“People need people”, said the small daughter of William Schutz in response to his advice to come down stair by her own. Her reply was a powerful trigger for the great psychologist. to work on “human potential. Based on the research, he developed the instrument of Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behaviour (FIRO-B) for the high-performance military team. Interpersonal needs are like physical needs such as food & shelter, motivating individual’s behaviours.
What one does at the workplace is the function of personality (who one is) and the situation. “Who one is” – is the function of what one has gone through in the formative stage of life? William Schutz called it the Relational Continuity principle. How one has been treated by parents and other nears & dears in an early age shapes one’s world view to respond to the various situations. Our normal behaviour is developed by the unextreme treatment we received in our childhood.
Our self- concept for significance, competence, and lovability leads to varying degrees of respective feelings of acceptance, respect, and intimacy. These feelings, in turn, create within us -Expressed (when we initiate action towards others) and Wanted (when we want others to initiate action towards us) interpersonal needs & behaviour respectively for:
- Inclusion (recognition, belonging, participation, contact with others, and how we relate to group)
- Inclusion (recognition, belonging, participation, contact with others, and how we relate to group)
- Affection (closeness, warmth, sensitivity, openness, and how we relate to another person).
Inclusion is about – “whether I am in or out” wrt group. Control is about “whether I am up or down wrt competence”. Affection is about “how far or close I am with an individual”.