Former Dublin football manager Jim Gavin has made an appearance on this year’s Leaving Certificate higher level Business paper (Wednesday). In question 5 (Part 2 – Enterprise), he is introduced.
“Jim Gavin, Director of People and Operations in the Irish Aviation Authority, is a speaker on leadership and motivation. He references motivational theorists such as Douglas McGregor and Abraham Maslov.”
There follows a number of questions on those theories. Maslov was the American psychologist who developed the “hierarchy of needs” in the context of human motivation. McGregor originated the “Theory X” and “Theory Y” analysis of what motivates different people in an organisation.
The paper is available to view here.
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Maslov was, however, more prominently associated with the sporting career of Gavin, who focused on the conclusion of “A Theory of Human Motivation” – the now 80-year old paper that introduced the hierarchy of needs: “What a man can be, he must be.”
In an Irish Times interview with Malachy Clerkin seven years ago, the then Dublin manager mentioned this influence.
“And football is about the collective too. We’re not individuals in a sporting sense. And yet we are in a personal sense. It’s about that person. We take a very player-centred approach in Dublin, as I’m sure all the intercounty managers do.
“It’s about the individual, satisfying his needs, having respect and building up his self-esteem to the point where he can be creative.
“It’s Maslow’s theory of self-actualisation. He would have said himself that the history of the world is the history of people selling themselves short. In the management team, our job is to get those players not to sell themselves short. To be the best they can be.”
The Leaving Certificate paper makes no reference to Gavin’s sporting achievement in becoming the first person in the history of the GAA to manage a team to five successive All-Irelands.
