People don’t want things. People want feelings.
Your employee wants a promotion, but you know they're not ready yet.
Your parents want you to go on another date with that person, but you don’t want to see them again.
You want a slice of cake at 10 pm, but you also want to lose weight.
When you think that people want THINGS, all of these seem like lose-lose situations.
Either you give the employee a promotion, and you’re unhappy. Or you don’t give it to them, and they’re unhappy.
Either you go on another date to make your parents happy. Or you say no, and now they’re upset.
Either you have the cake and delay your weight loss goal. Or you say no and feel deprived.
When you realize that what people really want are FEELINGS, a whole world of possibilities opens up to you.
Your employee doesn’t want the promotion. Your employee wants to feel a certain way.
How do they want to feel? Accomplished? Valued? Challenged? Like they’re making progress?
And how can you help them feel that way — even if you don’t give them the promotion?
Your parents don’t want you to go on another date. Your parents want to feel a certain way.
How do they want to feel? Reassured that you’re making good decisions? Secure that they did a good job raising you?
And how can you help them feel that way — even if you don’t go on the date?
You don’t want a slice of cake at 10 pm. You want to feel a certain way.
How do you want to feel? Relaxed? Energized? Comforted after a long day at work?
And how can you help yourself feel that way — even if you don’t eat the cake?
Don’t be distracted by the THINGS people ask for.
That’s just a smokescreen. It’s a first guess at what will make them feel how they want to feel.
Instead, get curious. What do they really want? What’s the real underlying need?
How do they want to feel?
Answer that question, and then get creative about fulfilling that need.
Because even if you can’t give them the THING, there are a million ways to go about creating a feeling.
And if you want some help teasing out what someone REALLY wants and finding creative ways to give it to them.
Even (especially!) if that someone is you…
Then come talk to me, and let’s figure it out :)
Here’s exactly what we’re going to do—
We’ll look at what you already know.
We’ll form a hypothesis.
We’ll make a plan to test it.
You’ll go off and conduct the experiment.
We’ll review the data.
And we’ll do it again.
Until it’s done.
Let’s start today.
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