Communication needs
What needs are satisfied in and through communication? What are the driving forces of communication, its internal causes? Why do people come into contact with each other? If you answer the questions asked specifically in each individual case (What need does this person satisfy? What is his goal? What does he want from me?), this will help eliminate many mistakes. There can be many motives that prompt a person to ask this or that question. The result of communication depends on how closely the interlocutor’s motives coincide with yours, and on how accurately you “caught” his motive.
Among the many motives (making communication a means of satisfying needs), several basic ones can be identified. These include:
1. The need for prestige (recognition). When a person, entering into communication, hopes or strives to express his personal qualities through recognition, admiration, positive evaluations from others, he satisfies precisely the need for prestige. This is not surprising: when communicating, we seek recognition of our abilities and, not finding it, we are upset, disappointed and even aggressive. If in the process of communication we cannot satisfy the need for prestige, will the communication (and the interlocutor himself) be interesting for us? Communication with people who tend to evaluate us positively is always attractive.
2. The need for dominance. This is the desire to actively influence the way of thoughts and actions, tastes, and attitudes of another person. In its mild form, it looks like this: if, under our influence, the situation or behavior of another person changes in the direction we desire, then we satisfy the need for dominance. In a harsh form, in an exaggerated form, this need is expressed in the desire to influence another for the sake of this influence itself.
3.Need for affiliation. Affiliation means the need for communication for the sake of communication itself (maintaining warm relationships, eliminating discomfort or loneliness). Some people cannot stand loneliness, their need for affiliation is so strong. Finding himself alone in a room, a person with a strong need for affiliation strives to immediately restore communication (even via telephone).
4. Need for security. This is one of the basic, or, as psychologists say, “vital” needs. So, a person satisfies his basic vital needs in a variety of ways (escape, attack, pretense, conformity and even neuroses). But if, for one reason or another, some of these reactions are blocked, then the need for security is almost always satisfied through communication. Even complete strangers become more sociable in situations of anxious waiting (for example, in line at the doctor's office).
5. The need to maintain individuality. This need manifests itself in the desire for such communication in which or as a result of which we could read in the face and speech of another person recognition of our originality, uniqueness, and unusualness. It begins in early childhood, when parents communicate with the child as a one and only being. In order to maintain individuality, a person has to resist the leveling influence of the social environment, which classifies each of us into a certain category of people with ready-made programs for responding to a particular situation. Resistance is the basis of the need to preserve individuality.
6. Need for patronage.
7.Need for cognition.
8. The need for beauty.
1 . 3. Communication as the main way of activity of a social worker.
In an environment of historical upheavals, the activities of a social worker, his humanity, willingness to help, ability to listen and understand, communicate with different groups of people and through this communication solve practical problems facing the individual and society are of great importance; those. mastering the art of communication is the most important and essential skill that a person whose line of work is directly involved in working with people should have.
Conventionally, communication can be divided into two blocks: the first is spontaneous communication in the process of human life, without which the existence of society itself is impossible, the second is a purposeful process carried out by special institutions, organizations and individuals, including directly in social work.
The legitimacy of special consideration of the problem of targeted communication in the social work system is due to the following reasons.
Firstly, the universal nature of the impact. Secondly, the defining nature of purposeful direct communication in comparison with spontaneous communication, carried out in all types of human activity. Thirdly, this is due to the scale of its action: it universally and purposefully covers essentially a significant part of the population; Therefore, analysis of the content of communication, the nature of the relationships that arise, and their influence on people’s mood is an extremely important issue, but has not yet been properly reflected in the literature.
Fourthly, direct communication creates significantly greater opportunities not only for persuasion, but also for persuasion, because there are conditions for dialogue, identifying different points of view for discussion. Attention to this problem is also caused by the dialectical contradictory nature of the development of the communication process itself.
Fifthly, the practice of recent years indicates that social workers do not have the proper culture of communication.
