Progress is achieved through people's efforts to satisfy their needs. Maslow's most famous research was conducted in 1946 in Connecticut, where he concluded that bringing groups of people together was one of the best ways to surface their areas of conflict. These groups were called T-groups, or training groups. The underlying theory held that patterns of behavior needed to be unfrozen before they could be altered, a concept later elaborated by Kurt Lewin.
The Five Levels of Need
According to Maslow, motivational needs can be understood across five levels. The first is physiological: the physical needs for shelter, food, clothing, rest, and sex. The second is security: the need for safety of body and employment, health, stability, protection, benefit plans, social security, order, and public safety.
The third level is social: the need to love and be loved, to form friendships, family bonds, and group affiliations, and to build harmonious interpersonal relationships. The fourth is esteem: the need to be valued, to develop self-esteem, to feel important and useful, and to receive recognition and acknowledgment of merit.
The fifth and highest level is self-actualization: the desire to renew and expand one's potential, to become increasingly more of what one is capable of becoming.
A Living Hierarchy, Not a Rigid Scale
For Maslow, most people tend to seek to satisfy basic needs first. Only after those are met will they seek to address needs of belonging, status, and self-actualization. Importantly, two factors qualify this model: each person's needs change over time, both in terms of satisfaction and in terms of the order of priority. The hierarchy he developed therefore represents a general tendency, not a rigid scale.
In Maslow's view, the most significant need was of a spiritual nature: the will toward self-individuation and spiritual fulfillment, to know oneself at the deepest level possible. Yet a striking discrepancy remains visible in the behavior of many people in Western cultures, who continue to accept as scientific truth that we live in a materialist world where everything is made of matter and matter constitutes fundamental reality.
Beyond Material Wealth
As Mother Teresa once observed when visiting Americans: despite being materially wealthy, they were poor in spirit. Let us reflect on the deeper motivations that move us each day in the exercise of leadership and management across every area of our lives.