Communicating and leading, one lesson a day

Imagine you coordinate volunteers at a neighborhood food pantry. Saturday's distribution is coming, and the delivery company has changed its arrival window. You need the building manager to unlock the loading entrance earlier than usual. You also need a volunteer to redo labels that cannot be read from the sorting tables. Neither request is dramatic. Still, both can turn awkward when you care about the relationship and do not want to sound demanding.

Today's lesson is about building a request that earns a clear answer while protecting the connection between you. Clinical psychology gives us a practical script. Its strength is that it prevents two familiar failures: hiding the request under a long explanation and delivering frustration without ever stating what you need.

The source is psychologist Marsha Linehan, who created dialectical behavior therapy. Her work often involved intense emotion and strained relationships. She saw the damage caused when people could not state a need without either giving way or erupting. Her answer was a script called DEAR MAN. It appeared in her skills manual in the nineteen nineties and has been taught and tested since. A method designed for severe conflict can handle an everyday request easily.

The letters give you the sequence. D means describe: offer observable facts without loading them with a verdict. E means express: briefly own the effect on you. A means assert: state the exact action you need with a firm ending. R means reinforce: show how agreement helps the other person or the shared work.

That is the DEAR part, and it is the message itself. MAN is how you hold the message. M is mindful: stay on the ask instead of getting pulled into side arguments. A is appear confident: use a steady tone and posture even if you feel nervous. N is negotiate: be willing to give to get, by changing how the need is met or by asking for less.

Run the loading-door request through it. Describe: the truck is scheduled to arrive before the building normally opens. Express: without access, the chilled food will sit outside and the setup team will lose part of its sorting time. Assert: please have the loading entrance open when the driver arrives. Reinforce: that lets the delivery move straight into cold storage and keeps the public entrance clear for visitors.

Four sentences. Notice what is missing. There is no history of every access problem the building has ever had. There is no apology for asking. There is no vague ending that makes the other person guess whether you need an answer. Every extra sentence gives the listener another place to put their attention. A clean ask gives them one decision to make.

Now take the unreadable labels. This is feedback on work someone already did, which can feel more personal. A close cousin of DEAR MAN is the model known as SBI—situation, behavior, and impact—developed by the Center for Creative Leadership. Identify where it happened, what you observed, and what resulted. Then make the ask. At the packing rehearsal, the allergy labels were printed in type that could not be read from the sorting position. Volunteers had to pick up each package to identify it, which slowed the line and increased the chance of a mistake. Please reprint the labels in the larger template before Saturday.

That message does not judge the volunteer. It describes the work and tells them exactly how to fix it. Softening it with “only if you have time” would not be kinder. It would make the priority unclear. Directness, when it is specific and respectful, is a form of respect.

The hard part comes after the ask. When people feel unheard, they often add force or justification. Force sounds like a fight. A long defense sounds like doubt. Both make the answer harder. The better move is less language, held more steadily: describe, express, assert, and reinforce. Then be quiet. That pause gives the other person room to answer.

Mindful does not mean repeating yourself like a machine. It means noticing when the conversation has moved away from the decision. Suppose the building manager starts explaining why the normal hours were chosen. You can acknowledge that and return to the point: I understand why the usual schedule exists. For this delivery, I still need a way to get the chilled food inside when it arrives. You have not attacked the policy or surrendered the need.

Negotiation works the same way. You can trade on the method. Maybe the manager cannot arrive early but can give the driver a temporary access code, or arrange for the overnight custodian to meet the truck. Those are different ways to meet the same need. Negotiation does not require accepting a solution that leaves the food outside.

Here is the practice. Before you send your next request, read it once and mark every sentence as describe, express, assert, or reinforce. Delete anything that does none of those jobs. Check that the ask names a person, an action, and a useful time. If you are giving feedback on completed work, use situation, behavior, and impact before the ask. Then send it without adding an apology underneath.

That is the lesson. Make the ask clear, hold it steadily, and give the other person room to answer.