MASLOW’S HIERARCHY

Bringing Spiritual Psychology to the Workplace

Over 70 years ago the social psychologist, Abraham Maslow, created a “hierarchy of needs” that has helped modern society navigate the biological, emotional, and social concerns of humans in their personal and professional lives.

Usually visualized as a pyramid with physiological concerns such as food, water, sleep, and safety at the bottom, the pyramid culminated in what Maslow called “self-actualization.”

He would later add a stage he called “self-transcendence” which he realized came towards the end of a well-lived life.

Surprisingly, there has not been too much attention paid to Maslow’s hierarchy in the world of work, until recently, with the importance of emotional safety coming into focus in the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives at many workplaces.

Additionally, the skyrocketing problem of Burnout has forced many companies to start looking more carefully at the physical, mental and emotional stresses carried by their workers. The Great Resignation has pushed companies to finally get serious about how much damage employees sustain day-to-day in the workplace - at so many of the levels of human need.

In my ongoing study of The Great Resignation and the attending issues of burnout, quiet-quitting, lying flat, emotional labor, moral injury, and all the other problems that have been bubbling up, I have found that Maslow’s hierarchy was a good starting point for trying to make sense of the many reasons people give for dropping out of the workforce. But I needed to take it deeper, which is why I began to weave in all the other theories and models that I have studied in my long career as a teacher, minister, and mythologist.

Corresponding Models to Maslow’s Hierarchy

Some scholars have noticed that Maslow’s Hierarchy bears a strong resemblance to the ancient system of the Chakras, the seven levels of physical, mental and spiritual development named by ancient Hindu and Buddhist texts thousands of years ago.

There are also correlations to Erik Erickson’s developmental stages, the Enneagram, Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, Albert Bandura’s pillars of Self-Efficacy, Rudolf Steiner’s stage-theory of Spiritual Development, Kohlberg’s stages of Moral Development, Carol Gilligan’s Moral Stages, Martin Seligman’s Flourishing Model, Jean Baker Miller’s Relational-Cultural Model, the Richard Barrett Values Model, and on and on.

The fact that there is so much overlap in these theories suggests is that there is something there which all these observant human beings have noticed and described according to their own predilections - some subjective reality that we humans experience and use as a way to frame and categorize the array of competing desires we feel in the face of reality.

It may be something like the wonderful old poem of the six blind men and the elephant: They’ve all got hold of some part of the whole, even if no one of them alone has grasped it entirely. And the essence of the insight is that humans are motivated by distinctly different drives, which are often in competition with each other, and which seem to have an evolutionary or at least developmental trajectory. Whether that trajectory is “upwards” in the positive, moral sense, or merely “onwards” in the sense of unfolding, is still under debate.

The Seven Qualities Model

It is in that spirit of collaboration that I offer my own synthesis of these developmental theories, using seven simple colored blocks to designate the seven challenges to human beings - those needs or yearnings that require our mastery in order to thrive and live into our full humanity.

In adopting the metaphor of the seven colors, I am following in the footsteps of author Christopher Hill who felt that the rainbow colors - as defined by Isaac Newton: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet - aided in an intuitive understanding of the Chakra system.

It has become so adopted by the West that I use it for convenience - and for aesthetic purposes.

There are other metaphors which may feel more natural to you than the color spectrum, and I encourage you to find your own analogy.

What I am describing as Qualities are purely abstract and can be associated with any color, texture, sound, flavor, and image.

Hierarchy or Dynamic Model?

Some interpretations of the hierarchy of needs approach the levels in a static fashion, stacking them one on top of the other, as if needs were satisfied by going through a cafeteria line and adding things to a plate:

Once you’ve got them you can simply ingest them and move on.

Other interpretations are more nuanced, seeing the needs as dynamic and influencing each other for good or ill, so that getting your needs met at the level of achievement and self-esteem could make it easier to go back to the need of social belonging and get those emotional needs met.

Negatively, this also means that not getting basic needs like housing and food security met means that it’s harder to meet your goals for intimacy and self-expression.

But it’s important to remember that none of this is set in stone.

One interpreter suggested that the Adverse Childhood Experiences model shows that not getting your needs met in childhood predicts poor outcomes for all sorts of higher level needs in adulthood. But the evidence also shows very clearly that not everyone who has been victimized by A.C.E.s suffers that fate: a significant percent (up to 30%) go on to lead happy, healthy lives, proving that there is an inner resilience that allows us to overcome not getting those needs met.

This is critical and must not be glossed over. We have the power to meet our challenges and find ways to come out on top.

Spiritual Practices that turn the Hierarchical Model Upside Down

There are some interpretations which see the lower level needs - those for basic things like housing, financial security, sense of belonging, social interactions - as necessary to have fulfilled before one can move up to the so-called higher level needs like intimacy, self-expression, aesthetic appreciation, wisdom, or serving a higher cause.

And yet, religious traditions throughout time and locale have emphasized the ability to overcome those lower level needs through spiritual practices such as fasting, celibacy, silent retreats, pilgrimage, poverty, solitude, renunciation of ego, etc.

In fact, one could see the spiritual life as a pointed attempt to minimize the desires of the body and ego in service of the higher desires of unconditional love and service.

But so long as we are human beings walking on two feet, most of us must attend to all seven levels with conscious appreciation of their place in providing a balanced life. To give up the lower level needs before one can can do so gracefully leads to disaster, and we only have to point to the long lists of so-called religious leaders who end up in prison for vice of one sort or another to see why that is the case!

Questions to Ponder:

• Is satisfying the lower needs mandatory for supporting higher needs?

• Do lower needs hide the higher hungers?

• Can spiritual disciplines quiet the so-called lower needs?

• Is the capacity for love the bridge from the lower to the higher levels?

• Are all our needs and desires dynamically interrelated?

Inspiration for The Seven Qualities Model

The model I offer is inspired by all of the aforementioned pioneers of psychology and sociology, but especially by the insights of the American philosopher and author, Robert Pirsig, who believed that our unique, indigenous wisdom celebrated QUALITY as both the means and the end of the purpose of human life. [Read his book LILA: An Inquiry Into Morals for the full explanation of this idea; or his earlier and more popular work ZEN and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values.]

Rather than a series of needs to fulfill, or tasks to accomplish, or challenges to overcome, he suggested that the quest is simply to explore ever-expanding layers of QUALITIES which are both the means for personal growth as well as the reward for existence. This more open-ended approach to experience removes much of the burden of oughts-and-shoulds and frees us up for appreciating what IS at a much deeper level.

The Number Seven: Mythological Significance

It is likely that the importance of the number seven originates in the seven visible planets.

A mammoth tooth dated to 30,000 BCE has the first known star map inscribed upon it, so humans have had a long time to align our psyches to celestial themes. From the late Stone Age through the Bronze Age - that time period that Joseph Campbell refers to as “the way of the celestial lights” - the human imagination took hold of those seven planetary bodies and began to spin all sorts of psychological projections upon them. Various ideas about the attributes of each planet still thrive in humans’ interest in astrology.

In addition to the seven planets we have the seven days of the week, based on the Babylonian calendaring system of 700 BCE; the seven days of creation from the Judeo-Christian scriptures which adopted the earlier idea. The Catholic Church acknowledges seven sacraments, seven virtues, and seven deadly sins; The Torah sees seven pillars of wisdom and the Jewish Menorah holds seven candles; there are seven blessings given under the marriage chuppah; Muslim pilgrims walk seven times around the Kaaba in Mecca during holy week; in Hinduism there is also a seven-circle walk in the marriage ceremony; Buddha took seven steps at birth; in ancient Egyptian mythology, the Mesopotamian goddess, Inanna, traversed seven levels in her journey through the underworld; Islam notes seven doors to the entrance of hell; the Rig Veda describes seven streams of soma - the drink of the gods - and Hindus have seven sacred rivers; there are seven notes in the Western diatonic scale; and we have divided the rainbow into seven named colors.

This only scratches the surface of the symbolic references to the number seven!

Suffice it to say that humans are still attracted to the these ancient systems, and the fact that our social lives are completely controlled by a seven-day calendar system with days named for ancient gods and goddesses shows just how much influence the old beliefs still have over us.

Because these beliefs are woven into the tapestry of our collective imagination, it is important to lift up some of the ancient beliefs and make them conscious so that we can infuse them with contemporary concerns, values and ideals.

That is exactly what I am attempting to do with The Seven Qualities Model.

The first step in support of Qualities over Needs is to do away with hierarchies, so I offer the image of the Roundtable - the radical gift that Queen Guinevere brought to King Arthur as a wedding gift - which changed forever the ways in which humans imagine coming together in community.

Once you have placed all the Qualities in a circle it gives each of them the dignity and respect they deserve as well as removing the stigma suggesting that all but one are merely stepping stones to something higher and better.

By leveling the playing field in this way I hope to encourage each of you to embrace whatever Qualities interest and excite you and not feel constrained or pre-judged about what you should or should not be striving for.

Take the Deep Assessment

Get a sense of where your strengths and weaknesses are in the full spectrum of Needs & Capabilities.

As you then work through the seven chapters of the course you will have a better idea of what Quality or Qualities you are currently engaged with in a more urgent manner.