In our increasingly digitized and isolating modern world, more than ever we need to learn how to relate to each other better. At LUMAN, we see this trend everywhere from big companies to startups. Work is all about relationships — the more we relate together well, the more satisfied we are. Purpose and happiness have become increasingly important. Nearly two-thirds of U.S.-based employees surveyed by McKinsey said COVID-19 caused them to reflect on their purpose in life. Nearly half said they are reconsidering the kind of work they do because of the pandemic.
It’s clear that employees expect their jobs to bring a sense of purpose to their lives and employers need to meet this need or be prepared to lose those workers. (Ahem, the Great Resignation, anyone?) How then, do companies provide their employees with purpose? It starts with optimizing the work culture.
Why Relating Matters
Companies are made up of people and that means interacting with one another. The culture of a company is created by how things are done, by the people doing them; culture is how we talk to one another, how we handle challenges and failures, how we contribute or don’t, and how we feel about each other. This bleeds into our work, how inclusive we are, how we run meetings, how we challenge each other’s ideas, etc. It can be quite daunting then to invite a culture consultant to come in and pick apart what’s not working.
You are what you repeatedly do and the alternative is also true. If you’re not practicing relating to each other well, you’re not going to get any better at it. The good news is that there are quite a number of skills you can learn to help you become better at relating. Once you’re on board with encouraging cultural changes for the betterment of your people (which creates a positive impact that ripples out to your external stakeholders), the question then becomes, how do you tie relating better with the overall purpose of the company? It’s not just about getting along better; it’s about contributing meaningfully (because you feel safe to do so), and having cultural practices and rituals to fall back on when the environment becomes disrupted, volatile, or uncertain. In other words, you get to marry culture and strategy.
Doing so allows a team to optimize its culture so it’s “future-ready,” meaning continuously learning and adapting such that it is ready for the inevitable challenges that come to the business. These so-called “soft skills” get a bad rap because interpersonal skills are difficult to measure. They’re often seen as unimportant, take too much time, and slow down progress. However, at LUMAN we have a phrase, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”
With technology moving faster than ever before and organizations being urged to do more with less, if you slow down and take stock of what’s working and what’s not, then the team can move better and faster together. If you think of rowers, they practice their moves to be in sync so they’re all rowing in the same direction at the same time. The more in sync they are, the faster they go.
If an organization and all its stakeholders are clear about its purpose and goals, then instead of trying to do everything in siloes, stakeholders are able to move together and work faster like those rowers. This is what LUMAN calls a “creation culture” — optimizing team culture for future-ready organizations.
While most leadership programs focus on management skills, LUMAN treats everyone like a leader. We inspire employees to take ownership of their results and create impact for the organization, its ecosystem, and the customers. We have an integrated set of best practices for leadership development and team performance. These seven capacities support a team to reach new levels of creativity and performance. As an experienced nonviolent communication (NVC) practitioner and trainer, I see NVC as a “meta-skill” that is part of each leadership capacity.
The NVC Meta-Skill
A meta-skill is a master skill that magnifies and activates other skills. Employing NVC is a meta-skill. I know there are people out there who are turned off by NVC because they’ve had negative experiences with it. Maybe someone used NVC as a manipulation tool, or, ironically, communicated violently using NVC. I hear you, I know that happens, but that sort of NVC is not what I’m talking about here. Instead, the meta-skill I’m referring to is viewing the world with the belief that everything a person does, they do to meet a need.
When adopting this perspective, there’s an awareness of yourself and others. You’re able to understand how you relate to other people. It shows up in your conversations and the reasons why you avoid conversations. Needs are simply life’s impulses. When you reach for water, you have an unmet need for thirst. When you yell at someone, you have a need to be heard. Needs are universal. Every person has needs.
Needs are different from strategies. Human needs are universal but strategies, the way we go about meeting needs, are not. The way you meet your need for connection may look different than mine. Furthermore, strategies can conflict but needs do not. For instance, if you have a need for connection at work but your colleague has a need for space at that moment, you can meet your need for connection with someone else. And your colleague can hunker down in a pod to meet their need for space. Both of your needs can be met in a way that doesn’t cause conflict.
Using this meta-skill allows you to transcend judgment and become more authentic, which is a key component of a creation culture. I discuss the seven capacities of a creation culture more in depth below.
Authenticity
Authenticity requires awareness of your own internal operating system. For instance, determining when you need food, water, air, rest, or movement. When any of those needs aren’t met, it becomes more difficult to concentrate on work. Authenticity puts you in touch with all parts of yourself — the comfortable and the uncomfortable. You become your own authority on you. And that also allows you to determine how safe you feel.
Safety
Safety includes not only physical safety, but psychological safety. Do you feel safe to challenge authority, or your colleagues? Is it OK to speak up? To be yourself and contribute? Do you feel free to learn and make mistakes? Practicing the NVC meta-skill of viewing the world through the lens of needs can help you determine when you feel safe and with whom. And if not, you can start to shift things so you do feel safe. In order for you to have a met need for safety, however, there may be other needs associated with that as well, like freedom or choice.
Clarity
We all need clarity. We all want to know what is going on so we don’t do the “wrong” thing. Ambiguity creates stress. Creating clarity starts with having an awareness of yourself, how you communicate, what your role is, and how that fits in at the company. When you’re aware of your needs, you’re also aware of your feelings because your feelings act as messengers. When you’re content, calm, peaceful, etc., your needs are met. When you’re uncomfortable, agitated, tense, etc., your needs are not met.
When you focus on your needs, you can ask for what you want much more clearly. You don’t become attached to strategies because you understand there are numerous strategies to meet every need. And then you’re able to collaborate on those strategies.
Agreements
Agreements are just what they sound like — agreeing on solutions and requests. When needs are on the table, it’s easier to create solutions and thus agreements because you don’t have tunnel vision. You don’t think to yourself (or out loud), “It has to be like this. It’s the only way!” Working in this way, however, requires the willingness to let other people shine. It requires that everyone making agreements is thinking about the bigger picture. In other words, ego is put to the side.
Feedback
Feedback promotes learning and growth, which are key to a creation culture. Employees want to learn and grow because those are universal needs. Feedback is a part of learning and growth, but there’s also a way to deliver feedback using the meta-skill of NVC. Check out this blog for specifics, but in short, if you focus on needs when giving or receiving feedback, you’re able to understand your own feelings and where they come from. That can help you stop taking things so personally because you’re able to separate judgments or criticism from the feedback.
Care
Care means care for yourself and others. Like feedback, when you focus on your needs and have awareness of others’ needs, you have more care because you’re seeing each other’s humanity. You’re seeing each other as just humans in this world trying to do the best that they can. Could you imagine how great it would be if we all just had a little more care for each other at work?
This NVC meta-skill can also make room for more care for yourself because when you see things that are uncomfortable or there’s some tension, you can do something about it. You can regulate yourself so that you can enter into that next really long meeting clear, relaxed, and focused, for instance. And if you can’t do that, you can have some compassion for yourself.
Purpose
Purpose relates to feeling like what you’re doing in the world has an impact. It has meaning and there’s a sense of contribution. Using the meta-skill of NVC with purpose means understanding how important that need is. Again, I’ll refer you to the McKinsey survey referenced above. People are willing to leave their jobs if the need for purpose isn’t met!
– Simple, but not Easy
The NVC meta-skill is simple in theory, but it’s not easy to practice. We have so much conditioning that tells us not to focus on our needs, that our feelings don’t matter. We hear things like, “Man up” or, “Don’t be a cry baby.” However, feelings and needs do matter because we aren’t robots. We are interacting with people at work, we’re talking to them, and we all have universal needs. The strategies to meet them are different for everyone, but we can all agree we’re just trying to do our best here and make the most of what we have.
My experience has been that it’s a lot easier to collaborate, to connect, to work in flow and expand myself and my abilities when I am aware of all the parts of myself. And that means (along with therapy, coaching, and a supportive work environment) using the meta-skill of NVC.
