Sunday, February 12, 2006

Is there something like "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" for networkers

There is a question I am asking me all the time: "Is there something similar like the - Maslows´s hierachy of needs - for networkers?"


Here some reasons which can be important for networkers:

  • for one it is important to have a hight quantity of contacts
  • for one it is important to be a part of a big and worldwide community
  • for one it is important to find new and interesting people
  • for one it is important to expand his business
  • etc.
I am sure that there are several reasons more.

What are the motives? What are the aims?

Maslow´s hierachy of needs

Maslow's primary contribution to psychology is his
Hierarchy of Human Needs, which he often presented as a pyramid, with self-actualization at the top as the highest of those needs (or conflicts or tensions) in ones life. The base of the pyramid is the physiological needs, which are necessary for survival. Once these are taken care of (resolved), an individual can concentrate on the second layer, the need for safety and security. The third layer is the need for love and belonging, followed by the need for esteem. Finally, self-actualization forms the apex of the pyramid.

The idea of the pyramid came to his mind after an inspiration on visiting the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

In this scheme, the first four layers are what Maslow called deficiency needs or D-needs. If they are not filled, you feel anxiety and attempt to fill them. If they are filled, you feel nothing; you feel only the lack. Each layer also takes precedence over the layer above it; you do not feel the lack of safety and security until your physiological needs are taken care of, for example. In Maslow's terminology, a need does not become salient until the needs below it are met.

Needs beyond the D-needs are "growth needs", "being values" or B-needs. When fulfilled, they do not go away, rather, they motivate further. He outlines about 14 of these values or B-needs, including beauty, meaning, truth, wholeness, justice, order, simplicity, richness, etc.

Maslow also proposed that people who have reached self-actualization will sometimes experience a state he referred to as "transcendence," in which they become aware of not only their own fullest potential, but the fullest potential of human beings at large. He described this transcendence and its characteristics in an essay in the posthumously published The Farther Reaches in Human Nature. In the essay, he describes this experience as not always being transitory, but that certain individuals might have ready access to it, and spend more time in this state. He makes a point that these individuals experience not only ecstatic joy, but also profound, "cosmic-sadness," (Maslow, 1971) at the ability of humans to foil chances of transcendence in their own lives, and in the world at large.


I am sure that you have your motives as well to join a network like successBC.

What are your aims? What are your motives?

I am looking forward to your feedback.

Yours Markus Roemmen
Chairman and Founder
successBC Limited