Motivation theory – Maslow

Abraham Maslow was a humanist psychologist who pioneered the idea that human behaviour is driven by our needs.

Maslow’s hierarchy is a theory of motivation that suggests we have layers of needs which are hierarchical, in that we need to sort out one layer before being able to attend to the next. This hierarchy is generally depicted as a pyramid with the most basic need of all, physical survival, at the bottom.

This hierarchical model makes some sense; it is very difficult to think about ‘higher’ things while struggling to survive, and it would not be advantageous to do so in an evolutionary sense, either.

There is a similarity to Herzberg’s model, which can be seen as an extension of Maslow, in that the first four levels are often referred to as deficiency needs, while the top level is known as growth or being needs.

The greater a deficiency need, the stronger will be the urge to meet it – so the longer it is since you ate, the hungrier you become.

When these needs have been reasonably satisfied Maslow thought it would become possible to reach self-actualisation and be able to reach one’s full potential.

Life is a game of snakes and ladders, however; messy experiences like unemployment, divorce and so on prevent people getting their life needs met and so reduce the chance of real fulfilment in self-actualisation.

Maslow thought that only 1% of the population would achieve that highest goal because we spend so much of our time striving for the wrong things – our commercial culture encourages us to pay attention only to external elements of success. Self-actualisation is different: “It refers to the person’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualised in what he is potentially.”

Self-actualisation would vary from one person to another: “The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions”

This is not a whole philosophy of workplace motivation, but it forms a significant part of the underpinnings of modern frameworks like SDT and, of course, the WeThrive 4C model.