Shelter in Place: the global family stays home

Like most folks in the world right now, I’m homebound. Not homebound, exactly; the new term is ‘shelter in place’ or ‘home stay.’ But I’m not entirely in the house. Each day I take a 2 mile walk. I go out to buy groceries. Plus I live in a houseboat, and spend time daily sitting on my deck on the Columbia River, watching the ducks, sea lions and cormorants go by. Not to mention taking a daily paddle up the river. So I’m not staring at the walls all day.

I’m one of the lucky ones. My clients have shifted to phone work and WebEx meetings, but I still have work and I’ve always disliked flying anyway. Most of my days are spent writing – my weekly blog article and my new book that I finally have time to write – so I have a creative focus.

And frankly, I don’t mind too much. As an Aspie, I don’t seek out social connections anyway. I don’t go to bars, and eat out only occasionally with friends who are equally happy to share food in our homes.

But as someone who believes in the greater good, I believe if one of us is hurting we’re all hurting. And so many of us are now, or soon will be, hurting. Hourly workers won’t have money to pay rent; small business are closing and putting employees out of work; people who are ill can’t get the tests or medical attention they need; children can’t go to school causing a multitude of family problems. So many people. So much suffering. And this will go on for god-knows how long.

So I was thinking. For those of us lucky enough to be receiving regular paychecks regardless of whether or not we can get to an office; for those of us with spare time to serve; for those of us with enough money in the bank to make it through for the long haul, I believe we must serve those in need. I propose the following:

1. Find a person, family, or group to donate to. It doesn’t have to be a large sum. Maybe help one family with the rent or a week of groceries. When there’s no money coming in, every bit helps relieve the stress and fear.
2. Volunteer your time to babysit or ‘homeschool’ kids for a day or a week, so parents who are able to work on site can do so.
3. Find ways to use the internet to support clients in a new way, or reach out to remain connected with friends so you’re not so isolated. Obviously this is a no brainer. But do it.
4. Start a blog; share your thoughts, fears, experiences with friends, family, and neighbors. By communicating mutual concerns, by sharing your deep thoughts and worries, you’ll feel a bit less alone and the group consciousness may take over. Who knows, you might have a good idea for someone, or you might have an extra blanket, or a roll of toilet paper for a neighbor.

If we’re lucky enough to support our own ‘stay cation’ we must share whatever it is we’ve got with those who don’t. We’re all on the same ship. We’re all vulnerable in one way or another. Each one of us is dealing with the same issues, albeit differently. While some of us are bored, or missing the repartee amongst colleagues; while some of us feel confined by the ‘four walls’ we don’t quite notice in the few hours we’re usually home; while some of us (I’ve read) are eating too much junk food; we’re still alive and well and truly, we can’t complain.

Let’s share what we’ve got. I believe in a world where people care about each other and do what we can to minimize harm. There’s just no way to get around the fact that at this juncture, we can’t afford to be selfish. We’re a global family. We all have hopes and dreams, families and lives to be fulfilled. In these difficult times, let’s remember we’re all in it together. Let’s take care of each other please.

__________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, author NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell), listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. 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.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.    

Sharon Drew Morgen March 23rd, 2020

Posted In: News

A Buyer’s Guide to Buying: the hidden steps

People don’t really want to buy anything. We’d much rather maintain our status quo if possible: it’s worked; it’s comfortable; it’s normalized; we’re set up to keep on keepin’ on. Indeed, the goal of a buyer is to solve a problem with the least ‘cost’, using the least resources (money, time, human power, culture, etc.) and causing the least disruption. And a purchasing decision is far, far more than good information, collaboration, or good decision making practices.

Adding, choosing, buying anything new means change to the status quo, always fraught with risks that are unknowable before a purchase is made. Indeed, a buying decision is a change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue. And the ‘cost’ of bringing in something new must not exceed the ‘cost’ of maintaining the status quo. How can you know this before making a purchase?

CASE STUDY

Years ago, I was a consultant at KPMG training a team of Senior Partners in my Buying Facilitation® model. My contact, Dave, called to say he’d not returned my call because they’d received their first RFP from Boeing (who’d always used Arthur Anderson as their consulting partner) and a group of them were madly trying to compose an impressive proposal.

“What’s stopping them from using AA again this time?” I asked. Dave didn’t have an answer and said he’d find out. He called back to say Boeing was indeed going to use AA again, but had sent them the RFP because they needed a second bid. (Note: do YOU know how often that happens?)

With my assistance, they stopped writing the proposal and instead sent a letter saying since Boeing would be using AA, we wouldn’t be submitting a proposal. Instead we offered them a couple of pages of my Facilitative Questions (a new form of question I invented that works with brain function to discover criteria) which led them to discover how to avoid resistance and disruption during the large-scale, global change they were seeking.  This included how to

• avoid disruption and resistance during implementation,
• recognize and involve the complete set of stakeholders from the beginning to ensure the entire fact pattern was collected and the success criteria designed to elicit buy-in,
• notice, manage, and avoid the project/change risks,
• maintain the change over time.

KPMG knew it was risky to approach the RFP as we did, but since they weren’t getting the job anyway, they decided it was a good risk to take as the questions exhibited their ability to lead. And it was indeed a good risk: Boeing called after a couple of months to give them the job (without a proposal or price discussion, I might add).

“When we saw your questions, we realized we never even considered those sorts of issues and just assumed our vendors would handle that stuff. And we consistently had problems in those areas you mentioned but never knew it was possible to avoid them. We just didn’t know what we didn’t know, and didn’t know how to include those elements in our RFP. When AA came in to start the project, they had no plans to manage anything but the exact end-result specs we asked for. From your questions, we know now that a few extra steps can be taken at the start of a project to ensure buy in and trouble-free adoption. We certainly didn’t know it was possible to set up the right components from the beginning to avoid the problems later on. Realizing the size of this project and the numbers of people and teams involved, we don’t have tolerance for any dysfunction, so we fired AA. Can you come in and start from the beginning and factor in all of the items you mentioned in your letter?”

Whether an individual or part of a Buying Team, somehow buying choices get narrowed down to one. How do you do that? And is there anything you could have included in your decision process to assure your selection comes with minimum disruption and maximum buy in for after you’ve made your selection?

WHY WE BUY ANYTHING

Outside of small personal items, the only time we consider buying anything is when we’re absolutely certain we can’t fix a problem any other way AND we have comprehensive buy-in. The risk of the new causing imbalance is just too high. ‘Need’, price, features and benefits are important, of course, but secondary; purchasing something new must maintain the status quo as well – problematic since anything new faces the possibility of disrupting the equilibrium. It’s a systems thing.

Every person, group, family, company, is a system. To maintain themselves, systems need balance (homeostasis) and work hard to ensure its norms and values are carried forth through actions. (For those unfamiliar, this is called Systems Congruence). The last thing a system wants to do, the challenge we all face when we recognize something needs to change, is how to bring in an unfamiliar element (certainly a risk) and maintain our status quo. And the time it takes for all the elements that will touch the final solution to agree to something new and know how to integrate it, is the time it takes to choose.

It’s not about price or features until it is; it’s about the dynamics of change. And without taking these steps, the risk of resistance is high as it puts the system out of balance.

One thing is certain: before any decision to buy anything occurs, a set of ‘soft’ criteria – rules, norms, beliefs of the underlying system, if you will – must be met that go beyond the tactical – factual – specifics of the requirements. We get so focused on ‘hard’ criteria we put every buying decision at risk, including:

• environment not able to integrate or use the new adequately and causes disruption;
• environment not ready to accommodate change congruently causing relationship and output problems;
• goal that initiated the purchase in jeopardy;
• resistance when implementation causes change that hasn’t been accounted for.

Regardless of the need or the efficacy of a new solution, if the risk of disruption to the system is higher than the need for change, no purchase can be made. But as you’ll see, it’s possible to change without resistance or disruption.

WHAT WE LEAVE OUT WHEN IT’S TIME TO BUY

In the Boeing story, the Buying Team’s RFP focused on the facts, the outcomes, of what they thought would solve their problem, but overlooked the ‘soft’ issues – the systemic issues. It’s the same problem with individual purchasers: Have you ever thought about how you decide to buy THIS one instead of THAT one? Have you specified your criteria to ensure the new will fit with the old – and a way to notice when there is an integration issue? Have you captured the specific steps you’ll need to do something different than your normalized habits?

An online search for ‘buying process’ explains the conventional approach: recognize a need, research and evaluate the choices (price, features, etc.), and buy. Seems so simple. But it’s not simple at all.

For smaller decisions, weighting and evaluating features and choices works just fine. But sometimes, especially when Buying Teams must choose a new item or vendor, or something wholly different that shifts the intent of the status quo, is required, we don’t always address the unconscious elements that cause us to accept or reject choices. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. But sometimes it does.

For those times there’s less leeway for error, for when implementation can be fragile (i.e. there’s resistance to change before any decisions have been made), or when numbers of people will be involved, it’s possible to manage those unconscious elements upfront. Sure, facts, needs, features and outcomes are necessary. But the non-obvious data points may lurk without recognition until they come back to bite us or harm performance. Here are the challenges: We:

• compare the purchase of a new solution against what’s already there, but might forget to add in how to manage what happens when the new criteria changes our outcomes, actions, job descriptions, management needs, downtime, learning curve;
• seek to find something equal-ish to what’s being replaced without considering how the new will alter our status quo over time or how it will change performance in unexpected ways; 
• gather initial data only from obvious stakeholders without expanding the group to those who will ultimately touch the final solution, and face resistance;
• have feelings about a choice if our jobs or ego-needs will be affected, causing unspoken resistance that comes out through sabotage or interference;
• sometimes acquiesce to a group’s choice and hold hidden biases that will rear their heads later or cause an ineffective decision making;
• resist a purchase due to an ‘intuitive’ feeling (fear of change, dislike of implementation practices being discussed, distrust of vendor being selected, etc.) that makes the status quo feel safer, and procrastinate making a decision.

There are actually specific steps to all buying decisions that take into account the full panoply of criteria – hard and soft – to make congruent buying decisions. Along with the practical and factual details, these steps make conscious the unconscious elements that ensure a successful conclusion, regardless of the size or price of the purchase or the complexity of the implementation.

STEPS TO BUYING

Note that if everything were working perfectly there would be no need to buy anything. In fact, people only buy when they cannot fix a problem with a known solution. Making a purchase is the last thing anyone wants to do. But when it’s necessary, the outcome must include the maintenance of Systems Congruence, or the cost of failure is too high.

I’ve put together steps below to address systems functionality, more factors than merely need, price, or vendor selection. [Note: for those interested, I’ve written a book on this: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell] By including all steps, you’ll discover the unconscious factors, the risk factors, the change management factors, so they can be addressed, either individually or with the Buying Team, as part of the actual purchasing decision. Take a look.

• Specified Outcome: What is the status quo you’re trying to change? While this might seem simple, and come to you defined by a user, this is far from simple. It requires:

a. The entire stakeholder team be included so they can discuss all of the elements that caused the problem, and understand why it hasn’t been fixed until now. The love of the existing processes? The habits incurred by many? The attitude of being ‘good-enough’? Whatever is in here is the reason a new solution is needed now. If this is an unknown, a solution might be purchased that doesn’t address the baseline problem. (i.e. If there is a ‘rules’ problem and it hasn’t been resolved, the same problem will occur with the new solution.)

Often the same factors that have kept the problem in place will cause implementation or acceptance and use issues: the entire group of folks who will use the purchase must understand all possible problems and outcomes. Of course this will bias the ultimate choice to purchase.

b. If any stakeholders are left out from the early stages, it will be harder and more disruptive later on when they join. When I urged British Airways to include their HR manager in a large software rollout, they said “OH! We always forget her, and then need to play catch up when she needs things changed.” Precisely.

• Status Quo: It’s rare that a problem exists, or a new enhancement needed, without there being something in the status quo that has, or must be, changed and will resist when it’s threatened. The only way to discover the precise factors is by leading the stakeholder team through a thorough examination of how they got where they are.
• Criteria: What criteria need to be met for the problem to be resolved? Again, all stakeholders must work together to figure the criteria out and reach agreement as to how to manage it before going forward to list the criteria for a purchase. Here are some criteria that my clients manage before putting out an RFP or moving forward with a project:

a. Minimal disruption: How will the new replace the old to ensure minimum disruption? What needs to be in place, or accepted, or shifted?

b. Buy In: Who needs to be involved to implement efficiently? Who needs to buy-in?

c. Resource cost: Who will analyze the resource cost of the new to make sure anything new will cost less than maintaining the status quo? And how will this be gauged when weighting choices?

d. Disruption management: What disruption will take place when the new is brought in? No, really. The stakeholders MUST know this: What EXACTLY will be the disruption and how will it be mitigated? By whom? How will you prepare the people, groups, situations that will be effected? What does that look like? This must be handled specifically, point by point, by all stakeholders or you face resistance or non use.

• Workarounds: Until everything known is tried and failed, it is irresponsible to consider bringing something New in as the risk is too high for disruption. Of course all new purchases create disruption. But the New must match the norms and carry the rules of the system.

When considering fixing the problem, what options have been tried already from within the existing structure of choices? What stopped these workarounds from working well-enough to not need something from outside? What would a new option need to do differently than the workarounds that have been tried? Did the trials and choices of the workarounds come from the entire stakeholder team?

• Problem Recognition: It’s not until all of the above have been addressed is there a clear understanding of what needs to be purchased. Sometimes Buying Teams are given a fact sheet, or send out an RFP, blithely assuming it’s accurate, only to have the end result fail when one or two stakeholders scream because they were never contacted, or didn’t understand the consequences for them. This is a huge problem in Buying Teams. Sometimes folks do research, make calls, meet with vendors, without having handled steps 1-3 and can’t figure out why they’re getting such resistance.
• Research: When the entire fact pattern is understood, when all stakeholders are aware of the consequences to them when the new is purchased, when there is agreement they can’t fix the problem themselves, it’s time to do initial research. Delegate out different research modalities among the different stakeholders. We know that different people get different searches as per their past history, so assign several folks to the same topic. But also research other departments, friends, reliable vendors.
• Evaluation: The entire stakeholder team must buy in to the new. Until there is agreement that the new matches the values and norms of the underlying system, and the cost of bringing it in is known and addressed, there will be no purchase.

Purchasing a service or an item is relatively easy. The difficult part is making sure the new fits into the status quo with minimal disruption and cost. Add the systems element to your buying decisions to ensure an easy integration and use. Otherwise, you might end up failing when you don’t need to.

________________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, author NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell), listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. 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.sharondrewmorgen.com. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen January 20th, 2020

Posted In: News

When, Why, What, and How to Pitch Your Story: a guide for parents, leaders, fund raisers, and sellers

For some reason, it’s an accepted norm that presenting details of an idea or solution will prompt action. It goes something like this: you want someone to buy or do something, or fund you; you want a team to organize in a certain way, or a teenager to change behaviors. In other words, you want someone to do something they’re currently not doing. You decide on a story, a pitch, a tactic, a presentation, that will influence them to change their current behaviors to do what you want them to do. So you

• formulate the ‘right’ message, in the right way – according to their demographics or personal characteristics – that (you assume) represents their ‘needs’ and will motivate action;
• develop the ‘right’ supplemental materials or stories;
• pitch, present, tell a story, offer indisputable research and superlative references that prove your value.
• You then assume your ‘relationship’ with the listener – your status, brand, assumed expertise, history – offers you authority to be granted what you ask for. And then you wait. And then…nothing.

In case you’re wondering why you’re not getting the results you deserve, it’s because it’s all based on you.

WHAT – PITCHES CAN’T BE HEARD

Just because you may be ‘right’, have the essential information and capability to fix a problem, your message won’t be heard unless the listener recognizes they want to change, that they cannot resolve their own problem using familiar resources, and they’re ready to seek an external fix.

Indeed, until they know precisely when, why, what, and how to change their current thinking and behaviors, until they recognize that the ‘cost’ of adopting a solution from outside the status quo is lower than the cost of maintaining the problem, there’s a case to be made that your suggestions will be ignored or resisted.

Here’s the problem. Your pitches and stories:

1. try to persuade others according to your needs and goals (As a listener, if don’t think I have a need, why should I listen?);
2. are misunderstood and mistranslated as per unconscious listening biases (As a listener, if I misinterpret what you’re talking about, what is my takeaway? And how will I know what I think I hear isn’t what you’re saying?);
3. provide an answer according to what you believe is needed (As a listener, I’m offended when you think you know more than me about what I need.);
4. use biased verbal and graphic forms to represent the message you think will be effective (As a listener, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think that way.);
5. reflect your need for them to take action NOW (As a listener, I haven’t figured out if I need to change anything. So why are you pushing me to take action?);
6. probably don’t resolve the potentially broken internal rules and historic choices that created and maintain the problem (As a listener, I know I need to resolve this, but it’s always been this way and so many things are dependent upon it. What will break if I try to do something different?).

Notice it’s you and your biases determining:

• the information you’re sharing – which may not be the best set of facts for that listener;
• the particular words, graphics, presentation used – which may not be the best for the listener’s understanding;
• the assumption that the problem needs to be fixed – and fixed the way YOU think it should be fixed;
• that YOU are the one (an outsider with no true knowledge of the full data set of what’s going on internally) who has THE content to fix them – and aren’t recognizing any possible avenues for them to fix themselves;
• the intended outcome YOU believe needs to be met – which may not be the same outcome or agenda the listener condones.

In other words, with no accurate idea of how your information is being received OR the actual underlying fact pattern that has both created and maintained the status quo, with no ability to understand the historic, systemic issues that keep the status quo functioning well-enough to not have considered change, you’re trying to tell folks to do what you want them to do using your own criteria for them to change.

You certainly have no control. You have no way of knowing the rules, relationships, background, of what you can only see parts of from outside the system. You have no idea how you’re being heard, or if your chosen languaging and presentation is what the Other will respond to. Indeed, you have no way of knowing that your message is ‘right’ for that person at that time.

I contend that by entering a conversation fraught with your own biases, goals, needs, and limited understanding, you’ll only succeed with those who already believe the way you do, are seeking change, and are looking for exactly what you’re presenting. And those who really might need your message will ignore it if it’s mistimed, runs counter to the current operating rules or agreements, or uses the wrong languaging.

This can be amended. You can prepare listeners to accurately hear and be motivated to act on what you want to share; you can language your information according to the best chances to be heard, at a time when the listener is ready, willing, and able to hear. But you need to add a new mindset.

WHY – CAN’T YOUR PITCH/STORY BE HEARD?

Right now it seems your listeners are ignoring you, or resisting; that they misinterpret or forget on purpose. But that’s not the case. They just cannot respond to what you are telling them. The way they hear you is a big part of the problem.

Simplistically, brains take in spoken words through your ears as chemical and electrical signals devoid of meaning. These signals

• travel down neural pathways
• seeking similar-enough signals
• that match with the incoming signals
• to an unknowable (greater or lesser) degree,
• and may have a different meaning
• that’s some degree ‘off’ the incoming message,
• but matches historic decisions and beliefs
• that have been built in to current choices, status quo, and accepted norms.

In other words, there’s a high probability your intended message will be misheard, misunderstood, or mistranslated as per the meaning attached to the neurons and synapses a listener’s brain automatically chooses to match with your words; you have no idea what others hear when you speak, your clarity, personality, and messaging aside.

Those with no interest at all, and regardless of your attempts to inspire attention, may notice only a fraction of what you offer and certainly won’t care if they’re getting it wrong. For those who are trying to listen, they don’t know what parts of your message they’re missing or misinterpreting. Their brains won’t tell them they’ve got it wrong.

In fact, people can’t know that they DON’T accurately hear what you’re saying. As per above, their brains don’t tell them which words or concepts were omitted or mistranslated during their normal brain/listening process. So if I say ABC, you might actually hear ABL and your brain won’t tell you it haphazardly discarded E, F, G, etc. during its signal matching process. I actually wrote a book on this called WHAT? Did you really say what I think I heard?.

In other words, even if people try to hear you, even if you’re messaging is terrific, all listening is unconsciously biased by your listener’s brains regardless of what you say. And using normal conversation, or pitching/storytelling, you have no control. When you merely pitch

• what you want them to hear
• AND your listener has not heard what you intended them to hear
• AND your listener is not in agreement or doesn’t know how what they think they heard relates to their situation,

there’s a good likelihood you’re unwittingly fostering resistance and resentment.

But when listeners have agreed they want new knowledge, when they know how to manage any disruption that would result from bringing in something new, their brain will connect with the correct neural pathways to listen through and accurately hear what you’ve got to say.

Your first job is to get them ready to hear you. I can’t say this enough: regardless of how much Others need to hear what you’ve got to say, no matter what problem it will resolve, no matter how urgently they need the information you have, they cannot, cannot hear you accurately unless they unconsciously match what you’re saying with their unconscious listening biases.

WHEN – SHOULD YOU SHARE INFORMATION?

Begin by getting on the same page as your listener. That means your normal pitch, your normal presentation materials or deck, may need to be amended to include factors on THEIR side of the table. Do research with current clients. Come at this from the standpoint of the listener, the buyer, the funder:

1. recognize it’s your responsibility to help the listener hear you accurately; their brains won’t know what’s accurate.
2. create the path to ensure listener buy-in before mentioning your idea.
3. assume you will be resisted if what they hear doesn’t match their current beliefs and historic rules about the subject.

I continue to be shocked that I rarely meet a marketer OR a seller who knows exactly how their buyers buy: the types of internal change issues they must manage before they can do anything different; the possibilities they have of fixing their own problems; the relationship and power and buy-in issues going on amongst stakeholders that influence (in)action. Or folks seeking funding: what criteria will funders use to choose you over the competition? It won’t be based on your pitch – they’ve heard it before. Or influencers: what historic actions or cultural norms are fixed in the status quo that would need to shift for them to buy-in to change?

Until you know this, there’s no way for you to be certain the proper technique to use to pitch, and you’ll only be successful with the low hanging fruit. I wrote a book on this that will teach you all of the stuff going on behind the scenes: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. But make sure you do research. Or let me know and I can help you gather the right data and give you a report.

Once you understand the ‘lay of the land’ behind the scenes, your conversation must begin by engendering trust so they’ll begin to turn off their guarded ear and open up a bit. And the only way you’ll engender trust is to really care about them. They will have no need to care about you unless you do. Something like this:

For some reason, it’s an accepted norm that presenting details of an idea or solution will prompt action. It goes something like this: you want someone to buy or do something, or fund you; you want a team to organize in a certain way, or a teenager to change behaviors. In other words, you want someone to do something they’re currently not doing. You decide on a story, a pitch, a tactic, a presentation, that will influence them to change their current behaviors to do what you want them to do. So you

• formulate the ‘right’ message, in the right way – according to their demographics or personal characteristics – that (you assume) represents their ‘needs’ and will motivate action;
• develop the ‘right’ supplemental materials or stories;
• pitch, present, tell a story, offer indisputable research and superlative references that prove your value.

You then assume your ‘relationship’ with the listener – your status, brand, assumed expertise, history – offers you authority to be granted what you ask for. And then you wait. And then…nothing.

In case you’re wondering why you’re not getting the results you deserve, it’s because it’s all based on you.

WHAT – PITCHES CAN’T BE HEARD

Just because you may be ‘right’, have the essential information and capability to fix a problem, your message won’t be heard unless the listener recognizes they want to change, that they cannot resolve their own problem using familiar resources, and they’re ready to seek an external fix. 

Indeed, until they know precisely when, why, what, and how to change their current thinking and behaviors, until they recognize that the ‘cost’ of adopting a solution from outside the status quo is lower than the cost of maintaining the problem, there’s a case to be made that your suggestions will be ignored or resisted.

Here’s the problem. Your pitches and stories:

1. try to persuade others according to your needs and goals (As a listener, if don’t think I have a need, why should I listen?);
2. are misunderstood and mistranslated as per unconscious listening biases (As a listener, if I misinterpret what you’re talking about, what is my takeaway? And how will I know what I think I hear isn’t what you’re saying?);
3. provide an answer according to what you believe is needed (As a listener, I’m offended when you think you know more than me about what I need.);
4. use biased verbal and graphic forms to represent the message you think will be effective (As a listener, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think that way.);
5. reflect your need for them to take action NOW (As a listener, I haven’t figured out if I need to change anything. So why are you pushing me to take action?);
6. probably don’t resolve the potentially broken internal rules and historic choices that created and maintain the problem (As a listener, I know I need to resolve this, but it’s always been this way and so many things are dependent upon it. What will break if I try to do something different?).

Notice it’s you and your biases determining:

• the information you’re sharing – which may not be the best set of facts for that listener;
• the particular words, graphics, presentation used – which may not be the best for the listener’s understanding;
• the assumption that the problem needs to be fixed – and fixed the way YOU think it should be fixed;
• that YOU are the one (an outsider with no true knowledge of the full data set of what’s going on internally) who has THE content to fix them – and aren’t recognizing any possible avenues for them to fix themselves;
• the intended outcome YOU believe needs to be met – which may not be the same outcome or agenda the listener condones.

In other words, with no accurate idea of how your information is being received OR the actual underlying fact pattern that has both created and maintained the status quo, with no ability to understand the historic, systemic issues that keep the status quo functioning well-enough to not have considered change, you’re trying to tell folks to do what you want them to do using your own criteria for them to change.

You certainly have no control. You have no way of knowing the rules, relationships, background, of what you can only see parts of from outside the system. You have no idea how you’re being heard, or if your chosen languaging and presentation is what the Other will respond to. Indeed, you have no way of knowing that your message is ‘right’ for that person at that time.

I contend that by entering a conversation fraught with your own biases, goals, needs, and limited understanding, you’ll only succeed with those who already believe the way you do, are seeking change, and are looking for exactly what you’re presenting. And those who really might need your message will ignore it if it’s mistimed, runs counter to the current operating rules or agreements, or uses the wrong languaging.

This can be amended. You can prepare listeners to accurately hear and be motivated to act on what you want to share; you can language your information according to the best chances to be heard, at a time when the listener is ready, willing, and able to hear. But you need to add a new mindset.

WHY – CAN’T YOUR PITCH/STORY BE HEARD?

Right now it seems your listeners are ignoring you, or resisting; that they misinterpret or forget on purpose. But that’s not the case. They just cannot respond to what you are telling them. The way they hear you is a big part of the problem.

Simplistically, brains take in spoken words through your ears as chemical and electrical signals devoid of meaning. These signals

• travel down neural pathways
• seeking similar-enough signals
• that match with the incoming signals
• to an unknowable (greater or lesser) degree,
• and may have a different meaning
• that’s some degree ‘off’ the incoming message,
• but matches historic decisions and beliefs
• that have been built in to current choices, status quo, and accepted norms.

In other words, there’s a high probability your intended message will be misheard, misunderstood, or mistranslated as per the meaning attached to the neurons and synapses a listener’s brain automatically chooses to match with your words; you have no idea what others hear when you speak, your clarity, personality, and messaging aside.

Those with no interest at all, and regardless of your attempts to inspire attention, may notice only a fraction of what you offer and certainly won’t care if they’re getting it wrong. For those who are trying to listen, they don’t know what parts of your message they’re missing or misinterpreting. Their brains won’t tell them they’ve got it wrong.

In fact, people can’t know that they DON’T accurately hear what you’re saying. As per above, their brains don’t tell them which words or concepts were omitted or mistranslated during their normal brain/listening process. So if I say ABC, you might actually hear ABL and your brain won’t tell you it haphazardly discarded E, F, G, etc. during its signal matching process. I actually wrote a book on this called WHAT? Did you really say what I think I heard?.

In other words, even if people try to hear you, even if you’re messaging is terrific, all listening is unconsciously biased by your listener’s brains regardless of what you say. And using normal conversation, or pitching/storytelling, you have no control. When you merely pitch

• what you want them to hear
• AND your listener has not heard what you intended them to hear
• AND your listener is not in agreement or
• doesn’t know how what they think they heard relates to their situation,

there’s a good likelihood you’re unwittingly fostering resistance and resentment.

But when listeners have agreed they want new knowledge, when they know how to manage any disruption that would result from bringing in something new, their brain will connect with the correct neural pathways to listen through and accurately hear what you’ve got to say.

Your first job is to get them ready to hear you. I can’t say this enough: regardless of how much Others need to hear what you’ve got to say, no matter what problem it will resolve, no matter how urgently they need the information you have, they cannot, cannot hear you accurately unless they unconsciously match what you’re saying with their unconscious listening biases.

WHEN – SHOULD YOU SHARE INFORMATION?

Begin by getting on the same page as your listener. That means your normal pitch, your normal presentation materials or deck, may need to be amended to include factors on THEIR side of the table. Do research with current clients. Come at this from the standpoint of the listener, the buyer, the funder:

1. recognize it’s your responsibility to help the listener hear you accurately; their brains won’t know what’s accurate.
2. create the path to ensure listener buy-in before mentioning your idea.
3. assume you will be resisted if what they hear doesn’t match their current beliefs and historic rules about the subject.

I continue to be shocked that I rarely meet a marketer OR a seller who knows exactly how their buyers buy: the types of internal change issues they must manage before they can do anything different; the possibilities they have of fixing their own problems; the relationship and power and buy-in issues going on amongst stakeholders that influence (in)action. Or folks seeking funding: what criteria will funders use to choose you over the competition? It won’t be based on your pitch – they’ve heard it before. Or influencers: what historic actions or cultural norms are fixed in the status quo that would need to shift for them to buy-in to change?

Until you know this, there’s no way for you to be certain the proper technique to use to pitch, and you’ll only be successful with the low hanging fruit. I wrote a book on this that will teach you all of the stuff going on behind the scenes: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. But make sure you do research. Or let me know and I can help you gather the right data and give you a report.

Once you understand the ‘lay of the land’ behind the scenes, your conversation must begin by engendering trust so they’ll begin to turn off their guarded ear and open up a bit. And the only way you’ll engender trust is to really care about them. They will have no need to care about you unless you do. Something like this:

I have something I’d like to share. But I’m not sure if you need to hear it. How are you currently thinking about X right now?

This lets the listener know they have their own valid viewpoint and you won’t foist your beliefs on them; pushing your data too soon encourages resistance and resentment. Continue with some of these:

I hear you currently believe X? Did I hear correctly?

If there is a time when you consider change, how would you plan on handling X?

I notice that you didn’t mention X. Do you have any thoughts on how you might incorporate any needed new choices? I have a solution/idea that would offer new thoughts on this subject should you want to consider new choices.

The hard part is to keep yourself from talking if their responses seem to naturally lead to them adopting your solution: until they have agreed to add something new or consider change, until they realize they might be missing a piece, you’ve got nothing to say.

How many times have you walked through booths at conferences and heard folks wasting their breath pitching pitching pitching, hoping hoping hoping their message will be heard by someone?!?! Well, there’s a good chance you’re doing the same thing. Stop wasting your breath; save it for those who want to hear it and then language it according to their listening patterns.

Wait until you’re certain your listener wants to learn/do something different before pitching. Even for you folks seeking funding: before you pitch, help them determine the criteria they’ll use to choose someone to fund and then match that criteria. For parents seeking to change a teen’s habits: what’s stopping them from implementing what they promised? For sellers: what do they need to do internally to get the buy-in for any proposed change? How will they determine if an outside fix is less costly than maintaining the status quo? What can they do to fix the problem themselves first?

Until people know if they’re ready/able to do anything different, that the ‘cost’ of change is manageable, they aren’t available to listen to what you have to say. When you begin with a pitch, you’re restricting your audience to those who have already decided to change – the low hanging fruit. Until people know how to listen without bias you can’t be heard accurately. Sorry.

HOW – SHOULD YOU PITCH?

Of course it’s necessary to share specific details when needed:

• to take action (The space for the desk is 8 feet long.);
• to recognize a fit between items (We will be serving fish, so bring white wine.);
• to explain penalties (If you come home after midnight, you’ll be grounded.);
• when someone seeks you out to answer their curiosity (How do you cook that?)
• to know what to do when an action has been agreed upon (Our first action will be to…);
• to know content details (I now recognize I cannot solve a problem myself, know how to manage the fallout from bringing in something new, and have the buy-in to learn, buy, think, add something new).

It’s necessary to language your pitch so you’re understood when information is needed. Once the listener has shared what they already believe to be true about the topic you’re discussing, use their words, their beliefs, and what they think is missing, to populate your pitch. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re selling email organization software.

You: How are you currently organizing your email?
Prospect: I use my folders in my email software.
You: I assume that’s working fine for you or you would have added new capability before now.
Prospect: I know I should do it, but I can’t get my head around adding any new software than I already have. I’m overwhelmed.
You: I know. All of us are. I sell an email organizing product that’s simple to install and seamlessly works with most existing software. If you want, we can discuss it if your stakeholders would consider adding the organizing capability to what you’ve got now.

Notice when it was time to speak I focused my pitch to only the comments my listener mentions. If I used my entire pitch, I’d be breaking trust.

I’ve spent decades training sales folks, another decade as a life/business coach, and more recently as the developer of a unique change model that enables folks to generate congruent behavior change. I developed an entire generic change management model (Buying Facilitation®) that teaches sellers how to facilitate any buying decision, coaches to facilitate congruent change, and helps leaders and parents expedite requests and promises. And I also developed a new form of question (Facilitative Questions (above) that help others discover their own answers with no bias from the questioner other than a facilitated direction for brains to find answers.

I understand how difficult it is instigate change in others. Remember that when you’re pitching, or sharing a story to initiate another to take action, you’re asking them to change. Please consider the problem from a different angle. Help your listeners change by helping them change their brains. Stop thinking your brilliant content will be enough; serve them by helping them figure out how to use what you’ve got to say to become better.

_______________________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, inventor of Buying Facilitation® and Facilitative Questions, trainer, coach, and consultant. She is the author of 9 books, including NYTimes Business bestseller Selling with Integrity. Sharon Drew can help you develop, perfect, and present your message for optimal success.

Sharon Drew Morgen November 4th, 2019

Posted In: News

The Cost of Misunderstanding: why leaders must take responsibility for mistakes

Working with a partner in Amsterdam recently, I was one of a small team of communication experts offering a day of skills for executive leaders. Wanting to make sure my contribution would work interdependently with the other consultants, I asked my Dutch partner Thomas Blekman the topics my colleagues would be presenting. Voice and Storytelling, I was told. Did I need to contact either of them to discuss how to best fit my content in with theirs? Nope. “Just teach your great stuff.”

Hmm…. From the topic titles, it seemed the client company wanted the leaders to learn the best tools to facilitate audience buy-in. To add my knowledge appropriately, I developed an agenda that enabled these leaders to be heard without bias and encourage maximum information/idea adoption. Given my work on the unconscious biases involved in our brain’s physiologic listening processes (I wrote a book on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard – WHAT? Did you really say what I think I heard?), I know that people can accurately interpret only a percentage of what’s said. I wanted to help these leaders make sure their outreach efforts would be heard as per their intended outcomes.

Twenty minutes prior to my session, I met the man teaching Storytelling. Except it wasn’t Storytelling. He was teaching How to Pitch. He introduced himself as the winner of The Netherlands Pitching Competition.

PITCHING VS STORYTELLING

What? Not Storytelling? The blood drained from my face. Thomas noticed immediately: “You’ve got a bias against pitching. Admit it,” he whispered. I was so overwhelmed by the enormity of my misunderstanding, and the consequences to the participants, I merely agreed. But I had to very quickly try to figure out how to reconfigure what I’d developed to more accurately address the new situation.

Different from the listening skills I would now be teaching, I’ve spent 35 years training sales folks in my Buying Facilitation® method, and my pitching program teaches 1. very specific skill sets to facilitate an audience’s ability to make a new decision and be ready to act before a seller pitches anything, and 2. how to develop pitch materials that match the responses of the audience. In other words, not pushing content at them as per the speaker’s outcome, but helping them determine the type of content they’d need in order to consider making a purchase now, then giving them that exact content. Quite the opposite of conventional pitching.

For me Storytelling and Pitching are entirely different concepts. In Storytelling, the speaker shares a narrative that will hopefully facilitate audience buy inand connection, potentially shift thinking, and maybe consider new ideas. Pitching means there is a manipulation going on – with precisely chosen words and images – to get Others to act according to the speaker’s agenda. While both are potentially forms of influencing, Storytelling has an idea-shift outcome while Pitching is a persuasion tactic designed to cause an action desired by the presenter.

Had I understood the real program title was Pitching, I would have designed a very different program, including role plays to teach how to formulate the new type of question I developed (Facilitative Questions) that facilitates decision making, to use before they pitched; and then ways to develop presentation materials for their pitch that matched the audience responses rather than traditional pitch decks that focus on the seller’s information choices.

While I was able to add some new material to my original design, my presentation left the audience confused as to where my stuff fit. Not to mention that without discussing his content to see how I could collaborate, I was flying blind against The Best Pitcher in The Netherlands. Obviously, an upfront discussion weeks prior to the program would have given me the data I needed to design the best skill sets to complement his.

While there was no blame involved here (I don’t think Thomas intended to mislead – he most likely just translated wrong.), there was a cost to my misunderstanding. The participants didn’t get what they deserved because I had misunderstood my mission. The fact that it wasn’t my fault is irrelevant.

HOW WE GET IT WRONG

Often in our communications we make assumptions, mistranslate another’s words or meaning, or misunderstand the nature of a message, and unwittingly end up causing harm.

While sometimes – maybe 15% of the time – the problem isn’t your fault because you can make faulty assumptions from the facts you’re given; or you have such an entirely different world view that you cannot fully comprehend the full fact pattern. Most of the time you unconsciously bias what you hear, causing a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. It’s your brain’s fault.

1. What you hear enters your ears as chemical/electrical signals that trigger your unconscious biases- historic, systemic, physiological – leading to flawed assumptions. You don’t even recognize that what you think you heard is inaccurate: your brain doesn’t tell you how it has ever-so-kindly (re)translated the incoming message, leaving you to believe the speaker actually said what you thought you heard even when it was never said. When you think someone’s not hearing you, that’s not true: they are hearing you, but their brain is sending your message down an incorrect synapse and discards what doesn’t fit – and then neglects to tell us what it omitted. Oops.
2. Sometimes we translate what’s been said into an entirely different world view than intended. Recently I asked a friend – a techie – to read over a draft article to tell me if he could understand the way I explained something, or if it was confusing. After an hour (should have taken 10 minutes max) and a missed meeting, as I waited for his response (the article was time sensitive) I called him. He said he was still editing my article. What? Did he hear me ask him to be my editor? “Well I heard you say to just read it, but that’s what people say when they really want me to fix it for them.” Why didn’t he first check with me if that’s what I meant? “Why? I knew that’s what you really wanted.” His faulty assumption cost me a meeting.

So net net, it’s quite difficult to know for certain if what you think you hear is accurate without checking; when you believe your understanding is accurate, it’s pretty hard to get curious about the possibility of a misunderstanding. [Of course it’s only when an influencer can consciously recognize fact from personal, unconscious bias that it’s possible to truly understand what’s been said. For those wishing to learn how to do this, I have a chapter on this (Chapter 6) in WHAT?.

But whether it’s because a situation has occurred outside of your choice, or because your own unconscious bias caused you to misunderstand, the results are the same: when your actions are based on a fundamental misunderstanding that results in you causing harm, you must fix it. Otherwise you lose trust.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

To fix a misunderstanding, you must take responsibility for it, regardless of whether or not you believe you’re at fault. Many years ago, when leaders still made unilateral decisions, I was working with the inside sales reps at Bethlehem Steel. Over the months, it became very clear that the entire group was deeply angry. Earlier that year they had been ordered to move: leave their homes and lifestyles, and move to either Burns Harbor, MI or Sparrows Point, MD. They were given two months to sell their houses, pack, buy new houses, move their families, find new schools and new jobs for spouses, in the middle of a school year. Two months! Obviously, families split up to remain behind with kids in school, houses weren’t sold in two months, or packed, or purchased. The reps were living in rentals, flying to their families on weekends. Or the spouses moved and left teenagers to finish out the school year with neighbors, etc. A mess.

The reps lived in daily resentment, unconsciously (or consciously) dragging their heels getting things done, forgetting to do stuff. Sales numbers plummeted. They took a lot of sick time, took days off to visit their families back in their old houses, got weird illnesses like emotional blindness (Who knew that was a thing!), etc.

Because my client Dan was the instigator, I decided to do something about it. One day, Dan came out of his office to meet his mystery lunch guest. It was me. I had arranged everything with Dan’s secretary, and flew in on my own dime.

Dan: Hey, SD. You’re not supposed to be here today, are you? Are you my lunch date?

SD: No. And yes. And you’re paying.

During our lunch I explained how angry everyone was, and how he had disrupted their families and lives. Dan didn’t get it. “I gave them each $5,000 compensation to move!” Obviously he needed a bit of a push. I told him I’d set up a meeting at 2:00 that afternoon with him and the rep’s leadership team, and handed him a speech to say to them.

Dan: This is an apology!!! I’m not saying this!

SD: Yes you are.

Dan took the paper, and began pacing around the restaurant, reading. He paced for 20 minutes. Then said he was ready to go. We didn’t talk in the car. In the meeting, I sat in the back. At the table, he stood up, looked over at me, cleared his throat, and said to everyone:

It seems I overstepped my bounds and didn’t consider your needs when I forced you to move on such short notice, find other houses to move into, pack, move in the middle of the school year, and didn’t respect your family obligations.

That was all he had to say. The entire group got up and cheered. Some of the men starting crying. They all went around him to hug him. “We just needed to hear you apologize. We felt overlooked and disrespected. You didn’t seem to care about us or our families. We just needed you to take some responsibility for your mistake.”

Dan had totally misunderstood the system involved in families moving house across country and how children needed to find schools, parents needed to find playgroups, the time it takes houses to sell. The misunderstanding harmed his team. They needed an apology. They needed to be respected.

Net net. I don’t care if you believe you misunderstood anything or you believe you’re ‘right’. If there is a problem under your watch, you’re responsible.

THE HOW

Here’s what you’ll notice if there might have been a misunderstanding:

• Something is amiss. You may not know exactly what it is, but it will feel like something is a bit off center. People will try work with the givens, but they’re not particularly happy, and not particularly at their best; they might be late for work, forgetting to do promised stuff, ignoring deadlines, etc.
• You’ll hear people grumbling and their issues don’t seem to make sense.
• Suggestions for change will be made in areas you believe to be stable.
• People won’t look you in the eye, or they’ll make themselves unavailable.
• People will not necessarily complain, but they won’t necessarily be compliant either.

Net net, there will be something wrong and you won’t know what it is. Gather the group, or the leaders, and ask if there is something you did that caused confusion or annoyance that you need to clean up. Is something wrong that you need to make right?

1. Make sure you don’t have any attachment to being right; your goal is to make sure whatever problem has occurred will be resolved. You’ve got a ‘people’ criteria here, not a ‘right’ criteria.
2. Listen with an unbiased ear. It’s helpful for you to walk around while you’re listening – it puts you into Observer, and will supersede your unconscious biases.
3. Let the outcome, the fix, come from the people that are experiencing the hurt.
4. Make sure you repeat what they say to make sure you hear them accurately and you work from their suggestions.
5. Get agreement from everyone for the fixes, and make sure everyone is on board.
6. Ask if there is anyone still left hurt or angry – and ask them what they’ll need from you to feel the problem resolved going forward.

Your responsibility is to have a well-functioning, thriving group, an outcome in which everyone is creative and collaborative, a conclusion that everyone can buy into and become better for. Blame, fault, mistake, are not operative. It’s just your job.

_________________________________________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, sales visionary and inventor of Buying Facilitation®, and author of 9 books including the NYT Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and What? Did you really say what I think I heard?Sharon Drew works with companies to facilitate congruent change and collaboration, with healthcare providers to facilitate patient buy-in, with folks seeking permanent change by facilitating them through their unconscious to design a conscious route to permanent change (The HOW of Change). She is a consultant, coach, trainer, speaker, change maker and award winning blogger (www.sharondrewmorgen.com). She lives in Portland, OR on a houseboat. Reach Sharon Drew at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen September 23rd, 2019

Posted In: News

How Listening Filters Cause Misunderstanding

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

THE PROBLEM WITH LANGUAGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUR BRAINS TRICK US

Simplistically, here’s our unconscious listening process:

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

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

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

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

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

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

LISTENING FOR METAMESSAGES INSTEAD OF WORDS

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

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

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

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

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

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

LISTENING FOR MEANING VS WORDS

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

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

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

BROKER: “IonlyneedtwosecondsIwouldliketocomeandseeyounextweek.”

The prospect hung up.

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

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

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

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

NANCY: [The world’s fastest] HELLO!

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

NANCY: Tomorrow at 2.

And we both hung up.

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

NANCY: HELLO!

SDM: You still sound busy.

NANCY: Who are you?

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

NANCY: What are you selling?

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

NANCY: I’ll give you 5 minutes.

SDM: Not enough.

NANCY: 10 minutes.

SDM: Not enough.

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

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

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

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

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

Before we continue, I just want to make sure I understand what you mean to say.

Here’s what I heard…. Is that accurate?

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

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

Sharon Drew Morgen April 1st, 2019

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