Actualization as the Sum of the Components
Habits | Stories | Journals | Empowerment
Psychologists have debated the utility in Maslow’s model of retaining a separate section for Actualization. After all, is that not the sum of its parts, explained in detail elsewhere?
Retaining Actualization as a separate and discrete concept gives us the benefit of directly addressing the whole. Ultimately, the whole must retain our focus. For it is the individual, not the components, that will find position and meaning and actualization in the environment. Besides, we intuitively understand, confirmed by complexity theory, that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Maslow found that actualized adults share common traits; they are spontaneous and authentic and very much in the moment. They are less burdened either by the past or the future.
They are problem solvers and generally creative, and they tend to readily accept the facts and the reality of situations. These traits are prerequisites to helpful and practical progress. These are the traits of an adaptive, learning and therefore evolving organism.
But these traits are found nowhere in the hierarchy of needs. The whole is something else. It is more than just the components. The synchronized organism is more than a happy conglomeration of its parts. And although there is an indelible need to address each component, it is the whole that we ultimately meet and nurture and respect.
To make the point through a different prism, let us consider robotics. We suspect the evolution of robotics will eventually recognize that coordination and direction of components is not the sole solution. Of course each component demands special attention. But they also require some autonomy. Without it, the whole can not be more than the components. It can not be adaptive and spontaneous.
The general picture is that as an individual matures and actualizes, the person grows outward from their beginnings and embraces layers of reinforcing thought patterns, behaviors, habits and relationships that further bolster and reinforce their views on life and position in it. A person’s life journey, their search for meaning, fills with experiences and relationships that demand a continual, if sometimes unconscious, adaptation and growth to the environment at least partly of their choosing.
This journey, this story if you will, is not just an individual one. As we have seen, the milieu or context is an indelible part of the story. It interacts on the individual; inter-causality is fundamentally at play and an integral part of what and how the individual learns. It forms a reinforcing pattern and tableaux upon which actualization feeds.
As a short aside, it is not surprising then that economics finds such powerful trends in first mover advantage and elasticity. We learn in social contexts and we learn best what we learn first. We feel most comfortable there. We learn the most from first relationships and social contexts. Our internalization, our stories, run deepest there. This pattern repeats again in network theory where the first nodes usually become the largest nodes, which gain the most associations according to Power Laws or the Pareto principle.
Following are supporting enablers for actualization as reinforced in scientific research.
Habits
Cognitive-behavioral models and gains in the centrality of the search for life’s meaning have greatly enriched our understanding of how habits reinforce growth or actualization.[i] The secret of Covey’s seminal work, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” was not just his practical approach and tool sets, but also his synergistic placement of habits within a cognitive framework even while he so practically demonstrated that being human necessarily involved a physical, emotional, social and spiritual fraternity.
Covey’s book is not really a management primer as much as a psychological self-help book, a practical celebration of Maslow. That it found such a significant audience in the business world attests to the integral relationship between individual behavior and business effectiveness. He reminded everyone in a clear and practical way that our lives holistically enjoin Maslow’s hierarchy. He demonstrated how some habits naturally reinforce actualization. They have a significant and non-linear causality to them; it is impossible to say just how one element affects the other. The truth is, they all affect each other, and their total effect is something else again, creating a snow ball effect.
Here again recurrent themes jump out at us. We are humans with unalterable aspects. We cannot concentrate only on one aspect of ourselves, whether it is our intellect, or physicality. We are ourselves a complex network whose components work sympathetically.
But it all begins; our development, our habits, our progression, all revolve around the central star of choice; our ability to insert ourselves in the gap between stimulus and response. In all situations, our self-preservation, or advancement of our principle meaning, must gain utmost priority. For there will be no other to stand in for us. There can be no other. For we must act for ourselves if we wish to actualize and mature. Our independence or esteem does not discount our social nature or belonging, our need for help, mentors, and guides, and relationships. Nevertheless, no rules, no parent, no manager, can do it for us.
It matters not so much what sociological milieu we are in, but what we do with it. Like our habits, we must either change them, or run from them, in order to rearrange them to our benefit.
Beware your thoughts for they become words, Beware your words for they become actions, Beware your actions for they become habits, Beware your habits for they become character, Beware your character for it becomes destiny.
The quotation’s usefulness reveals the outward rippling layers of our development. Earlier in the description of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we saw that learning itself follows this same pattern, overlaying the categorizations of our humanness, and our search for experiences that bring meaning and sense to our existence.
Holistically, habit reinforces actualization just as physical activity builds up the body. But habits instruct more than physical structure. We must also view them in the context of their social networks; there is a synergistic component to them.
As an illustration, in organizations, habit is process. The social aspect of process is clear. There is a supportive synergy involved, just as the individual draws support from the fulfillment of each need in order to grow. There is an implication here; functional departments actually obstruct habit formation to the extent they prevent the organism from seeing the habit or process as part of an integrated whole.
Stories
Cognitive-behavioral and experiential psychology finds much importance in each person’s actualization in understanding where they are and where they are going. The cognitive stance brings value to the concept through stories in two ways.
First, the inner narrative that accompanies life’s progression is critically important. For it not only defines the meaning of the events but the individual’s interpretation and reaction to them. This concept dovetails nicely with our sense of unique meaning for every life. We are not the product of some sociological experiment or trend. We are the sum of our interpretations of and actions on our life experiences.
Seen from this perspective, it is possible to predict the usefulness of catharsis as therapy and role-playing as creativity generator. Both approaches jog perspective and celebrate choice in the same way since they place the actor on a stage in contrast to a passive recipient of fateful events.
Second, cognitive theory absolutely places choice in the central role of creating the story in the first place. Active insertion in one’s life gives one a higher degree of control and therefore security. The self-actualized human with a life’s purpose also demands it.
Self-autonomy is an integral foundation of actualization. For a team or a culture, creating and telling the story is a necessary exploratory activity, integral to communication and purpose.
Benefit of Journals
Societies have written and catalogued their journeys since before they developed a language. We continue to learn about the synergistic benefits of recording our stories and experiences as opposed to merely telling them.
First, there is a cathartic element. Writing is often as effective as speaking with a counselor or a significant other. Writing allows expression symbolized by pouring one’s internal thoughts onto the visible page.
In addition to visualization, writing is activity. It forces a focus, an interpretation, an analysis. Activities require resolution. They brook no cognitive dissonance.
Third, writing unveils irrationality that remains alive and well in our thoughts. It is much more difficult to write an illogical treatise than to hold a number of disparate thoughts in one’s consciousness. As we have seen, we have a drive to make sense of it all. Writing helps us do that. It establishes and confirms our mission.
Fourth, recording our thoughts over longer periods reinforces our sense of belonging. It provides a rich earth or tableau in which emotion and spirit finds root. It provides a history, sometimes a public one. It provides lessons and experiences for others, and defines who we are. It grounds the vagaries of our daily difficulties and emotional highs and lows with the consistency of months and years of written word.
Our forbearers drew on walls to leave a defining and lasting mark for the benefit of both the artist and the viewer. The activity predates language. We have been doing so ever since.
Empowerment
Empowerment and engagement, studied so earnestly by management thinkers in the last decades, takes on a richer hue when viewed in the light of actualization. It is not Associate engagement the organization yearns for, but actualization and purpose.
Management theories on empowerment are pale and one-dimensional compared to the work in psychology on actualization. Imagine using empowerment language to describe teen development. It resembles a parent surprised to learn their teen has their own life to live, and can do it quite well without a thousand rules to keep her in place.
In team situations, actualization must take place for peak performance. Like the teen, empowerment is only part of the challenge. Hierarchical cultures and management too often restrain team actualization despite empowerment efforts by constraining their engagement and their creativity in other aspects of actualization. Empowerment provides only a glimpse at the potential many organizations leave unfulfilled. Great teams address all of Maslow’s hierarchy, not just empowerment.
[i] Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 15th ed. (Free Press, 2004).