Theme 1 - Leadership

1.5. Identifying Needs

Part of becoming a good community leader is being able to recognise your personal needs and when these needs are not being met.

Acknowledging Needs

The first step in getting your needs met is acknowledging that you have needs. Sometimes people don’t allow themselves to admit that they have needs, they might do this because they don’t believe that it's alright to have needs, or to express them, or:

• are embarrassed about appearing needy to others. This extends to fear of being perceived as incompetent, incapable or deficient in some respect
• feel their needs are driven underground by seemingly more pressing concerns

How to Recognise a Need

Answering the questions below might help you to recognise your needs, especially those that aren't getting met.

• Do you have a sense of disappointment, fear, frustration, anger or hurt?
• Is there a pattern to your more negative feelings?
• What are these negative feelings related to?
• What would be a good outcome for the things that are causing the negative feelings?
• What do you need to get a good outcome?

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Introduction:

When considering needs it is useful to consider the theory proposed by researcher Abraham Maslow (Maslow, A. 1970, Motivation and Personality. N.Y., Harper & Row.) Maslow's theory sets out needs in terms of a hierarchy. This hierarchy provides an interesting framework to group common needs into particular categories.

According to Maslow, human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and certain lower needs have to be satisfied before higher needs can be satisfied. This is his fundamental point (and it's basic common sense): that primary needs such as the need for food, water, shelter, etc must be satisfied before we strive for things like social status or contributing to our community. This model helps us understand why at certain stages of life people have such differing priorities.

Maslow's theory has relevance for anyone who leads, is part of a team, or is involved with the community, because it offers real insight into the individual factors that may contribute to team performance and community participation. The behaviour of an individual at any given moment will be largely determined by that persons strongest need.

The diagram of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, will assist you with this process.

Food for Thought! Have you ever been in a situation where you were attempting to get the community involved in a particular issue or initiative, yet the participation levels remained low? Was it frustrating that while there were strong indicators that the issue was an important one to the community, and you had made significant efforts to promote the initiative, there seemed to be a lack of interest and motivation on the part of the community. Well, viewed in terms of Maslow's hierarchy, the lack of support may have had more to do with community members attempting to get lower order needs met than genuine lack of interest. For instance, if a community has high levels of socio-economic disadvantage, it will be unlikely that they will become as involved in a community development initiative as a community where member's lower-order needs are already satisfied.

Hierarchy of Needs Assessment

As you have read Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs model is useful in grouping needs together in categories. It is also a valuable tool for better understanding how individuals differ in the needs they strive to have met at various life junctures. Maslow helps us better understand why involvement and participation in community projects may differ so markedly among various community members. If you like Maslow's way of understanding needs you may benefit from completing the Hierarchy of Needs Assessment. This exercise will help you map out which of Maslow's categories of needs are most important for you now.