Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Earlier in the week I explored the desire to flourish rather than simply succeed. I realised, as I wrote what will now be a future blog on personal flourishing, that an understanding of Maslow's hierarchy of needs was useful and decided to write an additional blog first to cover that.

This series of blogs contends that flourishing is a essential desired outcome - individually and organisationally. What flourishing looks like personally Maslow would suggest depends on what someone already has. Maslow hypothesized that someone would start by seeking the fulfilment of their basic or physiological needs for survival. Once these basic needs are met, they no longer act as a motivator for the person. An escalation of needs then takes place with each of these needs providing motivation for someone's actions in the acending order shown in the diagram above.

• Physiological needs are required for survival and include air, water, food, sleep, shelter, clothing and so on.
• Safety needs include security, freedom from pain, protection from danger, wellbeing and so on.
• Belonging needs are the needs to be social and include: family, friendship, affection, and love.
• Esteem or ego needs include respect from others, recognition, appreciation, independence, achievement and so on.
• Self-actualisation needs relate to an individual’s personal growth and fulfilment of their potential.

I wonder if the undercover boss in an earlier blog this week, and other's in similar positions, make assumptions about where those working for them are on this hierarchy of needs. Perhaps based on their own situation and experience. If an organisation is to flourish I'd suggest they need to ensure that these needs are met for those working for them at all levels of the organisation.

One tool I use with clients is taking lessons from nature and applying them to their organisations. I wondered therefore where nature fitted in Maslow's model.  Here's what I came up with - would love your comments on whether you think it works.

In other words plants only have basic physiological needs. This use of the food chain ( my interpretation anyway) then suggests that insects and reptiles have additional safety needs, that birds and mammals have an additional need for belonging and that humans are the only species who also need esteem. 

As so much of humanity is seemingly a long way from having their self actualisation needs met I wondered if that will be the role of Homo Evolutis or whatever, or whoever, comes next? 

In this week's undercover boss DHL's CEO realised they still had action to take to meet the basic safety needs of many of those working for them. I'm sure it's the same in many organisations. The worry is that if this model is true then many organisations are treating those in their employment the same as, or worse than, the food we eat?

Alison Smith

Inspiring change inside and out

Flourishing is the outcome of a 7 step process I've developed that uses nature as our teacher and suggests that, just like nature, we need to preserve our ICECAPS.

Blog 6 of 31 as part of the ultimate blog challenge for July.

Impatience does not serve us well

I've spent a lot of time in traffic over the last couple of days and have encountered a number of unhelpful outcomes of impatience:

• Frustration - I was getting very impatient with the guy in front of us this morning driving at 10 mph slower than I wanted to. My extra speed would have come to nothing once I got into this queue - and in that 5 mile stretch would normally only have saved me 2 minutes! 
• Being delayed further - When faced with this queue this morning another guy in front of us turned round to take what we felt was a short cut (In the hope of coming out of a junction at a point 10 cars in front of us) - I smiled when we came out 5 cars behind us. 
• Causing undue stress in others - Overtaking when there's insufficient space and time to do so safely.
• Injury or worse - There's too many tributes along the side of the road - many I'm sure caused by actions arising from impatience.

Every week on the A9 here in Scotland there's reports of accidents, and at least monthly fatalities. It's a normal A road interspersed with dual carriage way. The hills are long, however, and as it's the main route north it has many lorries slowing down progress. There are multiple signs telling you how far till the next dual carriage way and there's lay-bys for lorries to pull over into too. Yet drivers still allow impatience to motivate unhelpful behaviours that might lead to any one, or all, of the list above.

I wonder what nature has to teach us about impatience?

During a coaching session in June, as we walked down this path, the client shared that they were frustrated with the speed with which things were progressing on a project they were working on.

I asked them to look around and consider how much of what they could see would have been here less than 8 weeks previously. The answer of course was very little of it. The bare trees and perhaps the grass. I'm sure the path ahead would have been illuminated with light from above and not covered in growth. If we'd come here every day for every one of those 8 weeks I'm not we'd have seen much difference each day. Yet within that time so much would have changed.

Next time you get impatient try remembering the outcome you're wishing to achieve and realise you're still headed towards it - many of the behaviours I've seen demonstrated on my travels recently may just stop you achieving your outcome at all!

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out

Blog 5/31 for the ultimate blog challenge in July.

How to get out of a rut

The language we use often provides a gateway into our mind. That is it explains how we've internally represented a situation. Previous blogs have explored phrases we use such as no pain no gain, burning bridges and burying our head in the sand. Yesterday I read a blog that referred to being 'stuck in a rut'. I'd like to share in this blog one of the very simple techniques in the landscaping your life toolkit and apply it to this phrase.

This technique assumes that saying "I'm stuck in a rut" is describing your internal representation of the current situation. Which means if you can change how you're representing it in your mind you may be able to find solutions that currently are hidden from you. 

To change the internal representation is really very easy: 

1. Find a rut, 
2. Stand in the rut 
3. Step out of the rut
4. Notice what you notice about the situation.
5. Be surprised with that you discover.

There's a video blog on this I did some time ago if you'd like to see it in practice.

Next time you find yourself in a rut remember it might be much easier than you think to get out of it.

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out

Blog 4/31 in the Ultimate Blog Challenge for July.