Who needs Needs?

I have been reading and thinking a bit more about needs this week. And the more I have studied them, the less I like them.

A need is defined as a requirement to live a healthy life. Most of Maslow’s needs fall into that category. Clearly we all need food and shelter and clothes and so on. There are also needs that evolution has presented us to preserve the species, sex being the most obvious example.

The next category is also positive, but might be better described as universal human goals rather than needs. These are things like rudimentary healthcare, a basic education, support through childhood and in old age, and personal security. When we consider that in the West we are the first generation to enjoy those basic goals, and that much of the world still lives without them, we should pause to consider whether we have much right to even think about whether we need any more.

But more there are, and the next category is still full of laudable goals at the level of humanity, although we have to be careful about calling them rights and they become marginal against the definition of a requirement for a healthy life. These are things like freedom of movement, fair access to the rule of law, religious freedom, functioning democracy, equality of opportunity, and something akin to societal dignity. Hardly anyone enjoys these goals in totality, yet great progress has been made and it is a fair quest to base a political philosophy around them. Indeed, that is exactly the basis of my own politics.

But there is a difference at a personal level. None of these things can really be described as needs. We have limited control over them. If we start thinking of them as rights, we become strident and demanding, and may forget the blessings we enjoy. By all means we can speak against those denying us such freedoms, but we should be careful with our expectations.

The same is true with another group of goals that many fall into the trap of considering needs, items at a more personal level. These are things like the love and loyalty of a partner, and also of our parents and children. We can include concepts like peace, or respect, or justice, or even happiness. We can also add in health, and something about personal growth. Once we have the universal human goals in place, this list is a key driver of fulfillment, much more so than the political and societal list, but it is still a mistake to consider them as needs.

This is because they are generally outcomes, areas where we can influence but not control, and where any expectation can only lead to disappointment. These are blessings, not needs or rights. We can’t demand them or ensure them. Our best strategy, if we can achieve it, is to forget all about this list as needs for ourselves, but use it as a basis for how we treat others. We can’t do much to secure tem for ourselves, but we can do a lot to help others secure many of these blessings. We have no right at all to demand them or expect them, but we can give them, and graciously accept any blessings that come back our way as a result.

All of this is a preamble to reconsider the needs of David McClelland, of achievement, affiliation and power. Don’t these all seem very selfish set against all the needs above?

So it is folly to call any of these needs. But we can still acknowledge them as preferences and learn from them. To recap, most of us have one dominant need among the three. However, unlike things like Myers Briggs our preferences are not claimed to be innate but can be influenced by culture and can also change over time.

Someone with high achievement need often likes to work alone and loves challenging but attainable goals. Someone with high affiliation looks for acceptance from a group. Power need is a bit more complex, and encompasses a need for status, control and also a need to influence an outcome through others.

Achievement motivated people can make excellent subordinates, while the most effective leaders usually have power motivation, notably the influencing kind. One pitfall is that achievement (or affiliation) motivated people can progress based on competences that become irrelevant in more senior positions.

A bit of ambition is good, especially when young. Ambition leads to innovation and progress. Goals are important, and desires and dreams are fine. Let’s just avoid the trap of these good things becoming needs. For it is easy to see how each can lead to trouble.

An achievement need is fine while the goals are clear and our powers remain strong. Perhaps many engineers are achievement motivated, for the complaint I heard most often from them in Shell was about a lack of clarity. Well, sorry, life is not simple and clarity can always be given. Expecting others to bend their own goals to meet our selfish demand for clarity will lead to disappointment all round. And what about when we get a bit older or if we start to fail a bit? We get more and more disappointed. Perhaps we will become even more single-minded, and locking out our loved ones from our lives and our feelings. A failing achiever is not much fun for him- or herself nor for those around them.

An affiliation need can be even more damaging as we mature. This need might seem softer and more supportive of others, but can become the most needy need of all. What right have we to shape any group to support our need to belong? In parts of our lives, maturity brings responsibility, which entails tough love of others and accepting some risk, neither of which are served by an affiliation need. Then, as we grow older, we can also be lonelier, as our groups disintegrate and habits and technology move on.

The need for power can do the most obvious damage. Status and respect must be earned and re-earned, while those with power can require ever more of it. That leads to abuse, corruption, and disillusion. It is rare to see someone graciously hand over power and then be able to thrive without it. And much power can wane with age: look at those people (usually women) of a certain age who have used their sexual power relentlessly until they discover it has left them.

So I have concluded that all these needs are really curses. When my team did the assessment exercise all those years ago, our boss came out as high in all three needs categories. At the time, we were in awe and a bit jealous. But looking back I can see how he was already suffering then and probably suffered more later as disappointments inevitably followed expectations. Apparently US President Eisenhower was assessed as low in all three categories. That made him lucky and perhaps effective as well.

Somehow, I seem to have managed to dampen my own needs. Probably having a breakdown at forty helped me take distance and find alternative avenues. The subconscious choice to focus on developing others was serendipitous. Later, I’ve been surrounded by great role models, and probably religion has helped too. Of course, being blessed with all the more basic true needs makes everything else a lot easier. I still have many ugly and unreasonable needs, but they seem less than they used to be or might still have been without these lucky breaks.

So there may be several useful lessons here. A smart goal in life, at least past thirty, might be to find ways to suppress needs, beyond the most basic ones. To do this, it helps to understand where our needs are. Then we can seek help from others, or at least find alternative ways to satisfy our needs that are more robust as we mature.

So we have a full agenda here. Follow a political philosophy to support universal human goals without letting the stridency of needs get in the way. Do whatever we can to help others achieve their hopes for love, peace and respect, without demanding the same for ourselves, always remembering to count our many blessings. And recognize and work to suppress our need for achievement, affiliation or power as we mature. Society does little to help us in any part of this agenda, but it feels like a good one to follow. Thank you, Mr. McClelland. I don’t like your language, and I learned little from your theory the first time around, but now you have really helped me.