3 Good Reasons to Hate Maslow's Pyramid

The principle is simple: as long as a basic need is unmet, it takes centre stage; once it is satisfied, it stops motivating and makes way for the next one. That simplicity is what made the model so successful. It is also what makes it a problem.

The origins of A. Maslow's article

Let us first understand why this article, written in July 1943 by Abraham Maslow, still carries so much weight in companies today. As soon as management training comes up, people think of Maslow's pyramid. On one point I agree with most of my fellow consultants, trainers and coaches: motivation remains a crucial lever in management. But you still need to know what really motivates an employee today, and that is exactly where the famous pyramid shows its limits.

Reason 1: a theory of human motivation, not a theory of management

It is July 1943. When his article "A Theory of Human Motivation" appears in the journal Psychological Review, Maslow is a professor at Brooklyn College in New York. The Second World War is at its height: the Soviets have just defeated the troops of the Third Reich at Stalingrad. Managing teams is not the concern of the moment.

Maslow writes as a clinical psychologist. He draws on what he observes in his patients and on the authors of his time, Freud, Adler and Goldstein. Work only appears in passing in his text, in connection with the need for safety, when he mentions the preference for a secure job, a savings account or insurance. Nothing about managers, organizations or performance.

The move into business came later, through other people. In 1960, Douglas McGregor published "The Human Side of Enterprise", in which his well-known Theory X and Theory Y draw directly on the hierarchy of needs. The model then entered business schools. Maslow himself took an interest in 1962, during a summer spent at a Californian electronics company, Non-Linear Systems. He drew a book from it, "Eupsychian Management" (1965), in which he worried about enthusiastic executives adopting wholesale a model that came from the clinic and had never been tested in the world of work. The author was therefore the first to urge caution.

Reason 2: Maslow never talked about a pyramid

Nowhere in his article does Abraham Maslow use the word "pyramid". He talks about a hierarchy of needs, which is not the same thing. To take a rigorous approach, we ranked the words of his article by semantic analysis. Out of the 9,102 words in the July 1943 text, here are the rank and number of occurrences of a few significant words, the top places being taken by English function words (the, of, and…).

The word "needs" ranks 9th, with 129 occurrences. "Hierarchy" only comes in at 88th, with 15 occurrences. As for "pyramid", it does not appear once.

Above all, the hierarchy Maslow describes is anything but rigid. He devotes a whole section of his article to exceptions: people for whom self-esteem matters more than love, creative people who create whatever their living conditions, people ready to sacrifice everything for an ideal. He also points out that a need does not have to be fully satisfied for the next one to emerge. A pyramid with neatly separated levels says exactly the opposite.

We must therefore accept that the pyramid was not born of Maslow's work: other authors added it over the years. In 2019, three management researchers, Todd Bridgman, Stephen Cummings and John Ballard, traced its history: the triangle appears in the management literature around the turn of the 1960s, then spreads from textbook to textbook until it becomes the image everyone knows. Maslow himself spoke of a hierarchy and of the satisfaction of needs. His article was above all exploratory research into the psychological needs of human beings.

Reason 3: the theory behind Maslow's pyramid has not been scientifically validated

The period was hardly suited to validating anything: in 1943 resources were mobilized elsewhere, and checking that human needs fall into five ranked categories would have required lengthy research. That research was carried out later, and its results are disappointing.

• The AT&T managers: in 1968, Douglas Hall and Khalil Nougaim followed around fifty young managers for five years. Their needs changed as their careers developed, but not in the order the hierarchy predicts.
• Two levels rather than five: in 1972, Edward Lawler and Lloyd Suttle concluded, at best, that there is a distinction between basic needs and all the others, with no established order above them.
• A pyramid to rebuild: in 2010, Douglas Kenrick and his colleagues proposed rebuilding it entirely on the basis of evolutionary psychology, with needs that overlap instead of stacking up.

To these findings I would add a criticism I come across every day in my work. As early as 1980, Geert Hofstede pointed out that Maslow's hierarchy reflects the values of the American middle class of his time. In cultures where the group comes before the individual, belonging and safety often matter more than personal achievement. A manager leading an international team soon notices this.

It is therefore a theory, or rather a hypothesis, never backed by solid scientific evidence. I stay cautious: when I mention Maslow in management training, I keep my claims measured. There is other research on motivation that is better suited to managers' everyday reality, notably the work of Herzberg, of Deci and Ryan, or Spranger's theory of motivations.

What Maslow's pyramid still offers managers

Hating the pyramid does not mean throwing Maslow away. Three ideas from his article remain valuable for anyone leading a team, and they are the useful core of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in the workplace.

• A threatened need takes up all the space. An employee who fears for their job in the middle of a reorganization will not hear a speech about the purpose of the mission. Before talking about ambition, you have to address the worry.
• A satisfied need stops motivating. A pay rise is welcome, then becomes the norm. Relying on salary alone to sustain engagement is like filling a leaking bucket.
• The lasting levers are at the top. Recognition, autonomy and the chance to learn keep motivation going over time, provided the foundations are solid.

On the other hand, the pyramid says nothing about the differences between people. Two employees in the same role, on the same salary, can be driven by opposite motives. When an important need stays frustrated for too long, either of them may end up sliding into demotivation, but not for the same reasons. That difference is what a manager has to understand, case by case, rather than assuming that everyone climbs the same pyramid at the same pace.

Motivating a team without a ready-made pyramid

There are many ways to build your team's motivation without forcing a model onto people who do not recognize themselves in it. We work with teams through team coaching and team building, including in multicultural settings. Do get in touch to talk it over.

Frequently asked questions about Maslow's hierarchy of needs

This article was written by Marc Prager.