525 | Identifying And Expressing Needs

Chris LoCurto 0:00
On today's episode, we talk a lot about having high levels of quality communication. But what does that actually look like? Let's talk about expressing needs that is coming up next.

Chris LoCurto 0:23
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks, I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. Now, we talk a ton about communication around here. And why is that? Well, because it's either your biggest asset, or as we find in every single business that we work with, it is your biggest liability until you solve it to once you solve it, then that, that or at least do a lot to fix it, then that becomes an incredible asset. But what we discovered is, every single business, communication or lack of high levels of quality communication is the biggest issue. Hands down, there is not a business that comes to us. Again, folks, we work with a ton of small businesses, we work with a ton of, you know, mom, and pops or, you know, 510 20 team members, we also work with large businesses as well. By far in every business doesn't matter what the size is. Communication is number one issue now, and especially by the wait for the leadership team. Because whatever level of communication you have at the leadership team, I can promise you, it's going to be exaggerated out from there. So if if it's not that great at the leadership level, it's gonna be crappy. Once you get inside the team. Now, understanding this, it doesn't matter if we're dealing with a couple, you know, a husband and wife and a two day marriage next level life event or a team of executives sitting around the table, and a week long strap plan, it does not matter, we discover that quality communication or again, rather than lack thereof, is 99% of the time the root cause of conflict of dysfunction, and missed expectations. I've said it before that communication is the most important part of culture for leaders to lead well, and right on its heels is accountability, or what we call expectations for today. I can't overemphasize the importance of high levels of quality communication. Now why do i Why do I point that out? Because many people have great abilities to communicate. Many people communicate a lot. We have teams that will come in and they believe that their communication is it's super, it's great. It's it's excellent, because they like each other because they talk a lot. But that doesn't mean that the communication is actually quality. So what does it take to have great communication? Well, that's what we're gonna take a few episodes and dive into. And this first one, we want to talk about expressing needs. Now, some of you might be hearing this and probably a lot of entrepreneurs hear that and go, Oh, for the love. Are we talking about feelings? No, we're not talking about feelings. We're talking about being able to express needs, if you are a good leader, or a great leader, you understand the importance of being able to communicate needs, right, expressing that.

So we're gonna dive into a bunch of this right now one of the most difficult things to communicate is one's needs, whether on a team in a marriage or everyday relationships, this can turn into a touchy subject, and I mean, fast. Anytime we're dealing with needs, people can tend to feel it deep down inside of their bones, right? And so the, the tendency is to become overly emotional. Right? When we're talking about communicating needs, sometimes we feel like we have to get really emotional when doing so. And when we do that, we tend to communicate poorly, or unclearly, or unhealthy ly unhealthy and healthily, making up words. Either way, overly emotional people tend to put the burden of responsibility on others when expressing their needs. Let me say that again. Because I think a lot of times we don't recognize what's happening. overly emotional people tend to put the burden of responsibility on others when expressing their needs. Now, it doesn't mean that the other person doesn't have responsibility. All right. But when we're talking about our personal needs, whether being work or whether it be in relationship, whatever, we have a tendency, and we see this, we will see this a lot in our marriage events, we'll see this a lot in next level life events, we will see this, you know, whenever we see an immature leadership team, trying to communicate that when it comes to needs, it becomes your responsibility to solve my needs. And I'm not saying that the other person doesn't have responsibility, maybe completely their responsibility. The key is not whose responsibility it is, it's how we're expressing the needs in the first place. And if we are overly emotional, and we're putting the burden of responsibility on the other person, that's coming from our root system, that could be coming from victim mentality. That could become how from how we tend to leverage relational power. So when communicating to emotionally folks tend to over or under express the most important part, which is the needs. So they may say too much, or they may say too little, you know, they'll go on and on and on, about something you know, that they're struggling with, without clearly expressing and clearly explaining what the needs are. Or the opposite of that is, is that they'll, they'll hold back, they'll climb up, they'll, they'll withdraw emotionally. And what we're missing here is, what do you need. So if we become overly emotional, we speak too much we talk too much, we can lose a person in the process. I can tell you with my personality style, you know, I am somebody who is a listener, I listen to people all the time. But when somebody goes ballistic with information, my brain says, I have to do something with everything you're giving me. So too much stuff, it takes me on the wrong path. Right? If you're overly communicating with information, and not getting to the actual clear explanation of the needs, then I'm trying to figure out what all this information has to do with me. Why are you sharing this? And what am I supposed to do with it, where the person who's communicating it is going well, I just need to get things out, I just need to talk through things, I don't really want you to do anything with it, well, then hold that information. Right, because my personality style wants to help you wants to do something with it. If you don't give information, and this is the thing we share all the time, especially with strat plan is I can help you with anything you share next level life, I can help you with anything that you share. But if you don't actually share it, then you're gonna leave without any help with that, because there's nothing I can do. If I don't know it, I can't help you with it, right. So if you don't share information, guess what the person's not going to understand your needs.

So that's, that's the first thing that they tend to do. The second thing they tend to do is, is exaggerate or even depreciate their needs, right? So they'll use superlatives like I always or you never know, I can tell you any Hi, I and I'm, I think I'm a 67. So I have a tendency to do this as well. Any high eye has a tendency to exaggerate what it is that we're talking about, you know, I do it all the time on here. I say, you know, I've said it 1000 times, and maybe I've said it, you know, 150 times. But there's always this exaggeration to express the thing that you're saying, however, sometimes when we're trying to express our needs, if we're saying things like, Well, you never what we'll find out is, that's actually probably not true. It's probably, you know, maybe you don't do it 15% or 20% of the time. But if we're telling somebody will you never do this, if in again, this is helping people to communicate clearly and helping people to walk their processes, what we tend to find is, is that that's not an accurate statement. When somebody says you never, I always, it tends to be something that's a small portion. But the small portion is the thing that they're remembering in the moment. They're not remembering. The other times when somebody has done something well, or you know, that they haven't always done the thing that they're trying to communicate. So we have to watch the exaggeration or even the appreciation, which is that they're going to shrug off their needs. So it doesn't matter. You know, many times it's it can be because they feel conflict. It can be because they feel like they're being a burden to the other person. Or it can be that they're trying to communicate to the other person
by saying, Well, my needs obviously aren't important to you, so my needs just aren't important at all. Don't worry about it. It's no big deal. It doesn't matter, and they're being passive aggressive. So that's another thing that we tend to see when people get too emotional is that they exaggerated they can even depreciate. The third thing, and in both cases, is that they don't listen objectively, nor learn from the situation. So when somebody becomes overly emotional, they get so involved with their emotions, that they lose objectivity, that the emotions create a picture or create a situation, that is no longer objective, it's no longer accurate.

It's no longer, you know, realistic. And that's a very difficult thing. When somebody is penning a reality that doesn't actually exist, especially if you don't do like what we do for a living, you know, that's where we are, we have to be able to pick through those things and point out the things that are incorrect. And that's too much and no, that's not correct. And that's not even reality. When you're dealing with somebody who doesn't know that and doesn't understand that, then somebody painting a new reality, can seriously muddy up the situation, and muddy up what somebody is trying to understand about what you are claiming to be needs, right? If the reality is not a reality, now, I'm really confused. You know, I'm hearing you say you need something but you just painted this reality that and I don't even think that's accurate. Or another thing they can do is they can tend to come away feeling unheard and unaware of what just happened. And folks, I want to talk to my high individualistic out there, my highest statics out there. If you and so I want you to really ponder this, don't be offended by this, ponder it, because this will help you. If you need to be heard. You don't even have to be right. But you need to be heard. And you're dealing with somebody where you feel like you have not been her you could have completely have been heard and still feel like you haven't been hurt. So I will there's many times I know that sounds confusing, but there's many times that I will work with somebody. And I will see that their the struggle that they're experiencing is that they don't feel like they're heard. And so instead of having a quality conversation with me, they will go on the attack. Well, you just you're not even listening to me. No, I'm absolutely listening to you. And what I will tend to do is repeat back the very things that they've said. Or I'll even say what do you believe I have not heard and then they will say something. And I will have already repeated it. I will have already said it right now it's okay. Well, let me point to this over here. Now, what is it that you're struggling with? Why are you feeling like you're not heard. So a lot of times a person who is overly emotional, and needs to be heard, can feel like even if they are hurt, that they're not hurt. But I hope this is crystal clear. So we have to understand in those moments, you know, if you're the person who's struggling with needing to be heard, you have to, you have to understand that you may have been hurt, yet understand that you're struggling emotionally in the moment and have to start asking yourself some quality questions to find out if what you're if the attack that you're going on is real and accurate. So hopefully all of this has made sense. So far, these are things that we have to pay attention to as leaders, we need to pay attention to how, you know, if somebody is talking too much and not explaining things clearly, if they're talking too little. And we're not getting to the needs, we have to understand if somebody is exaggerating or depreciating their needs, we have to understand if somebody is, you know, changing reality not not not sticking to objectivity. Or if somebody is only focused on being heard, and not being accurate. So if we understand these things, then we can start to guide and direct the conversation.

Now, if you're the person who's trying to express these needs, you've got to understand these as soon as possible. You've got to check this in your communication to make sure that you actually get to your needs. Because in all of those situations, if any of those are you, then I don't know what you need. I don't understand I can't solve the problem for you. I can't take care of you. I can't help you until I get to that clarity and I will try but it is a big ask to put on somebody else to figure out what you need when you're not communicating clearly and let me just add that as another thing. When we become overly emotional, is that we can have a tendency to blame the other person for not Understanding our needs, and we're the ones who have not communicated clearly. So this responsibility has to come on. So with that said, let's dive into some practical keys that are going to help us to communicate our needs clearly, with the people in our lives. Because, you know, here's what's at stake. If communication is the lifeblood of organizations and relationships, and it absolutely is, then expressing one's needs and expectations is like the the carotid arteries in relationships. They supply that life giving blood and oxygen to the brain to the central nervous system. Yes, I'm using this, these metaphors. Stick with me for just a second. Because if you take a look at the carotid arteries, they are the major blood vessels that provide your brain's blood supply. So a stroke occurs when something blocks blood flow to your brain, causing a brain injury. Okay, so no, I'm not trying to offend anybody out there who's ever had a stroke. That's not the point here, please don't take this personally, you should not. What I'm doing is helping you to understand how important communication is a kind of stroke happens when we don't express legitimate needs, desires and expectations. Right? If we are not communicating well, if we're not delivering the blood supply, the quality communication, then we have this injury that technically happens to our organization, to our team, to our situation to our relationship. Now, what I'm talking about here is legitimate needs, desires and expectations. Notice that word legitimate, we're going to come back to that in just a minute. Now, one's needs and expectations should be communicated, you know, expressed and received in order to avoid a kind of relational or organizational stroke, right, this blocking of key information, think of it that way. This is the key thought for today, a halt in blood flow, vital information, results in damage, if we do not have good blood flow, ie, high levels of quality communication, then we have damage. Okay. So just stick with me on this. I know it's a fun metaphor, maybe not a fun metaphor, but I think you're getting the point, right? So needs are infinitely more complicated to communicate. So when they are tethered to our emotions, when we're agitated, or angry or anxious, even legitimate needs can become distorted. Alright, so if we have a great need, once I back it up with emotion, then the idea of the need or the need itself can become incredibly distorted. So if we understand this, then hopefully we can remove a lot of those emotions, right? There's a lot of damage done in relationships when expressing needs in an unhealthy way. Now, I'll just kind of dig into this a little bit, right? When a common thing, a common thing for couples, is, when I need something, if I become emotional about those needs, or maybe I have background with my spouse of how my spouse responds to something, then I pack that into my communication. So let's say that I need this some attention from my wife right now on a specific subject, I don't know.

Let's say I need my wife's help in making a decision on where we're going on vacation. But if I've experienced in the past that my wife doesn't like to give input, and my wife absolutely loves to give input on where we go on vacation. But let's say that I haven't, that she doesn't like to give and just pick up just pick a place. Chris, I don't even want to deal with it. I want you to just pick a place, then I might take that history and pack that emotionally into the expression of the need. What's the need? I just want some input. Do you want to go here, here, here here? Do you want to go someplace Sunny? Do you want to go someplace cold? Do you want to go someplace with a beach? Do you want to go someplace with a mountain, right? I just need just some input. That's all I'm looking for. But if I know that my spouse refuses to give input, then what happens to me and again, you I know you married couples right now are going oh my gosh, I've experienced this 10,000 times just this last week alone. What I tend I can tend to do is pack that expectation of how she's going to respond into my expressing of my needs. So if I believe she's not going to give input than I could become passive aggressive, I can go on the attack, I could say things like, Hey, listen, if you don't help me out with this, then I guess we don't need to go on vacation. Right? I always talk to you about this, and you never give any input whatsoever. And so we never get to go someplace fun. And then whenever we get there, you're always frustrated, or you hate the place that we've gone to. Now, I'm throwing a lot into this, but I'm not that far off, I'm probably not far off at all right? That's probably pretty accurate to what some people experience. If my wife did not give me any input ever, then I can feel the responsibility for picking a vacation and maybe the I don't know the stress of getting the right place, or however people look at this, I don't really stress about that. I look forward to it. But the stress of picking the right place, or the stress of my spouse not being happy or fill in the blank, right.

So if I am expressing my needs in an unhealthy way, which is I need your input. And I'm just picking something super basic, you know, if we rolled this up into a business situation, it could be, you know, I need your help on this project. It could be I need leadership on how to make this thing happen. It could be any of these things, anything like this, right. So if I'm expressing my needs in an unhealthy way, then it is not difficult for me to pack in a whole bunch of the different, you know, situations that we talked about just a minute ago, all the exaggerating, being too emotional, not listening, saying too much to it, whatever it is. So if I'm packing my emotions into the expression of my needs, in this example of a marriage situation, then you can see how much I've just jacked up any great communication, right? There's not going to be any great communication, I've already set a reality, I've put my spouse on the defensive, I'm ready for a battle. None of this is going to get what are we talking about? Here, we're talking about getting to a great vacation, right. And I'm already starting this thing off in a way that everybody's going to be unhappy. So that's what we need to understand. So what's healthy look like? Well, let's start with what makes a need legitimate. So point one is identifying needs, some people have trouble expressing real, legitimate, healthy needs. And it could be for a variety of reasons, it could be because you need other people, it could be that you're struggling with the need of other people to have other people involved, right? That you want to be able to do things on your own, and you don't want other people's input. And right now you're stuck in a situation where you need other people that could jack things up, it could be that you don't like being vulnerable. That is a big, big issue that we see, even with teams that believe that they're incredibly vulnerable, what you find out is, is that, you know, when it comes to being able to give input on what they're doing, or give input on how they should change things or fix things, then what we find is a lot of times people can't be that vulnerable, right? For a lot of husbands and wives, you can't be vulnerable with your spouse, on, you know, allowing them to speak into changes that you need to do or things you're struggling with. And so vulnerability just goes right out the window. And so expressing a need can be incredibly difficult because expressing the need may mean that you're saying I need to be vulnerable with my spouse, or my leader or my team member. And I'm just not able to do that. Right? All these makes sense. It also could mean that you're risking rejection in this situation. Now, this is another all three of these are super powerful reasons why people don't express their needs well, you know, having to need other people and having to be vulnerable. And in a big way, taking the risk of rejection for a lot of folks is not something that they're able to do. And so the fear of being rejected is going to keep them from communicating well.

So any of these could be their own topics of discussion, we could break each one of these down into a whole, you know, each one could be their own show. But before we go any further, if this is resonating with you, then I'm going to say get the help that you need to get unstuck and move forward. And I'm pretty darn positive. This is resonating with everybody who's listening, folks. We see lots of people come to the next level of life who are struggling with their communication, especially while expressing legitimate needs in their marriage. There are many times that We have people that struggle because they believe they're wrong, they're bad, they're not worthy, they're not good enough. And yet, they're very legitimate with the needs, they just need to learn how to express them. It's not something to be embarrassed about. It's part of this broken world that we live in. But it's also not something that just fixes itself, or goes away if we ignore it. In fact, for many of you, you might be getting your reality set on a daily basis that your needs aren't legitimate. So if you're really serious about fixing this, then get yourself into a Next-Level Life event. Go to Chris LoCurto.com/next level life. Today, it's time to take the next step, get unstuck, and move forward into healthier relationships Chris LoCurto.com/next level life today. Now, let me say this as well because communication can be a complex subject. Some personality styles struggle with identifying or describing what they're feeling, and why they're feeling that way. completely understandable. Every personality style has strengths and weaknesses. And for some, it's a little easier to articulate what they're feeling. Maybe even a little too easy at times, right? Some may need to filter. But as we look at personality styles, if you understand the way that you handle conflict if you understand the way that you receive and give information. If you understand how you act and react, if you've not done your personality styles profoundly, go get it done, go to the store and get it done our store so that you can kind of understand how you act, react, give information receive information, if you can look at your personality style, you've probably got a pretty good idea of where you struggle in expressing. Obviously, forte, if I just break this down into the most basic a high D is going to be very dominant in the concept of need, you know, they don't want to need people. So it could be a very dominant way of saying that they need something which could set somebody off right? Hi, I again, we're going to we're probably going to be over-expressive on what our needs are, which is going to muddy up the waters with too much emotion as well, high s is not going to want to create conflict. And so high s is probably going to not explain enough information in a high sea probably going to bring too many details about what's needed. And over Express information as opposed to clarity of needs.

Now, those are just basic. So if you're offended by any of those, then you probably don't understand your personality style very well. Right. Those are just basic understandings of personality styles. The sooner we understand those, and how we express ourselves, the sooner we can change any additions to the clarity of expressing needs, right, and just express the clarity of need, right, and remove anything that's affecting that. Now. Wherever you might fall in the personality style spectrum, our objective has to be clear communication. And for some people that begin with identifying and examining their needs, you've got to do the hard work of understanding yourself, and what you really need, someone may want to go back and listen to episode 460, which is about learning to lead yourself better before others. If you need to dig deep and do some work in this area, that will help you out immensely. So make sure we start with understanding what your needs are now, and point to legitimate needs. Let's dig into what makes a need legitimate. So just to be clear, I'm not talking about having zero filters on your brain and mouth and just blurting out everything that you think you need or desire. High levels of quality communication mean that sometimes you have to be selective about what you choose to say, as well as how you choose to say it. So think about the what and the how, in these two examples. So when it comes to leadership, we do not need leaders who tell the team every single morning all the ways that they've disappointed them over the last 24 hours, right? Same thing with husbands and wives in a personal relationship, right? We don't need a husband or wife breaking up the laundry list of the ways you've disappointed me lately. Right? Those are terrible ways of communicating now, with that understanding, and we all agree with that. Not communicating missed expectations. Thus holding each other accountable to agreed-upon outcomes is a slippery slope toward disaster. So we've got to find this right balance. It doesn't do any good to come out and go here. There's all the things you've done that's, you know, wrong and you screwed up, and I'm disappointed. But at the same time, if we don't actually communicate missed expectations or things that have been agreed upon, then that gets us a massive lack of accountability, which is the number two thing that every business struggles with heavily. So we'll get to expectations and accountability in a minute. But first, let's take a look at legitimate needs. Starting at Ground Zero, the most basic of human needs, so needs one to one all humans have needs. Take a common illustration, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now, Abraham Maslow was a 20th-century American psychologist who basically said that for humans to thrive, they've got to address their basic needs, in priority, moving from basic to complex.

So basic human needs, start at the base, physical level, then physiological, then psychological, etc. So number one is food physical needs. Number two is water physical needs. Number three is shelter. Physiological needs. Number four, is safety, safety and security. Number five is love. psychological needs, right, and we can keep continuing on with the needs that we have. In other words, we need food, water, and shelter, then feeling safe and secure, and having a reasonable sense of being protected and not in harm's way, etc. And whether at home or office, you need that your partner needs that your team needs those things. Safety and security is a need in an office environment. So think about this, when we're talking about work. Is it your responsibility as a leader to provide? Number one and number two, food and water? No. Shelter will? Yes, probably right, unless they're remote. And you know, if you got brick and mortar than Yes, what's the next thing that somebody needs? What is called in, you know, a lot of work that we've done in the trauma world, is what's called felt safety, safety insecurity. A team member needs to feel safe, insecure, folks. Your spouse needs to feel safe and secure. Your children absolutely need to feel safe and secure. These are things that we may need to express to others. If I don't feel safe and secure with you, I need to be able to communicate that clearly. So that's one of the things we talked about when it comes to healthy boundaries. So it's tough to maintain a relationship with someone who's always trying to harm you. We've had so many folks, I wouldn't say 50%, probably 40%, maybe strong 35 40% of folks that have come through next level life that have people that are controlling, that have people that are manipulative in their lives. I can tell you, as somebody who has had people that desire to hurt me throughout my entire life, that's a big reason why we do what we do is I had to figure out how to fix this stuff, and how to put in healthy boundaries and how to change the way that I approach people and how to make sure that unhealthy people aren't a part of my inner circle and making sure Healthy People are and you know, all of these different aspects. I can tell you, that's a difficult life. It's a painful life. It's a tough life. There was a time in my life in my late teens and early 20s when I just swore off people. I just didn't even like people anymore. I just been hurt so many times. And it wasn't until God made it clear to me, Hey, you don't have to let them hurt you. You, a high altruist, keep allowing people to hurt you. And you don't have to you need healthy boundaries and need to grow a backbone.

So I can tell you it's really difficult. If you have somebody in your life or you know, if you're in a relationship with somebody who's always trying to harm you. That's tough. That's painful. That is difficult. I don't know. For me, I think that's probably the thing that I hate the most in relationships, is if I have a relationship with somebody who's trying to harm me, and guess what, folks? I've had it in my personal relationships my whole life. I've had it in business relationships. 99% of our clients are phenomenal, amazing people love loving people don't want to hurt you kind of people. And then every now and then we'll get, you know, a client, who they are just, they are just bent on trying to hurt somebody, they are bent on being controlling and manipulative. They are bent on, you know, they might have agreed backing it up, there's all kinds of things that could be backing it up. But their goal is, I want to hurt you. I'm going to do what it takes to hurt you. I don't like what you said, or what you did, or whatever. So I'm going to do everything I can to try and bring you pain, it happens. Those are the times and I've had to fire a couple of clients over stuff like that. It's only been a couple of praise God, hallelujah. We've got phenomenal clients. But every now and then one just gets out of control. And it is the worst type of relationship. It is not worth your time. It's just not, it's not worth your nobody's money is going to be worth no amount of money is going to be worth dealing with that level of just ridiculousness. So these things in Maslow's list are needed in order for humans to survive and then to thrive, needs are not wants or desires needs are necessary. For example, your spouse showing you affection is a need, and that he or she is funny at a dinner party is not. I need my wife's affection. That fills me up that allows me to operate my best. When I know that I have my wife's affection when I know that my wife cherishes me that I'm able to operate at my best that my wife is funny at a dinner party. That is not neat. My wife's already funny. But my wife also sometimes doesn't like to talk. So it just kind of depends on the situation she's at. Sometimes she's incredibly social, and sometimes not so much. So her being funny is not a need at a dinner party, right? So these are things that we have to understand what is legitimate about the need. So now let's take a little switch and talk about spiritual needs. So before we move on, there's another category of needs that's important to consider. Now I'm gonna level with you as a believer, when we don't feel loved, cared for, and accepted by our Heavenly Father, then we will go looking to fulfill even legitimate needs in illegitimate ways.

This is where so many people get in trouble. We're so many people who seek worth. Acceptance, approval from man, instead of seeking it from God. Now I just shared that I need my wife's affection. Yes, that is something that I do need. But well above her need. My wife comes second in my life, and I'd come second in her life. I need God. Right? When we are not getting even our basic needs met, but especially when we're not seeking in gaining our needs from God, then we struggle with our identity, we struggle with what our purpose is. Right? If we are on a great journey with the One who created us, then we understand what our identity is. Then we understand what our purpose in life is. And we understand who he is and how he gives us life. How in Deuteronomy, it I hate that it's not translated well, but in Deuteronomy, it says, God is life. He loves you, He brings you hope. He is life. What does that mean? You do not exist. Without him. You do not breathe. Without him. Your blood does not flow through your veins. Without him. You don't process food. Without him. You have no business. no team, no family, no children, no hope. Without him.

Period, no matter what you've convinced yourself of if you've convinced yourself that you do. Sorry, you're wrong. God is life. You did not create your life. Nobody else created your life. He's the one who has everything in his hands. Right? So it's important for us that we do some really, really hard work here. To find out what does he say? Our worth is? What does he say our identity is The cool thing is that God wants us to tell him our needs, even though he already tells us that he already understands. He already knows what we need. But he wants us to turn to him. It's not a matter of well, he already knows what I need. I don't need to say anything. No, you need a relationship, you need to communicate with him. He wants to hear us speak to him, Be vulnerable, reach out to him recognize that he is the only person who can solve all of our needs. He's actually really direct about it. Listen to it in this verse. Don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything, tell God what you need. And thank him for all he has done. Philippians four, six. So if you're a believer, Scripture tells us to tell God our deepest needs and desires. He invites us while he instructs us, I should say, to tell him what we need, we are supposed to express our needs to God. Alright, moving on. Point three, expressing expectations. Now we've identified what legitimate needs are in the relationship. Great, that's fantastic. Now, then we've got to express them in a healthy and objective way, setting realistic expectations and allowing others to take responsibility and to remain accountable. Alright, so think about the various expectations that can come into play in the following scenarios. One may be your spouse may need you to pick up your child from daycare, or your boss may need you to come into work on your day off, or your romantic partner may need you to listen carefully. Now, you've probably been in one or more of these situations. And you can see how they can get messy damage caused by missed expectations, or not getting one's needs met, is the number one form of relational stress in a relationship. Maybe you can't pick up your child from daycare, or maybe you can't come in on your day off. But you do have to respond in a healthy and objective way. So every situation is different. But this is part of the negotiation process.

Folks. Were needs need to be addressed. Think about what your response would be in any of those situations. Right? Maybe you can't pick up your child, maybe you can't come in the day off? How do you express your needs? How do you express it? How do you make sure that you communicate clearly? When somebody is expecting something, you know, what if your spouse is like, hey, you've got to go pick up little Johnny from daycare? And what if you can't write? Then the negotiation process starts. Right? How do we communicate clearly, you know, maybe you are stuck on a project somewhere, maybe you've got something super important? Maybe you just ask what your spouse is doing? Or, you know, why are they not able to pick up whatever it is? Do we need to have that discussion started? Not just you must, and you don't understand and you don't ever hear me. And I'm always picking up little Johnny. And we've got to start having clear communication. And yes, it shouldn't be communicated to you. You need to go pick up our child at daycare, right? It actually should involve information that helps you to understand why the person who was going to pick up the child can't do it. These are all things that we need to think about. So some things to also think about, as you experience some of these discussions is, you know, did the situation become the blame game in your mind? Right? Well, you never do this or while you haven't done this or whatever. Are we focused on blaming somebody? Are we focused on responding thoughtfully to what is being said? Did you try to gain some perspective or negotiate the outcome? You know, Hey, hon, I hear you what's going on? What happened? Is there? Is there a reason you know what happened to you let me care about my spouse, maybe something jacked up my spouse's day that they can't go and pick up. You know, the child, maybe something is terrible or painful or difficult or, you know, whatever, let me gain some perspective.

Hey, babe, are you okay? What do you experience instead of just going in and battling? I can't go pick up our child, maybe find out what's going on with your spouse right then and there. Right? How do you solve that? How do you gain some perspective? And what if you just find out that, you know, maybe, they just don't want to, you know, maybe there's some negotiation that can happen here, right? So here's something funny from my I got Scott's character on the office about communication. He says, when people work together, there's going to be conflict, you can't outrun your problems. And that's why the idea of a cage match is so universally appealing. So at the end of the day, if you can't communicate, well get in the cage and just beat it out of each other. That should definitely work out. So there may be some truth to that. Maybe sometimes. It takes a really difficult and tough conversation to get to good conflict. You know, hopefully, it's not Thunderdome style. For those of you that are old enough. Oh, and Miss Tina Turner just passed recently not too long ago. So there you go. Reference to Tina Turner. Hopefully it's not Thunderdome style. Right. That's, that's, that's not ever going to make things good battling it out. It should always, always, always, always be the last resort, right? Remember the safety and security thing, right? People need to feel safe. And so work on helping them to feel safe. Stephen R Covey says, Seek first to understand then to be understood, right? So if we're looking at that, hey, you need to go pick up our child. Let me first try and understand what's going on with you. And then if I have a need that makes it very difficult or impossible, then let me try and explain that in a clear, clear way. This is not always our first impulse. Thought, right? Although sometimes the cage match probably is our first impulsive thought. Instead, we have to learn to ask questions and gain perspective before insisting on our own viewpoint. So having high levels of quality communication is the key to having healthy functioning teams, and relationships. Learning to express needs is part of this process. So when our communication sucks, then the relationships suffer. And yes, it's the same thing with anybody else in communication as well. So to wrap this up, here's a simple progression that will help you stay objective about your needs. Number one, you've got to take responsibility for your own feelings. Yes, you do. Number two, other people can't make you feel one way or another. Stop using that. Number three, acknowledge what you feel and decide what to do with it. Number four, taking responsibility for how you feel will help you get clarity. Number five, you gain clarity when you acknowledge and deal with feelings.

Let me say that when again, you gain clarity when you acknowledge and deal with feelings. Number six, it frees you to speak objectively about legitimate needs healthily, how fully? Again, am I making that word up? It's working for me. And number seven, your part to communicate is done. Now it's up to the other person. So lots of information. Hopefully, that has been helpful for you guys. That's all the time that we have for today. But hopefully, this is helping you to recognize that you can have a much better conversation with a spouse with children or with a team member with a team leader on expressing your needs through clarity. Hopefully, this has given you some great tools to do so. So as always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.