Via LeadDev

“In the modern workplace, humans have six core needs to feel safe and secure at work. Learning about people’s core needs has dramatically shifted my management and leadership approach because I can now better understand why this other human is reacting to something that I don’t personally consider overwhelming, emotional, or scary.”

— Navigating Team Friction | Lara Hogan | #LeadDevLondon, at 8:25

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Management coach and author Lara Hogan draws on the work of organizational coach Paloma Medina to explore six core human needs at work.

The acronym is BICEPS:

• Belonging: The need to feel part of a group, plan, or tribe. Social rejection activates the same brain regions as physical pain.
• Improvement/Progress: The need to feel like you’re advancing – personally, professionally, or organizationally.
• Choice: The need for autonomy over your work. Too much and too little choice are both threatening.
• Equality/Fairness: The belief that resources and opportunity are distributed fairly. “When humans feel like something is not fair, we start riots.”
• Predictability: The need for enough routine and structure to feel safe. Constant surprises are exhausting.
• Significance: The sense that your contributions matter. Demotion, exclusion from decisions, or irrelevant assignments all threaten this.

These needs aren’t equally important for everyone. One teammate may be most sensitive to threats against belonging; another may crave predictability.

Hogan illustrates this with the corporate desk move. It’s a trivial, logistical event but it reliably produces strong emotional reactions. What’s more, the same event can cause a wide variety of reactions depending on who you ask:

• Belonging: Being separated from your peer group feels like social isolation.
• Improvement: A disruptive move can feel like an obstacle to meaningful work.
• Choice: Being told where to sit – rather than asked – removes autonomy.
• Equality: Some groups get better locations, more input, or more space than others.
• Predictability: An unexpected change signals that more changes are coming.
• Significance: Moving away from an executive, or losing a window seat, can feel like a demotion.

The takeaway: Don’t assume you know how someone will feel about a change or why someone is upset. Resist the urge to prescribe a fix based on your own core needs. Pause to ask instead. Learning what matters most to each person is the fastest path to making them feel understood.

Things you can try today

Understanding your team’s core needs:

• Ask each teammate what BICEPS need feels most important to them right now.
• Before announcing a significant change, run it through the BICEPS lens: which needs might this threaten, and for whom?
• When someone reacts strongly to something that seems minor to you, pause and ask which core need might be threatened.