Consciously or not, our needs and values guide our decisions and play a fundamental role in our happiness, motivation, and success. Goals are much more likely to be met when they in alignment with the one’s values and beliefs. Unfortunately, we are not always able to immediately articulate these needs and values, and they can at times conflict.
Through the use of coaching skills, we are better able to understand what an individual’s needs, values, and strengths are so they can be leveraged mindfully. They can serve as a life compass, keeping us in alignment with what is important to us to live a happier and fulfilling life.
Needs
Our core needs are rather universal in that everybody shares them, although we will all prioritize them differently based on how these needs have or have not been met in our past. It can be challenging to identify our needs directly, and one trick is to observe our emotions and habitual behaviors which can reflect when needs are being met or not.
Perhaps it is because of this emotional connection that identifying needs can be especially challenging. We may not always be fully aware of or connected with our emotions, and may not be comfortable experiencing the more negatively associated emotions. Instead of trying to console or “get over” such emotions we have the opportunity to support coachees in deepening their awareness to these influencing factors in their lives in order to better align themselves in a way to meet those needs.
Naming what is present and following with empowering questions can help support that connection between one’s feelings and needs. For example:
“Your eyes lit up when you spoke of your new responsibilities at work. What needs are alive for you?”
“I hear your disappointment. What are you longing for?”
Note how these questions try to tap into the emotional experience. In positive situations asking what is exciting about it or alive in them may help make that connection. In negative situations, asking what they are longing for or what they are missing may help.
Other ways of using empowering questions to identify needs would be to touch places that could be triggered by needs being met or unmet.
“What motivates/excites you?”
“When are you at your best?”
“What makes your heart sing?”
“What would an ideal job/relationship/etc look like?”
“What is so important about _______?”
Needs vs Strategies
The biggest challenge I and many of my classmates had when learning about needs was the differentiation of needs vs strategies. Coaching involves digging deeper, and so while someone may say “I need more money” or “I need a new job,” what they are likely sharing is what they assume they need to feel better – i.e. to meet the underlying unnamed and possibly unknown need. Such assumptions limit the scope of possibilities at best, and at worse do not honor the underlying need at all.
For example. I may think I need to find a new job only to discover on further exploration that the reason I was unhappy in my current job was that I was not leveraging my creativity. In finding another job I may find, to my dismay, I am still unhappy because I had not considered ensuring that the new job would give me the creative outlet I needed to be fulfilled. What’s more, it may have been possible to have been happy and successful at my current job had I found ways of meeting my creative need.
Even if a strategy is beneficial, having such a narrow spotlight on that strategy limits other ways of further supporting one’s needs and opening the door to new possibilities. It can make us think small. Asking empowering questions to dig deeper will often help see past the strategy to what need(s) we are actually seeking to meet.
Strategies are more particular to circumstances, people, and situations vs being universal, i.e. describing a shared human experience. Here is a handy acronym to help: PLATO. Whenever we include a Person, a Location, an Action, a Time, or an Object in our expression of what we want, we are describing a strategy rather than a need.
Values
One’s values refer to what we find meaningful in life – what’s important to us. When we are honoring our values we feel more engaged and fulfilled in our work and our lives. In the workplace, employees who find their work aligned with their values (and needs) will be more motivated and happy than those who do not.
In working with needs and values you will find there can be quite an overlap. Consider values as what guides us toward meaningful ways of having our needs met. It’s a bit easier to determine one’s values. Reflecting on lists of common values to see what resonates most is a good way of starting that process. Asking empowering questions to explore what is important about the things we think and do will also offer much insight. Here are a few other exercises that can help determine and prioritize one’s values.
- How would headlines about you read?
- At the end of your life, how do you want to be remembered? (A variation on this is to write your own obituary.)
- When are you at your best? What are you doing at such times? What gives you pride or satisfaction?
- What are you passionate about? What can’t you live without?
- What do you feel called to you/your purpose in life?
Working with Needs and Values
Once we are more in touch with our needs and values, we can actively align our lives to honor our values and meet our needs, using them to guide our behavior so that we are able to live more fulfilling and meaningful lives. In the workplace, it translates to more motivated employees actively engaging in their work. This is win-win since managers see the boosts in productivity, reliability, and loyalty they want, and employees are happier and more successful at work. It ceases to be “just a job” and becomes an active component of their lives.
Conflicting Needs and Values
There will be times when one’s needs and values are in conflict. For example, I may want to the stability of being employed but the freedom that comes from being self-employed. The question then becomes, how can I have both? Sometimes we may need to make compromises, other times we may find creative ways to honor both.
Prioritizing would be a possible first step. If you have a long list of needs and values imagine being on a boat that is sinking and you can only keep 5 of them, tossing the rest overboard. Which 5 are you left with?
If the conflicting priorities are still in that shorter list, step into the experience of each one in turn, incorporating all the senses and perhaps even movement. Notice the difference in feeling and energy in each place. How does the other experience look within the conflicting one? Perhaps new insights will emerge, or we may be able to determine the order of importance.
If coaching someone, ask empowering questions as they step into each experience and share your own observations of shifts in energy and subtle cues you notice.
Keeping a Short List
Developing a short list of one’s core needs and values that can be carried on our person, placed visibly at our desks, and even shared with our colleagues can help regularly reconnect and realign ourselves with what means most to us. It keeps us focused on what matters most to us and can serve as a compass for making decisions. With any given decision, what values are being honored and how are they being honored? What decisions honor the most values?
The “Dark Side”
What an ominous heading! When I was learning about being a professional coach hired by companies, a mentor made an interesting warning. Companies bring in coaches to improve performance, retention, etc. However, when someone experiences coaching, there is a risk that a certain number of people will decide to leave the company to follow their heart and dreams. The argument was that ultimately this was a good thing. It meant they were not fully invested in their current work and that it may not have been aligned with their needs and values.
I bring this up since managers who use coaching are ultimately not coaching for the companies best interests but that of the person they are coaching. This will ideally lead to happier and more productive staff which in turn does the company well. It may also clean house of both those who refuse to make an effort and those who decide the job is not for them. Short term this may be disconcerting, but long term it cultivates a much more supportive work culture.