A SELF-ACTUALIZING LEADER SPEAKS OUT

While Peter Senge does not himself use the term self-actualization” in his book The Fifth Discipline, or even mention Maslow, what follows here is a long quotation in the book by a CEO who does. If there is one person that Senge quotes extensively throughout his book, it is Bill O’Brien, who was at that time the President and CEO of Hanover Insurance. In fact, Bill O’Brien not only mentions Maslow, speaks about the hierarchy of needs, self-actualization, but repeatedly through the Fifth Discipline described and argued for things that today we know as the premises of Self-Actualization Psychology. Here’s a sampling of quotes from O’Brien.

In speaking about the need for managers to redefine their job from the “old dogma of planning, organizing, and controlling,” he says they must realize “the almost sacredness of their responsibility for the lives of so many people. Managers’ fundamental task is “providing the enabling conditions for people to lead the most enriching lives they can.” (p. 140) “The total development of our people is essential to achieving our goal of corporate excellence. ... we believe there is no fundamental tradeoff between the higher virtues in life and economic success. We believe we can have both. In fact, we believe that, over the long term, the more we practice the higher virtues of life, the more economic success we will have.” “The ferment in management will continue until we build organizations that are more consistent with man’s higher aspirations beyond food, shelter, and belonging.” (p. 5)

He says that people with high levels of personal mastery are more committed. They take more initiative. They have a broader and deeper sense of responsibility for their work (p. 143).

“In the type of organization we seek to build, the fullest development of people is on an equal plane with financial success. This goes along with our most basic premise: that practicing the virtues of life and business success are not only compatible but enrich one another. This is a far cry from the traditional ‘morals of the marketplace.’” (p. 144) “Early on we recognized that there is a burning need for people to feel part of an ennobling mission. If it is absent many will seek fulfillment only in outside interests instead of in their work. But we also discovered that stating a mission or purpose in words was not enough. ... people need visions to make the purpose more concrete and tangible.” (p. 224)

Finally there is a long passage from O’Brien. I invite you to read the following knowing what you now know about Self-Actualization Psychology and notice if this is not a great quote from a

leader who thinks in terms of self-actualization.

“Our traditional organizations are designed to provide for the first three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs: food, shelter, and belonging. Since these are now widely available to members of industrial society, our organizations do not provide significantly unique opportunities to command the loyalty and commitment of our people. The ferment in management will continue until organizations begin to address the higher order needs: self-respect and self-actualization.” [Aim for the higher needs, “seek the peak” to create loyalty and commitment.]

“This is the quest we at Hanover have been on for almost twenty years now— to discover the guiding principles, design, and tools needed to build organizations more consistent with human nature.” [The principles of self-actualization that accord with the best in human nature.]

“We weren’t focused on organization learning initially. We set out to identify and eliminate the diseases that afflict hierarchical organizations and make them inconsistent with the higher aspects of human nature.” [First, release the interferences to unleashing the highest potentials.]

“All of this was based on certain beliefs about people, as are all forms of organization. If you believe that people are most concerned with getting along and putting together coalitions to wield power, that’s a political environment. If you believe that once you’re on top the secret is staying on top, that’s a bureaucratic environment. If you believe, as we did, that there’s an enormous reservoir of untapped potential in people that can be channeled more productively than it is, you try to build a value-based, vision-driven environment.” [Beliefs about people create the organization’s culture— a self-actualizing culture is value-based and vision driven about the potentials in their people.]

“Now, I think that the human being has a deep drive to learning. So, as you create organizations that are more in line with human nature, you are building learning organizations. So, although we started in a different place, we ended up in the same place.”

At that point Senge asked a question about the timeliness of a self-actualizing company to today’s world (well, the world in 1987): “Why do you think that organizations more consistent with human nature are timely?”

“My personal view is that this has to do with the evolution of consciousness. Mankind’s nature is to ascend to greater awareness of our place in the natural order— yet, everywhere we look we see society in a terrible mess of self-centeredness, greed, and nearsightedness. In modern society, business has the greatest potential to offer a different way of operating. The potential of business to contribute toward dealing with a broad range of society’s problems is enormous. But we must show the way by example not by moralizing. We must learn how to harness the commitment of our people— then our commitment to building a better world will have some meaning.” (pp. 347-348) [This is

what Maslow discovered in 1960 and is even more timely today— we build self- actualizing companies to build a better world.]

I’ll end with this quotation from Peter Senge himself: “I believe our fundamental challenge is tapping the intellectual capacity of people at all levels, both as individuals and as groups. To truly engage everyone— that’s the untapped potential in modern corporations. This leads me to the notion of an organization as a learning organism.” (p. 350)

So while Senge calls it a “learning organization,” we call it a self-actualizing organization in Neuro-Semantics which I will address more in the next Meta Reflection. And you can read all about such in Unleashing Leadership (2009, $25) as well as in Self-Actualization Psychology (2008, $25), and you can learn all about it in the new trainings called — Unleashing Leadership.