Life Is a Series of Presentations: 8 Ways to Punch Up Your People Skills at Work, at Home, Anytime, Anywhere by Tony Jeary

Author:Tony Jeary [Jeary, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2004-02-22T14:00:00+00:00

What Do You Want?

Abraham Maslow, who lived from 1908 to 1970, observed that human beings always want something, and these desires motivate all our behavior. Then, in an effort to create a universally applicable theory, he concluded that everyone’s deepest desires correspond roughly to sequential stages or phases of our lives. At first, he argued, people must satisfy their most basic biological desires: the need for food, sex, and shelter. It has been observed, for example, that all social revolutions originate with the middle class because the poorest people are so busy struggling to meet their most basic needs that they cannot strive to improve their lot through rebellion.

In Stage 2 of Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs, once a person’s basic biological requirements are met he prioritizes his own feeling of safety before all other desires. In Stage 3 a person seeks to satisfy his need for belonging or social contact. In Stage 4 his need for esteem and status takes precedence. Finally, in Stage 5, if he ever reaches it, a person’s greatest desire is to achieve self-fulfillment.

One way to explore the why behind your presentation is to find your place and the place of your audience on Maslow’s hierarchy. For example, are you or your audience at the point of longing for social contact, or are you most keenly in search of status? But knowledge of Maslow can only take you so far. The main problem with his hierarchy, as I believe he freely acknowledged, is that, while it has the ring of truth, it has never been scientifically verified. Also, it tends to be inherently judgmental, as if the person who never gets past Stage 3 is somehow living on a lesser plane of existence than the person who exists in Stage 5. But the shortcoming from our perspective as presenters is that Maslow paints all humanity with such a broad brush that his observations become difficult to employ as a useful tool when dealing with individuals in our audience.

In an effort to overcome this handicap, for years I have successfully coached clients to evaluate their audience’s why through the prism of what I call Seven Subconscious Desires. Every audience member wants to belong, to be respected, to be liked, to be safe, to succeed, to find romance, and to be inspired or enthused. Every part of your presentation, I have instructed, should have as its purpose the satisfaction of one or more of these desires. Thousands of my clients, when they remember to focus the whys of their presentation on these desires, have had great success connecting with their audience.

Recently, I learned about a study that offers a scientific basis for the results my clients have achieved by keeping in mind the audience’s subconscious desires. A psychologist named Dr. Steven Reiss managed to take Maslow quite a step further. Dr. Reiss agreed with the premise that human beings are creatures of desire, but he found Maslow’s hierarchy too rigid. Instead, he set out to define a different set of fundamental desires that all people have in common, and to do it scientifically.

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