Making a Specific Request

When making specific requests (or strategies), it is important to be specific.

This may be seem obvious but it cannot be stressed enough. When we are specific about the behavior or action that meets our needs, we increase our chances of getting our needs met. If, for example, we have a need for connection and were to request more time together, the words “more time together” are vague and general, leaving room for misinterpretation through multiple interpretations. In this way, we risk getting our needs met because the request was vague and ambiguous.

How, for example, do we define, specifically, more time together? Does it mean 10 minutes a day, 60 minutes a week, an hour on a Saturday night, or a two-hour Sunday afternoon drive? In specifying what more time together means, we clarify for ourselves and others what more time together looks like. We do this by naming a concrete action and using positive language. 

When beginning a specific request, Marshall suggested we preface our request with the words, “Would you be willing to . . . ?” In this way, we increase our chances that we will be heard in the way we want to be heard, reducing the risk that our request will be heard as a demand. Asking if someone would be willing to do something is different from telling them to do something. As Marshall noted, it invites power with rather than power over.

When making specific requests (or strategies), it is important to recognize that there are far more strategies than there are needs. This means that there is more than one way to meet a need. To the degree that we are open and curious about the strategies that meet our needs, we can begin to relax, trusting that we do not have to be wedded to a specific strategy.

Here, then, are some suggested strategies for meeting a need for connection and for sharing what a specific request sounds and looks like:

• Would you be willing to give me a hug when you come home from work?
• Would you be willing to take 10 minutes at breakfast to tell me about your day?
• Would you be willing to go dinner once a week, just the two of us?
• Would you be willing to share your feelings and needs about what is important to you?
• Would you be willing to tell me what you heard me say?
• Would you be willing to take 10 minutes to hear what is important in me?

What determines the strategy that is most helpful is discerning the strategy that truly meets our needs. Making a specific request is not about being manipulative or trying to get our way; it is about meeting our needs without demands. It is requesting that which enriches life.

Often, when we share our feelings and needs with another, and they share their feelings and needs with us, strategies arise organically from the mutual sharing. In other words, the strategies find us, as Marshall noted. In the mutual sharing, the strategies that find us may well be different from the strategies we had in mind when we first entered the conversation. In fact, they are often better than the strategies each one brought to the conversation. 

This is the power of sharing feelings and needs: they inform our strategies, resulting in this paradigm shift—feelings and needs first, strategies second.