Ep 109: Please Don't Funnel Me! ~ Exploring the Impact of Funneling in Relationships

Please Don't Funnel Me!
Exploring the Impact of Funneling in Relationships: A Perspective on Conscious and Unconscious Influences

Have you ever felt uncomfortably processed, like a mere statistic on a spreadsheet or an impersonal number on a list? That's how I began to feel with the increasingly popular strategy of funneling in relationships used by organisations.

I've grown weary of this impersonal approach and have made the conscious decision to pull away from it. But how does this funneling affect our daily lives and decisions? I invite you to join me as we unravel this intriguing social and business phenomenon.

As we venture into this candid exploration, we'll dive deep into the distinction between conscious and unconscious funneling in our relationships. How much of our choices are genuinely ours and how much are subtly influenced by these funneling processes? In addition, we'll address the prickly issue of unauthorized list additions.

Although economic pressures may drive organisations to such tactics, we'll discuss the potential repercussions and impacts on the authenticity of relationships. Ultimately, the goal is to encourage mindful decision making, ensuring we uphold our dignity and foster authentic relationships amidst the pressures of our fast-paced world.

Chapters

• 0:02 The Issue of Funneling in Relationships
• 11:07 Conscious vs. Unconscious Funneling in Relationships
• 16:00 Unauthorized Adding People to Lists

Transcript

Catherine Llewellyn: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence Brought to you by Yes You Now with Catherine Llewellyn, Truth and Transcendence, episode 109. Please don't funnel me. So I don't know if you know what I mean by funneling. Over the last few years, the prevalence of organisations that provide special services that allow you to create sales funnels which allow you to kind of draw people in, put them on a mailing list, offer them things to look at for free courses and gradually funnel them along to a point where hopefully, they then buy your services or products. And I remember when this first started to get popular and it sounded like quite an interesting idea. It could save a lot of time and effort, it could get rid of expenses on sales teams and people sitting on the phone making phone calls all day. And, yeah, you know, maybe an interesting idea, but nowadays everything is a funnel. You buy some cheese online. Before you know it, you're on a mailing list for a cheese company who are trying to get you to join a membership, so you can be in a community with lots of other people talking about cheese. Now, for some people this is great fun and if you like it, you like it.

Catherine Llewellyn: 1:40

But frankly, I'm pretty fed up with funneling now and I think a lot of people are, and I thought about this and thought well, why am I fed up with it? What is the issue here? I think the first thing that obviously is annoying is when I interact with an organisation and purchase something or send in an inquiry and, without being consulted, I'm placed on a list, I'm put into the top of a funnel and there's that feeling of being funnelled, which is a feeling I'd never had before, before the whole funneling thing was invented, and I'm starting to develop a resistance to it and an irritation with it, so that when that first perky email arrived saying thank you so much for joining our community, you can now use this code to get discounts or future things and you can do this, and that Very often my immediate response is one of irritation and feeling put upon, which is a bit sad when you think about it, because often the email is genuinely quite friendly and quite often it's offering something quite nice. But the fact I wasn't asked whether or not I wanted to go on the list in the first place, I think is the first sign of unwelcome funneling. And I thought about it some more and thought, okay, what are the other things about it that I don't like and one of them is that feeling of being processed like a number, not like a person.

Catherine Llewellyn: 3:19

So I see that first email and, even though it's addressed to me personally and it's very chatty, I know that that exact same email is going to every single other person who clicked that link or who bought that item. So I know it's not personal but it's pretending to be personal and that really rankles. And that rankles a bit like if somebody wants to get me to like them and they pretend to be genuinely, really interested in me, genuinely find me fascinating or interesting or a good person or appealing in some way, but they don't really mean it, but they do a good act, a good facade of it for some agenda that they have. When I then discover that's the case, perhaps after I've been drawn in, that's a very disappointing and unpleasant experience. So it's the kind of inauthenticity, the pretended offering of a friendly message or a friendly reaching out, that also rankles, because although the person who put this whole thing together, who created the funnel and is offering the thing, might be a truly lovely person or an organisation full of lovely people with positive intent, the fact that I know the whole thing is a process and that I'm being funneled through it as a number, whilst there's a pretence that this is all about me being befriended by somebody who really, really cares about befriending me. That just feels unreal, inauthentic, and I just don't like it.

Catherine Llewellyn: 5:08

So I then thought, okay, so just don't get into funnels and just unsubscribe. And so that's what I do, and although I did kind of tinker about with the idea of creating funnels for my own promotion activity, I've dropped that now. And basically now, if I want to invite people onto a mailing list, I'll say would you like to join the mailing list? And if they want to, they can, and if not, not, I'm not going to automatically funnel people, because I've now decided that's not how I want to do things and not how I want things to be done around me. So for those of us who are listening to this and thinking well, you know, what's this got to do with me? I don't even. I've never heard of this funling thing. I vaguely recognise what Catherine's talking about. I vaguely don't even care about it or find it annoying. But what's the point? And I realise then that this funling thing is symbolic or representative of an aspect of how we as humans try to deal with complexity.

Catherine Llewellyn: 6:15

So as we go through life, we as a baby, as a young child, we are completely open to all sensations and messages and influences coming our way. We have no filters and, in a way, funnels. They act to draw people in, but they also act as filters as well, and as we grow older we start to individuate and then to socialise. Over time we gradually start to put in place various mechanisms that allow us to start to sift through and actually use our discernment in regard to the information that's coming towards us, the people around us, and that's a gradual process. Sometimes we go through experiences that sharpen up that process significantly or quickly, but in general it's a gradual process. So by the time we reach adulthood we've got a framework in place that kind of helps us guide us in relationship to who we want to be in connection with, how we want to be in connection with them and what sort of stages of connection and relating feel okay for us.

Catherine Llewellyn: 7:32

There was a whole thing about on dating sites. When people are looking for personal relationships that on dating sites do people. Is it better if people offer as a first meeting to take people out for dinner and dancing and possibly go to the cinema as well, you know, or even a weekend on their island. Or is it more sensible to say to them would you like to go for a coffee? Now, that's an example of different levels of pressure of an initial contact and we all have different kind of thresholds of openness and interest and capacity for new connections and for developing connections with people, which is part of what the whole funnelling thing is all about that whole business of gently easing people along a path to the point where they're prepared to make a commitment or say yes to something.

Catherine Llewellyn: 8:32

So in life in general, we often want to get to know somebody or find a way of working with somebody, or employ somebody, or be employed by somebody, or be working on a board with somebody as a colleague, or be a practitioner working with a client, or a client working with a practitioner, or facilitating a group or being in a group All these different ways in which we want to gradually, at the right pace for us and following the stages that work for us, move from a place of perhaps no contact or a new contact into a place of increasing commitment, involvement and exposure as well, because the more involved we get, the more attached we tend to get, the more vulnerable we are to impressions and effects and impacts of being around those people or in those situations, which, of course, if it's a benevolent situation for us or a benevolent relationship, and it works that vulnerability is an experience of wonder and joy, and if it's not, that vulnerability is an experience of feeling unsafe, possibly even betrayed, distressed and so on. And I suspect anyone listening to this will have experienced each side of what I'm just talking about, probably more than once. I know I have and I've tried to learn from it. But, of course, as we learn from these things, it's so easy to start to create rigid frameworks in order to protect ourselves, and the classic archetypal one is when people talk about women who hate men. Now, that's an archetype I think everybody's heard of now, which is the archetype of the woman who has experienced herself being badly treated in relationships and is now decided she hates all men. Now, whether there is such a thing as this particular human being, I don't even know. I'm certainly not like that myself, but that's, if you like, an extreme archetype which is quite useful, and there are lots of other ones. It's quite useful as a way of reminding ourselves that it's so easy and so possible, as we go through life, to actually create funnels for the human beings that come towards us.

Catherine Llewellyn: 11:07

So we have different ways that we want to actually encourage people to get closer to us, but we also have different ways that we want to screen people out, and when this becomes automatic and unconscious, that's where it becomes the things that I don't like about funnels, and that is something I felt important to speak about today, and I'm asking myself and I invite you to ask yourself as well how much of the decisions we make and the ways that we respond and deal with people and the people we choose to be around or don't choose to be around in whatever capacity, and the points where we say no or yes, how much of that is conscious and how much of that is an unconscious, automatic funnelling process that we are imposing on the people around us and on ourselves as well, because we're in the centre of that particular process and we're the ones who might end up sitting on the sofa in the living room on a Saturday night wondering why we're by ourselves or battering away with our business and wondering why we can't get any help or support from anybody, or finding ourselves surrounded by people who we thought would be great to be surrounded by but actually really are not. Now, those sorts of outcomes I'm suggesting could be contributed to by unconscious automatic funnelling screening of people, whereas those of us who are feeling much happier about all of those things are probably a bit more conscious about what are my needs. What kind of people do I want around me, in whatever capacity, whether it's personal, professional, community, whatever it might be and who consciously notice those moments of feeling drawn or not drawn and consciously notice the way we invite people in. And are we consciously inviting people to do something? Or are we just unconsciously drawing people in and then later on we just dump them when they disappoint us because we were not actually authentically real in our initial invitation or our second, third, fourth invitation, and that can actually. I was talking to someone the other day who was referring to someone else who has a seducer, and that's what the seducer does. The seducer draws people in whether or not they care about them. They draw people in because they have an agenda and they feel drawing that person in is going to help further their agenda and it's not kind. So there's a lot of different aspects around this that have struck me even while I'm speaking on this podcast. So please don't funnel me. I promise not to funnel you.

Catherine Llewellyn: 14:13

And if you feel yourself being funneled whether it's a work situation or a personal situation if you feel yourself being funneled, drawn in, offered the pretense or friendship, and if someone's caring about you, just check does it feel real, does it feel authentic? And if it doesn't, are you being stroked? Are you being drawn in to something which doesn't really nourish you? Because, again, we all have the capacity for that. We all have the capacity to kind of purr in response to the attention, because sometimes we don't get enough good quality attention, so when the attention's there, it can be very seductive. So are we noticing that? Are we noticing? Do I really want to go in this direction? Are we sifting people out unconsciously or are we being conscious about it? And what are we doing in regard to other people? Are we funneling them in an automatic, inauthentic, in-personal way, or are we being authentic and conscious and connected?

Catherine Llewellyn: 15:25

Now, of course, the caveat I just want to throw in is sometimes, if you're running a business where you need to have 10,000 people look at your website in order for 2,000 of them to click a link and go and read something or watch a video, and then a percentage of that looks at some other information and then ends up with a number of people which is actually manageable for you and your team and your organization to relate with in a personal way, then that's the way it is and of course I've got no argument with that.

Catherine Llewellyn: 16:00

But I would say, in that case, please consider this business of adding people to lists without their permission, being overly familiar and pretending a friendship when that's really not actually what's on offer at that point, and being real and authentic, because otherwise what you're doing is you're actually breeding a situation. You're actually setting things up for disappointment along the way. I know this can be a hard thing to hear, because these days there's a lot of competition, the economy is pretty dodgy in most places and many organizations are simply running to keep still, so it's a hard one. So it's with you. It's with you, obviously, to choose what to do. So there's my little thing from today about funneling, and I wish you a beautiful week, and if you are funnelled in any way, may it give you what you want, and if it's not giving you what you want, may you, in a dignified fashion. Extricate yourself, have a beautiful week and I'll see you next time.