Trust Practice: Expressing Your Needs

Our work is focused on building our collaborative capacity to engage in systems work. Collaborative capacity includes the strategic and relational skills required to work across difference.

A key collaboration skill is the ability to build, maintain and repair trust with others, and if you're in the role of facilitating collaborations amongst groups, to help others do this trust work with each other.

There's a lot that goes into trust. If you're interested in a deeper dive into trust, you might like to follow my weekly column on LinkedIn.

Trust is supported by the ability to name needs clearly

One of the most powerful practices I’ve learned has come from Marshall Rosenberg’s work on Nonviolent Communication.

The practice is often framed through the OFNR model:

• OBSERVATIONS — speaking cleanly about what happened.

• FEELINGS — those messy, body-felt sensations that signal what matters in the moment.

• NEEDS — the most fundamental expression of our humanness.

• REQUESTS — asking for the other’s willingness to support us in meeting our needs.

It’s easy to mistake NVC as being only about how we communicate with others.

Most importantly, it is a practice of self-empathy and self-compassion.

The first step is always to check in with how you’re feeling and what you need. It’s remarkable what’s revealed when I slow down to do this. So often, I’ve found that when I can name my needs clearly, I’m the one who can meet them.

What does this have to do with trust?

Sharing one's needs helps communicate boundaries while maintaining connection.

When people know where we stand, they are better placed to be able to respond with compassion. This simple — but not always easy — practice fosters trust.

When conversations land in difficult places and connection is ruptured, intense feelings can arise. It can be instinctual to blame the other.

Yet, at a human level, what’s often happening is that both people’s needs are not being met. Through an NVC lens, every conversation is ultimately saying:

Please meet my needs.

or

Thank you for meeting my needs.

The challenge is that, in the busyness of life, we rarely slow down enough to know what we need. So instead of naming needs clearly and gracefully, it is easy to grasp for them in less-than-graceful ways.

Putting it into practice

Try this next time you a strong feeling arises, slow down and check in with yourself. See if you can observe what is happening from a more neutral perspective, as if a video camera is watching the interaction.

How do you feel?

Check in with how you are feeling. You might notice several feelings trying to get your attention. I like the Feelings Wheel as a tool for this (click on the image below if you want an interactive version of the wheel).

What do you need?

Ask what needs these feelings are trying to reveal to you.

These needs are prompts only and the list is certainly not exhaustive.

How might your express your needs?

Make the expression of these your own. Sometimes it's enough to acknowledge these to your self. Saying it out loud gives it extra power.

I need space right now.

I need to my contribution to be acknowledged.

I need more softness in our conversation.

Remember, this is a practice, so it's not about getting it right. The OFNR process in Nonviolent Communication includes a fourth stage of Requests. I’m deliberately not including that here, as it requires more space to explore the nuance and skill involved in making a request.

A great place to start is simply to acknowledge your needs and noticing what this reveals for you.

A colleaugue, Meghann Birks, once shared with me a developmental model of moving from Accidental → Intentional → Intuitive → Embodied.

My learning in this area began accidentally. I’m still highly intentional about checking in on my needs. With practice, it does slowly become more intuitive — and, at times, embodied.

If any of this lights up and this is a practice you want to grow in, coaching can be a safe way to do that. Feel free to reach out.

Go well,

Benny