Page 51 - Develop your leadership skills- John Adair. -- 2nd ed

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42 ■ Develop your leadership skills

There is, of course, a variety of ways to move people: you can
threaten them with punishments of one form or another, or
induce them with financial rewards. Although motivating
others in this way does fall within the compass of leadership as
well as management, it is not characteristic of it.

I know that one of the things that leaders are supposed to do is
to motivate people by a combination of rewards and sanctions.
More recent thought suggests that we motivate ourselves to a
large extent by responding to inner needs. As a leader you must
understand these needs in individuals and how they operate, so
that you can work with the grain of human nature and not
against it.

In this field as in the others, it is useful for you to have a sketch
map. Here A H Maslow’s concept of a hierarchy of needs is still
valuable (see Figure 4.2). He suggested that individual needs
are arranged in an order of prepotence: the stronger at the
bottom and the weaker (but more distinctively human) at the
top.

The hierarchy of needs includes five categories:

■ Physiological – our physical needs for food, shelter,
warmth, sexual gratification and other bodily functions.

■ Safety – the need to be free from physical danger and the
need for physical, mental and emotional security.

■ Social – the need for belonging and love, to feel part of a
group or organisation, and to belong or to be with
someone else. Implicit in it is the need to give and receive
love, to share and to be part of a family.