My wife and I attended a wedding recently. In addition to throwing a check in the envelope, we wrote them a little note. We were extremely happy for the couple and excited to be there to celebrate their special day with them.
We are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this year in 2026, so we decided to offer the couple some advice: Our top 10 points of marriage. Within the top ten, we offered advice about listening, being gentle, and being forgiving. As we were getting close to the end of our list, I asked my wife what else we should include? She said to add the question: “Do you need to be helped, hugged or heard?”
I loved it and it absolutely made the list. She said that she had read it in an article about a Doctor who began to use that line with his patients. Yes, many of them needed to be helped, but he wanted to know about the why and a little bit more about his patients.
When you ask the right questions, you can learn so much more about people, and how to best help them.
So much of the life of an educator and a school leader is helping others with their problems or fixing them the best you can.
So many times outside the walls of school, whether in other professional settings, or in my personal life, it was really one or the other: the hugs or just being heard, not necessarily the need to be helped. Sometimes a person just wants to be heard, even in the incredibly intense environment of division one men’s college basketball. So many times while officiating, the coach just wanted to be heard. The coach could definitely accept a mistake, but they wanted to be heard. There weren’t very many hugs in those environments, but listening was certainly key.
So in the next situation you face with another person, ask the question: Do you need to be helped, hugged, or heard?
The answer might surprise you, and you might help the person by being a great listener, then giving that oh-so-important hug! Keep surviving and thriving, friends!
