Unconscious Needs are deeply rooted emotional needs that remain out of our awareness and serve to fuel our habitual behaviors (Functional / Dysfunctional).
Within your team, unconscious needs are constantly present… …in every member of your staff…the leaders, the followers, the motivated and the troublesome. Understanding the power that Unconscious Needs have at directing the behavior of your staff, greatly improves your ability to steer business by design and to accomplish business goals more rapidly.
A Process That Matters… Deeply
To wrap you mind around the concept of Unconscious Needs. Start first by identifying your management team. On a sheet of paper, make four columns.
In the first column,
· list each individual separately by name
In the next column,
· write down their annual pay
In the third column, write the answer to this powerful question,
· Why does (name) work here?
In the final column, write the answer to this powerful question,
· What Unconscious Need of (name’s) does working here meet?
I hope you took the time necessary to really execute this exercise because it will give you new and amazing insight into the authentic motivation of your employees. If you did not do this, you are robbing yourself of the basic foundation of what Ritual Builders is based upon.
As you identify each individual on your team and start to become mindful of their Unconscious Needs it is very easy to label money as the raw source behind a need. Very seldom is this the case.
Employees are working at your company in search of something much more important than the yearly pay you are granting them.
Even the most money motivated, hungry, hard-ass has an Unconscious Need that is directing them. Ask the questions, what does having/making a lot of money give this person? The answer will be very insightful to both of you.
One of the most perplexing things about Unconscious Needs is that they operate at a level below consciousness, thus the name. This can create a series of challenges for anyone in their life and career because one is often pursuing an Unconscious Need with the belief that obtaining THE GOAL will meet the need. Identifying a lofty goal that motivates us is actually quite simple, but when the Unconscious Need behind the goal remains out of awareness, we often find we have been pursuing something that will never reward our internal sense of fulfillment.
For example, how many high powered executives have given up their family lives, their health, and their soul to achieve greatness in their chosen field? Countless. Yet many, if not most, find themselves at the pinnacle of their careers with a host of accolades, a series of impressive accomplishments, a bundle of wealth, but void of any sense of authentic meaning to their life and career. While the pursued goals where sharply identified and the discipline to achieve them executed, the Unconscious Needs have been at work, driving the individual… … ..and still out of awareness.
Take a moment to identify your own Unconscious Needs. What will accomplishing the goals you’ve set our for your business do for you? Why is that important? Twenty years from now, what will you have accomplished with your business and what will those accomplishments have given you that truly matter… ...deep inside?
One can find it truly fascinating, how all of us are moved and motivated by deeply hidden drives and powerful emotions. In a later post we more thoroughly examine the phenomenon of Unconscious Needs and will show you how to meet the single most powerful need of the human experience.
