The Needs Lens
Communication skills workshops
Great teams aren’t lucky. They’re skilled.
Change how your team talks to each other in a single day
From the author of Why weren’t we taught THIS at school?, published in eleven languages. Trusted by leaders and teams across the public, private, and third sectors.
Book a callDoes any of this sound like your team?
- Hard things go unsaid, because people don’t know how to say them without damaging relationships
- Different communication styles keep clashing, and nothing gets resolved
- Feedback only happens during performance reviews, so small issues don’t get taken care of
- People leave too much of themselves at the door
- Your team is already strong, and you want to give them the skills to go further
The good news: all of these can be solved with skills your team can learn.
Start here
The Needs Lens: foundation day
In one day, your team learns to look underneath behaviour to the needs that drive it, like being heard, knowing they matter, belonging, or having fun. Using real situations from their own work, they start building the four practical skills: listening with empathy, understanding themselves with compassion, speaking to be heard, and acting with care for everyone’s needs.
By the end of the day, your team will be able to:
- make sense of frustrating or puzzling behaviour, including their own
- avoid the ten habitual listening responses that shut conversations down
- listen so people feel safe to bring more of themselves to work, and get to the real issue faster
- notice when they’re triggered, so they can avoid reacting and then regretting it
- use empathy in difficult conversations so that both sides feel heard and can move forward
- turn clashes into solutions that work for everyone, not just the loudest voice
- hold meetings that are more focused and more productive
Short on time? Also available in two other formats:
a compact half-day version
a 60–90 minute taster for a lunch-and-learn or all-staff session
I could immediately see how to use the material to bring real benefit to our team. It was very refreshing and different to other trainings, which tend to focus on theory without looking at real-life applications.
What changes for your team
Honesty instead of polite silence
the things people have been holding back get said, clearly and kindly
Calm instead of reactivity
people notice when they’re triggered and respond, rather than react
Empathy instead of disconnection
people understand where colleagues are coming from, even when they disagree
Trust instead of blame
mistakes can be raised confidently, with the assumption that everyone’s doing their best
Solutions that last instead of quick fixes
problems get solved at the root, so they don’t keep coming back
And because these skills make a real difference at home as well as at work, they stick.
The team communication is much better now. Individuals are facing their challenges with authenticity and communicating about their differences. We communicate about our needs much more now, and I see how much your intervention has helped.
Take the learning home
Add a copy of my book, Why weren’t we taught THIS at school?, for everyone on your team, for just £5 each.
It goes deeper into the skills from the day, so people can keep coming back to it when they meet a challenging situation at work or at home. It’s the book the whole approach is built on.
“A beautifully simple guide to the relationship skills we all so deeply need, but most of us don’t know how to access.”
After the foundation day
Team training: stackable half-day modules
Most teams start with the foundation day, then add the modules that fit.
How you put The Needs Lens into practice will look different in every organisation, depending on your culture, your policies, and the way you work. So there’s no set pathway: we design what you need together. The one thing that never changes is where we start, with the heart of The Needs Lens: understanding behaviour through shared human needs.
Each module is half a day, and two can be joined to make a full day.
Core skills: listening and self-awareness
listen with empathy, and understand yourself with compassion
Core skills: speaking and problem-solving
speak to be heard, and act with care for everyone’s needs
Hard conversations
a simple map for doing them well
Feedback
give and receive feedback that lands
Leading productive meetings
meetings where everyone is heard and things get decided
Team conversation part 1: preparing in separate groups
leaders and the rest of the team learn the skills to talk well together
Team conversation part 2: talking together
a carefully held conversation about something that matters to your team, such as feedback, what’s getting in the way, or a change you’re going through
Advanced skills (up to 12 people)
small-group practice on the skills you most want to develop, such as empathy under pressure, the inner critic, or setting boundaries
She knows how to bring the values of NVC to big organisations and get senior management involved. She is practical, efficient and understands well the needs of corporations.
Want to keep the learning going? Ask about programmes with monthly sessions, leadership groups, and training for internal champions.
About Alice
I’ve been a barrister, a teacher, and a CEO, as well as a daughter, a partner, and a parent. In every role, I’ve seen how much gets lost when we don’t navigate our differences well: the conversation that never happens, the idea that never gets heard, the friction nobody names. Most of us were never taught another way.
Discovering the power of shared human needs was a lightbulb moment for me. The idea that every piece of behaviour, however difficult, comes from needs we all share gave me a real foundation for building the kind of team, and the kind of world, that I want to see. I wrote about it in Why weren’t we taught THIS at school?, now published in eleven languages.
Today, as the founder of The Needs Lens, I work with leaders and teams across the public, private, and third sectors. I see all the time how much opens up when people understand each other’s needs: honest conversations, better ideas, and people who feel heard and seen.
Human skills are what set the best teams apart, and they aren’t a gift some people are born with. Your team can learn them.
“The way she explains empathy, and how behaviour is always an attempt to meet our needs, is the clearest I’ve come across.”
Questions people ask
We’ve done communication training before. How is this different?
Most training gives people tools for particular conversations. The Needs Lens gives them one way of understanding people that works in every conversation.
Can one day really make a difference?
Yes. Most people change how they listen in a single workshop. And because the whole team learns a shared language, it keeps working after the day.
Will people feel exposed?
No one is put on the spot, and people choose what they share.
Can you do it online?
The taster works well online or in person. All half-day and full-day sessions are in person only.
Let’s talk about your team
Book a free 30-minute call. Tell me what’s going on and what you’d like to change, and we’ll see whether The Needs Lens is the right fit.
Book a call