First Published 27 July 2023

What Do You Need?

In what way do you need people to show up and support you when stuff goes differently to plan?

I am the type of person who needs to talk through my thoughts to understand myself better and get to my opinion.

What I don’t always need, is for the person I am talking to then ‘fix’ anything for me – sometimes I just need to form the thoughts and hear the words from my own mouth to then come to a decision, sometimes I need to just get it off my chest and then other times a good brainstorm fits the bill.

We’ve all been there (I am assuming) where the other person is telling you what you should do, or how they are going to help you, or perhaps what they would do if they were in your shoes and then strongly suggest you do the same…

There’s a couple of reasons this has been on my mind lately.

I was on a networking training call earlier this evening and my breakout room were tasked with coming up with creating a mini presentation around helping others we network with.  We had a great discussion and I shared a recent experience.

Recently a friend had had a pretty unexpected change to plans (aka a pretty crappy day!) and I asked if they needed a rant, to stew or to solutionise.

I asked this so that I could find out how best I could support them in the way they needed in that moment.

Did they need me to:

• just listen (rant) and get it off their chest to clear the air?
• sit with it themselves (stew) – in other words “leave me alone Angela, I need peace to work out what I feel/think”
• work out/brainstorm next steps (solutionise) to be that sounding board to come up with ideas of how to deal with the situation.

After my friend got over teasing me for making up new words (… what? I happen to think that’s an excellent new word!) they got what I was getting at. (and I think they appreciated me meeting them where they were at in their processing).

My fellow breakout room members quite liked this and as one of them said they were going to use it, I figured it was worth a share.

So next time you are processing something and need space, or a chance to rant, make sure to tell the person who is supporting you how you need them to support you (even if that is to leave you alone!)

And if you are the supporter, perhaps ask your friend/spouse/colleague what they actually need from you rather than assuming – you may be surprised by their answer!

As ever, my calendar is open if you need me to listen to you rant and then help you through the planning next steps stage – I have a few openings for coaching clients just now.  Or zoffee’s to just something off your chest with no judgement!