The Hierarchy of Human Needs a Framework for Leadership and Management.

Motivation is arguably the most critical lever managers, and leaders have for creating high performance. By motivating your employees and fulfilling their needs, you will likely see them give you maximum contribution, often without you needing to cajole them continually. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a go-to model that explains the psychology of human motivation. It will help you spend less time guessing what makes your people tick so that you can spend more time doing the things that motivate them. This model, based on research by Abraham Maslow in the 1940s, suggests that before people can even begin to do their jobs, they need basic needs such as food and shelter to be met. Once these are taken care of, employees can then reach higher-level needs like those for safety and security, which will motivate them to perform at greater levels. When you use Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to motivate your employees, you will find that you have happier and more productive employees.

The hierarchy

Five levels comprise Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs: physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem and self-actualization. Once we achieve one level, we move on to address other needs. When people can't meet their basic needs—when they don't have enough food or water; when they feel unsafe in their environment; when they don't feel loved or needed by others—they will become demoralized and unproductive. Here is how each category relates to employee motivation:?

Physiological:?Ensure you pay your employees a salary that meets their most pressing needs, including health care benefits. For example, if you have an employee who requires medication for diabetes but can't afford it without insurance, take steps to ensure he has coverage (even partially). Another way to motivate your employees is by providing a supportive work environment. According to Dr Stephen Covey, the most significant motivating factor is our perception of how well we are doing. Everything rises and falls on leadership. Leaders determine whether organizations live or die. We must lead ourselves before we can lead others. This means creating a healthy, safe work environment where your employees know what to expect from day today. It also means that we need to recognize that not all employees want or need to be motivated differently. At the same time, some thrive under public recognition; others do better with personal recognition.?

Safety:?Establish clear and transparent processes so that everyone knows exactly what's expected of them at any given time. Encourage transparency and open communication between supervisors and employees so that no individual feels threatened in the workplace. Whether they feel threatened because they aren't receiving adequate feedback or because they think their supervisor doesn't like them – both are signals to your employees that something isn't right; neither leads to high performance. Finally, you can create safety through consistency. Although change happens and is necessary sometimes, too much change creates confusion for employees.?

Belonging and love:

Don't underestimate how much respect impacts morale. In addition to treating employees fairly and communicating effectively, you should also show them respect via growth opportunities. Help them learn new skills and provide ways for them to network with colleagues beyond their immediate team members so that they feel connected to your organization socially. Make it known to employees that you appreciate them by recognizing their successes publicly, – in front of peers and management.

If an employee is concerned, she won't give her best effort. Likewise, if an employee fears being criticized or told off unnecessarily by their boss, he probably won't give their best effort either. Build trust among your employees so they feel respected and valued, and they'll act accordingly.?

Esteem and Self-Actualization:?I would venture to say that most employees don't feel appreciated in their current roles, which is why they are unhappy and unmotivated. People generally aren't satisfied with their job; they yearn for more to do things they are passionate about, advance their career, earn more money, be recognized for their efforts, etc.

How it applies

It's not just about money, though you should pay people fairly. Maslow's theory addresses five main levels of human needs: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. He maintained that a person can only progress toward self-actualization when their lower-level needs are met first. If an employee doesn't feel safe in your company (physiologically), for example, they will never make it out of survival mode and do what is needed to succeed. So how does Maslow relate to motivation? The first step is to meet employees' basic needs at work. These include things like job security, health benefits, and fair pay. This doesn't mean loading up on perks—it means creating conditions where employees have economic and psychological stability, so they aren't too worried about paying their bills or whether they will still have jobs tomorrow. Once these key necessities are covered, employees need to feel like they belong and are part of something bigger than themselves. They also want social acceptance from others; if everyone else in their department is going out for a happy hour after work but they don't fit in because of a language barrier or because someone made fun of them once when no one was around to back them up, they may clam up even further. Finally, employees need to feel respected and valued by their managers as individuals. A manager who takes the time to get to know each team member's strengths and weaknesses increase team performance while nurturing workers' confidence, loyalty, and enthusiasm.

Short- and long-term motivation

Motivation and rewards are effective ways to provide short-term motivation. For example, offering incentives such as higher salaries or bonuses can give your employees a boost in their performance without any long-term adverse effects. However, it's important to note that these types of rewards don't inspire an emotional commitment from workers; they only serve as an incentive for them to do more until another reward is offered. This isn't sustainable, which means you have to continue using these kinds of motivators often—and at increasingly larger levels—if you want consistent results. So if you're looking for longer-lasting high performance from your team, there's one thing you can try first: self-fulfilment. In his book The Psychology of Personal Constructs (1955), psychologist George Kelly describes how people use personal constructs to guide their behaviour and make sense of new information. There are two main kinds of constructs: those that facilitate self-fulfilment, which we'll call self-constructs, and those that inhabit it, or anti-constructs. To be clear, self-fulfilment is something you want for your employees; if they have it, they have greater autonomy, motivation, and overall performance within your organization. Anti-constructs are hindrances to all three. So what kinds of motivators fall into each category? Well, let's start with some of the better motivators—the ones designed to encourage self-fulfilment and eliminate anti-constructs. This can be placed in a hierarchy based on their motivation (self-actualization being at the top). At its core, Maslow's Hierarchy states that people will try to satisfy needs one level below before moving up to reach a higher need.

My take-way

Perhaps the most significant contribution that Maslow's hierarchy of needs has given us is a framework to help us understand where to direct our attention as leaders and managers when it comes to motivation. The most effective way to motivate your employees is to address the bottom three layers (physiological, safety, and social). Only then should you begin tackling esteem and self-actualization needs.