Drawing from my experience as a sailor, I’ve started to describe consent decision-making as navigating by objections. Hearing objections helps us mark out potential hazards, find a clear channel, and reach our destination together.
How does this metaphor work for you?
~Andy Grant, certified facilitator
Interesting metaphor and nice drawing. In my own experience as facilitator - and when training others - the skill to navigate - in realtime - but also foresee and plan ahead or around objections, is an important skill to have as a facilitator. But I also see the ability to ‘dissolve’ objections as a facilitator and integrate them in a proposal as a key skill to have. So it’s not just navigating around objections (avoiding the buoys), but sometimes it’s also sailing your ship straight for them, dealing with them and dissolving them in the process…
Thanks for your reflections, Egon. Dissolving and integrating objections sounds like the process of digestion, and it also works for me. Hmmm. More to ponder.
With a quick search of the phrase, “navigating objections,” I found a potential downside of the navigation theme: It has been used for some time in corporate sales, dealing with objections by potential customers. That leads me to wonder how we employ powers of persuasion in sociocracy and to what end. How is what we do, similar to and different from a sales pitch?
