Richard Milligan argues that Maslow's pyramid gets it backwards. Most people prioritize meaning over basic needs like safety and security, even when dying. Leaders who want to motivate their teams need to lead with purpose, not promises of provision.
Maslow's hierarchy that a lot of people misunderstood and still today misunderstand. What Maslow said is that as humans, we're primarily motivated through 5 layers of human motivation. At the lowest levels, it's safety and security, it's provision, which is ultimately money, and then it's belonging, affirmation, and meaning. And because of the way the pyramid was shaped, a lot of people misunderstood him to say that people wanted safety and security and provision above belonging, affirmation, and meaning. But if you invert that, those things, you'll know what's true about most people. They want meaning above anything else. Find someone on their deathbed and ask them if they would prefer that they worked another 10 hours a week. And they would say, no, like I would pour into other things that were more meaningful than the transaction I was doing at work, right? So meaning's of the utmost importance. And which is why a leader understanding why we're doing this and being able to articulate it to the team is so important.
