Alice Sheldon on needs understanding and the partnership paradigm

Lisa: So Alice, thank you for being on the podcast and really looking forward to our conversation.

Alice: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a delight to be here.

Lisa: I guess where to start… maybe you could tell us what is needs understanding and what called you to write this book and to want to kind of bring it out into the world?

Alice: Sure. So it turns out that there’s what I and many others find a very helpful way of framing the world through the lens of human needs. And when we talk about needs, we’re talking about the physical needs like food and shelter and so forth, but also belonging, having fun, acceptance, love—a whole range of human needs. And if we understand our own and others’ behavior through that lens, it can have a whole range of helpful possibilities, from the inside—us and how we feel—to the effect that we can have in the world. So in a sentence or two, that’s what needs understanding is all about.

And I found it, or at least I found the work that I’ve developed, back in the late 2000s—2007, 2008-ish. I have had a sort of quite high-powered career posts throughout my life, but underneath that, there was a real river of depression, so bad that at points it ended me up in hospital. And this was the body of work that helped me transform that, and it’s also the body of work that helped me with my parenting.

So more than any other single thing that I’ve done, this was the thing where I found personal transformation. And from that, importantly for me—because I’ve always been interested in “Well, what’s my part? What’s the Alice-shaped hole in contributing to social change?”—this is, for now anyway, my piece to share—this work that can be, for those that it fits, so powerful.

Lisa: Well, thank you for sharing that. I wonder if you could say some more about what in this needs understanding piece was so transformational for you personally?

Alice: Yes, I can. And I’m loving your questions, Lisa, and I’m just needing to pause each time because it’s kind of that sort of question that you know I’d want to be on a four-hour hike with you. And as we don’t have a four-hour hike, how to cut—you know, most helpfully say for listeners…

I think for me, what I love about it is the combination of a very deep approach to transforming how we think and behave, combined with a very practical action in the world piece. Those things have always been very important to me—the personal happiness, but that alone has never been enough for me. I want that to go alongside being able to take effective action in the world, and this body of work more than anything else gave me hope.

You can take it—I mean, what I love about it is that you can take it, and often when I work with organizations I find this—you can take it at the level of “How to write an email that people are more likely to respond to? How to talk to a colleague in ways that are less likely to wind either of you up?” Or you can take it at the level of “Oh, okay, I know why this situation is triggering me so much. There’s the same needs that’s being touched here that was touched when I was two, when I was three, when I was four, when I was five.” And I love that it can meet people in different places. That feels important to me.

For me, the reason it’s been so transformative is that it has given me that tool for understanding and making sense of some of the difficulties I’m having in the present, in a way that looks back but, most importantly, looks forward as well.

Lisa: I’ve told you already that I have stuck up on my bedroom door the list of needs that you included in your book, because it’s such a good reminder. I can see it every day, and I’ve noticed since reading your book that I’m more curious now. I’m asking people in meetings and conversations—I’m sort of listening for or asking directly like, “What is it that you need?” And it’s such… I find that people aren’t used to being asked that question, and people aren’t used to, in my experience, being able to articulate or even sense what their needs are. It’s like a completely different way of looking at things.

Could you share with us some of the sort of principles or… you know, because as you said, something that’s so great about the book is how practical it is and how—I love people who make, think, break things down into simple principles and actionable steps. So yeah, what’s good for listeners to know about?

Alice: I mean, this is again such a lovely question. And I have to say I’m smiling here, Lisa, because for me, I am not one for wanting to remember 23 different principles. That’s like, you know… So what I love about this is the simplicity of it. Everything builds out from two central principles, and I wonder whether the most helpful thing would be for me just to run through the example I give right at the beginning of the book? Perhaps?

So let me do that, and this is—although it’s a parenting example, I chose it because whether or not we’ve had children, we’ve all been children. And it’s one that I hope people will easily translate into a leadership example or another personal example.

So I’ll use that one, and this is a story of when my daughter was about six—five or six—and what she would really love doing more than anything else in the world was being at home playing with her small people that she would create all kinds of relational stories. And it was completely delightful for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half in a really good Saturday morning. But actually, after that, I’d be like, “Oh, for goodness sake, you know, can we go for a walk? Can we go and see some friends? Can we go to a cafe?”

So this is just an everyday example, but it did recur pretty much every Saturday or Sunday morning. And it would usually end up fairly ungracefully with me either trying to negotiate (obviously no use at all with a six-year-old), bundling her out of the door, trying to distract her, giving in, staying at home and feeling unhappy, or—more times than I care to remember—kind of losing it. Like, “For goodness sake, you know, this is… I feel at home all morning with you. We’re going out for me!” sort of thing. And that thing that I’m sure many parents think coming out of my mouth.

So that’s the setup. If we step away from the heat of the moment and look at that through what I like to think of as “needs glasses,” the idea with needs glasses is that they embody the first principle of needs understanding, which is that anything that we do is actually an attempt to meet our underlying needs. I find that a powerful principle because these are things that we all share and that we all feel good about. So if we understand behavior in those terms, the first thing that happens is we start to invite a lot more compassion into the situation.

So in this situation I would turn to myself with my needs glasses on and see fairly easily that actually, you know, I’m really longing for some aliveness in my day, maybe for a sense of connection—both with my daughter but also maybe with other adults, that quality of connection.

And if I then turn the needs glasses and look towards Anna for a minute and stop seeing her intransigence or whatever else I’m putting on to her after my—you know, with my irritation—then it’s easy for me to see that she is probably looking for fun and play, and also for choice. Like, you know, very common for kids in Western society.

So that’s the first stage, and then how is that useful? And again, breaking it down into pieces, there are four skill areas that come from the central principle of needs understanding. The first is that invitation to listen to the other person with empathy. So that instead of saying—instead of saying to her, “Look, we agreed that we’d go out and now it’s time to go out,” I might say to her, “I get it, you are really looking for some fun. Is that what it’s about? You’d love to carry on playing.” Or, “Yeah, I can really imagine that you’d like to be making the choices here. It’s often me who gets to choose, and actually it’d be nice, you know, if you could choose as well.” So that’s the empathy piece.

Then a second skill area is understanding myself with compassion. So already, as I see myself saying, “Well, you know, of course I need some aliveness. I’ve… I’m a single mom. I’ve had a hard week at work. Of course I’m going to need that.” There’s another piece in that which I’ll come back to, which is important to me.

But the third piece is speaking to be heard. So I’m much more likely to have a useful conversation with Anna if we stop arguing about our strategy. And I think that’s what you’re referring to, Lisa, when you talk about talking to people about needs. We’re so used to talking about what action should or shouldn’t we take, that we don’t so often go and actually focus on the needs. Once I’m in the realm of talking to her about, “Okay, your needs for fun, for choice, my needs for aliveness,” I’m much more likely to get a solution that sticks.

And the final area is holding all the needs with care. So the principle here is that actually all needs are of value. How do we hold more with care? I might not always be able to meet them, but—and this is a leadership principle, really—I would understand leadership as being something about holding the needs of the whole. So my own needs alongside everyone’s needs and acting in service of the whole. And that’s what I’m trying to do in this situation.

So then I’m looking—you know, I might be looking with Anna, “Okay, so you like this, I’d like this. Is there a way that we can make all of this happen?” And honestly, 99 times out of 100, she could come up with a solution. Sometimes she couldn’t. Sometimes my need would be so great that I couldn’t see any other way of meeting it than by actually overriding her needs, and sometimes I would do that. And then the difference would be that instead of a sort of angry boundary or a sort of “I feel guilty” boundary, it becomes, “You know what? I totally get this, what’s going on for you, and I can’t find a way of meeting this right now. So right now I am going to insist that we do this.” Not the option I want, but definitely better than if I didn’t have those tools and just went straight into sort of strong-arming, if you like, from an angry place. It’s from a very—from a loving place rather than an angry place.

The piece that I missed, Lisa, and I don’t know if it’s helpful to say now or—where I’ve been speaking for a while, but the piece that I missed is the piece about fingerprint needs. And I don’t know if that’s helpful or not. I know you’ve obviously had a look at the book, so yeah, what do you think?

Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think—you know, thinking about listeners and the kind of “new ways of working” movement, I think there are so many traps in trying to move away from kind of command and controlled, top-down, dominator-type, hierarchical organizations. We can end up thinking that, “Oh, that means I need to sort of sacrifice all of my needs”—you know, that we must all be equal and we must be this sort of wonderful harmonious organism. And I think there’s such a learning edge in this work for people to, number one, understand my needs and to not see me sharing something about my needs or being direct in sort of speaking them as something that is dominating or selfish or, you know, that that contributes to the whole.

Alice: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. It’s a real “both and.” And I see, you know, it’s been exciting for me as I’ve sort of prepared for speaking with you, looking at some of the work that you’ve done and some of your previous guests. And just seeing, for me, there’s a really perfect fit between my focus, which is on how do we grow ourselves individually so that we become more self-aware and less self-conscious.

So I see—you know, so many people have a sort of objection to the kind of self-development or personal growth because it can be—right or wrongly—seen as very introspective. But actually, it fits perfectly alongside the bringing about effective change in organizations, because the more conscious we are of what’s going on for us, the more we’re able to spot our leadership patterns and know what is triggering, what is reactive, what is responsive, what is proactive. And so, yeah, so I love that question.

And yes, after that long preamble, let me say something about fingerprint needs, which is—this, I just, yeah, I really love it. So when I was going through my needs in that situation, one that I didn’t mention is the need to matter. So I would often find myself feeling a bit like I was actually only five or six years old myself, you know, like “Do I matter? You know, I’ve been doing all this all week. What about me?”

Now, clearly I don’t want to dump that onto my child, clearly. But it really helped me—when you were asking earlier about things that helped me—it really helped me to be able to frame these trigger points in terms of needs. Because so many times for me, it’s the same handful of two, three needs which crop up again and again when I am triggered and ineffective. And so once I know that, I can start to do something about it.

And in this situation with Anna, as I say, it’s the “Do I matter?” Now, if I track back to my early life, then in my family of origin, through no fault of anybody at all, my experience was that I didn’t matter. And so that need is a particular trigger for me in a way that it wouldn’t be potentially for you if you didn’t have the same trigger.

So this explains why we see some people as being overreactive to things. They may well be reacting to a fingerprint need of theirs that you just don’t know about. For me, if I can see the “not mattering,” I can much more easily sort of take myself in hand. “Of course you’d feel like that, you know? Of course you’re going to be triggered by the not mattering. Now, let’s not take that into the relationship inappropriately with my child. Let’s take care of that myself.” And there are many ways you can do that.

And gradually over time that trigger massively reduces. So I’m happy to report that, you know, 15 years on or whatever it is, I mean, it still happens for sure, but I spend not very much of my time in the territory of being in my head, judging myself, judging the other person, feeling reactive. It’s really empowering because it gives me so much more energy and space for being out in the world, meeting other people, and doing the work that I can do.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah. I watched one of your videos recently as well with another example that I thought was so powerful, and I think probably lots of people listening to this can relate, which was in a Zoom call, having people—lots of people with their cameras turned off. Like, how many of us have tried different strategies for getting people to turn their camera on? And you made a really good distinction between needs and strategies. Could you share about that example with us?

Alice: Yeah, of course I can. So it’s the equivalent of—it’s the equivalent in the parenting example of battling with Anna about going to the cafe or not going to the cafe, rather than talking about needs. So in this example, as you say, “Have you tried everything?” Rather than continuing to talk about the strategy, which is, “I’d love it if you turn your camera on” or “Cameras are good for this, that, and the other reason,” if I start talking about what’s behind it…

I mean, what I said—and I was—I just said, “You know what? I would really… I feel quite alone on this screen, and I’d really love some connection. Would anyone be willing to turn their camera on?” And immediately two people ping their cameras on. And it was—one of them then went on to say, “You know, Alice, you really had me at the word ‘connection’.” And that’s the need, you know—we can get that. And it allowed her in that instance to respond to that.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s so powerful because, again, I think in a kind of organizational context, we’re so conditioned to talk about sort of operational things and strategies and talk about things in a kind of dehumanized, sort of—what’s the word—kind of clinical, almost, way. And when we share something like that, you know, “I have a… I would like… I feel alone, I would like… I would love some connection,” it speaks to the humanness in all of us. And it’s so much more powerful than…

We can so often be preoccupied with trying all these different strategies, but I’m learning that, yeah, when I speak what my need is, taps into something different. And it also sort of invites others to do the same, you know, that we have this totally different kind of exchange then.

Alice: Yes, yes, absolutely. And as you were speaking, Lisa, I could hear in that—there’s also something people can feel like it’s just not quite appropriate in certain settings to talk about needs and feelings. And I wonder if that’s because actually we’re not used to talking about our needs and feelings in a very self-responsible way.

So I hear in your tone of voice—I can imagine you doing that in a meeting, and I can imagine how I would want to do it in a meeting, which is really—and I did succeed on that Zoom call—which is really just to state it. It’s a real request. Actually, people might say no. I’m not depending on you to do something in order for me to feel all right, but I am letting you know what’s going on. And there is a difference in there, I think.

My Swedish colleagues—there’s a really good phrase in Swedish, and I’m going to butcher it, but it’s something like “lila get,” which means being able to be with it. So we talk about this a lot as a leadership skill—that if I can sort of consciously choose to say something, it has a completely different quality compared to if I reactively say it.

So I can totally see how it wouldn’t work so well if I said, “Guys, I feel really alone now. It would be really great if you could turn your cameras on.” You know, that wouldn’t have the same effect. So it’s this—yeah, it is really… I think consciousness is a key part.

Lisa: I also—I really like in the book—I’m a visual person, and you have this great diagram of, I think it’s that we have this pattern to—when there’s a problem (I’m also thinking about this now in context of conflict or when there’s disagreement or differing opinions on things)… when there’s a challenge, we so often try and—we so often try and rush to a solution. And we all start talking about different solutions, and it becomes kind of binary, you know, this or that, either/or.

And you talk about how if we can sort of go down—this is almost—and spend some time exploring needs and kind of gathering and listening to and being curious about needs, that then totally different solutions occur. It’s sort of like taking a detour that adds so much value, almost instead of trying to rush straight from problem to solution.

Alice: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the quality of the solution that we come out with more than outweighs the time spent. That’s my experience with it. But I guess people need to try that out first, because often there’s that thing of, “Oh, this will take longer,” and so there’s that.

But there’s also, I think, related to that—as you spoke, it reminded me also of some of our resistance, I think, to talking to—to really listening to other people’s needs is that we might have to somehow give up on our own. And that’s so—you know, we find it hard to listen to the other side because we fear that it means we’re somehow agreeing with them, rather than standing very firmly in my values but being willing to cross over and understand your world.

So we become, you know, increasingly polarized and less able to find strong solutions that fit for me but also for you, or for you but also for me. It’s a “both and.”

Lisa: Hmm, yeah. And examples just popped into my head. Maybe we can kind of unpack it together through some needs glasses. So an organization I was speaking to recently, they’ve been exploring having self-managing teams for several years now. And since they started the experiment, new people have joined. Some people in the organization have decided they don’t really like this—they prefer how it was before, or something close to how it was before.

So there’s become this kind of “us and them” dynamic. And it’s got to the point where even to talk about self-management, that very word becomes sort of taboo. And this—the two camps, I think, struggle to have a conversation, I think because of what you’ve just described. That partly it’s each camp—I think particularly the self-management fans worry if we entertain the needs that this other group has, that means we’ll have to give up this thing, this way of working that we have invested our time in, that we believe in, and so on.

So what are your thoughts from the—from a kind of needs perspective, you know, how could those two groups communicate, have a dialogue in a different way that that might, yeah, open up more solutions or more possibilities?

Alice: What a lovely question. I mean, and there are sort of two levels, I guess. And maybe there aren’t… Well, so I guess first of all, I think—let’s think about what the needs on either side are before we think about the process too much. So I mean, if—you know, if—obviously you’ll be more familiar with the teams, Lisa, than me, but let’s—let’s do some guessing.

What—what do you think would come out if one were to imagine sitting down in the room with, say, the team who are pro self-management, for want of a better way of putting it? What are they are—what are they looking for?

Lisa: I think they—for them it’s important, I think their sense of autonomy is important, yeah, and freedom. And I think they’re worried, if we kind of move away from self-management, that means going back to traditional top-down management, and I will lose my freedom, my autonomy.

I think also to be—I’m guessing there’s a need to be acknowledged that what we’ve developed here is not perfect, but we’ve worked hard on it. We’ve really tried. This value in this, yeah. And I think to feel heard, you know, that are—our considerations for why we think this is good, we want those to be heard.

Alice: Yeah, yeah, that sounds—I mean, it’s definitely—that all makes sense. I was wondering also about growth as well, whether in that camp you find people who are wanting to invest in that?

Lisa: Yes, yes, I was also thinking that they—they wanted to—you think you’re right—they wanted to be champions for growth, and also kind of pioneers that this is something we can role model to our clients also and show that this is possible. You know, so I think there’s a fear that if we give this up, it means we’ve failed or that we couldn’t—you know, we weren’t able to make it work.

Alice: Yep, yep, that makes a lot of sense. And it’s interesting, just as a side—as a side comment, one of the things that is—that’s interesting about getting needs—and I don’t know whether you’ve found it when you’ve been just putting this into practice a little bit and thinking about it as you’ve gone about your life—one thing’s about getting needs: there’s never a sort of problem with getting it wrong, which I love as well.

So I could say, “Well, maybe it’s this,” and you can say, “Well, no, actually that really doesn’t fit.” It doesn’t matter because, in a sense, what you’re doing is going into the territory of the needs and away from the territory—in this case—of “Do we self-manage or do we not? Do we invest more in it, do we not?” Whatever it is.

Okay, so that’s the—that’s the one side. What about the—what about the traditionalists?

Lisa: Yeah, well, I think they also want to be heard and acknowledged. I think they don’t want to feel like, you know, we’re lagards or, you know, that we’re unenlightened because we don’t like this. You know, that we have valid concerns or, you know, protests, and—and those are important too. It doesn’t—yeah, to sort of to also feel valued, valid.

And I think also what I’ve heard is—and I hear this in lots of other examples too—that there are people who are craving more structure or support. So for them, what they’re missing that they feel they had more in the past was, you know, they miss their conversations with their manager, these kind of one-to-ones where they had performance management conversations, development conversations. So they—they’re craving more structure, perhaps more support. And my sense is that that doesn’t necessarily mean, “Oh, we have to—it’s going back to exactly what we had.” But there’s a need there for more—more of a sort of safety net, some kind of holding structure that for them is currently missing.

Alice: That makes a lot of sense. And again, just as a side point, the most entrenched polarization happens where the needs are the same on both sides, actually. Or at least there are some of the needs that are—that are the same. And people get really, really kind of stuck in that.

And I’m curious, Lisa, having—having heard those—those kind of needs—because I don’t know about you, but when I hear you say those things, I immediately feel great warmth towards both sides. You know, it’s—it’s easy to hear those and to—and to have that sense of—of, I suppose back to what I was saying before, the first thing that happens is is a sense of compassion and understanding. But the second thing is that we need some action because, you know, we don’t need to get stuck there.

So, you know, then—then back to sort of process, I’m thinking about, you know, what does it look like if actually one could find a way for each side to hear the other speak in a way that feels safe enough? So what does it look like to create a safe container? And yeah, I—I wonder—I can see you nodding. I wonder—I wonder if that—if that sort of rings a starter thought for you?

Lisa: Yeah, well, yeah, I’ve also been wondering about that. And I was talking to someone who’s in the pro self-management camp who—who was thinking about hosting such a conversation but was worried about “How do I do that, given that I have a bias?” You know, that people know I’m one of the pro self-management people.

Alice: Yep.

Lisa: And you know, my suggestion—I’d love your input on this—was to be transparent about that, to say, you know, “I know you all know that I’m pro self-management, and at the same time, I really want to hear what your concerns are, what your skepticisms are. I really want to listen and understand. And I’m not attached to, you know, that this is the way we have to go.” And maybe also to share, you know, my needs, that I also want to, uh, you know, be heard in the things that are important to us. And then see what’s possible, you know? So to not pretend, you know, that you’re Switzerland, but to be transparent about that and say something about that so that people can, yeah, be aware of—of the implications of who’s facilitating, I guess.

Alice: I love that, Lisa. I absolutely love that. And so I—I endorse everything that you’ve said. I won’t repeat it, but I also—the other thought that I have is, I wonder if that person would be able to find someone to co-host with who sits in the other camp? Because that would also be powerful—to if they would—two people who were able to do that and to name that. I could imagine that could also contribute to trust and safety as well.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah, very symbolic.

Alice: Yeah, absolutely. Both symbolic and then also practical, because I think you’ve got—you know, it just—it just—it does again, it could—it could increase the safety level even further if it were a possibility.

And I—and I think there’s something about having—I think there’s something—I mean, as you will, you know, be—be doing—and—and which is—which is the—which is that frame, which is that framing piece about exactly what the intentions are. And—and for me, I would be framing that again in terms of needs, because it is a universal language that everybody—that everybody gets.

And it just can break through that “Do we—do we self-manage, do we not? Do we go back, do we not? Are we going forward, are we not?” You know, it’s—it’s—it’s a—it’s a different level.

I quite often—if I’m starting a training someone new, I quite often put needs cards all over the floor and just invite people to start by picking up a needs card that they feel drawn to for some reason. And again, you know, often it then—“Are we meant to just do a check-in?” And often that—that—that is in itself quite revelatory, as people who haven’t thought about needs particularly before to just be able to see each other in—in a different—in a slightly different light.

Lisa: Yeah. I’m thinking also of, uh, you know, in my experience, we’re not very practiced at being with disagreement or divergence. So I think a lot of people, perhaps people listening, are thinking like, “Well, that’s great, Alice and Lisa, but what if we listen to everyone’s needs and there’s lots of different needs? And then it’s like, ‘Ah, now what?’”

Alice: Yeah, yeah. Well, I—I—I think there’s—in a sense, that’s why it’s helpful to have the—if you like, the—a deeper level of thinking about what needs are really there and doing some of that transformation work, alongside the really practical tools. Like, I really enjoy there’s sort of 10 language tools that are just really helpful. Like, how do we make a neutral observation and not evaluate? How do we move away from unhelpful praise towards helpful appreciation?

And—and I think—I think that that can be useful. People learn in different ways, and it’s helpful sometimes just to have those very, like, “This is how you could say something and use language differently.” Or think about this—in a very—at a very granular level in a different way.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah. I think also I love what you said before about, like, you know, “Try out, practice it.” In my experience, I think there can be a lot of anxiety about—as you said, if—if I listen to other people’s needs, I’ll have to give up my own. Or, what if we have all these different needs? How are we going to come to some kind of agreement or decision?

But in my experience, once the needs are out there, sort of shifts something. It’s almost like you can’t—you can’t plan for it, because we don’t know what the needs are until they’re out there. And then if we can—and especially leaders then who have a tendency to want to steer or suggest something, or go, “Okay, so then sounds like a solution is this,” but to ask a question then to the group and say, “Okay, so we’ve heard all these different needs. You know, what is—what’s coming up for people? What—what solutions or what proposals emerge now that we’ve heard those?”

Alice: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, going back to our two groups, when—when there’s a need to be heard and a need for recognition, then actually once those are acknowledged and met just through the—through the course of having a conversation, it frees up a whole load of energy for coming to—for coming to a solution.

So again, I—I see it as being a different way of focusing energy and time, rather than more energy and time. And it—and it—and it—and it just gives the possibility of—yeah, it just gives the possibility of a broader—more—well, I keep coming back to the word “stronger.” You know, this is strong work. It’s not about being like, “Oh, fluffy and sort of…” It’s about how do we find strong solutions? And that means solutions that fit for more people and therefore are more likely to stick.

When they need to be undone, can be undone with the same kind of respect and understanding of all the needs that, you know, might have been—otherwise. People are happier when they do this stuff. You know, people enjoy—enjoy life more because they just don’t need to spend quite so much time doing stuff.

The other thing I’d say about needs is that—I don’t know if you found this already in your journey with them, but actually, I mean, I—I—how many times do I think about needs in a day? Very, very little, honestly. Because I—it’s just something that I’ve—is in me, if you like. I certainly use it if I get stuck in a situation, but most of the time I don’t get stuck, which is good.

Even when—even when you’re learning, I think quite quickly, actually, you—you definitely don’t need to know—often needs on the sheet will be—you know, often we come across the same ones because of who we are and the situation we find ourselves in again and again. And so it’s quite quick to get to a sense of, “Ah, you know, all I’m really doing is looking at what really matters to this person behind this. Why is this person so stuck in this way of thinking? Why am I so reactive here?”

You know, and—and it just gives a framework. You know, so often when we’re thinking, we think about—everyone thinks about those questions. But it gives a way of really—I’m all about making it simple. It gives a way of just like crystal clear focus. “Oh, okay, I need to matter,” rather than a long story about why I found it difficult when my book was not shortlisted for the book awards, you know? Like, okay. So it’s—it’s—yeah, it—it’s—it’s—it gives a very, very simple framing.

Lisa: I—I think, in kind of when I’m facilitating groups where there’s conflict going on, things that help us get out of the trap of sort of describing events or incidents or behavior—no—and instead, you know, you can shortcut a lot, I think, by going under the surface and sort of identifying the needs or sort of—or seeing what the dynamic is.

And this—this principle, as you wrote it in the book, I’m looking at it now, is so simple and so powerful, that our behavior is always an attempt to meet our needs. And when you see, you know, especially when we kind of end up in a judgment of something like, “Oh, for God’s sake, why are they so this?” or “They did that, and that means that…”

It’s sort of being curious like, seeing like, “Wow, I wonder what the unmet needs are that—that’s how—what they’re doing or what they’re saying? Or that, you know…”

And to—to be curious about that is—is a completely different way of being and opens up a completely different kind of conversation.

Alice: Yeah, absolutely. And I—and what I really love about this work that I haven’t always found in other work around empathy is that it says, “You know, before I can get curious about you, I probably need to take a little bit of care for me.” Because if I’m feeling like I don’t want to empathize with this person, there’s a reason for that. And it’s a good reason. Of course, it’s a—it’s a need driving that. And once I can take care of that and know how to do that, then I can genuinely, without artifice, get into that, as you describe it, that state of curiosity about the other person.

So it’s this—it’s this—you know, so there’s—to be able to really—all that mental chatter and inner critic—whatever we want to call it—the stuff that is either—the stuff that is either, you know, “I’m angry with you” or “I’m angry with me” or “I blame you” or “I blame me.” If we can really just use those judgments as a signpost to what is going on for us, again, it can really unlock possibilities.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah. That’s a good reminder because I—I think maybe—you can—maybe I’m giving it away in my biases, but I can tend to skip the part about myself and be going to being empathetic and curious and—and completely forget to tap into, you know, what’s my need and what’s going on with me. And then it leaks out somewhere else inevitably in a reactive way that I don’t want it to. Yeah, or later on, I’m sort of—something’s not feeling good, and I can’t work out why. So it’s—I think it’s—it’s that balance, I think, that equilibrium between the two seems really important.

Alice: Yeah.

Lisa: I really like as well in the book, you talk about this partnership paradigm. And again, I think there’s such a parallel between that and people who are exploring new ways of working. In a way, we’re exploring—trying to explore a partnership paradigm of organizations. Yeah, so I think that’s really relevant. Can you say more about partnership paradigm in the context of needs understanding and what that looks like?

Alice: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I—I really like the illustration of this as a problem that sits where we—where we situate a problem between us. Or a, you know, view that we don’t like, whatever it is.

In the opposition paradigm, we situate that problem between us so that it breaks the connection between us. And—and in the book, there’s a lovely illustration done by Lily, who did my illustration for me. And it’s like a mountain, the problem sitting in between the two of us. And we are both pulling on it in our own direction to try to get rid of it. We don’t want it to be there, but we don’t actually know what to do. And all the time, the connection is broken.

And so the work—the partnership paradigm—we’re moving around to the same side. We’re not denying that the problem is there. So there’s still a difference of opinion. There’s still a—there’s still a way one of us wants to go, and the other doesn’t, whatever. But the problem is—we’re both facing the problem next to each other so that we start to look at, “Okay, what would it look like? How could we—how could we find a different way forward?” So we re-establish some of the connection and try to deal with the problem like that.

And again, I think it—you know, in our super polarized world, it’s—it’s scary to go and try and understand someone who’s got a completely different view to us. I think—I find it scary, if I’ve got someone with, uh, political views that are the polarized opposite of my own. And they’re entrenched in them, and you know, maybe I’m entrenched in mine. And—and—but also, you know, maybe I just have certain values I want to hold on to.

So—so—so it’s scary to say, “Okay, you know, like I’m gonna keep my values here, but I’m also just going to cross and listen to what you have to say and really try to understand where you’re coming from.” Because I don’t have to stay there. I can—you know, I can come back to my place. But maybe if I can understand where you’re coming from, and I can really, at some level, get that it’s about your needs, then that switches how I see things. I cease to see you as the enemy, and I see you as someone who wants something that seems to be incompatible with what I want.

And—and—and it gives a way to—it gives a way to talk forward rather than—rather than stay stuck and further apart in our polarization. And you know, moving to congregating with other people who look the same as me, who sound the same as me, who believe the same thing as me—nothing wrong with, you know, choosing some—to meet some needs for safety and belonging with people who we find it very easy to talk with. I’d see that as a very usual thing. But it’s—it’s where we don’t know how to cross across and listen, I think.

Lisa: Hmm. That feels so apt for this moment that we’re recording, where polarization feels so prevalent in the world in so many ways. I—you know, that’s why I get so inspired and excited by this—the principles of needs understanding and how we can apply them in all these different realms and, you know, scaling all the way up to a sort of societal level that it just shifts what’s possible between—at the end of the day, it all comes down to relationships, right?

Alice: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And—and I mean, taking it, you know, at a big level at the moment, we can—I would—I would love to really say, “Okay, what does it really look like to believe that all the people in the current European conflict are acting from needs? Does that mean we have to excuse the bombing of a hospital?” No—no, it absolutely does not. But, uh, you know, “Does it mean that we have to dialogue before?” No, we may well need to use a protective use of force at times in our—in our history.

But it does—it does give new possibilities if we can look through this lens of what does it really mean if we believe that everybody is acting from underlying needs. And I, for myself, I haven’t found that to fail yet as an analysis. I love it because it’s emotionally robust, but it’s intellectually robust as well. It’s—it’s a way of approaching things that—yeah, that I think fits.

And I’m really crossed because I’ve seen the time, and I’m like, “Oh no, but I want to hear from Lisa all about…”—I could go on for another hour, and I’d—I’d be talking to you much more about, you know, your discovery of this and how it fits with your work. And maybe we have that conversation offline? I don’t know, but—yeah, it’s such a delight to—it’s such a delight to—to meet you, Lisa, and to have some time together.

Lisa: Yeah, likewise. I—I think really—I think we’ll have to meet again for a conversation because I also wanted to talk about the application of needs understanding in a kind of educational context, in terms of young people and the potential that that opens up. So, yeah, we’ll just have to have another conversation, I think.

So maybe in closing, what sort of tips or starting points could you share with listeners who, having heard this conversation, are thinking, “Hmm, I’d—I’d like to explore needs understanding. I think that might be something valuable in my context.” What would you say to them?

Alice: So I don’t want to do a marketing follow-up for my book, and it is also a book that has got it all in it. So if you are interested enough to read the book, that is—it will, I hope, give you—not—I mean, it’s very—yeah, as you’ve said, Lisa, it’s really practical, so it should equip you with—it should equip you with tools.

I do a very relaxed little video series—again, you mentioned that. So the website is needs-hyphen-understanding.com. You can look at any NVC (nonviolent communication) resources more widely, you know, if—if this is of interest and you’d like to see what other people have to say about it. They frame it very slightly differently, but there’s a—there’s a lot of similarity there.

And I think, you know, the—the—I don’t know, I mean it’s interesting—I don’t know whether just actually… So the—the needs lists are available on the website. You can—you can just download them. You know, it might even be fun just to stick in these lists, as you’ve done, Lisa, on your bedroom door, on your fridge door, or you know, wherever. But, uh, yeah, those would be my—my thoughts. How does that sound?

Lisa: That’s great. Thank you so much for—for sharing this wisdom. I’m so grateful that you’ve written this book, and I know you’re starting to—to do more work with organizations as well. And I think it’s a real contribution. So, yeah, thank you for—for coming on the podcast.

Alice: It is such a delight. Thank you so much for having me.