Expressing what your needs are (when you actually also know them by yourself) is probably one of the hardest things I saw in teams.
Why?
Because first of all we are not used to thinking about our needs and second for some people is hard to express them.
This post will focus on one very simple activity from Liberating Structures which is helping people to express their needs. This activity also helps in learning how to give clear answers to requests.
In my experience, it also helped with getting rid of assumptions about what the other ones are expecting of me, instead listening to what they need in a direct request.
How did I apply the “What do I need from you” activity from Liberating Structures?
🎲 Situation: I had a retrospective which was supposed to be done with the whole team online and then it changed due to the unavailability of persons and the change of plans to in-person. It was with 4 senior developers, 3 from one team and 1 from a team that was collaborating with the first team. So a cross-teams retrospective (which was also an ad-hoc thing that happened). And they had only 45min available :)
🎲 Need of the people in the retrospective: to be able to express their needs in a direct request (more direct than in the stand-up every day).
🎲 Facilitator thought: I had back then just installed the Liberating Structures app on my phone and on that day I was reading through exercises and this specific one grasp my attention. I decided due to lack of time, we will learn how to express needs and also how to give a clear answer to them as a special case instead of looking to the previous sprint (for which we had already some learnings in a group discussion which was like a retrospective already :)
🎲 Requests: I asked them to write down in silence on their papers (pen and paper were the only supply I had) a request they have to fulfill their needs to each person there. I asked them to be clear enough so that they do not need to explain more.
🎲 Sharing: then I asked them to share what they wrote in turns and all the other persons to write down what they hear requested directly to them. There were not allowed direct answers from the other people, they just needed to write their answers down. Funny thing: one participant created an airplane out of paper and they were sending the airplane to each other to make turns in talking, I found it really a nice add-on!
🎲 Answering: each person then answered with “Yes”, “No”, “I will try”, or “Whatever” to the request of each person addressed to them.
🎲 Repeat: when there was a “Whatever” answer this meant the request was too vague to provide a specific answer. So I asked the owner of the request to formulate it again and the person who was requested to answer. Until it was a “Yes”, “No”, or “I will try”.
🎲 Conclusions: I asked them to write on their papers 1-3 things they will do next to fulfill the requests where they said “Yes” or “I will try” and then share them as a commitment with the others.
🎲 Debrief: I asked them what did they learn out of this way and how did they find it. They were super impressed with how easy is to do it when a structured approach is used, while becoming aware of their own help needs but also how clearly they express what they need.
🎲 Outcome: My participants were super happy that in such a short time they could express where do they need help and had answers and specific steps to follow.
One-phrase summary:
When you want your team to express where they need help from each other in a structured approach, while learning as well how to express requests in a clear way, the “What do I need from you” is a good activity to try.
Resources:
Liberating Structures website
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