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Five Driving Needs (Part 4): An Expanded Understanding

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De-complexify the mysteries of organizational life.

This fourth article in the series further explores the what, why, and how of the Five Driving Needs framework.

Belonging. Security. Freedom. Significance. Meaning.

These needs are universal and personal.

Nature hard wires us with innate needs like belonging and security. They’re vital to the well-being of every person born regardless of their ethnicity, era or postal code. In this way, our needs are universal – hardwired.

But our nurture imprints each of us with a unique need mix. That is, we each prize certain needs far more than others. This happens in two ways:

a) Some needs are thwarted. Example? If our need for belonging went unmet in our home environment, it became disproportionately important to us as adults. Job #1 in any situation became, “How do I get accepted here? What do I have to do to be included in this tribe?”

b) Some needs are pre-eminently valued. Consider. If the need for security was given the highest priority by our parents or our culture, it can overrule the others for the rest of our life – driving us to avoid ambiguity and seek out predictability and clarity in every situation.

All humanity is hardwired for all five needs but some people need certain ones more than anything else, because their environment deprived them of it or prized it above all else. So, when you think of needs, think universal and individual, nature and nurture.

These needs are constant and dynamic.

Read the rest of the article by Brady Wilson

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Five Driving Needs (Part 3): Creating an Energized State of Being

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Powerfully productive days are the result of energized brains

If a person’s natural M.O. is to contribute and make a difference but they are blocked from doing so, it produces an unmet need. This creates internal tension – the gap between their desired state and their current reality. There’s good news about tension – it has energy right inside it – and that energy can be released. When a driving need is fulfilled, the tension is resolved – and energy is released, producing a state of being. A state of being is more than just a feeling—it is a pervasive emotional condition that includes but transcends the emotion – affecting one’s entire being.

An emotion is like the temperature in your office, a state of being is like the weather in your city. For example:

Feeling accepted by a coworker in a meeting is good, but it can be a fleeting emotion.

Working in a team where you experience a solid, stable sense of belonging is a state of being.

Being given the chance to work on a new project is good, but it can be a fleeting feeling. Experiencing undisrupted freedom to make decisions and take action is a state of being.

An employee – let’s call her Jasmine, who experiences belonging within her team as a state of being. It’s the state of being – not just a passing nod of acceptance that releases a flow of oxytocin – freeing up mental bandwidth by bathing Jasmine’s brain with feelings of bonding, rapport and trust. Oxytocin is such potent juice that it can flush out fears of rejection, exclusion or isolation.

If she is also experiencing a state of significance, the potent juice of serotonin bathes her brain with feelings of agency, belief, confidence – flushing out the fears of being discounted, sidelined or disrespected.

Imagine Jasmine experiencing all five – a five-fold state of belonging, security, freedom, significance and meaning. Her ability to connect with people quickly unlocks trust in the group. Her calm brain sees things so clearly, cutting through the clutter, constantly re-focusing the team on what matters. Her creative thinking permeates the conversation with a sense of possibility – possibility that is infused with a sense of agency and purpose. Jasmine’s juiced brain makes her indispensable.

The addition of each juice does not produce a 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 sum. It’s multiplicative. Our clarity multiplies the impact of our connection which multiplies the impact of our creativity, our possibility and our purpose. The juices working in concert are a source of super-performance that scientists do not yet understand. It’s the inter-relationships of the juices that creates human magic.

Read the rest of the article by Brady Wilson

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Five Driving Needs Part 2 – Why are Psychological Needs so Biologically Urgent?

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Learn why need-meeting is now central to the healthy function of your organization.

Fifty years ago, Drs. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan began exploring what produces vitality in humans. Their work evolved into one of the most prominent theories of human motivation, Self-Determination Theory. According to this theory, when our core psychological needs are fulfilled, vitality and optimal performance naturally occur. Likewise, when they are thwarted, depletion and poor performance naturally ensue.

“Stated simply, basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration can substantially account for both the ‘dark’ and ‘bright’ side of people’s functioning.

Whereas the satisfaction of the psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness contributes to proactivity, integration, and well-being, the frustration of these same psychological needs, especially from significant caregivers, leaves one prone to passivity, fragmentation, and ill-being.” – Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2013. P. 263

This points to a simple fact: need-meeting is now central to the healthy function of our organizations. There was a day when meeting needs was relegated to the front line – something salespeople and customer service reps did for customers. It is now impossible to sustain innovation, maintain employee engagement or create great customer experiences without knowing and meeting needs at every node and nexus of the organization.

But why are our psychological needs so biologically urgent?

Read the whole article by Brady Wilson

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Five Driving Needs – Part 1 – A Framework for Understanding the Energized Brain

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Your powerfully productive day is the result of an energized brain.

Imagine yourself at the end of a powerfully productive day. You became so immersed in your work you lost all track of time. Every task you checked off increased the buzz. By end of day, the sense of progress was palpable.

What creates a day like that? One could imagine it was sandwiched between two dismally unproductive days. So what changed?

It wasn’t your talents – they don’t change from one day to the next. Neither was it your education, your experience, or skills – they don’t spike from one day to the next. It’s unlikely that gritting your teeth and trying harder contributed a thing.

Consider this possibility: that day was the result of an energized brain. Not raw physical verve and mojo, but what we call intelligent energy – the ability to sustain focus in the midst of distractions, manage your emotions in high stakes situations, process oceans of information, pick out the vital bits of intel and connect the dots in surprising ways.

This article de-mystifies that ever-elusive, powerfully productive day. It doesn’t occur randomly or by chance. There is a pattern:

  1. Your driving needs are fulfilled
  2. Those fulfilled needs energize your brain
  3. That energy endows you with peak performance.

Juices?

Question: what do people mean when they say, “The juices are flowing”?

Answer: Ideas are popping. The volume of ideas, The novelty of those ideas. The usability of those ideas. In short, creativity is getting easy here.

Question: what happens when your phone runs out of juice?

Answer: Brilliant technology – now useless – a paperweight – because it ran out of energy.

Question: what do people mean when they say, “I’ve got the juice to do this now”?

Answer: “I have energy to tackle this.”

The point? Juice is vernacular for energy. You’ve no doubt heard of dopamine – it’s an electro-chemical juice. When it flows – we’re more creative. There are several kinds of juices – each endowing us with a unique functionality. When GABA flows we feel calm. When serotonin flows we feel confident. When oxytocin flows we feel rapport. These juices prime our brains with the connectivity and current that produce peak performance, but they transcend plumbing and electricity by a long shot.

These brain-friendly juices create an emotional state, priming us with feelings of connection, clarity, creativity and confidence. Each juice is a form of intelligent energy that makes our brains smarter and our bodies more vitalized. Juice makes things easier – it shows up in the numbers – and in the work environment.

At Juice, Inc, we have partnered with many leaders to release this intelligent energy in their employees. Here’s what they told us:

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By Brady Wilson

Read the next article in our Five Driving Needs Series: Why are Psychological Needs so Biologically Urgent?

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