Here’s two questions for you to think about. One is probably quite straightforward to the answer, the other… maybe not so much. Here you go:
- Question 1: Did you celebrate National Best Friends Day on June 8th?
- Question 2: How good of a friend are you?
National Best Friends Day is a celebration to honor those who hold the title of best friend in our lives. Of course, if you didn’t celebrate the day, or didn’t know about it, that doesn't mean you aren’t a good friend. But perhaps Best Friends Day is a good moment to stop and think about our friends, and especially our best friend. Do we give them what they need? We tend to see the world through the lens of our own personality, our likes and dislikes, and it can be difficult to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. That’s when knowing something about our personality, and how it differs from that of other people, can help.
One really useful framework in building and maintaining relationships goes by the name of “FIRO”, code for “Fundamental Interpersonal Relationships Orientation”. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but it describes what the FIRO does. It measures what you need, and what you show, in your interpersonal relationships. This can help explain why sometimes other people, including our friends, don’t seem to understand us, or give us what we need from them – and why sometimes we don’t understand our friends.
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The FIRO framework looks at three different types of interpersonal needs:
- Inclusion, our need to belong. How much do you need to be part of a group? How much do you want to be included by other people in their groups, and how much do you want to include others in your group?
- Control, our need for influence. How much to you need to have clear direction and structure in your relationships, both on a one-to-one level and in groups
- Affection, our need for intimacy. How important is it for you to have close personal relationships with other people at a one-to-one level?
The FIRO looks at two different aspects for each of these areas. First, how much of that need is expressed to others, how much of that behavior we initiate to others. For Inclusion, for example, how much do we try to include other people in our activities – your FIRO Expressed Inclusion score. It also looks at how much we want from others.
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- For Inclusion: How much do we need other people to include us in their group and involve us in their activities? Wanted Inclusion.
- For Control: The extent to which we try to influence and control others, and how much we want to be in an environment that provides us with structure and clarity. Expressed Control and Wanted Control.
- For Affection: How much we try to be warm and friendly to others, and how much we want others to be warm and friendly to us. Expressed and Wanted Affection.
That gives scores; Expressed and Wanted Inclusion,Expressed and Wanted Control,Expressed and Wanted Affection. And we can have a high, medium, or low score for each of these six areas.
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So how can this explain why someone might be misunderstood? Well, this can happen when someone’s expressed and wanted scores are different. Let’s look at an example. Joe has high Expressed Inclusion, but low Wanted Inclusion. He wants to involve lots of people in his activities but doesn’t want them to include him in their activities. He’s likely seen by others as outgoing and sociable, but he also has a real need for privacy.
Because people see his high Expressed Inclusion, his friends are likely to invite or include him more than he wants to be, and he’ll refuse some of those invitations – which might leave them feeling hurt or otherwise harm the friendship. But knowing his FIRO profile will give Joe the language to describe his behavior and keep the friendship alive.
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Of course, our interpersonal needs involve other people too. Let’s look at Joe alongside his friend Joan. Joe has high Expressed Inclusion and low Wanted Inclusion. Joan has low Expressed Inclusion and high Wanted Inclusion. This might make for a good relationship. Joe wants to include Joan (high Expressed Inclusion), and she wants to be included (high Wanted Inclusion). Joan doesn’t much want to include other people in her activities (low Expressed Inclusion), and that’s fine with Joe, who doesn’t much want to be included (low Wanted Inclusion).
However, things might be a little different on Affection. Joe has high Expressed Affection and high Wanted Affection. Joan is low on both. Joe wants to be warm and friendly with Joan, to get a connection, but Joan, with low Wanted Affection, doesn’t want that. And Joe is looking for warm and friendly behavior from Joan, which she probably doesn’t want to express. This may be an area where understanding their FIRO results helps them to understand why their relationship may sometimes be strained, and gives them the knowledge they need to make that relationship work.
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So take a moment to think about your relationships, your friendships. Are there places where your best friend doesn’t seem to understand you, or you them? Are there times when they don’t quite seem to give you what you need, or vice versa? Maybe understanding your interpersonal needs, or knowing your FIRO profile, could help.
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