Individuals join groups in order to meet their own needs.

In many cases leaders ask group members to sacrifice their own needs for those of the organization or “the team”. This is not a recipe for stability…unless the wider culture is one of threat and scarcity. This seemingly obvious truth becomes more apparent and useful when an organization begins to lose valued people or when work teams are complacent or mediocre. Are group members getting their needs met? All of us strive, consciously or not, to meet our own needs. These are, as psychologist Abe Maslow identified them, survival, safety, self-esteem, affiliation and self-actualization. The more sophisticated an organization and its members are, the more members will be dealing with affiliation and self-actualization. Becoming “all you can be” in an organization is a complex and satisfying challenge, for the group and the leader.