Season 2 Episode 28 - How to Distinguish Requests From Requirements

“With a request, you can decline freely. With a requirement, you can decline, but there will be a significant cost.” – Kari Zeller

Fundamentally, humans are not awesome at distinguishing between requests and requirements. That point of miscommunication easily erodes trust in relationships and undermines a team’s focus on priority projects. When we begin to see where the wires get crossed (and the huge impact that causes), new pathways for circumventing these problems become apparent. Join Kari Zeller (FKA Granger) and Paul Adams as they unpack this ubiquitous breakdown and give us conversational doorways to getting onto the same page with our bosses, colleagues, direct reports, spouses, and children.

In This Episode:

00:56 – Introducing today’s topic: How to Distinguish Requests From Requirements

02:23 – Paul’s experience of questioning the status quo of an organization

05:22 – Tip: experiment by asking, “By when do you need that?”

08:24 – The reverse of asking, “By when do you need that?”

09:20 – The importance of distinguishing between a request and a requirement

12:35 – An example of how to initiate new conversations with your boss or colleague

13:55 – Paul shares something he wants his team to get out of the Productivity and Accomplishment Course

15:30 – Kari shares how a committed and accountable colleague of hers counter-offers her requests

18:35 – Kari and Paul distinguish suggestions, requirements, and requirements

19:59 – Matching our language to our meaning: the example of a client who said ‘strongly recommend’ when expressing requirements

21:17 – Paul’s professional and personal take-aways from this episode

21:53 – Paul challenges listeners to consider what key relationships could be powerfully impacted by this distinction and recommends a way to start that conversation

Quotes:

“Early in my career, questioning whether the boss’s directives were really requirements made me VP of distribution in six months.” – Paul Adams

“When you open the conversation about requests and requirements with your team, you can create enormous new space within your organization to generate the future you are after.’” – Paul Adams

“When her boss said it wasn’t needed it for two weeks, she almost fell over. Had she not clarified, she would have stayed up all night and moved everything else aside to those things done.” – Kari Zeller

“It’s valuable for bosses to realize that the propensity people have to do a good job — to please them and to advance within the organization — can cause people to hear each thing they say as a requirement that must be done right away.” – Kari Zeller

“If we are relating to something as a requirement, there is very little room to say ‘no’ or to counter-offer. But, when we’re clear we’re dealing with an actual request, we can negotiate, we can counter-offer, and we can say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’” – Kari Zeller

“When people hear everything as a requirement, they often don’t take the action and then they hide out about what they didn’t complete and/or they make the boss wrong for issuing too many requirements.” – Kari Zeller

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Links:

• Kari’s Website

• Paul’s Website

• Kari’s Online Courses about Leadership Performance, Accountability, and Trust

• Paul’s Other Podcast

  
  

Acknowledgements: Our work is mosaic art. We read, study, and practice many philosophies, methodologies, and modalities of human performance, to ensure that our approach best serves our clients. We would like to acknowledge all of the thought leaders and organizations, whose ground-breaking work has influenced the TGN Consulting approach – especially Fernando Flores, Jim Selman, Michael C. Jensen, Julio Olalla, Pluralistic Networks,The Newfield Network, and the Strozzi Institute.

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