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Abraham Maslow proposed a sixth level in his renowned five level hierarchy of human needs, which behavioural neuroscience has since confirmed. These levels explain the essential drivers of our behaviours, reactions and reactions.
We all have six foundational drivers that are at the heart of practical neuroscience.
Of course, your brain is an incredibly complex organ and variations of human behaviour are an endless ocean of subtle differences. But we can identify six neuro-scientifically founded basic needs of human beings and how these influence our motivational behaviours and how we interact with the world around us.
As human beings, we have developed to use the environment to its best and allow for reproduction and the furtherment of our species: our survival and growth.
For leaders to be successful, they should first ensure that their own needs are met, and then understand and help their team members meet their needs. To do this, a leader needs to understand that their team members have 6 essential needs easily remembered with the SPACES acronym – Survival, Pleasure, Attachment, Control, Esteem and Service. Each of these needs must be fulfilled in order for an individual to reach their fullest potential. Leaders should strive to provide their teams with meaningful work, opportunities for growth, and an environment of trust, collaboration and respect.
Only by understanding and meeting the essential needs of their team members, a leader can develop a successful and productive team.
SPACES – The Six Needs We All Share
* Physical Survival! Our physiological needs of hunger, thirst, sleep and sex.
* Maximising Pleasure and avoiding pain to feel safer and more secure.
* Growing Attachment, so that we have a better sense of belonging.
* Increasing our Control.Which helps satisfy our need to matter.
* Boosting our Self-Esteem: Which helps satisfy our need for self-actualisation.
* Being of Service to others. We are only truly satisfied when we help other people.
Each of these stimulates different neuronal circuits and will activate different regions in the brain. Let me briefly share a little more about each of these needs and then we’ll examine how we can consciously and deliberately affect them and hence, our FEELING of drive, inspiration and engagement. You can easily remember this using the SPACES acronym.
Why you need this
You need to be able to help your team fill their own power cell and ignite their destiny. Every team member has different needs and motivations and it’s the job of the leader to understand and meet those needs through different strategies.
They need to feel accepted, respected and that their ideas matter. Leaders should be mindful to include emotional intelligence in their leadership strategy. They should be cognisant of the emotional needs and psychological dynamics of their team and give team members the space to express their feelings.
Leaders should use empowering language and be mindful of their team’s limits. Each team member should have meaningful work and have opportunities for growth. Leaders should also be conscious of what their team members value and strive to provide them with those things.
It is also the leader’s job to foster a team environment where team members can collaborate, solve problems and grow together. Leaders should recognise the importance of building trust and rapport within the team, and ensure that all team members are treated fairly and equally.
Finally, leading a team requires understanding the different needs of each team member. A great leader is someone who has the ability to empathise and be compassionate with each team member and see things from their perspective. By doing this, the leader can help each individual in the team realize their full potential, and maximise the collective potential of the whole team.
The Sixth Level – Why It’s So Important
Abraham Maslow wanted to add a sixth level to his renowned five level hierarchy of human needs. Today, with our increased understanding through behavioural neuroscience, he was right to want to include it. These 6 human needs are THE essential drivers of our every day behaviours, actions and reactions.
What does this mean for you as a Leader?
Every leader needs to understand:
* How to fulfil their own needs, and
* Their role in helping all of their team members meet their essential, human needs.
Ultimately, by doing so, those leaders can fulfil their own need to help and serve others.
Is Your Battery Running Low
Imagine that your needs are like a discharged battery that you are able to charge through your life activities.
When the bottom cell is sufficiently filled, the next cell can be charged. All human beings have 6 essential needs, or power cells.
Though, some people have faulty power packs – with a corrupted sixth cell that has been taken over by a leaky fifth cell. That is, they care less about other people because their self-esteem is so overfilled they hold others in total contempt – because they matter less than me!
Beware overfilling any one cell: Gluttony and Obesity with an overfilled Cell 1, Excessive risk taking for Cell 2.
And many have a leaky battery, where their own needs never get filled.
What does this mean for you as a Leader?
Every leader needs to understand:
* Your own needs need to be met BEFORE you have enough to give others, and
* Whilst things may look OK on the surface – people tend to hide their emotional needs fearing that they are the only ones who have them.
By this, you’ll be better able to ask the right questions and better positioned to serve others and help them fulfil their real needs.
Empty Power Pack
If your needs are not met, you are an empty shell. Imagine that your brain is being powered by a rechargeable power pack.
The very first thing that you need when you are born is air. Soon after you need food, warmth and shelter. Sorry to tell you, but you were born needy and totally dependent upon others for your basic survival, and that is our first and primary need…
What does this mean for you as a Leader?
* If you’re running on empty – you’re not much use to anyone!
* As a leader, you help your team understand what they need and how you can help them satisfy those needs.
Survival Needs
Your brain’s number one, primary job is to keep you not dead! Thankfully, your brain has been doing a pretty fantastic job of that for you and will continue to do so, providing you look after just a few tasks. You can help your brain and yourself a great deal by attending importance to 4 key areas in your life:
* Eating good, healthy and nutritious food and water
* Getting sufficient rest and good sleep
* Exercising and stretching your body’s muscles regularly.
* Avoiding things, people and situations that may harm you
Do these, and your brain can do its job. Neglect them and your brain will give up sooner than you might prefer.
As a responsible leader you owe a duty to yourself and your continued good health to ensure that you enjoy good rest and sleep, exercise regularly and eat healthy, nutritious food.
What does this mean for you as a Leader?
* If you don’t look after your health, exercise, sleep and nutrition – you won’t be able to achieve much.
* Encourage and guide your team into a healthier lifestyle of good nutrition, suitable exercise and proper rest and sleep.
Pleasure maximisation (and avoidance of pain)
We follow a simple logic to increase our pleasure and avoid unpleasurable, dangerous or painful experiences. This helps make us feel safe and secure in the world.
Our experience over time gives rise to a whole network of mostly unconscious triggers and associations that are linked to either positive or negative experiences and our resultant pleasure or pain.
You may be seeking hedonistic pleasure focusing more on the subjective experience of maximising personal pleasure and minimising personal pain, or a eudaemonic experience with a more rounded psychological well-being that encompasses the combination of the other three basic needs being fulfilled for a long term meaning or purpose.
Our subjective experiences colour our view of the world and each person has their own unique internal rating process based on our own unique previous experiences.
In short:
* We strive to increase our belief of our own self-worth to ourselves and our perception of how others value us.
* We need to believe that we have some ability to control what happens to us and we need to feel cared for by another human being.
* Lastly, we seek to maximise the personal pleasure we derive from life and avoid unpleasant experiences.
To be able to deliberately impact our feeling of drive, motivation, inspiration or engagement we need to be able to fulfil these six needs in a way that satisfies us personally. And to understand that, we need to get back to those chemicals I talked about earlier.
This is going to help us hack your thinking by knowing the main chemicals involved and what you can consciously and deliberately do to alter the cocktail mix that your SNS, HPAA (and PSNS) do unconsciously for you.
We all need to FEEL and be safe and secure and be free from fear.
In organisations, Psychological Safety is the #1 differentiatorfor personal and team effectiveness!
What does this mean for you as a Leader?
* If you do not feel safe and secure and free from fear – then you are likely to make this even worse for your team.
* As a leader, allow your team members to speak up without any negative repercussions. Protect them from other leaders. Encourage all members to speak up freely and always encourage useful conflict and opposing ideas. Encourage everyone to build on previous statements with “Yes, and…” (NOT “No…But…”)
Attachment and Belonging
Our need for attachment is laid down at birth in our brain and memory. It helps us believe that we belong to a protective family or tribe.
This means that our perceptions, behaviours and emotional reactions and motivations can be laid down very early in life.
This is directly linked to the availability of an attachment figure, usually one of the primary caregivers, for normal social and emotional development. When this is not the case this has a negative influence on the fulfilment of this need for attachment.
(Bowlby, J., Ainsworth, M., & Bretherton, I. (1992). The origins of attachment theory. Developmental Psychology, 5, 759-775)
Whether your primary caregiver wasn’t there physically or emotionally doesn’t make a great deal of difference.
We all need to truly belong to a tribe of people connected to us and who help us meet our needs. A tribe where we have equal value and treated as equal.
What does this mean for you as a Leader?
* You need a tribe too! If it’s lonely at the top – you ain’t leading, you’re on a walk!
* Treat all team members equitably – they may not be equals but they have equal value! Encourage sharing, and proactively acknowledging each other.
Control and Mattering
Everyone has a basic urge to be able to design and control their environment. This helps fulfil our need to matter.
We need to know where we are going and how to keep ourselves on the right path to reach our chosen destination.
A situation that is unclear and ambiguous stimulates a negative reaction in the limbic system of the brain, specifically the amygdala. This in turn, will stimulate an immediate fear reaction.
If the resultant stress can be controlled and mastered this may stimulate reward circuits and be saved as a learned memory. Otherwise, this can destabilise the neuronal circuits and trigger a negative cycle of thinking.
(Whalen, P.J. (1998) Fear, vigilance, and ambiguity. Initial neuroimaging studies of the human amygdala. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 7(6). 177-188.)
What may matter more, is not that you are actually able to control your environment but that you believe that you control it. This is known as having an “internal locus of control” When the locus of control is external, we’ll blame everyone and anyone else and outside forces for what happens to us.
(Fournier, G. (2016). Locus of Control. Psych Central. Retrieved on June 3, 2018, from https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/locus-of-control/).
The big downside of an external locus of control is that even if they are to blame, they don’t give a damn because they are in it for themselves and their own locus of control.
In modern society our greatest punishment is to remove or reduce a persons ability to control what happens to them by imprisoning them, beating them or executing them.
When our base needs are being met, we want more control over our lives (or at least we perceive we have more control) and need to be recognised that we matter and that what we do matters.
What does this mean for you as a Leader?
* Learn to recognise and appreciate yourself. Respect yourself and achieve mastery in your leadership walk.
* Go out of your way to “Catch them doing something good!” – and deliberately recognise all team members achievements, individually and specifically. Not a catch all – “great job team!” – that’s about as genuine as it seems to you. Show complete respect for others and especially your team members. Coach them for mastery in their roles and beyond.
Self-Esteem and Actualisation
Every healthy individual is constantly seeking to increase and protect their self-worth. This is large part of fulfilling our need to self-actualise.
Self-esteem is a specific human need and only possible through having the ability to reflect and be able to perceive this and bring it to conscious attention.
Our interactions with others enable us to form this self-image that is influenced by a complex network of interactions with others in the environment and their reactions and observations of us.
We therefore develop a perception of our self-worth and a need to be valued and for value.
(Cast, A.D., & Burke, P. (2002) A theory of self-esteem. Social Forces, 80(3), 1041-1068.)
When a friend ignores you (and you notice this), for example, it is likely that you will question your own value to them and hence the value you bring to the relationship.
When your boss tells you that you did a great job on that project, your self-worth increases and your value on that relationship increases.
As Dale Carnegie put it many years ago in the classic ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’: “Everyone wants to feel important”. That includes you!
“Everyone wants to feel important.”
When we are healthy and safe, we belong to a tribe and we matter: we need to pursue our God given talents, to be creative and to fulfil our destiny
What does this mean for you as a Leader?
* Leadership develops daily! Pursue excellence and keep learning how you can be and do better. Think before you speak and remember to Pause and Breathe.
* Encourage, Develop, Guide and Empower your team members daily! Your task is to make them better than you. That’s what will be noticed by those higher up the food chain.
Serving Others
Or self-transcendence as Maslow called it, is our highest need. Serving others boosts your health and well-being (survival), happiness (pleasure), greater connection (attachment), that you matter (control) and uses your giftedness (esteem). That is, serving others helps fulfil all your other needs. But to be in a position to do this, you need to fill those needs. You need to be blessed to be a blessing.
When we are personally fulfilled, we transcend to think more about others than ourselves. We need to give and to serve and to fulfil our spiritual selves.
What does this mean for you as a Leader?
* You will only be truly fulfilled when you give and give some more. If you have yet to uncover your purpose in life – here’s a clue that will save you many hours – “it’s not about you! You were born to serve others.” How you serve them – that’ll be your gifts to them.
* As a Leader your job is to serve others and when your power pack is filled to bursting, you can charge them up and help them find out and practice how they too serve others.
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Categories: Business, Education
Tags: leadership trust collaboration neuroscience team joy work influence brain leadership qualities growth talent potential performance unity resilience hybrid digital-first workplace
