Leadership, the Human Drives and the Ultimate Human Drive: The Search For Meaning

Are you one of those people who’s driven to lead in whatever situation you encounter? Or are you one of those people who's comfortable being in the crew without extra responsibility? I’m curious to why some of us are drawn to take control while others prefer to follow along. Why do you think people are driven to lead? Why do you think people are driven to succeed up to the point of obsession? What are the basic human drives that motivate us each day to do what we do?

“Our understanding of leadership can be no better than our understanding of what makes humans, all humans, tick — what are the ultimate motivators of our behavior.”  Warren Bennis

Leadership is about relationships with others. You cannot lead without understanding the innate human drives that are essential to human development and survival.
Decades of research have given us numerous theories about drive and motivation, to include:

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belonging" and "love", "esteem", "self-actualization", and "self-transcendence" to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through. The goal of Maslow's Theory is to attain the sixth level of stage: self transcendent needs

• Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators : Self-desire to seek out new things and new challenges, inner satisfaction and desires,  to analyze one's capacity, to observe and to gain knowledge, external rewards and payoffs)

• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us: The well-documented drives to achieve autonomy, mastery and purpose in our personal and professional lives.

• Economist Milton Friedman’s Agency Theory: It argues that rational self-interest motivates all human behavior — and that businesses’ sole purpose is to maximize shareholder returns. 

Over time, behavioral economists have proved there’s much more to human behavior than rational self-interest. Still, it’s all very overwhelming and confusing. There are so many theories of behavior and every one of them makes sense on some level.

The Human Drive Theory 

Humans have evolved to survive differently from other animals. We have endured as a species because we learned to work in groups and rely on problem-solving skills, rather than brute force, inborn physical capacities and instincts.

1. THE SEARCH FOR FULFILLMENT - The drive to acquire what we need for survival, conception and our offspring’s survival. It is the drive to seek, take, control and retain objects and personal experiences. This drive far surpasses our drives to acquire food, water, warmth and a mate. We are driven to attain things that interest us, give us a sense of identity and meet our loved ones’ needs. objects and experiences that improve our status relative to others. In the course of evolution humans have been selected naturally for this drive by survival pressures, based on the basic needs for food, fluid, shelter, and sexual fulfillment. People are driven to acquire both material and positional goods. Both goods and social status are important here. The drive to acquire is rarely satisfied because you always want more and always seek ever greater status. People tend to have a natural desire to obtain physical objects, as well an “immaterial” conquests such as status, power, and influence. Many businesses are built on these and related desires. Fine clothing retailers, brokerages, consulting companies, Italians who make extremely fast and pretty cars: if a company aims to fulfill your desire to be richer, more notable, or more influential, they are selling you on your drive to acquire.
2. THE SEARCH FOR SECURITY - The drive to defend ourselves and our offspring from threats. We’ll protect our family and groups to which we belong, our ideas and beliefs, our sense of pride and hope, our self-image and our resources from harm. Humans have an innate drive to defend themselves and their valued accomplishments whenever they perceive to be threatened. The fundamental emotion manifested by this subconscious drive is alarm, which in turn triggers fear or anger. This drive has obvious survival value. This may have been the first drive to have evolved in earlier human forms.
   Possibly the one drive that seems undeniably apart of all of our psyches: we all desire to protect ourselves and our loved ones.
   We also seek to secure and maintain our property, which is why businesses like alarm system companies, insurance agencies, legal services and even martial arts training sell this security to us. Any business that seeks to eliminate a danger or promises to prevent bad outcomes is selling on this drive to defend.                                                                                                                           
3. THE SEARCH FOR MEANING - The drive to feel and comprehend: to learn, create, innovate, and make sense of the world and our place in it.   As different as we may be, all of us seek to satiate our thirst of curiosity. Look at colleges (which, let’s be honest, are businesses), training programs, book publishers, and many more business types that offer knowledge as their product. If you are selling new information (newspapers), new experiences, or the ability to be competent in a new skill, you are selling on the drive to comprehend.                              It is also the desire for new sensory stimulus, intense emotional experiences, pleasure, excitement, entertainment, and anticipation. Offerings like concerts and music in general, games, movies, and athletics all offer these new experiences, and they don’t necessarily pertain to learning something new. Any business that offers this form of excitement and pleasure discovery is selling on the drive to feel.
   

Leadership must effectively balance these basic human drives. We achieve an optimal state of leadership when we cultivate and consciously manage all human drives. It’s not enough to be mindful of one or two of them.
As Lawrence and Nohria wrote:

“We would predict that those who have found ways to satisfy all human drives (at least over time) will feel more fulfilled than those who have focused on some to the exclusion of others.”

 In The Charge, Brendon Burchard argues that the only way to measurably improve the quality of your life is to learn how to activate the very ten drives that make you most human. These drives are your desires for more control, competence, congruence, caring, connection, change, challenge, creative expression, contribution, and consciousness. These drives shape everything you think, feel, and do in life, so understanding and mastering them is critical to your success and happiness. Strategically activating these drives on a consistent basis is the fastest path to living a fully charged life.

Harnessing our human drives is not easy; if it were, we wouldn’t see so much restlessness in the world. That’s why Brendon has devised what he calls the true “activators” of human experience, a series of powerful yet simple actions you can take to radically increase your levels of energy, engagement, and fulfillment in all areas of your life.

What Brendon uncovers in The Charge will surprise and challenge you. It turns out that most of the ways we seek to meet our human drives are actually counterproductive. We all want more control, for example, but seeking to have more certainty in our daily lives or to control other people will actually decrease our levels of control (and happiness). We have a deep desire for change, too, but we often fail to make the right kinds of change that would make us feel more alive and in command of our lives.

In The Charge, Brendon helps us overcome these mistakes and illuminates the path for strategically and intelligently activating our 10 human drives so that we can have the one thing we all want: more life in our lives! Brendon Burchard is the founder of High Performance Academy and author of the #1 New York Times and #1 USA TODAY bestselling book The Millionaire Messenger. He is also the author of Life’s Golden Ticket and one of the top motivation and high performance trainers in the world. His famous training events and videos inspire millions of people to find their charge, share their voice, and make a greater difference.

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