
I plagiarized words and phrases in her change facilitation material as a way to overcome deficiencies in sales model rather than their original intention of facilitating the steps of change which Sharon-Drew has laid out so sellers can lead people through them before trying to sell.

I now wish to make clear that the goal of what Sharon-Drew has pioneered for decades as an original thinker and servant leader has been to truly (and singularly) facilitate change; when used with sales, a purchase might result as an output; when used in generic coaching and leading, a congruent, permanent decision results.

Plagiarizing any of her work without any attribution to get the attention of salespeople was wrong and for that I apologize. Sharon-Drew deserves to be properly credited. The writing, the developing, the inventing of the material I plagiarized has been Sharon-Drew’s life’s work. She often spends 50 hours writing the articles that I so carelessly plagiarized.

Sharon-Drew has invented additional brain-based models from which I also plagiarized:

Learning facilitation: a new form of training that uses brain function. I plagiarized some of her writing and thinking when I mentioned how I would train salespeople.
Facilitative Questions: a unique form of question that enables others to find their own answers and excludes information gathering. These are used in Buying Facilitation® to lead people through their change steps. I not only plagiarized her words used when explaining these, but I offered this new skill set in the form of Enabling Questions.
The 13 steps of change: the stages everyone must go through before becoming buyers. I plagiarized some of her steps in both articles, posts, in illustrations as a tool to help sellers position sales pitches, rather than the brain change steps that facilitate good decisions.

While my site claimed to offer clients a ‘new form of training’ and a ‘new form of question’, those were taken directly from Sharon-Drew’s inventions. I will no longer be offering services re any of the original material Sharon-Drew has invented.

I also had a 73 page sample assessment on how buyers buy that plagiarized many of Sharon-Drew’s words and ideas directly from her books and articles.

I apologize for plagiarizing and misrepresenting her work. As I did this over the course of years, I hope the people who have read my articles will go back to Sharon-Drew’s work on www.sharon-drew.com and read the ideas as they were intended. Sharon-Drew’s concepts on helping buyers buy and Buying Facilitation® are wholly original and needed in the sales industry.

I am truly sorry, Sharon-Drew.

Gordon Hogg

____________________

Sharon Drew Morgen June 20th, 2022

Posted In: News

Have you ever tried to change one of your behaviors and failed? Well, not failed, exactly. Maybe you were successful for a week or three, but then reverted back to the old behavior. Do you know why you reverted back? It’s your brain’s fault: behaviors don’t happen merely because you desire them.

There’s a universal myth that behaviors are… well, they just are, somehow removed from any source or trigger that would instigate them. We assume because we ‘want to do’ something, it will happen. But behaviors don’t just ‘show up’; they are a response to an electro-chemical process in our brains. Certainly out of our direct control.

In this article I’ll attempt to instigate your curiosity and offer my theory. I understand I’m going against mainstream thinking, that the perceived wisdom says behaviors stand alone and can be changed through determination and discipline (i.e. Behavior Modification). But read what I have to say. I might just provide some new thinking.

THE BRAIN EQUATION

Behaviors are part of a neurological process, the outputs of a series of brain connections that get triggered to act, brain connections formed through time from what we learn, how we live, what our parents and neighbors and jobs taught us. I call these our Mental Models.

In other words, behaviors are the visible display of who we are – so as a pacifist, you would expect me to not buy a gun. As a vegetarian, you would be surprised if I ate a steak. My behaviors express who I am at that moment in time (even when seemingly incongruent).

I believe, therefore I behave.

Take a look at the scientific graphic for how brains end up triggering specific behaviors, a simple equation that takes an incoming thought (an instruction, an input), through to action, a behavior (an output).

INPUT ➡️ CUE ➡️ CEN ➡️ OUTPUT

Inputs trigger outputs. See what it looks like once I add in where Beliefs and Mental Models sit so you can see how they instigate the behaviors:

INPUT (words/internal request=vibrations) –> filters (Beliefs, Mental models etc.) –> CUE (vibrations –> signals) –> CEN (dispatches signals automatically to ‘similar enough’ circuits for translation) –> OUTPUT (behaviors)

As you see from this equation (There are also electro-chemical processes involved, including dopamine.), once a message enters as an input, it gets filtered by specific Beliefs that then select signals that ‘match’ the input signals and go through brain sequences that end up as an output/action. There is no way for a behavior to occur without the signals that instigate them and without circuits that translate the incoming vibrations into meaning.

And yet when people attempt to make a change they address only the outputs and fail to start from the source – the stimuli, the initiators, the triggers – that triggered them. It should be obvious that with a different input, a different output will result. So

“I need to go on a diet.”

will conclude with someone’s brain seeking out the historic superhighway for ‘diet’ and produce the same results as previously. But if the input instructions are changed to

“I am a healthy person who will research best nutritional choices for my body and eat what will produce my best weight that I can maintain over time.”

The results will be different, a new ‘superhighway’ will be created, and it will be far simpler to reach, and maintain, optimal weight.

I contend a behavior is a Belief in action, the output that results from the brain processing an input. I believe that who we are and what Beliefs, values norms, and history define us, determines our behaviors.

Everything we do, everything we say, is a visible sign, an indication, of who we are. And I strongly believe that without new input, it’s not possible to change the output/behaviors.

If you wish more in-depth knowledge, watch my video explaining the elements of brain change: http://buyingfacilitation.com/blog/courses/the-how-of-change-sample/?lesson=62

BEHAVIORS ARE BELIEFS IN ACTION

Think of something you did recently, something simple, like go grocery shopping. The driver is your belief that it’s necessary to buy food to stay alive, that you’re running out of bananas. Simple.

But what about the type of words you use in conversation? Or who you vote for? Everything we do and say is a result of a Belief in action.

Recently a student of mine from Pakistan had a problem with her boss. She wanted to tell him that he was rude and disrespectful and he was trying to demoralize her. What’s your underlying Belief, I asked. “He’s a mean person who hates women and it’s time someone told him he’d better clean up his act.”

I asked her what she would say if her Belief was “No one willfully harms another and he may not realize I feel disrespected from his interactions, that because he’s from Pakistan his verbal habits might be cultural.” Oh! With that Belief change, she eventually called him and said:

“I’d like you to know how disrespected I feel during some of our conversations and it cuts off my creativity. I know you don’t speak to me this way intentionally, but I want us to work together in a constructive way so that together we can make a difference in the world. Is there a way we can communicate in a way that makes me feel more respected?”

He instantly became apologetic, said he hadn’t realized he was speaking disrespectfully, and he hoped she could forgive him, that he valued her, that he would work at speaking with more respect. From then on, their relationship and her creativity flourished. He even made her a close colleague, asking her opinion on several things he was working on and brought her in to meetings as a ‘leader’.

If she had acted on her originating Belief, she would have ended up being fired for being disrespectful. Instead he now sees her as management material. Change the Belief, change the behavior.

UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS

I have a story of a Belief change of mine and how it helped a neighbor.

My neighbor Maria came over one day crying. Seems she had been diagnosed with Pre-Diabetes and given a standard diet to lose 30 pounds. She was frightened that she’d end up dying from diabetes like her Mom did. I took her to Whole Foods and we purchased healthy versions of what she ate at home. She ended up losing 10 pounds by the time I left to train clients in India. When I returned 3 weeks later, she came over crying again. She had put the weight back on and remained scared that she’d never lose it and end up dying.

That’s when I realized that I had chosen to ‘do’ something (behavior) to help her, wrongly believing (Beliefs) that I could get her on the right path; that eating the ‘right’ foods (i.e. a behavior change) was the answer. But I hadn’t helped her create new circuitry so she could figure out her own change. I shifted my Belief to: Maria must be responsible for her own choices (behaviors) and I can help her create new Belief-based inputs.

I used my Buying Facilitation® process (a generic belief -> behavior decision facilitation model I’ve trained in sales for decades) on her:

SD: What has stopped you from being comfortable following your doctor’s diet?

M: If I did, I wouldn’t have the love I get from my family.

Wait, what? How did her family get included in this? I thought it was about food! [Note: Beliefs are often unconscious and outsiders rarely know what instigates them.]

SD: So I hear you saying that food, family, and love are tied together for you.

M: Right. Every morning I make 150 tortillas and put them in bags for my kids and grandchildren. Every morning they all come by, and I stand out on the curb handing out bags for each of them. Then Joe and I eat the rest. Tortillas are not on my diet.

SD: And you’d miss seeing your family every day if you didn’t hand out the tortillas!

So her Beliefs were based on something entirely different from anything food-related, and these are what prompted her behaviors. Unconscious. Automatic.

Maria and I put together a plan of action that would incorporate her Beliefs with her doctor’s orders. She had a large dinner party during which she handed her daughter Sonia her beloved tortilla pan wrapped up in a big red bow.

M: I am having health issues and can’t eat or make tortillas anymore. From now on Sonia will be the new Tortilla Tia (auntie) and will make them and hand them out every morning. On Fridays, I’ll make you enchiladas and you can come by here!

By discovering her unconscious Beliefs Maria was able to change her behaviors to lose her 30 pounds – and keep it off because she changed her eating habits permanently.

SERVING OTHERS

Obviously, outsiders cannot know someone’s unconscious Beliefs – even they don’t always know them! Yet in order to make congruent changes they must. As coaches, parents, managers, and for yourself, it’s necessary to get to the Beliefs to add or change a behavior. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What would I need to know or believe differently to be willing to shift my own belief about behaviors and consider they are instigated by my Beliefs?
What would I need to do or know differently to enter influencing relationships with a desire to help them discover their own underlying Beliefs without trying to influence them toward my own biases?
What skills would I need to learn in order to enter all influencing relationships with Beginner’s Mind and be as devoid of my own biases as possible?
How will I know, what will I notice, to recognize if/when my own biases got in the way of Another finding their own unconscious beliefs?

I’ve been developing belief-based behavior change models for decades, starting with my Buying Facilitation® model that leads Others through their unconscious Beliefs and systems so they can quickly make good decisions (used in sales, leadership, coaching), through to my How of Change model that actually teaches how to create new neural circuitry.

With so much of neuroscience focusing on ‘behavior change’ and omitting the need to begin with Belief change, we are withholding real support. Doctors could be facilitating ill people through to real behavior change and health; coaches could be helping people quickly discover their own answers with no bias from the coach; managers and parents and influencers could truly serve Others to find their own solutions.

I’m happy to share my knowledge with you. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. Or go to my site www.sharon-drew.com and read about some of my inventions. I look forward to us all learning exactly HOW to make a difference.

_____________________

Sharon Drew Morgen March 14th, 2022

Posted In: News

My friend Jack’s boss recently visited his team berating them for the output of their year-long project undertaken at his behest – and then walked out. Feeling disrespected and unmotivated, the team became despondent. As a senior manager Jack was left with the responsibility of re-incentivizing and inspiring the team and getting them back on track. But no one was there to incentivize him. After several such situations he began putting his creative energies into a beloved personal project.

I asked Jack what happened once he’d had a private word with the boss to discuss how his actions impeded the team’s creativity. Nope. No discussion. Jack said it happens all the time and he would have faced rebuke had he mentioned it.

Jack would have been the one censured?? Why would an upper manager wittingly disincentivize the team? Why would an entire culture be willing to disincentivize their employees? Why was disrespect condoned?

I believe that employees are a company’s first customer; why would companies prefer to not serve their employees as respectfully as they served paying customers?

WHY?

No one takes a job thinking they’ll experience verbal abuse that causes

Impeded creativity
Diminished loyalty
Reduced innovation
Anger and resentment
Distrust for management
Disincentive to learn and grow.

Indeed, we spend a large chunk of our lives working; we choose jobs where we can be our happiest, most creative and engaged selves. And yet here is one of the world’s great tech companies systematically mistreating the very people they hired to help them grow and carry their brand as global innovators.

Not only is this morally offensive, it’s profoundly stupid, akin to shooting your sled dogs for an infraction during the Iditarod. Why would you want to damage your lifeline to success?

Of course this isn’t the first company that treats their employees like scrap. But for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would want to disrespect an employee (or anyone, for that matter).

The cost is so high, engendering less innovation, more turnaround and higher hiring/training costs (if anyone even wants to work for them once word gets out), bad press, and unhappy employees that go on to inadvertently treat the company’s customers with less respect as natural fallout. Not to mention they eventually fall behind companies with Servant Leader practices that work on win/win, respect, and integrity.

In the 1980s I set up my tech company so everyone could explore their dreams, ideas, and the excitement of possibility. And except for moving, no employees left during the 5 years I was there. Competitors told me at conferences that they offered to pay my folks double but they wouldn’t leave. “What’s your secret? What are you doing over there?” they’d say.

What I did was pretty simple: I took care of them. I respected them. I removed ‘vacation days’ and told them to take off the time they needed to stay refreshed (I had to make them leave a few times a year – I couldn’t get them to take time off.). As per company policy, everyone took one day off a month to do volunteer work; anyone wanting a newly created leadership role got a 2 week trial run to see if they wanted the job before I hired in a stranger (Most folks went back to their job so they’d have more time with their families.); I took the field techs to a pub monthly to keep connected; I hired a ’make nice guy’ to make sure the outside team had a dedicated person for both technical and client relationship support.

And it was part of the culture to be as creative as they liked so long as they got my help 3 feet before falling over the edge. I remember my surprise (We’re doing WHAT?) when my training director signed a one-year lease for 1,000 sq ft of extra space to create a new set of programs that became so popular we doubled our training business in a year. They even got me to train a management course! I would never have thought of it. My employees were Customer #1 and I trusted their ideas.

CONDONING DISRESPECT? DENIAL?

So it makes no logical sense to me why companies condone disrespect when they depend on their employees for their success. Maybe:

Weak leadership from the top;
Fear of upsetting the status quo;
Denial;
Ego;
A good-enough culture;
Normalization of disrespect among the leaders themselves;
Old-fashioned top-down power dynamics.

There’s just no ‘win’ in it. Years ago I was hired by a franchise owner to visit 11 of his companies around Europe to see what was going on. When I returned with my 75-page report, he had a check ready for me saying the job was done. But given the problems I unearthed, we had loads of work to do. What happened?

Peter: See that pond out there? Before you left the water was sparkling. Since your visits and the questions you posed to the companies, I can’t even see the water anymore. All the junk that was on the bottom is now on top.

SD: And your choice is to clean it up or get rid of me and let it sink back down so it goes back to being hidden.

Peter: Correct. It’s all been working well-enough, and I can’t tolerate what it would take to fix these problems.

SD: You really need to read my report because you’ve got a few serious problems. Paul is methodically stealing all your customers.

Peter: I’m sure it will be fine. I’ve been Paul’s mentor for years. He wouldn’t steal from me.

Six months later he went bankrupt when Paul took the customers. I assume Peter never read the report. Ego. Denial. Status quo. No ‘win’ in it at all.

NO, REALLY. WHY?

For a corporate culture to maintain standards that allow the sort of maltreatment that disincentivizes staff and decreases output, the entire leadership team must buy-in to abuse.

Given that people (employees!) thrive on kindness, respect, and positive attention – my goodness, even our brains experience increased well-being with the raised oxytocin from positive attention – why would a company prefer to continue discouraging the very people they need for success?

No, really. Why?

I’m going to pose some questions here in the hopes that companies make sure they notice and minimize any sort of practices that are less than encouraging, inspirational, supportive, and honest:

How will you know when anyone on the management team is lacking the skills to truly serve their reports in a way that inspires them to thrive? What is going on within the culture that protects managers who are less than respectful or inspirational?
What rules or standards are built into the company culture that give people permission to be less than respectful and supportive?
What is the risk if you create a culture that serves all and makes it undisputable that disrespect is not tolerated? What laws/rules must you put in place to foster respect, collaboration, and true leadership? And how do you encourage buy-in of these laws/rules?
How do you encourage whistleblowers and make sure they get heard without retribution? So folks understand that breaking the rules of respect and integrity will prompt quick dismissal?
How can you make sure that integrity is built into your hiring practices? Into supervisory skills?

I don’t have answers here, folks. I have no place in my brain that would understand why anyone would want to do that to another person, let alone a senior manager with reports he’s dependent on to expand their brand.

For now, let’s just think about the questions and start a conversation. Let me know your thoughts: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_____________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen February 28th, 2022

Posted In: News

I hate unrequested ‘feedback’. Personally, when I want to better myself, I seek feedback from folks whose opinions I trust. But sometimes, when I do something that annoys someone else, they take it upon themselves to offer me ‘feedback’ to tell me what I did ‘wrong,’ too often based on beliefs we don’t share.

Given we could all benefit from positive feedback once in a while, I would like to propose ways to offer respectful feedback as part of a servant-leader model.

I’ll begin with a story. I recently shared an annoyance with a group of friends and was quite surprised to be met with silence. I did get one helpful comment afterwards:

“If the time comes you ever want to learn how to get the group’s attention in a way that they can hear and respond, I’d be happy to offer suggestions. I’ve been a member of the group for a long time and they have a certain pattern to their sharing. I’m here if you need me.”

To me, that’s great feedback. Gives me information and choice, not to mention a great resource to learn from; no blame, no insult, no assumptions, no bias. And he trusted me to discover my own timing for learning. Win/Win/Win.

SOMEONE IS MADE WRONG

These days it seems acceptable for one person (the Giver) to tell another (the Receiver) how to improve when acting in a manner deemed ‘unacceptable’ to the Giver. Indeed, books on feedback explain how Receivers can ‘overcome’ their ‘lack of perspective’ – obviously a biased, insulting judgment that assumes

the Giver is right (and the Receiver wrong),
the Giver has the moral entitlement to judge the Receiver,
the Giver’s viewpoint is accurate (and the Receiver should heed it),
the Giver has THE answer (based on his/her idiosyncratic beliefs),
the Giver uses the best verbiage to be understood accurately, without incurring resistance or hurt,
there is no bias involved,
the Receiver doesn’t have the tools, skills, or understanding to do what’s ‘right’ on their own.

Everyone has the right to speak their mind of course. But I don’t know anyone who welcomes what might be spurious comments based on Another’s biases.

The idea of someone telling Another that they have a problem and the Giver has THE answer, assumes it’s ok for the Giver to use their own biases to try to convince the Receiver they’re wrong and they need to change. And that is well outside of my personal, moral beliefs.

I’m aware that often a boss needs to help an employee make adjustments, or a parent needs to modify a teenager’s unsuccessful choices. But the baseline remains the same: No one has the right to proclaim a moral high ground, to expect anyone else to change because of personal feelings, biases, and assumptions, to assume the Receiver has no say, no unique judgment, no relevant thought process that could become part of an agreeable solution.

TWO MINDS BETTER THAN ONE

Of course, because nobody is perfect (although we each think we are), we sometimes need a reality check. For those times, there’s a way Givers can create feedback that will enable win/win conversations and excellence. Here are several issues that must be overcome:

BIAS: The assumption that feedback is needed is often based on a Giver wanting a Receiver to change as per the Giver’s unique beliefs and values. Sure, if there is a danger involved, a Receiver must ultimately choose new behaviors. But in general, when a Giver assumes the ‘right’ road without identifying a path to partnership, or recognizing there might be a specific reason the Receiver made their choices, any discussion becomes win/lose.

WRONG ASSUMPTIONS: Too often a Giver’s feedback assumes the Receiver is wrong, or doesn’t possess the skills or tools to do it better, and goes forth pushing their own agendas. With these assumptions, any feedback will most likely be ignored, especially if it offends, insults, or in some way harms the Receiver. This certainly doesn’t set in motion a path to positive behavior modification.

RIGHT VS WRONG: What makes one person right and one person wrong? Just asking. While it might be clear in the Giver’s mind, it’s often up for interpretation.

WRONG LANGUAGING: How does the Giver know for certain that their approach to instigate change is the best approach? My book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? discusses how brains misunderstand, mistranslate, and misinterpret incoming information based on the listener’s mental models and brain synapses – nothing whatsoever to do with the facts or content coming in. Unfortunately, we all assume our speech is ‘easily understandable’ and others should hear what we mean. Nope.

ME VS YOU: Why should I listen to you, or make changes in my normal behavior patterns, when I don’t agree with you and you make no sense to me?

WHO’S OUTCOME IS IT?: Sometimes the Giver is working from different, hidden, or unconscious outcomes. Why would the ‘offender’ heed the feedback if s/he is meeting her own outcomes? And how can a Giver understand differences between them with a goal or bias that restricts the ability to listen or be flexible enough to go through discovery together?

Are you getting the point here? Feedback is biased; people are all doing the best they can do at any given moment; the only people who will be compliant are those who are already on the same page (and those folks don’t usually need feedback) or those fearful of consequences. And fear is a poor motivator.

WHAT TO DO

Before you offer feedback, consider the distance between what someone is doing/saying vs what you believe should be done/said. Is it merely an opinion they should do something different, or will it actually resolve a problem? Is there a way to mutually discover a solution to accomplish this without causing fear, distrust, and annoyance?

When a problem occurs that needs to be fixed, a collaborative discussion will enable the Receiver to discover their own route to change.

1. Enter the conversation with curiosity:

I noticed X was occurring and find it problematic (for the job, for our relationship, for the outcome). Would you be willing to discuss it with me to figure out if there is actually a problem or there’s another way to look at the situation?

2. Be prepared to drop biases, expectations, needs, and opinions and clearly state intentions. There’s no place in a collaborative communication for any offense:

I find I’m having reactions to what happened, but come with an openness to finding the best route to excellence. If you feel like I’m being biased or disrespectful, I’d like to hear your thoughts so we end up on the same page with the same goal. It’s not my intent to disparage you in any way. I just want to find the best way to both feel comfortable going forward.

3. Tell your side of what you feel about the incident, without further commentary, and clearly state your need for the conversation:

When X happened, it seemed to me your reaction caused [a bigger problem/unexpected fallout, etc.] and it scared me. I wonder if we could discuss both our needs and assumptions and see if there is a path to end up with something we can both live with and neither of us considered.

4. Listen without bias. Make sure you repeat what you think you heard as it’s quite possible your brain might have misinterpreted what was said:

Let me see if I heard you accurately. I heard you say X. Did I get that right? Or am I misunderstanding something? Please correct my interpretation. I want us to be on the same page.

5. Discuss your needs in relation to what you heard, and begin creating a plan:

Sounds like you and I have similar outcomes but different ways of expressing it. That’s what I had the problem with, but now see your choices were just different from mine. What do you think about doing X as a middle path? I think that might meet the goals. What do you think? Do you have any other ideas to suggest?

6. Put it all together:

I think we’ve reached a route that we’ll both benefit from. Is there anything you need from me going forward to make sure we collaborate through to excellence?

I recognize there are times when the Giver is a boss, a parent, a leader needing specific results. But if there’s no collaboration, if there’s bias about right and wrong, if there’s no way to hear each other, neither Giver or Receiver can be the driver toward excellence. Use feedback as a route to excellence.

__________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen February 14th, 2022

Posted In: News

As someone with Asperger’s, I’ve always experienced the world from a different set of rules than those used by ‘normal’ people (neurotypicals (NTs)). Occasionally I get in trouble, even with friends. I remember once my neighbors Gus and Randy came over to watch TV and brought an ugly (ugly!!), cheap glass ashtray as a ‘visit’ gift – a gift to watch TV? The next day I brought it back.

SD: I’m never going to use this, and I hate it. Maybe give it to someone who will appreciate it.

Gus: (Laughter) You’re returning a gift!?

Randy: (Silence. Anger. Annoyance.)

SD: Randy, are you mad at me because I returned this? Do you want me to keep it? You seem to be mad at me. I don’t understand why.

Randy: (Silence. Silence. Silence.)

Gus: Oh, come on, Randy! It’s a cheap ashtray! We can use it as a Secret Santa gift.

Randy: (Staring at me with intense eyes. Silence. Staring.) WHO DOES THAT!!!!

SD: I do.

Because I experience the world so differently, I often neglect assumed, and apparently innate, conventional social rules. For survival, I developed others that make more sense to me. The good news is that using my own atypical rules and reasoning, I’ve spent my life resolving curiosities about choice and decision making that didn’t seem to have answers in standard thinking and yet make a difference.

With my atypical brain, I’ve invented values-based systemic brain change models (used in sales, decision making, leadership, habit formation, behavior change) that I’ve trained world-wide and have written several books on.

The bad news is that because my ideas have no precedent, the path to adoption is challenging. And yet, I’ve mostly figured it out.

In this article I offer what I’ve learned to help those troublemakers out there with great ideas that go against convention. After all, without troublemakers nothing changes.

RIGHT RULES DON’T CAUSE INNOVATION

At the start, I’d like to say that my innate rules aren’t wrong, they just operate from a different mindset than the perceived wisdom, enabling me to create out-of-the-box concepts. I don’t even realize they’re outside the box until I get pushback.

Eventually, the right people show up with curiosity and excitement. Once I was training my change model with a graphic on systemic brain change that took me 3 months to figure out. A woman raised her hand. “Where did you get that graphic? I’m a neuroscientist and that part is missing from the field. Where did you get it! Can I use it?” Music to my ears.

I’ve always known my ideas are to be shared and used by others. But how could I disseminate them when such a high percent of a reading audience uses more traditional thinking? To learn how, I had to learn the principles of ‘normal’ discourse and expectations. I had already learned that using my own unique communication process, the ideas got rejected out of hand.

Early on I recognized I had to show up as ‘normal’ if I wanted to share new thinking. When I was 11 I began taking notes of normal conversations; eventually I noticed patterns that offered new rules I could teach myself. I had to learn basics, stuff most two-year-olds know, like saying ‘Fine, thanks, how are you?’ when asked ‘How are you?’ To this day I don’t understand why that’s a valid response.

By now, and armed with probably half a million rules in my brain, I show up as NT most of the time, albeit a bit ‘charming’. I still get people annoyed when I over-share or interrupt even when I announce at the beginning of a conversation that I’m an Aspie.

But I’ve learned some rules that helped me share my models and innovate change.

10 RULES FOR INNOVATORS

To start, because my ideas are different from the perceived wisdom, folks who seek convention are initially opposed and I get ignored, or worse. But I’ve learned it’s just what happens to folks who break the rules. Rule #1: don’t expect to fit in. Be willing to be overlooked or ignored.

Over time, I’ve figured out who to share new ideas with; mainstream isn’t the place for me to start. Certainly, early adopters are more curious, accepting, and less judgmental.

So that brings up a few questions: who do I share my ideas with so they’ll garner acceptance and adoption? How much am I willing to dumb down a new concept to help it be understood? Should I just seek folks who easily understand? Am I targeting the right audience? How can I test my message so I don’t frustrate those who might understand with just a bit of help? Rule #2: choose who to share the ideas with.

I always work hard to understand the rules in a particular environment so I’ll have an idea which ones I’m breaking. It makes it easier to know where rejection will come from: if I don’t know where I’m at, I can’t get where I’m going (I’ve got a bunch of fun one-liners in Morgenisms you can enjoy.). But given I’m offering wholly new thinking, I understand I may first be ignored, made wrong, or not believed. Indeed, according to the norms, I AM ‘wrong’! Rule #3: don’t take it personally, it’s part of the process.

It’s important for me to know if an idea is worth spending time on. For the times I have a ‘wonderment’ (like in, “Hmmm. I wonder why people can’t hear each other accurately?” which was the start of my book on how to listen without bias), I’ve created a trigger to alert my brain to a circuit I’ve labeled ‘Wonderment’ where I have unfettered curiosity. Once I find myself immersed in questions, and in the middle of confusion, I know I’m on the right track. Rule #4: choose ideas that seem endlessly stimulating and you’re willing to devote a lot of time and energy on.

Frustration, curiosity, dead ends… during my process everything changes, even when it takes years; there are no ready answers and limitless places to look for new ones. I don’t even know all the questions to pose until I’m finished. So I keep stimulating my brain for just a smidge of a thought, a slice of a wonderment.

I make sure new inspirations flow in: Books. Podcasts. Plays. Hiking. I stay away from talking heads with conventional ideas that promise if you do X you’ll be successful. I just read a book on how New York City sanitation trucks get scheduled! I read ezines on topics I have no knowledge of. I travel to unusual places with unknowable rules to learn new patterns: I’ve spent a week with the Shuar Indians living in a mud hut with creepy things crawling up the walls (Pretty, but ewwww). I’ve spent a week in Uruguay living on a sheep farm failing badly at training a Border Collie.

I never know when new ideas will emerge but keep my brain stimulated to spark them. Rule #5: be infinitely flexible.

Time to think is crucial. I schedule specific hours every week to do nothing but think. I keep 20 pads of paper and pens scattered around the house to catch idea. I collect them at the end of the week to see what I’ve got. I never know what will work or what new ideas will go with what. So I try and try, fail and fail, scribble, and fail, and try, and…. Until one Eureeka moment when I know I’ve got it, when all feels settled. Rule #6: make ‘thinking’ a tool of your profession and devote specific time for it.

Get your brain in shape as if you were an athlete. I get plenty of sleep, no longer drink (sometimes a beer on a Saturday) because it muddles my brain. I remove drama as much as possible. I work out (walk 2 miles a day, one hour of weights in the gym 2x/week) and eat really healthy. With no exercise and bad food, I get logy. Rule #7: get yourself in brain-shape so you have the clarity necessary to innovate.

Mistakes are wonderful things. I make loads. And sometimes I revamp something that took me months or years to design. You must be ok with getting it wrong often. If you’re a perfectionist or need to be ‘right’ all the time, breaking rules and developing new ideas isn’t for you.

But each failure, each error, each dead end, eventually opens a path to an answer. There’s a lot of passion, self-trust, and self-discipline involved. I just have to keep going even when it’s a mess, when I’m confused, when it seems all wrong and going nowhere. After all, if there were a place I could learn it, it wouldn’t be anything new. So I’ve learned to trust the process.

It took me 10 years to create a new form of question. I began with wondering how it was possible to get into my brain to find stuff when I kept thinking just one way and I knew there were others. Eventually I developed Facilitative Questions that enable brains to discover where their best answers are stored. I’ve taught these to about 100,000 people! Rule: #8: be humble; failure and confusion are part of the process.

For me, I get impaled with an idea that I cannot shake and it rumbles around my brain every waking moment, even in my dreams. When you’re new at this, be stubborn: don’t acquiesce to the thoughts of Others who tell you you’re doing something impossible, or you’re wrong. You ARE! Get over it and keep going. Rule 9: be stubborn; being wrong is right.

The persistent problem is how to message the new ideas so they’re accepted. Left to my own devices, I can explain a concept in a sentence or two. But no one would understand me, so I’ve learned to incorporate industry idioms, styles of speech, regularly used phrases, and accepted knowledge.

The biggest challenge is inspiring curiosity instead of rejection. It’s a brain thing: incoming sounds (including words) get translated into meaning only when they’ve been sent through habitual, unconscious brain circuits (neuroscience books call words ‘puffs of air’). So people automatically think according to their historic assumptions.

The trick is to help trigger folks from an assumption to a curiosity. Some people automatically become curious when an incoming idea seems confusing; most people ignore it or reject it out of hand when it goes against a belief.

We’re never told that information, in and of itself, doesn’t cause new thinking unless it’s being sought (i.e. there’s a place in the brain waiting for that specific data); unless I get my ducks in a row and choose the right message to the right people and generate new brain circuits, I’m wasting my breath.

So how can you initiate curiosity so your new ideas get accepted? Just because you’ve got a great idea doesn’t mean it will be heard or accepted. But you must figure it out. Rule #10: Try several approaches to sharing new ideas, including questions, storytelling, personal examples, initiating sharing to understand Another’s thought process; develop outreach to fit the messaging to the audience.

So it’s a process. A very humbling process.

GETTING NEW IDEAS HEARD

What would you need to know or believe differently to begin your own wonderment program? To believe that your ideas are worth disseminating? That you can make a difference?

With so much change occurring – in business, technology, media, management, climate change, etc. – we’re all going through shifts in thinking and are open to change. It’s the perfect time to break rules and develop new models, new ways of working and thinking and communicating.

Obviously with your new ideas in hand, you must get them accepted and disseminated. So how? Do you want to make a difference in your personal sphere – for yourself or your family? Do you want to make a difference in the world? In your company?

The big hurdle to get over is how to help Others understand you; they have no brain circuits to translate your ideas. What will you figure out to resolve this problem?

It’s the problem all innovators and inventors must solve. Tesla never figured it out. Neither did Cezanne. Did you know he only sold one painting during his life – to Matisse who wanted to learn from him? Did you know it took 40 years for broad adoption of the telephone after it was invented? People continued using Morse Code to communicate! And remember how long it took folks to believe the world was round? Had nothing to do with the science, or truth.

It’s a complex issue. To break the rules in a way they’ll be adopted, you must not only change your own beliefs but facilitate others in changing theirs. Without belief change new ideas aren’t accepted. To break rules, you’ll need to help folks supersede their comfortable, automatic beliefs and message the new in a way that doesn’t offend.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he didn’t explain the engineering or coding; he used a huge screen with visuals, showing each component and simply showing the functionality of that component. Suddenly those things you secretly wanted were at your fingertips and had a name. He used what you already knew and believed and took it to the next logical step.

Breaking the rules to generate new innovations is a dark and lonely road. But it’s possible, and it’s necessary. The question is: are you willing to make a difference?

____________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen January 31st, 2022

Posted In: News

It’s time for a rant. After decades of writing books and articles explaining why we close such a small percentage of prospects and how, exactly, to facilitate the Buy Side to close much more, I’m going to say what I really think.

I’ll begin with my surprise: why do sales and marketing largely ignore the change management component of the Buy Side even in the face of very low (<5%) close rates? That the 95+% of prospects NOT buying (even in the face of the massive efforts) indicates that a focus on need or solution/product placement is imperfect? That maybe pitching/pushing content is the wrong strategy? My goodness, you wouldn’t even go to a hairdresser with a 95+% failure rate, let alone get on a plane or go to a doctor. Isn’t it clear that something is wrong?

DO YOU WANT TO SELL OR HAVE SOMEONE BUY?

For me the answer is obvious: both sales and marketing ignore the path folks take to become buyers and overlook a group of highly probable prospects who actually need support handling their unique change management issues. Because they’re not buyers yet, you’ve overlooked them. But you’re ignoring a huge opportunity to serve, differentiate yourself, and close more.

Here’s my question: Do you want to sell? Or help someone buy? Your answer is obvious: ‘I want to sell and I don’t care whether anyone buys.’ That’s what you’re doing! Selling, even though such a small percentage are buying! It’s the wrong answer. If you really wanted people to buy you’d be doing something different.

Both marketing and sales ignore the Buy Side, focusing on solution placement/product sale, while restricting the purchasing audience to those relative few – the low hanging fruit – who finally show up. And making a purchase is the very last thing people do. Before then, they’re merely people trying to figure out their best route to solving a problem.

People don’t want to buy anything, merely solve a problem at the least cost to the system. And until they understand the ‘cost to the system’ (how their culture and norms will be affected) they can’t buy. They don’t even recognize a ‘need’ until then. They certainly aren’t seeking an external solution; nor do they consider themselves buyers! Hence they pay no heed to your selling or marketing content. And yet you persist on doing the same thing even in the face of failure.

It’s possible to recognize folks who WILL be buyers on the first call, then facilitate them efficiently through their Pre-Sales (i.e. Pre-Buying) change management steps. But not with the current solution placement/product sale model.

Sales and marketing were designed to sell solutions. But sticking to the historic solution placement/product sale focus, they ignore the real Pre-Sales buying decision journey folks take first and overlook the possibility finding folks who will soon be buyers but don’t self-identify as such yet.

Sales and marketing overlook the much larger group of folks on route to becoming buyers but not ready yet, focusing instead on anyone – anyone with a name that shows up somewhere, anyone who will sit still long enough to read or listen, anyone who has any semblance of a ‘need’ as per a biased interpretation. Anyone.

FACILITATE BUYING BEFORE TRYING TO SELL

Sales can begin by recognizing, finding, and leading people through their team– and culture-based detection and buy-in activities; marketing can use change-focused content to guide folks through their unfamiliar steps of change. All it takes is a focus on facilitating change – the necessary steps involved with ‘buying’ – as the first activity rather than beginning with selling. And by ‘facilitating buying’ I mean the process of change, nothing product-purchase related.

By overlooking the change folks must take before identifying as buyers, you’re limiting your audience to those relative few who completed their internal decisions and have their ducks in a row; you’re missing a huge opportunity to beat your competition and be a change facilitator – a role folks really, really need you – as one aspect of your sales and marketing strategy.

With a shift in perspective to first find folks seeking change in your area of expertise and facilitating their necessary change management Pre-Sales Change Path BEFORE trying to sell, you’ll find folks very early in their decision journey (before they even recognize they might be buyers) and use your new change management thinking to help them figure out what they need to figure out. Then more will be ready to buy, and buy quicker.

Here’s an example of two responses to a Facilitative Question I posed to begin a prospecting call. Notice that they both have ‘need’ but only one is a real prospect [Hint: the willingness to change is the identifier.]:

SD: How are you and your decision team adding new sales skills to their already successful strategies, for those times you’re seeking to shorten sales cycles?

Response #1: every year I read 6 popular sales books. I choose my favorite, buy 1500 copies for the teams, then have the managers discuss one chapter a month. I’ve been doing it for years and my folks love it.

SD: Sounds like you are happy with your strategy.

#1: Love it.

Response #2: every year I offer some type of sales training. But I must be doing something wrong – it doesn’t seem to help and our close rates and the sales cycles don’t seem to change much.

SD: sounds frustrating.

#2. It has been. But I don’t despair. I keep seeking a way to fix this problem. Shouldn’t be so hard.

Both #1 and #2 need to learn my Buying Facilitation® model. But only #2 is actively seeking change and actually bought my training 2 weeks later. When starting by seeking folks on route to change (instead of seeking those with need), you’ll find people with a good chance of becoming buyers once they’re ready.

SALES IS AN OUTDATED MODEL

When designed 100 years ago, sales and marketing only needed a reliable product, a charming personality (Have you ever met a seller who wasn’t charming?) and folks with a need. Easy. Even buyers had an easier time: with a simple buying process, far fewer solution choices, and fewer bits and pieces to organize, buying involved maybe two or three available solutions; marketing content provided data they couldn’t get anywhere else; sales reps were a necessary and accepted part of a buying decision.

Times have changed but neither sales nor marketing have changed with them. Close rates have gone from 8% when I began selling in 1979 to well under 5% now (closer to 3% if tracked from first call). When I told someone recently that the sales model closed less than 5%, he disagreed:

F: We’re closing 15%

SD: Starting from where?

F: Starting from a visit! (Question: how many not-yet-ready-buyers did he get ‘nos’ from as he attempted to get an appointment?)

SD: How many would you close if you started counting when you get a name?

F: Less than 2%.

Isn’t this an indication that something is wrong? That you must do something different? A <5% close rate is 95+% failure! And yet it’s called success! But what if you said, “Hmmmm. Such a small percentage close rate is failure, especially after all that effort and outreach. What are we missing here?”

With fewer people needing your help to make a purchase, more folks involved in a buying decision, and more people buying online, why are you using the same process, the same thinking, you’ve always used? With a blank slate and all possibilities available, even the new apps continue the same failed thinking!

With technology to organize a seller’s time, grab names from unpredictable searches, cause company names to come up in search engines, push out content, combined with the separation of the technology into cost centers that hide the real cost of a sale, the only people making money are the groups selling these new technologies to salespeople!

It’s time to consider first finding folks on route to change and facilitating their non-buying change management process before trying to sell.

DOING THE SAME THING IS INSANITY

The continued belief that with the ‘right’ content/message, the ‘right’ technology, the concept ‘if you find them they’ll buy’ is a foundational flaw.

Think with me here: You’re spending more and more money to find more and more names and spending more and more time on folks not even real prospects. The hope, the promise – that once people notice you, appreciate your solution, believe they need your solution, and trust/like you, they’ll buy – is moot. There are several issues involved;

The focus on solution placement/product sale, and finding folks with ‘need’, misses the real opportunity:

the unique process each person/group people goes through before becoming buyers;
when, why, how people become buyers (Seriously. I’ve trained 100,000 sales folks and not one – not one! – knows their market’s Pre-Sales buying decision/change management process!);
the role of change in the buying process;
the possibility of finding folks on route to becoming buyers on the first call;
how to facilitate folks through their preliminary non-solution change decisions;
how to use marketing to progress the buying decision path.

By restricting sales and marketing to solution placement/product sale, the real process people go through on route to becoming buyers has been overlooked. Think about it for a moment. If you want to convince your spouse to buy a 2-seater $350,000 Lamborghini, would you want them to sit down with a decision facilitator or a Lamborghini sales rep?

What would you need to believe differently to begin your sales/marketing outreach with a change management criteria?

The industry presuppositions as to targeting ‘buyers’ are specious:

Please read the remainder of the article here.

For a printout of the entire article, click here.

________________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen January 17th, 2022

Posted In: News

What, exactly, is the job of a manager these days? With folks now working between office and home, meetings with people in different venues, one third of all adults suffering from depression, and work-life imbalance from our new work situations, our jobs as managers need an upgrade.

Until now, a manager’s job was akin to the job of a Chief of Staff where people, tasks, timelines, and outputs were determined by the company culture. Now the culture must address both emotional issues and leadership coming from within instead of top-down.

Managing is no longer as simple as being a good leader; it now holds the key to a company’s success and strategy. Certainly a factor in inspiring creativity and supporting well-being.

Are you noticing any issues showing up for any of your staff? Do folks need support coping with health issues? Emotional crises? Work-life balance? Are they doing the same level work they did pre pandemic? Are they as creative? Reliable? Happy?

I suspect there might be subtle differences showing up given the havoc we’ve been through. Here are a few ideas to help.

SKILLS TO SERVE

Given the new givens, folks might be a bit off balance. Here are a few ideas to help you serve them:

Enhanced listening

Because work has generally been a ‘doing’ place not a ‘being’ place, folks may gloss over what’s going on for them personally. But that doesn’t mean you should. How do you include the personal? Should there be separate meetings for those with work-life balance issues? For folks dealing with depression? What is the best approach to personal sharing so the group can serve each other and still do the business at hand?

Folks can seem ‘fine’ – put on a happy face, tell the Zoom group all is well – but listening with an unbiased ear will highlight the unspoken stuff, notice differences between their normal communication patterns and disparities showing up now.

But listening without bias is easier said than done; our brains weren’t set up to hear what someone actually means. When writing my book on how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard (WHAT?) I discovered an alarming fact: we have little chance of accurately understanding what’s said to us!

It seems all sounds (including words) enter our ears as meaningless vibrations, or ‘puffs of air’ as they’re called in science books. Through a series of very fast (five one-hundreds of a second) electro-chemical calculations in our heads, these vibrations eventually get translated into meaning according to ‘similar enough’ historic, automatic brain circuits that we’ve uniquely created during our lives and represent our mental models. Obviously, there’s a chance they might not be ‘similar-enough’ to the intended message!

And it gets worse: our brains discard some of the incoming signals that don’t match the existing ones! So I might say ABC and your brain tells you I said ABL – it never tells you it deleted D, E, F, etc. – and your brain never tells you the difference!

In other words, if there are no circuits to accurately translate what someone is saying to you, it’s possible that you may not be understanding the message according to their intent.

Put it all together and what you think was said is some percentage different from the intended message. Use my Listening Assessment to monitor your own patterns.

Meaning aside, it’s possible to hear differences between someone’s historic communication patterns and current ones. Physiologically, there might be an edge in their voice, shorter words used, a lower tone, distracted communication. To make sure you get it right, check with them: “I think I hear you say X/I think I’m noticing Y. Is that accurate?”

Here are guidelines to consider:

Notice differences – differences in voice, tone, volume; differences in content sharing. Does the person seem distracted? Quieter/more talkative than normal?
Listen for how the group handles personal issues. Is it open to adding the personal? How will you address this going forward?
Are some folks hearing more accurately? How will you intervene if you hear biases?
When something important is said, make sure to say: “I want to tell you what I heard to make sure I’ve got it right. Please correct me where I got it wrong.”

Once the team is alerted to listen for differences, set up norms going forward to help those in need. Ignoring is not an option.

Group process

How’s the group doing? When they’re in different settings are they working together effectively? Anything obvious showing up? Differences in working relationships? Is work being done efficiently? Are there communication issues? Is creativity at the same level it’s always been? Is the personal accepted? How will you handle those in the group who stick to tasks and ignore the personal?

Set up a discovery meeting. Here are a few questions to pose:

How can we be most efficient when not all folks in the same place?
How can we make sure all information is available to everyone? (Hint: this is bigger than merely sending out emails. Sometimes ‘water cooler’ chatter is important and omitted from the group discussions. How can you compensate for this?)
How do we ensure that everyone has what they need for each meeting, each initiative? That all information – personal and professional – is shared so everyone is working from the same data set?
How do we include personal issues in our meetings? Does the agenda change? Is there a time set aside?
How can we make sure everyone who should be involved is involved? Or share necessary data that only two people have discussed?
How can we discover fallout before it becomes a problem?

Until everyone who should be involved is in the meeting, no action can go forward congruently; no ideas or strategies can be complete.

I suggest meetings be rescheduled if someone can’t make it – their unique voice, feelings, creativity and observations are necessary. Without doing this, plans end up needing to be reconfigured; egos might be bruised and relationships compromised; good ideas will go unspoken. Meetings must include the full stakeholder team or there will be glitches, resistance, or non-compliance going forward.

Information Gathering/Idea Generation

Given people may not be in the same room, or they’re distracted as per their time/health/childcare issues, getting information collected and brainstormed might be untidy. But it’s important everyone is on board and buys in to actions and goals.

How will meetings be led and advanced? Will one person always do it? Will there be a rotation?
Who sets the meeting agendas? Can anyone add to them?
Who will supervise the collection of data, drive initiatives, follow up?
How will the group know when it’s collected the full data set, when there is buy-in for a new idea, when all ideas have been considered?

Managers have done a lot of this work, but with folks dispersed and communication potentially compromised, with leadership, strategy and new ideas coming from the teams, it might make sense to update old meeting styles.

Supervision

Must people be in person to be supervised? There has been a prevailing belief that face-to-face is best. But there might not be a choice now. How will you manage this? I suggest you sit down with each report and figure it out together:

What is the best way for me to supervise you now? What type of flexibility do I need to best serve you?
What should I be looking for in case you’re going through a bad patch and don’t notice you need some support?
What would my support look like for you? What would I be doing, saying, not saying, offering, to help?
Is there anyone on the team who might have your back if there’s a work promise you can’t complete on time?

Your job is to serve your folks. Figuring out what this looks like must be collaborative.

Peer Coaching

Since you’re not always around, but folks on teams often connect with each other, set up peer coaching so everyone has a buddy and someplace to go if they need extra support. Especially in these times when emotions might be present, it’s important to set up ways for folks who know each other to serve each other.

It’s time for new skills to serve, new ways to think. The job of the manager now is a pivotal one: help get our folks through this confusion we face. Success and excellence depend on it.

I’m a fervent believer that people have their own answers when they’re going through stuff. Even if they tell us of a problem, we can’t know all the issues involved or how, specifically, the person is really coping. But we can help them find their answers so long as we stay away from trying to resolve them.

If your company seeks any support to help your managers recognize and learn new skills, I’d love to help. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen January 10th, 2022

Posted In: News

« Previous Page — Next Page »

What If Our Jobs Were To Serve?

What’s in a Name? The tale of Speaker vs Listener

What’s the Cost of Team Miscommunication?

I’ve Been Plagiarized

A Behavior is a Belief in Action: why change is so elusive

What’s the Cost of Disgruntled Employees? Hint: employees are Customer #1

Feedback: a route to collaboration and excellence

It’s Time to Break the Rules: A guide for troublemakers and changemakers

The New Jobs of Sales and Marketing: facilitate the buying before the buyer

The New Manager: new skills for new times