Ep12: Apply the Hierarchy of Needs to Conversation

In this episode, Mike shares how Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs should be considered when engaging in deep conversation.

--Transcript--

(Intro)
This is the conversation Iq podcast. I’m your host Mike Ford. Are you sick and tired of dealing with social anxiety? Do you want to overcome your fear of feeling awkward or looking silly in social situations? Do you struggle with just saying hello or maybe keeping a conversation going? Well, welcome to our community of communicators where we are on a mission to rid the world of loneliness by sharing tips, tricks, and techniques from some of the world’s best conversationalist. Super excited to have you guys on this journey with us. We’ll see you on the other side of this episode.

(Episode)
All right, welcome to another episode of the conversation Iq podcast. I'm your host Mike for the last episode was about asking questions. So if you haven't had a chance to listen to that episode yet, get on there and check it out. It's really just talking about how to introduce the Socratic method into your conversations so that way you are able to drive conversation deep, make connections, and really be a solution sanctuary or supplement to the conversation partner that you're speaking to. Great episode. This episode I want to talk about, um, just the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and uh, what that has to do with conversation, right? First, a quick understanding of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's the pyramid is situated with two separate levels. The first portion of it is basically like the physical things. As someone who is like nose down to the grindstone, all I'm working for her as a poo food on the table and keep a roof over my head.

Those are our basic needs. And uh, at first starts off with psychological needs or their parents broke on a five sections. The first section, the bottom of the pyramid, the base, our psychological needs and psychological needs are food, water, warmth and rest. That second level above that are safety needs and have security and safety skills to make up the basic needs level. The upper half of that is what he would, well, he will consider the spiritual part of human existence and that is the one above the, uh, safety is belongingness and love needs. And that's your intimate relationships and friends. And above that as the esteem needs, which is the prestige and feeling of accomplishment and then above that or is it self actualization, which is the epitome of the hierarchy of needs. And so what happens is people try to go through life addressing one or the other and not fully taken the entire picture into account.

But if you were to take a moment to take a look at that hierarchy of needs, you could have essentially step into a conversation with someone and just by their language, and again we're getting into the parts of conversation where we are connecting with people on a level, we're creating safety and they are giving free information or providing indicators that we are chasing down and again and below the surface and other. We're starting to hear where they are in his pyramid of needs. Right? Or is there conversation or is the things that they're talking about or they are concerned about, do they fall on that bottom level of the pyramid or is it more in the esteem needs when they talk about prestige in that lacking a feeling of accomplishment? I remember they were talking about how accomplished they feel, which is awesome, but usually wherever someone is having an issue, like for instance, if they're talking about, you know, they don't feel necessarily like to have a lot of friends and a lot of relationships and all that stuff, you can take a look at some of the levels below that psychological needs of food, warmth, you know, the water rest, a security to safety and you can ask questions about that.

To be able to guide the individual in conversation to help them identify where is it they're getting hung up at. At this point, what we're doing is we're transitioning now into a place where we're serving as a sanctuary and and also a solution for the individual. It's really important that when we do this, we don't just forcibly provide any information, right? We, we want to first ask someone for permission and when I say that, I mean you want to literally ask someone, Hey, is it okay if I asked a couple of questions or would you like some, some feedback on that? I'm thinking a couple of things. Would you, would you like some feedback on some stuff and I'm allowed to tell you yes. And then you can go ahead and just start asking a couple of questions. You know, um, when it comes again, if you didn't hear the last episode, just your keep your questions open ended.

It's really important that you don't ask questions or watch your tone cause you're told me to come across as you are judging someone and even if you're not, people may construed the message that way. So it's really important that you're cognizant of that. So as we're walking through the hierarchy of needs, again you're listening for someone to tell you where they are on that. Again, you could provide some solutions, provide some quarters, some sort of supplement or provide a sanctuary for them. Now the question that I get some times is how exactly do I have positioned myself to do? Like how can I do that if I've never experienced or been able to help myself necessarily or help anyone else in the past? Right. Well that means that you need to first take yourself through the process of personal growth and development. For you to increase your value, increase what you have to offer, and then be able to share something like that with somebody.

There's this really great book, I remember what the Church Will Nan and they didn't, they were reading a book right to kids. And so in this book, the way that the book was designed it was is a kid's book. And they basically were like, okay, here we go. First things first, there's two kids, kids got buckets like you need to go through life and you've got buckets and you have people who are bucket fillers and people who are buckets emptiers, right? So a bucket filler is someone who basically they are going around and filling people's buckets and so that they had like this picture of this kid and he had like, you know, a bunch of sunlight in a bucket and his going around just dumping his bucket into other people's buckets. And so the thing is that what happens is eventually he runs out of stuff to point to other people's buckets as a question is where was he getting this source of awesomeness and are we were in church sold.

The Messenger are sharing, is that the sources? God, that's, that's where all of the awesomeness is coming from. It's coming from, from that source, right? I would also say that it takes work for you to really truly fill your own bucket and there's a, there's an intentionality that has to go behind that and you have to sit down and identify where you are right now. Where would you like to be in the next 10 20 years? The chasm between where you are and where you want to be. That's how you can start to identify what are the things you need to do to start to make your way that way. Right? And Make Your Way Dad away. And through that process of growing, learning, changing things around, creating some, some results in your own life, what you'll find is that you're able to turn around and just teach someone who is slightly behind you.

You can learn one, teach one, right? Each one teach one, you learn something, you implement, you turn around, you teach, you learn something, implement. You turn around and teach and from the results that other people aren't getting, you're not able to capture those results and share that experience with someone else. The reason why people have a hard time really getting into conversations because they don't feel like they have anything worth sharing, but you do. You have gone through some things in your life and you have also overcome a lot. So you are in a place to share and help and to encourage and to positively impact someone's life. Through the power of conversation. You have the ingredients. You just need the skills, the skills that allow you to, to step up the stills that allow you to turn around and, and when someone needs a sanctuary where someone needs a supplement and when someone needs a solution to their problem, you're able to turn around and be just that.

So the way ahead is creating a game plan for yourself of personal growth and development. Knowing where you are on, on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, identifying what you've got to do to the next level. Get there to the next part of that pyramid or the next part of that hierarchy of needs and then turn around and teach somebody else what you just learned. So without a matter of here, I'll catch you guys on the next one.

(Outro)
 Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Conversation IQ podcast. It’s always a pleasure just to spend time and share and to encourage and empower folks to be better conversationalist. If you aren’t picking up things that you can implement and you had positive results from that, please share with us. We love to hear about your successes. We’d also like to hear about any challenges you are experiencing so that way we can continue to serve the community. We can continue to provide value and continue to equip you with the tools you need for you to be an awesome conversation list. Please check us out at www.conversationiq.co for an opportunity to be a part of our Facebook group Increasing Conversation IQ. It is www.conversationiq.co we’ll see you guys on the next episode.