Research shows that money worries have a distinct negative impact on employees’ ability to perform their jobs. Financial education can help, but new voluntary benefits—such as student loan refinancing—offer employers a more proactive tool for combatting this productivity drain.
Dan Macklin is a co-founder and vice president at SoFi. He is a thought leader whose perspectives on Gen X and Millennial personal finance topics have been featured in a variety of media outlets including CNBC, Fast Company and Mashable, as well as his personal favorite, Italian Vogue!
About SoFi
SoFi is a leader in marketplace lending and the largest provider of student loan refinancing, with over $2 billion in loans issued. SoFi helps ambitious early stage professionals accelerate their success with student loan refinancing, MBA loans, mortgages and personal loans. Its nontraditional underwriting approach takes into account merit and employment history among other factors to provide unique financial and investment products. Borrowers who refinance their student loans with SoFi can expect to save $11,783, on average, over the lifetime of their loans. For more information, visit SoFi.com.
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Willpower. We all want it. We all need it. But far too many of us just don’t have what it takes to stay resolute and determined when the going gets tough. Indeed, maintaining self-control and self-discipline when facing challenges at work and at home, or when aspiring toward ambitious future goals and objectives, can be among the most difficult life skills to manage and master—but it’s also one of the most impactful.
The significance of having low willpower cannot be overstated, since a lack of mental strength and fortitude can adversely affect nearly every aspect of your life and how you are perceived by others. This includes levels of failure and success in the workplace; leadership capabilities relating to career and home/parenting life; maintaining good habits (reliability, promptness, health and otherwise); aptly managing compulsions, impulses, addictions and bad habits; and a myriad of other obstacles, trials and tribulations we’re presented with on a daily basis. Life without willpower paints an ominous picture.
However much desired or well-intended, the process to developing willpower to benefit your professional and personal life can seem impossible, especially when faced with difficult situations, coercion or pressure from others, toxic relationships and certainly addictions of any sort. However, taking the initial steps to develop and maintain a strong will and self-discipline can be life changing.
With this in mind, I connected with the author of “Life Rehab: Don’t Overdose on Pain, People and Power,” Kanika Tolver—a Certified Professional Coach and thought leader who helps individuals realize career, business, life and spiritual success. She offered this simple yet insightful 3-step exercise that can help individuals develop better willpower through practice, progression, and patience:
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Merilee Kern, MBA, is Executive Editor of “The Luxe List” International News Syndicate, an accomplished entrepreneur, award-winning author and APP developer and influential media voice. She may be reached online at www.TheLuxeList.com. Follow her on Twitter here: www.Twitter.com/LuxeListEditor and Facebook here: www.Facebook.com/TheLuxeList.
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Using current negotiation models, people feel they are giving up more than they want in exchange for receiving less than they deserve. As part of standard practice, negotiation partners going into a negotiation calculate their bottom line – what they are willing to give up, and what they are willing to accept – and then fight, argue, cajole, or threaten when their parameters aren’t met. People have been killed for this. But there is another way.
In 1997, Bill Ury and I had to read each other’s books (my book was Selling with Integrity) in preparation for working together for KPMG. Before our introductory lunch meeting in Santa Fe, I read Getting To Yes (where BATNA – Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement – originated), marked the areas I disagreed with in red, and sent the marked book back to Bill. There was a lot of red: his book teaches how to get what you want (potentially win-lose) rather than how everyone can walk away satisfied (win-win). After much discussion during lunch he agreed with me.
Beliefs
Win-lose is an incongruity. If one person loses, everyone loses – hence there is only win-win or lose-lose. Yet in the typical negotiation process it’s hard to find a win when the ‘things’ being bartered are not ‘things’ at all but representations of unconscious, subjective beliefs and personal values (termed Criterial Equivalents in NLP). And neither negotiation partner understands the values these items represent to the other: a house in the country might represent a lifetime goal to one person, and just a place to live to another; a $1,000,000 settlement might illustrate payback for a lost, hard-won reputation to one person, and extortion to another. When much younger, I spent a fortune on a 14K gold waist chain, believing that this decadent indulgence defined me as ‘making it.’ Seriously.
It’s possible to take the negotiation beyond the ‘things’ being bartered, away from the personal and defended ‘representation’ factor, and chunk up to find mutually shared values agreeable to both – and then find ‘things’ that represent them. So it might be initially hard to agree who should get ‘the house’, but it might be possible to agree that it’s important everyone needs a safe place to live.
Focus On Shared Values First
Try this:
enter the negotiation with a list of somewhat generic high-level values that are of foundational importance, such as Being Safe; Fair Compensation;
share lists and see where there is agreement. Where there is no agreement, continue chunking up higher until a set of mutually comfortable criteria are found. A chunk up from Fair Compensation might be ‘Compensation that Values Employees’;
list several possible equivalents that match each agreeable criterion. So once Compensation that Values Employees is agreed upon during a salary negotiation, each partner should offer several different ways it could be achieved, such as a higher salary, or extra holidays, or increased paid training days, or a highly sought-after office, or higher royalties;
continue working backward – from agreement with high-level, foundational criteria, down to the details and choices that might fulfill that goal, with all parties in agreement.
Discussions over high level values are often more generic, and far less likely to set off tempers than arguments over ‘things’: if nothing else, it’s easier for negotiation partners to listen to each other without getting defensive. And once values are attended to and people feel heard they become more flexible in the ‘things’ they are willing to barter: once Compensation that Values Employees is agreed to, it’s possible to creatively design several choices for an employee to feel fairly valued without an employer stretching a tight budget.
I recently accepted a cold call from an insurance guy because I was thinking of switching providers. Instead of facilitating my buying decision, the bias in his questions terminated our connection:
TODD: Hello Ms. Morgen. I’m Todd with XYZ. Are you interested in new car insurance? SDM: I am. TODD: Is your main concern lowering your costs? SDM: No. TODD: You don’t care about saving money? SDM: Of course I do. TODD: So your main concern IS lowering your costs? SDM: No. TODD: So what is it? SDM: I’m interested in a personal connection, in knowing that if I have an accident I will be handled by someone who will take care of me. TODD: I can promise you I’ll take care of you. My clients love me. Do you want to discuss how much you’ll save?
And, we were done.
Good sellers and coaches pose better questions than Todd’s, of course. But the conversation exemplifies how a Questioner’s biased questions can significantly influence outcomes.
The Bias Inherent in Questions
Questions restrict answers to the assumptions and biases of the Questioner; Responders respond within the limits set by the question. Asking someone “What did you have for breakfast?” won’t elicit the answer “I bought a lamp.” Even questions that attempt to open a dialogue, like “What can you tell me about the problem?” or gather data, like “Who’s in charge of decision making?” merely elicit top-of-mind responses that my not effectively represent – and indeed might cloud – the issue. Biased question; biased answer.
Sometimes questions are so biased and restricted that the real answer might get overlooked. ‘Do you prefer the red ball or the blue ball?’ excludes not only the green ball, but a preference for a bat, or a discussion about the Responder’s color blindness. But a question such as: ‘What sort of a game implement could be easily carried and engage all employees?” might elicit a response of a ball or marbles or Monopoly and include more team members.
Most questions pull or push the data sought by the Questioner, making it difficult to know if:
the communication partners make the same assumptions;
the wording of the question is ideal;
a better answer exists outside the limits of the question;
the question encompasses the full set of possible responses.
What if the best answer is outside of the framework of the question? Or the question isn’t translated accurately by the Responder? Or there is an historic bias between the Questioner and Responder that makes communication difficult?
Facilitative Questions
Questions can be used to facilitate choice, to lead Responders to new options within their own (often unconscious) value system, rather than as set ups to the Questioner’s self-serving objectives. Using a Facilitative Question, the above dialogue would sound like this:
TODD: Hi Ms. Morgen. I’m Todd, an insurance agent with XYZ Corp. I’m selling car insurance. Is this a good time to speak? SDM: Sure. TODD: I’m wondering: If you are considering changing your insurance provider, what would you need to know about another provider to be certain you’d end up getting the coverage and service you deserve?
The question – carefully worded to match a Responder’s criteria for change – shifts the bias from Todd’s self-serving objectives to enabling me in a true discovery process; from his selling patterns to my buying patterns. How different our interaction would have been if his goal was to facilitate my buying decision path rather than using his misguided persuasion tactics to sell.
I developed Facilitative Questions decades ago to enable any Questioner to facilitate someone’s route to congruent change. With no manipulation or bias, they require a different form of listening, wording, and objectives, thereby avoiding resistance and encouraging trust between sellers, coaches, consultants and their clients.
Take a look at your own questioning strategy to see if they might work for you:
How are your questions perceived by your Responders? How do you know? What’s your risk?
How do your questions address a unique Responder’s decision criteria?
How do your questions bias, restrict, enhance, or ignore possibilities?
What criteria to you use to choose the words to formulate questions?
To ensure any new skills would work effectively with your successful skills, what would you need to know or consider before adopting additional question formulation skills?
Remember: your innate curiosity or intuition may not be sufficient to facilitate another’s unconscious route to change – or buy – congruently. You can always gather data once the route to change is established and you’re both on the same page. Change the goals of your questions from discovering situations you can provide answers for, to facilitating real core change. Before buyers or clients will work with you, they have to do this for themselves anyway. You might as well do it with them and create a trusting relationship.
Facilitative Questions follow a specific path and wording. I’ve trained sellers to use them for lead generation, to make appointments with the right decision makers (often helped by gatekeepers) and teach prospects to assemble Buying Decision Teams and reach consensus; to help coaches find – and keep – ideal clients, and facilitate their change efficiently. They are great for small and complex sales, for prospecting and lead gen, for team building, for coaching clients seeking change, for change implementations. And for doctors, lawyers, communication professionals, therapists, school administrators, and leaders.
If you’d like to learn how to formulate Facilitative Questions, either get this Learning Accelerator, or contact me to discuss team training or coaching at [email protected]. You can read about the use of Facilitative Questions and the full path of change in Dirty Little Secrets: www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com.
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Do you know what’s stopping you or your company from making the changes necessary to have more success? Or why prospects aren’t buying something they need? Or why clients aren’t adopting the changes they seek? The problem is resistance. And as change agents we’re inadvertently creating it.
Change requires that a complacent status quo risk its comfort for something unknowable – the probable loss of narrative, expectations, habitual activities and assumptions with no real knowledge of what will take its place. People don’t fear the change; they fear the disruption.
The Status Quo of the System
To understand why our status quo is tenacious we must understand systems. Simply, a system – for the sake of this article families, corporations, or individuals – is:
a collection of policies, beliefs, agreements, goals and history, uniquely developed over time, which
embrace uniform rules that are
recognized and accepted by all and
constitute the foundation of all decisions.
Because of the law of homeostasis (simply, all systems seek stability) any change potentially disrupts the status quo and will be resisted, even if the ‘new’ is more effective; even if the system seeks the change; even if the persuader is skilled at persuasion tactics.
Until or unless a system is able to shift its rules so that the new product, idea or implementation has the ability to fit in and new rules are adopted that reconfigure the status quo from within, change faces an uphill battle. The system is sacrosanct.
To get folks to change their minds or accept a solution and avoid resistance, it’s necessary to first:
help the system discover the differences between the new and the old,
help the system discover the details of the risk,
facilitate an acceptable route to managing the risk,
facilitate buy-in from the right people/elements
regardless of the efficacy of the proposed change or the need.
Our Guidance Pushes Against Stable Systems
Entire fields ignore these change management issues to their detriment:
the sales model fails 95% of the time because it attempts to push a new solution into the existing status quo, without first facilitating a buyer’s non-need change issues;
coaches end up needing 6 months with clients to effect change as they keep trying to push new behaviors into an old system – and then blame clients for not listening’ or believing they have the ‘wrong’ clients;
consultants and leaders have a high rate of failed implementations as they attempt to push the new into the old without first collaboratively designing new structures that will accept the change.
Persuasion and manipulation tactics and guidance strategies merely push against a stable system. As outsiders, it’s unlikely we can acquire the historic knowledge and consensus from all relevant insiders, or design the new rules for systemic change, for our ideas or solutions to gain broad acceptance throughout the system.
We can, however, facilitate the system in changing itself. Then the choice of the best solution becomes a consequence of a system that is ready, willing, and able to adopt excellence.
Obviously, having the right solution does not cause change: pitching, suggesting, influencing, or presenting before a system has figured out how to manage change is not only a time waste, but causes resistance and rejection of the proposed solution. So all of our logic, rational, good content, reasoning, or persuasion tactics are useless until the system is ready. Facilitate change first, then offer solutions in the way that the system can use it.
The question is: do you want to place a solution? Or expedite congruent change?
Listening for Systems, Facilitating Change
For the past 30 years I have designed unique models that facilitate change from the inside. Used in sales, and now being used in the coaching industry, my Buying Facilitation® model offers a unique skill set that teaches systems how to change themselves, and includes listening for systems rather than content, and a new way to use questions (Read Dirty Little Secrets (www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com.).But whether you use my model or develop one of your own, you must begin by facilitating change, not by attempting to first ‘understand need’ or place a solution or idea.
I’m suggesting that you change your accustomed practices: the idea of no longer listening for holes in a client’s logic to offer guidance goes against the grain of sellers, coaches, and consultants. By listening for systems, by focusing on facilitating change and enabling consensus and change management, change agents are more likely to sell, coach, and implement.
I’ve written a new book (What?) to help you hear what others are really saying rather than just what you want to hear. I’ve made it free: www.didihearyou.com. Read it, and then let’s start a conversation. Let’s begin to think of managers, sellers, leaders, and coaches as true consultants who can hear what their clients mean. Let’s add a few facilitation skills and be the agents of real change with integrity.
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Dan Macklin is a co-founder and vice president at SoFi. He is a thought leader whose perspectives on Gen X and Millennial personal finance topics have been featured in a variety of media outlets including CNBC, Fast Company and Mashable, as well as his personal favorite, Italian Vogue!
Merilee Kern, MBA, is Executive Editor of “The Luxe List” International News Syndicate, an accomplished entrepreneur, award-winning author and APP developer and influential media voice. She may be reached online at 
Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (
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