Humans have certain needs. If you want to know how to motivate them, you should know what their needs are.  Irrespective of culture, background, sex or ethnicity humans seem to have a universal set of needs. Knowing these needs is critical in understanding why they do the things they do and how you can influence them in the process. The set of needs can be divided into six areas. These are known as the six universal human needs and were popularised by Anthony Robbins. This categorisation seems to work well when you want to understand why people resort to new behaviours to compensate for those needs that were not satisfied.

Most people are familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs developed in the 1950s. The model emphasises our basic needs and goes on to explore what our other needs are when our most basic needs are satisfied. Although an effective model, it is effective as a test of progression of one’s personality.

In contrast, the six human needs, which somewhat resembles Maslow’s hierarchy, doesn’t concern itself with the priority between these needs, rather it focuses on what they are and what happens when they are not satisfied. In practice, this seems to be an ideal approach when performing self-examination or consultancy and coaching where you want to understand the why and how quickly.

Let’s look at these six human needs in more detail.