Maslow’s Hammer

In one of the recent training courses that both Lama and I were delivering together, one of the participants approached me during break time to express his disapproval of our training method and style that both Lama and I were using.? Although I was a bit surprised by such unexpected feedback, I was very much interested in hearing him out and finding out what is it exactly that he did not like with our approach.

Although we had barely covered the very first-morning session of the training that was supposed to be taking place over 2 days, I kept mentioning to him that he needed to give the rest of the training a chance and not be so judgmental from the very first start, especially when the majority of the participants were very much in tune with the training overall.?

But he kept suggesting that we should change our approach.? Then, he resorted to an analogy that he wanted me to relate to…and said: “I’m a Civil Engineer and when I sense that the foundation of a building is not well laid out, I take immediate action and I make all the necessary modifications to the foundation.” Of course, such an example makes perfect sense…and this goes without saying if we are in fact in the engineering construction field.? But we were not.? And then he continued and said: “It’s like you’re just telling me to continue with constructing the entire building and hoping all along that it will stand in place after we complete building it.”

This is when this discussion reminded me of a very famous quote by Abraham Maslow that goes something like this:

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

This quote refers to a concept commonly known as "Maslow’s Hammer." It simply refers to an over-reliance on a familiar tool that we sometimes tend to use and abuse over and over again to solve any challenge we face. Although such a tool can be very useful in some circumstances, over-reliance on such a tool can be quite dangerous and can surely result in approaching problems in ways that are not always helpful.?

And…this is exactly what that gentleman was relying on, unfortunately.? He comes from a very technical background to the extent that he insists on seeing everything only from his perspective, and only as a civil engineer. He even pushes himself to deal with any issue that is not to his liking only from his approach rather than considering other solutions.? Such an approach can be quite disruptive indeed, especially when wronglly applied.? No, not every issue is a “nail” and no, you cannot just resort to your “hammer” to deal with such issues.

This is why Lama and I put a lot of emphasis on behavioral skills training. No matter how skillful and knowledgeable we become in our field of expertise we will always need to keep on honing our behavioral and human competencies to truly make it in life.? It is just so unfortunate that there are some people out there who get themselves so immersed in their profession; they tend to forget that the behavioral humanistic field in life is as important, if not even more important, than anything else.? ??

With Love...

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