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The 'How' of Choice: beyond 'Why' and 'What'

 

Guest articles > The 'How' of Choice: beyond 'Why' and 'What'

 

by: Sharon Drew Morgen

 

When you’re conversing with a prospect, a teenager, or a team member, how do you choose the most effective words – and how do you know if there is a problem with what you've communicated before it’s too late? How do you determine what to say, exactly, to effect real choice and change with folks who may have different mindsets and goals than you?

We’ve been through decades of Why, then What. But without the How, the Why and What can’t initiate choice or change: Recent brain research has proven that humans actually have no conscious access to the associations that drive our beliefs, biases, or behaviors. How do we get to our own, and Other’s, unconscious to enable change? How do we go beyond our own beliefs, biases, and behaviors to enable all that’s possible in any communication? How?

CONVENTIONAL QUESTIONS AND LISTENING FAIL

To get to the unconscious and real change, our habitual skills are inadequate:

Questions: our natural curiosity and inquiry-based questioning processes are biased - posed by Questioners from their restricted subjective experience (and prejudiced curiosity and assumptions) and predisposed goals; our conscious curiosity restricts possible outcomes and butt up against the limits of our Communication Partner’s (CPs) biases, assumptions, history, expectations and knowledge base. In other words, we've got bias bumping up against bias.

Listening: we only hear according to habitual filters (bias, assumptions, triggers, memory). I spent 3 years writing and researching a book (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) on how our brains reject anything we hear that makes us uncomfortable.

Goals: ‘Gather information’ and ‘Understand’ are biased by our own goals and biased questions and listening skills. Plus, we may be making false assumptions: our CPs have no conscious access to their full range of possible responses and may not be in a position to either gather accurate data or accurately represent stakeholders. We’re gathering incomplete and inaccurate data; we’re sharing data our CPs can’t make sense of or know how to listen to.

TOOLS FOR HOW

Doing what we’re doing now, it’s hard to facilitate change which demands that the underlying beliefs, values, agreements, and structural elements of a system (individual or group) must shift. In other words, our curiosity, our information sharing, our standard listening practices, are not change initiators and actually inhibit real change. Here’s the How of unconscious change:

Beliefs vs. Behaviors: our behaviors are representations and translations of our beliefs – our beliefs in action, if you will. And our beliefs are what makes each of us ecologically sound – they help us DO what we BELIEVE. Until or unless beliefs (mostly unconscious) are engaged, buy-in occurs, and any potential threats to the underlying system are managed, change will not happen. Too many of us – coaches, sellers, doctors, leaders, parents, to name a few – base our interactions and goals on offering and gathering information based on OUR biases and needs, causing us to succeed only with CPs whose unconscious beliefs are aligned. In other words, they’re not able to hear us or accede to our suggestions due to their unconscious filters: we’re merely pushing good data into a closed system and facing resistance. This is where we lose buyers, fail coaching clients, offer unheeded information to patients or teens, and have difficulties collaborating, implementing, or changing.

To enable change, we must have an array of unbiased communication tools to engage our own and our CPs unconscious beliefs, which can’t be done by gathering or offering information. [Note: information gathering and sharing is necessary only once the unconscious is ready for change.

Change: change occurs only when all of the elements (all) of our unconscious that have created and maintained our status quo buy-in to the new. If we try to push change without first getting buy-in, our unconscious thinks there’s a foreign element pushing in and rejects it. This is the problems with implementations: even when the change is ‘discussed’ beforehand, it faces resistance due to the nature of the ‘information-in’ approach without engaging the unconscious systems elements necessary, garnering resistance, sabotage, and misunderstanding.

Insider vs. Outsider: only people inside the system can understand, figure out, and make their own changes; they’re the ones living with their rules and values and history. Facilitators are outsiders and can never understand the system that re-creates the status quo every moment.

‘HOW’ DEMANDS REACHING THE UNCONSCIOUS

I have spent decades developing a ‘How’ model that’s used at the front end of questioning, data gathering, and data exchange. I know most folks prefer their habitual skills, intuition, and experience; but they rationalize any failure by calling buyers stupid, or patients un-educated or lazy, or say that clients don’t really want to change. Rather than considering the possibility that it’s our own skill sets that need enhancement, we continue what we’re doing and built our failures in (i.e. a 5% close rate in sales is deemed ‘normal’) as ‘acceptable’.

The real How requires helping CPs engage and manage their own unconscious. Facilitators must stop trying to meet their own expectations and facilitate Others in reaching their own – their way. Offering advice, pitches or information doesn’t make a dent, and as Outsiders, we’ll never understand anyway.

As a student of ‘How’ since I’ve been 11 years old, I’ve spent decades developing (and then training to global corporations) a ‘How’ process by unwrapping and scaling my systemizing Asperger’s brain, using NLP as a structural frame, and studying systems and brain science (a very cursory explanation of my lifetime of study and trial). My material uses a sequenced process of unbiased, systemic questioning and listening that gets precisely to the unconscious to make change, choice, and new decision. I’m eager to teach the material to anyone involved in facilitating excellence (sellers, marketers, coaches, negotiators, leaders, etc.) as I begin my retirement process.

Facilitative Questions: These questions enable the Other to sequentially engage their unconscious systems, pull information out of the relevant memory channels and are NOT inquiry-based. They follow the brain’s sequence of systemic change, and use specific words, in a specific order, to engage specific elements of our unconscious in the specific path our systems take to reorganize around change without disruption. Note: these questions have been tested and trialed over 30 years.

Listening for Systems: We’ve never been taught to listen for the underlying system or metamessage or unconscious patterns that form the status quo. By hearing what’s meant, rather than what’s said, we can formulate the right FQs. When listening for what we want to hear rather than what’s being meant, we listen with biased filters and circumvent success.

The Sequence of Change: There’s a generic, specific, systemic sequence that all change takes regardless of the circumstance (or industry, or situation. Change has identifiable, explicit, generic steps). Until or unless all elements (or stakeholders, or beliefs, etc.) are recognized, all the elements that maintain the status quo buy-in to change, and the system designs a route toward systems congruence, no change can occur.

Goals: We must become Change Facilitators first. Starting with ‘I need to know’ or ‘I seek a prospect with a need’ or ‘I need to offer this information’ impedes success. Without win/win, and Servant Leadership as goals, you’re a solution seeking a problem and merely find the low-hanging fruit.

WHAT TO DO?

So if you can’t ask questions, gather data, understand needs, or offer advice, what should you be doing instead? Here is the approach to How:

  1. Enter as a Change Facilitator/Servant Leader. Help others examine their unique unconscious system of beliefs and biases to determine what’s missing within their system to reach Excellence in the area of your solution. Ultimately, they’ll need to recognize what’s standing in the way of them having the beliefs and steps to support the congruent change and determine a way forward that incorporates all (all) of their unique criteria – and maybe your solution. They do this anyway – just without you.
  2. Begin the communication by listening for metamessages to trigger the
  3. formulation of your Facilitative Questions that
  4. lead your CPs through their unconscious status quo and enables them to discover
  5. what’s missing (at the unconscious level) for Excellence to occur, and notice any incongruencies.
  6. They must gather the appropriate people, policies, relationships, etc. and begin the change process. Once this is completed, THEN you can…
  7. Ask information gathering questions or give advice ONLY to those who are able to change congruently.

Always remain in a Witness, or Observer stance to remain unbiased (I have a chapter in What? that explains the process). Obviously there comes a time when gathering/sharing data, or offering important advice, is vital. But save it for end when there is a readiness for change. It’s a systems thing. And I can teach you how to do this.

If I had my way, every scientist, teacher, doctor, seller, coach, lawyer, leader, and parent would know how to do this. For me, we all should be Servant Leaders to each other to enable good decision making for effective interactions. Sellers can find the right prospects on the first call and attend meetings with every stakeholder present; marketers can enter the Buy Path much earlier in the decision cycle by using Facilitative Questions; parents/doctors can inspire appropriate action; leaders can eschew their biases and facilitate change without resistance. I’m here to help those companies and individuals interested in learning the How of change.

 


Sharon Drew Morgen is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation® - a change management model that includes learning how to Listen for Systems, formulating Facilitative Questions, and understanding the steps of systemic change. For those of you wishing to learn more, take a look at the program syllabus. Please visit www.dirtylittlesecrets.com and read the two free chapters. Consider reading it with the companion ebook Buying Facilitation®

Sharon Drew is the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling With Integrity, as well as 6 other books on helping buyers buy. She is also the author of the Amazon bestseller What? Did you really say what I think I heard? Sharon Drew keynotes, trains and coaches sales teams to help them unlock situations that are stalled, and teaches teams how to present and prospect by facilitating the complete buying decision process. She delivers keynotes at annual sales conferences globally. Sharon Drew can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512 771 1117


Contributor: Sharon Drew Morgen

Published here on:

Classification: Sales

Websites:

www.buyingfacilitation.com

www.newsalesparadigm.com

www.sharondrewmorgen.com

www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com

 

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Main sections: | Disciplines | Techniques | Principles | Explanations | Theories |

Other sections: | Blog! | Quotes | Guest articles | Analysis | Books | Help |

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Please help and share:

 

Quick links

Disciplines

* Argument
* Brand management
* Change Management
* Coaching
* Communication
* Counseling
* Game Design
* Human Resources
* Job-finding
* Leadership
* Marketing
* Politics
* Propaganda
* Rhetoric
* Negotiation
* Psychoanalysis
* Sales
* Sociology
* Storytelling
* Teaching
* Warfare
* Workplace design

Techniques

* Assertiveness
* Body language
* Change techniques
* Closing techniques
* Conversation
* Confidence tricks
* Conversion
* Creative techniques
* General techniques
* Happiness
* Hypnotism
* Interrogation
* Language
* Listening
* Negotiation tactics
* Objection handling
* Propaganda
* Problem-solving
* Public speaking
* Questioning
* Using repetition
* Resisting persuasion
* Self-development
* Sequential requests
* Storytelling
* Stress Management
* Tipping
* Using humor
* Willpower

Principles

+ Principles

Explanations

* Behaviors
* Beliefs
* Brain stuff
* Conditioning
* Coping Mechanisms
* Critical Theory
* Culture
* Decisions
* Emotions
* Evolution
* Gender
* Games
* Groups
* Habit
* Identity
* Learning
* Meaning
* Memory
* Motivation
* Models
* Needs
* Personality
* Power
* Preferences
* Research
* Relationships
* SIFT Model
* Social Research
* Stress
* Trust
* Values

Theories

* Alphabetic list
* Theory types

And

About
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Blog!
Books
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Contact
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