We often face problems when communicating with other people. And some of you have already heard that a big part of a successful communication is to be responsive to other people’s needs.
But what exactly are human needs and how can we identify which of these concerns our counterpart?
Today I will be talking about something called the “Requirement tower” referring to Vera F. Birkenbihl. This tower is a further development of Abraham H. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pictured right below.
Both theories claim that human needs are structured in five steps whereas the overlying steps can only be reached while the base still remains.
Step 1 – Basic Requirements
You might already guess those. Basic requirements are everything your organism needs to survive like for example food, water, air to breathe and sleep. Primitive humans needed all their power to realize these basic requirements. As long as they weren’t realized there was no interest on the other steps.
Step 2 – Safety and the feeling of security
This is a kind of “inner security” which everybody defines a little bit else. Typical examples for these times would be a place to stay (house or apartment), a workplace, income and savings.
For somebody whose safety is in danger, he will do everything to ensure this need before going to the next step.
Side note: Please remember that this also counts when somebody already has reached the upper steps. When at some point in his life anything is threating his safety, this person will come back to this step to ensure his safety again and when done he can continue on the upper step.
Step 1 and 2 are therefore summarized in a group called “physiological survival”.
Step 3 – Social needs
After ensuring physiological survival, this is the first time a human is starting to be social. In our evolution humans stared to live in groups and tribes. Nowadays examples would be family, company, clubs, countries or a community of faith.
Step 4 – self-needs
In this step the human is starting to look back at itself but this time it’s about psychological needs for the individual as physiological survival is already given. These needs can for example be titles and mastery but mostly appreciation.
As small children, we want to appeal others and we obtain appreciation by strokes. At first physical and later figuratively. Our behavior is formed with strokes and can also be modified. How we were stroked as children is exerting strong influence to our later need of appreciation.
There are two specific orientations:
a) Children that were stroked for just being without a specific reason
b) Children that were only stroked when they did something right
These children memorize how they obtain appreciation and expect appreciation in the same way in their later life.
People from group “a” are often against things like school marks, pressure to perform and elites made by hard work whereas people from group “b” can be identified by the exact different philosophies.
Step 3 and 4 are summarized in a group called “psychological survival”.
Step 5 – Self-actualization
This step is a more abstract one. As we summarized step 1 and 2 as physiological survival and step 3 and 4 as psychological survival, this person has realized any form of survival. From now on this person can think about things like morality, creativity, spontaneity and problem solving.
Conclusion
One part of successful communication is to respond on human needs. To respond correctly on them you need to know on which “step” your counterpart stands and concentrate on these needs. If you do this your counterpart will automatically respond to your needs as well.
As said human needs are one only part of successful communication. If you want to know even more you’re invited to also read my article about how to preserve self-esteem and improve communication.
Thanks for reading, have a wonderful day!
References
BIRKENBIHL, Vera F.: Kommunikationstraining: Zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen erfolgreich gestalten, 37. Auflage 2017