Maslow on Management

Notes on Synergy

The more influence and power you give to someone else in the team situation, the more you have for yourself.

Social synergy as used first by Ruth Benedict to apply to the degree of health of the primitive culture she was studying meant essentially that a synergic institution was one that arranged it so that a person pursuing his selfish ends was automatically helping other people thereby; and that a person trying to be altruistic and helping other people and being unselfish, was also automatically and willy-nilly helping along his own selfish advantages. That is to say, it was a resolution of the dichotomy between selfishness and unselfishness, showing very clearly that the opposition of selfishness and unselfishness or their mutual exclusiveness was a function of a poorly developed culture (103). I have shown this to be true within the individual in about the same way, winding up with the statement that where selfishness and unselfishness are mutually exclusive, this is a sign of mild psychopathology within the individual.

Self-actualizing people rise above the dichotomy between selfishness and unselfishness, and this can be shown in various ways. One is that they get pleasure from the pleasures of other people. That is, they get selfish pleasures from the pleasures of other people, which is a way of saying unselfish. The example that I used a long time ago ...