What I learned from the book: Why Weren’t We Taught This at School?
This post summarizes some of my learnings from the book called Why Weren’t We Taught This at School? by Alice Sheldon.
The Core Idea
Everything that we do or say is an attempt to meet an underlying need.
Examples of such needs are need for the freedom of choice, the need to be heard, the need for creativity or authenticity, the need to feel a social connection, etc.
When you look at your behavior and that of others through the lens of your respective needs, your outlook will change. Things can work out better when our chosen solution to a problem takes care of everyone’s needs.
Four key skills
- Listen with empathy
- Understand yourself with compassion
- Speak to be heard
- Act with care for everyone’s needs
Listen with empathy
Listen to others, try to understand what’s going on for them and what is the underlying need that they might be looking to satisfy with their actions and desires.
Focus on the person who is speaking to you and listen to them with empathy, instead of thinking about what you are going to say next. Don’t advise, fix, explain, teach, or one-up as the first reaction when someone shares a problem with you. By listening with empathy, you are listening to understand the experiences and feelings of another person with full acceptance and no judgment.
But first, you have to become comfortable with your feelings and be in a good emotional space yourself before you can become an empathic listener.
Understand yourself with compassion
Just like you should listen to others with empathy, you should also try to understand yourself with compassion. Understand your actions and your thoughts in the light of your needs.
It is important to determine your fingerprint needs. Fingerprint needs are usually our trigger needs. If someone touches them, we get into survival mode and overreact to that need not being met (or the fear of it). A helpful way to identify your fingerprint needs is to think about situations in which you have had a disproportionate response to something someone else said or did.
Speak to be heard
You have to know when and how to express yourself.
The more the other person experiences being heard for their needs first, the more receptive they’d be to hear about what’s going on for us.
As for how, you should talk about your needs rather than arguing for a specific solution. This will help the other person understand your needs instead of giving the other person a specific solution to accept or reject or your preferred strategy to meet those needs.
State observations instead of judgments or evaluations.
Make requests instead of demands.
Act with care for everyone’s needs
Don’t make the mistake of jumping straight to the solution as soon as you run into a problem.
Take the intermediate step to understand the underlying needs that are creating a problematic situation. Once you know your needs and the needs of the other person, you are far more likely to come up with solutions that satisfy both of your needs.
Whenever you feel like there’s only one solution to the problem between you and someone else, it’s often a sign that you have forgotten to think about the underlying needs of each other.
Hold on to your needs but let go of your preferred strategies.
If you are interested in this topic, I would recommend reading the book as the book has many more details and strategies.
