Human beings have inborn needs that motivate, channel, and modify behavior.
These needs, as they are pursued by individuals and groups, have a tremendous impact on how organizations and human society as a whole operate. The needs frustrate leadership that tries to ignore or sidestep them, and they support lead-ership that provides employees with avenues to satisfy them. There are many models and theories that describe human needs. I prefer a slight modification of control theory. The original control theory posits that people are always seek-ing, usually without being aware of it, to satisfy five basic needs. The seven needs of my slight modification of control theory are shown in Figure 3.1.
It is not important for our purposes whether these seven needs are the
“real” human needs that future research may verify. You might be inclined to identify 10 needs or 3 needs if you thought about it for a while. The seven
needs are sufficient to demonstrate the power of innate needs and the ways in which they influence much of what we all do. As we discuss these needs, keep in mind that there is a range of each need’s strength across people. While all humans appear to have all seven needs to some degree, some people are driven much more or much less than others by each of the various needs. Unlike Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which proposes sequential need hurdles, con-trol theory stipulates that all seven of the needs presented in Figure 3.1 be simultaneously pursued.
survival
Few people, except perhaps a small number who are very physically and/
or mentally ill, wish to die right now. It’s easy to understand why. Everyone alive today is a genetic descendant of thousands of generations of prehuman and human survivors, those who struggled against all odds to raise offspring without medicine, science, reliable food and water supplies, central heating, prenatal care, refrigeration, transportation, and even without cable TV, per-sonal music players, and cell phones. At the same time, they faced drought, disease, wild animals, floods, famines, prairie and forest fires, ice ages, short life spans, and infant mortality rates in the 90% range. As humans developed over the last few hundred thousand years, those who were too slow, stupid, weak, prone to illness, or not willing to keep struggling did not survive. Only those who strove against all odds (and were lucky) survived and produced off-spring. Given this history, how can any manager say that his or her employees can’t handle the work or aren’t tough enough? Given the right leadership, any group of human beings can do almost anything because we are all the direct descendants of tough-as-nails survivors.
Figure 3.1 The seven inborn human needs.
Survival Sex Belonging
Self-power Fun
Self-worth
Freedom
sex
The pursuit of sex is hardwired into human beings by natural selection. In a primitive environment with high infant mortality rates, the bulk of resources, after ensuring basic survival, must be devoted to reproduction and child rear-ing. If a group of protohumans or humans (or squirrels or worms) did not have birthrates that exceeded their death rates, they did not pass their genes into the future. Every person alive today is a direct descendant of those who focused extensively on sex. This is why there are more than 6 billion people on earth now, with an estimated total of 12 billion to 20 billion by 2150. While almost everyone agrees in general that we have a population problem now, or will have one soon, the inborn urge to have sex and thus children is difficult to resist on an individual level—it is part of what we are.
Belonging
Human beings are born to work together and find satisfaction in groups. All peo-ple have an inherent need to be with other peopeo-ple. This tendency was wired into us long ago and is just as important as a strong sex drive in helping us survive as a species. Primates, protohumans, and humans who tried to make it alone or in very small groups did not survive. Those who formed groups had much better odds of surviving long enough to raise their offspring. The evidence of humans’
need for contact with others is plentiful. When humans are deprived of human contact for long periods, they frequently become mentally ill and often psy-chotic (as prisons such as Pelican Bay in California demonstrate). People who live alone tend to die earlier, get ill more often, and take longer to recover.
Babies who are held more gain weight faster and recover from illness and pre-mature birth sooner than babies who are held less. People who have large, close, extended families during childhood tend to deal better with stress in adult life than those from smaller families with few nearby relatives. It’s clear: Humans need to be around other people. They want to belong to a group, and they suffer when they do not. Think of what this means for leaders: Employees are seeking group membership. They need it. This means they must be allowed to function in effective teams and groups that get important work done. If not, they will find other groups that will accept them and provide their group belongingness fix. At work, these other groups can range from unions to groups of complain-ers, troublemakcomplain-ers, or those who simply go through the motions of work. Most of these alternative groups will generally not fully share management’s goals.
Employees need to belong. Good leaders provide them with opportunities for belonging to groups that assist the organization in meeting its objectives.
self-Worth
Human beings crave feelings of self-worth; we all need to believe that we are valued for our unique qualities by those around us, particularly those we admire and/or those with whom we share similar values and attitudes. This provides validation of our selves as individuals. Without such validation, we suffer. People who lack close social contacts tend to be depressed more often and tend to have more difficulties with careers and forming new relationships compared with those with solid social contacts. Recent research discovered that a primary pain-processing center, the anterior cingulate cortex, is acti-vated just as much from a social snub as it is from overt physical pain; the need for social acceptance is hardwired into us. The need for self-worth is active in people every day, especially at work. Our modern lifestyle of career chasing and job hopping has taken away traditional opportunities for self-worth pro-vided by family relations living nearby and stable communities where people live for tens of years and provide social support for one another. Without real-izing it and without seeking it, organizations have become the major default source for social and personal self-worth for many people. Ironically, this has occurred just as employees are increasingly being shown that they are dispos-able. This circumstance can greatly benefit both businesses and employees if work and organizations are modified to provide more opportunities for self-worth and group belongingness.
self-Power
Human beings need to feel as though they have some control over their imme-diate surroundings; they need to believe they have self-power to look out for themselves. A well-known and often repeated experiment demonstrates the impact of merely the perception of self-power. A group of volunteer male subjects were told that they were participants in sensory perception research.
Each of the subjects had one of his fingers placed in a sleeve that would deliver an electric shock sent from a computer. The subject was told that there were 10 levels of shock, ranging from 1, the least powerful, to 10, the most severe. The subject was then given one shock at each level from 1 to 10 as the experimenter called out the shock level. Level 1 was almost imperceptible, while level 10 was extremely painful. The subject was then told that he would be given a shock every few seconds and that he should try to guess the shock intensity and call out the appropriate number. The subject was then shown a button that was near his other hand. He was told that the more he pressed the button, the more he would reduce the intensity of the shocks. After receiving
the 8th-, 9th-, and 10th-level shocks, subjects were very motivated to rapidly press the button.
A second group of subjects was taken through the same procedure with the same exact sequence of shocks, except that the function of the button was explained differently. The second group was told that the more they pressed the button, the more money they would receive. The potential money that could be earned was meaningful to the subjects. Thus, both groups were motivated to rapidly press the button. The secret of the experiment was that neither but-ton was connected to anything; they were fakes. The results demonstrated that the subjects who thought they could reduce the shock levels by pressing the button reported shock levels that were one to three levels lower than the actual shocks. Just thinking that they could reduce the shocks made the subjects per-ceive the shocks as less painful. The subjects pressing the button for money reported the shocks as accurately as the subjects who were merely estimating the shock levels without any button to press.
This experiment, replicated many times over the years, demonstrates that if people believe they have some control over their situation, some self-power, they will find a situation less oppressive. The remarkable finding is that the amount of control does not have to be extensive. While it would be foolish for a leader to pretend to provide an opportunity for a self-worth need satisfac-tion that is empty, it is not necessary to let employees run rampant in order to meet their needs for self-power. They understand the realities of work and the constraints that exist. A wise leader finds as many situations as possible within these constraints to allow employees to satisfy their needs for feeling that they can make a difference. The structural configurations described in Chapter 6 create many of these situations.
Fun
Some theorists believe that humans are the only species that plays, but these people must have never owned a dog or cat or watched monkeys at a zoo. It is believed that people need to play in order to defuse tension, deal with a frus-trating situation (as when satire is used to lambaste politicians and bosses), and increase bonds among a group that feels it is undervalued (as when a group of workers engages in a game of “ain’t it terrible” as they complain about their organization and how they perceive their group’s place in it). If people don’t feel as though they can play around a bit at work, it is an indication that their frustration and anger are dangerously high. It is also an indication of an oppressive organization. The bosses may be keeping things under control
but at a high cost in loyalty, enthusiasm, and commitment to getting things done. Fear can generate acquiescence, but it cannot create a highly productive work environment. As might be expected in our 24/7 world, fun is the least studied of the seven needs. Those organizations that bring in comedians for a few hours of entertainment under the guise of making work “fun” are miss-ing the point; workers must find fun in one another, in their work, and in the organization.
Freedom
The need to have a choice in various situations is critical to human beings, if for no other reason than it allows us to attempt to manipulate a situation to our advantage. We have to move around in the world and make choices in order to eat, drink, procreate, find a job, and get ahead. The need for self-power provides the energy for us to make changes, but it might not be enough to drive us to find situations in which we can make a choice. The satisfaction of the need for freedom enables all the others. It is critical for leaders to provide employees with the maximum possible freedom that’s appropriate in every situation. This enables employees to get the most of everything for themselves while providing management with what it wants. The structural configurations described in Chapter 6 create situations in which employees can enjoy appro-priate levels of freedom in their day-to-day work.
So what do needs tell us? They tell us that employees are using their work life (and their home life—it’s all the same as far as need satisfaction is con-cerned) to satisfy powerful compulsions that cannot be denied. This creates tremendous energy that has to go somewhere, much like a river raging through a canyon. A leader has only two choices: (1) direct this energy and benefit both the organization and the employee, or (2) let nature take its course and get only what the averaged need satisfaction of all employees produces.