The renowned theorist Maslow found that people need motivation to fulfill certain needs, and that some needs always take priority over others. He therefore proposed Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The earlier five-level model of this theory became widely known. From the bottom of the hierarchy upward, the five levels are:
Physiological needs: eating, sleeping,
Safety needs: earning money and having a place to live
Social needs: having someone who loves you
Esteem needs: having people who appreciate you
Self-actualization: having a sense of worth.
Needs always emerge and are fulfilled progressively, from lower to higher levels. What practical applications does this have in our day-to-day work?
In team management, we can provide different ways to meet people's needs at different levels. For example, we can foster a positive workplace atmosphere to support team relationships and a sense of belonging as part of social needs, give more respect to employees seeking esteem, and offer more recognition to employees seeking self-actualization.
It can also inspire ways to identify consumer demand. In economics, the price consumers are willing to pay corresponds to the satisfaction they receive. So you can offer different value propositions to customers with different levels of needs—for example, strengthen a product’s functional value to meet safety needs, and add extra value to meet social and esteem needs, and so on.
You can also better understand the different people around you, as well as how the same person behaves differently at different stages of life. Of course, to better understand their behavior, you should also know a few caveats to this theory.
3.1. The strength of each person’s needs at each level varies, sometimes dramatically. For example, someone with a strong need for financial security may always feel they don’t have enough money. Even when they’re already rolling in it, they may keep amassing wealth recklessly, even at the risk of earning people’s contempt—and not care. By contrast, someone with little need for social connection may be content with just two close friends.
3.2. Needs can also be met out of sequence—for example, an artist who goes hungry, a traveler who sells their house, or a retired senior official who would rather be driven out of their home than apologize to their boss.
3.3. A single behavior can serve multiple levels of need. For example, while working to earn money, someone might also want to preserve their dignity. Even someone who happily does a good deed may hope to receive a little token of thanks or something like that.
3.4 After the satisfaction of lower-level needs declines, it sometimes doesn't affect the continued pursuit of higher levels. For example, medical workers and volunteers on the front lines of the fight against the epidemic see all needs below self-actualization under strain—tired and hungry, facing danger and staying away from home for long periods, and even not understood or respected by some people. Of course, you could say there's a sense of responsibility in this behavior, but you also surely know that responsibility is a duty that comes with one's position. For many people, especially volunteers, this behavior is more a voluntary and proactive choice to go even when they could choose not to. Although human complexity always exceeds what theory describes, that said, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is still worth referencing for studying the overall generality of human beings.