Is It Time to Rethink Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

bai hay

Blanchard LeaderChat

Hierarchy Of NeedsMost human resource and organizational development professionals are familiar with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  In his 1954 book, Motivation and Personality, Maslow’s proposed that people are motivated by satisfying lower-level needs such as food, water, shelter, and security, before they can move on to being motivated by higher-level needs such as self-actualization.

In a new article for Harvard Business Review Online, What Maslow’s Hierarchy Won’t Tell You About Motivation, Blanchard author Susan Fowler suggests that despite the popularity of Maslow’s model it might be time to take a second look at the idea of a needs hierarchy.

In conducting research for her new book, Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work … And What Does, Fowler found that instead of a hierarchy, contemporary science points to three universal psychological needs common to all people at all times:  autonomy, relatedness, and competence.  This research would suggest that leaders need…

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