exercise · all tools
What I Need From You (WINFY)
Depth · what it can open●●○○2 — reflective
Holding · facilitation2 — facilitator
Trust · group readiness★★some
Disclosure · what is sharedrequired
Functions or teams that depend on each other each formulate their top needs from the others as crisp requests. Spokespeople exchange them in a public circle — and answer only "yes", "no", "I'll try", or "whatever" (meaning the request was too vague), with no explanations allowed. The discipline of clean asks and unhedged answers surfaces years of cross-silo fog in an hour.
Prerequisites
- Real interdependence between the groups present, and leaders willing to hear a public 'no'
Hold with care
- The no-explanations rule stings and is the point — brief everyone on why, or the debrief becomes damage control
Practical
- Time
- 60-90 min
- Group
- 12–∞ · small-group, large-group, organization
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- Large room; spokesperson chairs in a circle; sticky notes
- Mechanisms
- dialogic-encounter, feedback-mirroring
- Change scope
- state · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- liberatingstructures.com/what-i-need-from-you — Liberating Structures, open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Henri Lipmanowicz & Keith McCandless — Liberating Structures
In this directory via Liberating Structures
status: checked · added 2026-08-25