Leadership - Abraham Maslow
Motivation - Abraham Maslow
Background
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology that Abraham Maslow proposed in his 1943 paper ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, which he subsequently extended. His theory contends that as humans meet 'basic needs', they seek to satisfy successively 'higher needs' that occupy a set hierarchy.
Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy."
(‘Motivation and Personality’, 1987)
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels.
The four lower levels are grouped together as ‘deficiency needs’ associated with ‘physiological’ needs, while the top level is termed ‘growth needs’ associated with ‘psychological’ needs.
While our ‘deficiency needs’ must be met, our ‘being’ needs are continually shaping our behaviour.
The basic concept is that the higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus once all the needs that are lower down in the pyramid are mainly or entirely satisfied.
Growth forces create upward movement in the hierarchy, whereas regressive forces push the more influential needs further down the hierarchy.
Deficiency needs
The deficiency needs (also termed 'D-needs' by Maslow) are:
Physiological needs
The physiological needs of the organism, those enabling homeostasis, take first precedence.
These consist mainly of:
The need to breathe.
The need for water.
The need to eat.
The need to dispose of bodily wastes.
The need for sleep.
The need to regulate body temperature.
The need for protection from microbial aggressions (hygiene).
When some of the needs are unmet, a human's physiological needs take the highest priority.
As a result of the influential nature of physiological needs, an individual will de-prioritize all other desires and capacities.
Physiological needs can control thoughts and behaviors, and can cause people to feel sickness, pain and discomfort.
Maslow also places sexual activity in this category, as well as bodily comfort, activity, exercise, etc.
Safety needs
When the physiological needs are met, the need for safety will emerge.
Safety and security ranks above all other desires. These include:
Security of employment.
Security of revenues and resources.
Physical security - safety from violence, delinquency, aggressions.
Moral and physiological security.
Familial security.
Security of health.
A properly-functioning society tends to provide a degree of security to its members.
Sometimes the desire for safety outweighs the requirement to satisfy physiological needs completely.
Love / belonging needs
After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs are social.
This involves emotionally-based relationships in general, such as friendship, sexual intimacy, and / or having a family.
Humans want to be accepted and to belong, whether it be to clubs, work groups, religious groups, family, gangs, etc.
They need to feel loved (sexually and non-sexually) by others, and to be accepted by them.
People also have a constant desire to feel needed.
In the absence of these elements, people become increasingly susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety and depression.
Esteem needs
Humans have a need to be respected, to self-respect and to respect others.
People need to engage themselves in order to gain recognition and have an activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution and self-value, be it in a profession or hobby.
Imbalances at this level can result in low self-esteem, inferiority complexes, an inflated sense of self-importance or snobbishness.
Being needs
Though the ‘deficiency needs’ may be seen as ‘basic’, and can be met and neutralized (i.e. they stop being motivators in one's life), self-actualization and transcendence are ‘being’ or ‘growth needs’ (also termed "B-needs"), i.e. they are enduring motivations or drivers of behaviour [see The Complete Motivation package].
Self-actualization
A dictionary definition is.
The process of establishing oneself as a whole person, able to develop one’s abilities and to understand oneself.
Self-actualization (a term originated by Kurt Goldstein) is the ‘instinctual’ need of humans to make the most of their unique abilities.
Maslow described it as follows.
Self Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is. (‘Psychological Review’, 1949)
Maslow writes the following of self-actualizing people.
They embrace the facts and realities of the world (including themselves) rather than denying or avoiding them.
They are spontaneous in their ideas and actions.
They are creative.
They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the problems of others. Solving these problems is often a key focus in their lives.
They feel a closeness to other people, and generally appreciate life.
They have a system of morality that is fully internalized and independent of external authority.
They judge others without prejudice, in a way that can be termed ‘objective’.
Self-transcendence
A dictionary definition of ‘transcend’ is.
To go above or beyond expectation.
At the top of the triangle, self-transcendence is also sometimes referred to as spiritual needs.
Viktor Frankl expresses the relationship between self-actualization and self-transcendence clearly in ‘Man's Search for Meaning’.
He writes:
The true meaning of life is to be found in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system.
Human experience is essentially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization.
Self-actualization is not a possible aim at all, for the simple reason that the more a man would strive for it, the more he would miss it.
In other words, self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-transcendence. (p.175)
Maslow believes that we should study and cultivate ‘peak experiences’ as a way of providing a route to achieve personal growth, integration, and fulfillment.
Peak experiences are unifying, and ego-transcending, bringing a sense of purpose to the individual and a sense of integration.
Individuals most likely to have peak experiences are self-actualized, mature, healthy, and self-fulfilled.
All individuals are capable of peak experiences.
Those who do not have them somehow depress or deny them.
Maslow originally found the occurrence of peak experiences in individuals who were self-actualized, but later found that peak experiences happened to non-actualizers as well but not as often.
In his ‘The Farther Reaches of Human Nature’ (New York, 1971) he writes:
I have recently found it more and more useful to differentiate between two kinds of self-actualizing people, those who were clearly healthy, but with little or no experiences of transcendence, and those in whom transcendent experiencing was important and even central.
It is unfortunate that I can no longer be theoretically neat at this level. I find not only self-actualizing persons who transcend, but also non-healthy people, non-self-actualizers who have important transcendent experiences. It seems to me that I have found some degree of transcendence in many people other than self-actualizing ones as I have defined this term.
Ken Wilber, a theorist and integral psychologist who was highly influenced by Maslow, later clarified a peak experience as being a state that could occur at any stage of development and that ‘the way in which those states or realms are experienced and interpreted depends to some degree on the stage of development of the person having the peak experience’.
Wilber was in agreement with Maslow about the positive values of peak experiences saying, ‘In order for higher development to occur, those temporary states must become permanent traits’.
Wilber was, in his early career, a leader in Transpersonal psychology, a distinct school of psychology that is interested in studying human experiences which transcend the traditional boundaries of the ego.
In 1969, Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof and Anthony Sutich were the initiators behind the publication of the first issue of the ‘Journal of Transpersonal Psychology’.
In the main good leaders seek to remove risk and fear whilst poor leaders survive on threats and manage risk weakly.