Let’s get into the levels themselves.
I’m going to combine levels 1 and 2, because they both relate to meeting our basic survival needs. How does our need to meet our basic needs show up in our career? Well, if we’re meeting 1 and 2 in our career it means that we have some sort of income, our career allows us to pay our bills, it allows us to buy food and heat our homes, and so forth.
The career basically keeps us alive, keeps our children and family alive, and it keeps the the debt collectors away. I wouldn’t say it’s a dominant level, but most of us take this for granted. Most people are aware that this is a dimension of career that’s important. It’s kind of obvious but I don’t want to overlook the obvious here.
You know most people are aware that their career needs to bring money in. At the same time a lot of people can’t meet these needs themselves, and we have social security systems set up for people like that.
Interestingly, when you start a business it can be easy to forget about these early levels. Sometimes your attention can all go in to the product, to the dream idea, that you forget to look out for the basics. My friend Alberto experienced this when he started his SEO business in Madrid (as a consultor de SEO, as he likes to remind me). To begin with, he was so excited to start his project that he forgot to take care of the essentials. It took him a little while to realise this.
Level 3 is about raw inner power and dominance. It’s about having a really strong sense of will, direction and inner strength, and it’s about winning out over other people.
In career, this can show up in really unhealthy ways. It can show up in doing unlawful things to beat the competition, lying to customers, being horrible to employees. It’s really all about serving your own needs and interests, not thinking about other people, and often to the detriment of other people.
However it can also show up in positive ways as well. This strength, this ability to be self-assertive, this ability to show our anger, this ability to look out for ourselves in the career jungle, and so on, are all positive in moderation. The business world can be difficult and, depending on the industry you’re in, it can be quite cut-throat. If you don’t have some Level 3 in you, you’re going to get crushed by other people who do.
I think it also gives us a boldness, the ability to fight for the death, the ability to succeed no matter what. That’s important in career, but it’s also important at later levels in career development, when we start thinking about self-expression, passion and joy.
It’s important that we have this level three inner power because if we want to make a career switch, say start a business, how are we going to do that if we’ve got no inner strength? We need to have this Level 3.
We also don’t want to overembody Level 3 because it can make us into monsters, and without the higher structures in place, we’re just not able to function as professionals.