What are the desired outcomes of these strategies? They are intended to achieve one or more outcomes. First, each of these strategies helps to legitimize interpersonal needs. Through the use of unstructured group experiences, survey results, group exercises and even discussions about projected needs, people who are engaged in relationships (two person or small group) can find a safe place and are provided with a set of clarifying concepts and terms that enable a thoughtful and insightful dialogue to commence. The second desired outcome relates back to our earlier discussions about social construction of reality (Continental School).
By labeling these interpersonal needs, we give them a reality. Many people who grow up in highly restrained and “rationalistic” societies do not have much access to their interpersonal needs, in part because they have never been provided with words or phrases that can be used to label these needs. I personally find that my clients in coaching, training and consulting sessions often feel “liberated” by a growing familiarity with Will Schutz’ three needs. They find that the need for inclusion or openness is not just a sense of being “immature” or “needy” for interpersonal relationships, and that the need for control does not mean that one is an “authoritarian dictator” or “domineering boss.”
A third outcome concerns the role played by interpersonal needs in the development of a relationship or group. As I noted earlier in this book, the forming, storming, norming and performing stages of group development reflect shifting emphases on Schutz’ three interpersonal needs. In fact, the original model (created by Bruce Tuckman) is based in part on Schutz’ sequential evolution of these three needs in an interpersonal relationship or group. During the stage of forming in an interpersonal relationship or group, the need for inclusion is likely to be high in many (if not all) participants, while the need for control is likely to be high (and is often the cause of conflict) during the storming stage of the interpersonal relationship or group.
