Breaking Free from the Chains of the Need to be Needed

Do you create chaos in your life, so that you always have a problem to solve, and people always need your help? If so, you may have a “need to be needed.” 

This underlying, hidden need shows up in many of our clients. It can bring your business down to its knees—just like the need to be liked, the need to be right, the need to be in control, and the need not to be wrong. These are patterns people developed in childhood that allowed them to get their needs met.

If you have “a need to be needed,” then you have to be the smartest person in the room. If you must be the one to solve all the problems and save the day in your own company, then you’re not really a leader. You won’t be able to grow a team, because your team won’t stick around. A leader’s job is to attract people who are smarter than them, who can do a better job in their respective expertise than they can.

In today’s episode we discuss:

• How your parents are no longer the authority of you—YOU are your own authority 

• Some of our clients and family members who struggle with the needed to be needed

• How being needed gives people a sense of importance, a way to add value—but this requires someone else playing the role of “victim” 

• How one of our clients would build an amazing company, make great progress, then blow their business up—they’d tear the whole thing down and destroy everything that everybody did, so they’d have to start over again

• The difference between hiring an “employee” who checks the boxes and hiring a team member who sticks around because they believe in the vision

• How “A players” are constantly looking for growth, and if they don’t feel like there’s opportunities for growth within a company, they leave

• My experience working for a family-owned company that literally wanted to cause problems for the drivers

Some people have to constantly be in a damn crisis in order for them to feel good about themselves—and if you’re doing very well in life, they can’t acknowledge you for that.

As a leader, your job is to build other leaders, to create autonomy so that they can build leaders. That’s the only way to grow a company. 

Episode #144 – Break it Down to the Ridiculous