Navigate needs by listening

The news industry is fast-paced and often unpredictable, and the day-to-day work can be stressful and, at times, an emotional rollercoaster.

Today’s news organizations are also contending with rapid changes in technology, strains on resources and cycles of turnover. These conditions threaten psychological safety and can make it difficult for staff to feel reassured in their work.

Last year, the American Press Institute invited the National Equity Project to lead a 4-week bootcamp that helped news leaders explore ways to lead equitable teams and meetings.

One of the frameworks from the training is a brain-based model for collaboration developed by neuroscientist David Rock. His research pinpointed a person’s primary social needs using the acronym SCARF, which represents five domains.

Certain interactions in the workplace activate the brain’s response to rewards or perceived threats and can influence an individual’s emotions and behavior in social situations. NEP defines these primary social needs as:

• Status: Recognizing one’s relative position and value in a community
• Certainty: Predictability and having clear expectations of what might happen in a given situation
• Autonomy: Having a sense of agency and control over one’s environment
• Relatedness: Finding common ground to feel connection, trust and affinity with others
• Fairness: Ensuring no one gains or suffers from unearned advantages

LAist’s Jennifer Baughman participated in the bootcamp with a small group of colleagues. As director of programming, her responsibilities include daily communication with various departments across the organization. She said the SCARF framework has helped her navigate dynamics and improve relationships with collaborators who aren’t in her chain of command.

“I try to approach everything with curiosity and a service-oriented approach: How can I help you? How can I help make the most of your product? And how can we be of service to our audience?” she said. “When I come to these conversations with people, it’s helpful to remember the domains of SCARF.”

In her own department, Baughman said SCARF also helped her delegate some essential operations — like leading check-in meetings — to colleagues on the programming team.

“It’s helping me to encourage my team to have more autonomy. And that autonomy, I really think, helps with buy-in,” Baughman said. “When they feel trusted to own something, then they do end up owning it and making it their own. If they feel micromanaged, they feel the uncertainty, too.”

Listen constructively

Erik Fermín, NEP’s senior equity leadership consultant who co-led the “Designing and Facilitating Meetings for Equity” training, explained how considering one another’s perspectives and experiences is critical to building resilient workplaces.

“Every person has a story; whether it’s the cumulative experiences that make up their identity or the story of what it took to get their kids off to school that day, people show up to work with many stories inside them,” he said. “Creating space for people to listen to each other helps us see and recognize the things we have in common — our shared humanity. Our stories exist within larger systems of privilege, power and oppression that shape people’s daily experiences and opportunities.”

Fermín said that by creating conditions for listening to and honoring diverse perspectives, we build a shared understanding of how institutional barriers, historical inequities and systemic biases impact our teammates in distinct ways.

So how can you learn more about what your colleagues are thinking or feeling? The training also introduced the practice of constructivist listening.

In groups of two to five people, this method allows each participant to talk without interruptions, giving everyone equal time to reflect and release emotion. It also gives people the opportunity to think about their challenges in a different way. Giving one another undivided attention and confidentiality while limiting interruptions and criticism are also part of the constructivist listening guidelines.

According to NEP, this approach can be “effective for conversations that are both intellectually demanding and emotionally challenging by encouraging trust, care and authenticity.”

Baughman said constructivist listening can be a “real solution” for news organizations, where “there’s less listening” because journalists often relate to each other and build rapport through talking.

“It allows space for folks to really express themselves because people — more often than not —  just want to be heard,” she said. “And at the end of the day, a lot of people really do want to solve their own problems. They don’t want to be told what somebody else’s solution is.”

And constructivist listening, which prioritizes the speaker and their own thoughts and feelings in real time, is one way to help people discover their own solutions.

Try it out now

• Practice constructivist listening: In news organizations, constructivist listening can be used in one-on-ones with direct reports or in small group meetings. It can also be helpful when working through editorial dilemmas or helping journalists process tough moments like breaking news and traumatic coverage.
• Write personal user manuals: There is an easy way to help teammates understand how they can best work with you — personal user manuals. The exercise can involve responding to simple bullet points and take as little as 30 minutes. When team members write and share their manuals, the practice can help promote a culture of self-discovery, reflection and awareness. API has tips on how to start your own user manuals here.
• See how SCARF can work for you: In practice, you can help support yourself and others by thinking about how SCARF applies to your workplace. Reward responses in the brain tend to light up when these needs are acknowledged:   
  • Status: Recognize improvements, give credit where it’s due and acknowledge a job well done publicly.
  • Certainty: Open up the floor for questions; communicate clearly about expectations around milestones, timelines and deadlines.
  • Autonomy: Provide opportunities for choice in story assignments and how individuals manage their time.
  • Relatedness: Find common ground after learning about shared or contrasting experiences.
  • Fairness: Share why, how and when decisions are made with those affected.

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