There's a relationship dynamic most of us have either lived or watched play out. One partner never complains, never asks for much, prides themselves on being "low maintenance." The other regularly voices concerns — about big things, small things, the dish by the sink. And somehow, both people end up miserable.
The one who speaks up feels ignored. The one who stays quiet feels like nothing they do is ever enough. Two people who genuinely loved each other, slowly ground down by a problem neither of them can quite name.
That problem? Nobody learned how to actually say what they needed.
This Isn't Just a Relationship Problem
The exact same dynamic plays out at work every single day — and the costs are staggering. We're talking $605 billion in lost productivity annually in the U.S. alone, driven largely by disengaged employees who don't feel safe enough to be honest with their managers.
Chris Mefford, CEO of Culture Force and co-author of Leadership is Overrated, puts it plainly: "Most organizations treat unexpressed needs as an individual communication failure — 'just speak up!' — when it's actually a cultural failure. The environment hasn't been built to make that kind of honesty safe or rewarded."
In other words, the problem isn't that your employees are bad at communicating. It's that you've built a place where honest communication feels risky.
Silence Is a Symptom, Not the Disease
When people don't express what they need, it's rarely because they don't know what they need. It's because they've learned — through experience or observation — that expressing needs gets you labeled as difficult, weak, or a complainer.
So they go quiet. They work around the problem. They build resentment. And eventually, they leave — or stay and stop caring, which is somehow worse.
The fix isn't a communication workshop. As leadership consultant Hanna Miller puts it, "Leaders can't simply encourage people to speak up. Effective need expression is a skill — it requires language, practice, and trust." And trust only grows when leaders respond to expressed needs with action rather than judgment, consistently, over time.
David Joles, COO of PURCOR Pest Solutions, takes a direct approach: explicitly tell your team you want to hear what they need, and then ask them individually regularly. "Often a little bit of prying — in a healthy, non-pressuring way — is what it takes for employees to open up. Over time, as it becomes more and more clear that they can express their needs with positive results, they'll naturally become more comfortable doing so on their own."
How to Ask for What You Need at Work
If you're the one who needs to make a request, framing matters enormously. Barbara Robinson, marketing manager at WeatherSolve Structures, learned this the hard way after a miscommunication nearly cost her company a $300K contract.
Her rule: never lead with what would make your life easier. Lead with what your manager already cares about — results.
"When I needed to hire a second copywriter, I didn't tell my CEO I was overwhelmed," she said. "I showed him that our content output had declined 35% over six months and we were missing deadlines on three client campaigns. Then I came armed with salary ranges, productivity projections, and a 90-day onboarding plan."
Mefford frames it similarly: lead with the outcome. "I want to deliver excellent work on this, and to do that, I need X." That positions your need not as a personal ask, but as alignment with what leadership already wants.
The Real Goal
Mefford describes what a healthy culture actually looks like: "A place where telling your boss what you need to do your best work is as unremarkable as updating a project status. Not heroic. Not vulnerable. Just Tuesday."
That's the bar. Not a workplace where people are brave enough to speak up despite the risk, but one where the risk doesn't exist in the first place.
Whether it's a marriage or a Monday morning standup, the relationships that last are the ones where both people trust that saying "I need something" won't be used against them. Building that kind of safety isn't soft. It's the whole job.