How Managing Your Needs Will Help You Become a Better Leader

Personal transformation can play an important role in becoming a better leader. Here’s how to meet your core needs to effectively lead teams.

Key takeaways:

• Personal transformation can be a valuable component of becoming an impactful leader.
• All humans have six core needs.
• Every person also has a unique combination of other needs that must be met to feel content and fulfilled.

Have you heard the oft-repeated airplane safety advice to “put on your own oxygen mask before you help with someone else’s?” Strong leaders don’t just take care of their teammates. They also care for themselves, so they’re in the best shape they can be — physically, mentally, and emotionally — to lead their teams to success.

Humans have six core needs that contribute to overall well-being. Realizing your own ideal mix of these needs will make you and those around you happier and more productive. People perform their jobs more effectively, have more nourishing relationships, and feel better about themselves when their needs are properly met.

When I realized I was overweight, lacked energy, and was working my life away but wasn’t gaining the foothold I wanted in business, I knew I was doing something wrong. That’s when the importance of meeting the six core needs became crystal clear to me.

The more positive changes I made in fulfilling my needs, the more abundance, joy, and peace charged into my life. It’s an obvious solution, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it comes easily.

While personal transformation isn’t a requirement to become a great leader, the most impactful leaders grow, learn, and transform along with their teams. This article explores humans’ six core needs and how maintaining them builds competent leadership skills.

6 core needs and your leadership skills

Leaders must ensure their needs are met; otherwise, they are unable to effectively lead their teams. Only when they are healthy, happy, and have a positive sense of self-worth can they entirely focus on their teams and the best forms of leadership.

Certainty, variety, significance, love, growth, and contribution are the six needs humans must fulfill to feel happy and content. How much of each need and the most efficient way to fill it depends on each of us as individuals.

People management can be complicated. Keeping yourself in peak shape helps ensure you stay at the top of your leadership game each day. Understanding your core needs and how they affect you helps you make more informed leadership choices.

Certainty

Humans need to feel safe. We require a feeling of certainty that we are okay and will remain okay in the foreseeable future. At work, this means that we have a sense of stability in our jobs and the future of the company.

Leading your teammates without a sense of certainty in your job can quickly turn into a disaster. A lack of certainty can result in panic, high stress, and rash actions and behavior. Competent leaders have trust in their company and believe the work they’re doing benefits the world.

Variety

Humans also have a need for uncertainty, or variety. When things are too predictable, they get bored and seek something out of the ordinary. Most work projects are temporary by nature, which provides a lot of variety. But it isn’t always enough.

Feeding your need for variety can manifest in many creative ways in the workplace. Think casual dress days, fun Fridays, and after-work activities to keep things interesting and avoid the status quo. When your need for variety is filled, you feel alive, excited, and motivated, which will rub off on your teammates.

Significance

Significance is our desire to feel unique, to feel like we’re accomplishing something of value and meaning. Great leaders go out of their way to fulfill this need for their teammates and incorporate appreciation and positive feedback into their repertoire. The key is that those leaders have a feeling of significance themselves.

It starts with pride in your team and the work you’re accomplishing together. If you’ve ever seen someone work on a project they don’t think anyone cares about, you know what I mean. Look for the significance in your life, share it with the people you work with, and watch how quickly productivity increases.

Connection

Loneliness is no fun. While not everyone needs a high level of contact with others, most of us want to feel connected to some degree. Being part of a larger community helps people feel accepted and seen by society.

Fulfilling the connection need is crucial to developing leadership skills. To lead effectively, you must be aligned with the people you lead. You must understand each other and have a mental and emotional connection that helps you communicate.

Growth

In essence, growth is a response to our natural curiosity. Humans strive to learn more as they age. It is first a method of survival — we learn to feed ourselves and find shelter. Our curiosity soon turns into a need to improve ourselves and expand our minds.

The workplace is one of the best environments for growth opportunities. Reaching professional goals is often the impetus to aim for higher personal goals. When leaders coach their teammates to their full potential, it fulfills the need to grow for all involved.

Contribution

The desire to contribute to the greater good is stronger in some people than others. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do something as dramatic as join the Peace Corps. It can be as modest as donating to a homeless shelter or volunteering in the community — simple acts that have a positive impact on the people of the community.

At work, contributions may present as participating in influential discussion groups and working on top-tier projects. Leaders obtain this skill when they help their teammates grow and achieve their dreams. It also comes from working with a company whose values align with your own and that contributes to causes that resonate with you.

When you develop an appreciation for, and learn about, the core human needs that regulate your decisions, it not only helps you better understand yourself but also the people you lead.

Ignoring the needs of your mind and body impacts your ability to think, focus, and be of service to the people around you. Ensuring that your needs are fulfilled boosts your mind, body, and spirit, which also gives a boost to those around you.

Managing your need fulfillment is part of what makes you a great leader

Because of my personal experience and the impact I’ve seen it have on others, I am a huge proponent of personal transformation and how it can change the direction of your life, from home life to romance and work. Check out my Medium, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages to see what personal transformation can accomplish firsthand and learn more about what it can do for you.