The stories we tell: teaching “need for achievement”

This teaching exercise explores David McClelland’s book The Achieving Society (1961), to suggest that McClelland’s “need for achievement” is an act of the imagination generated through “apperception” rather than a characteristic or trait of individuals. The exercise is useful for exploring the history of the “need for achievement” construct by having students write and analyze stories based on materials used in McClelland’s original research. The chapter provides: (1) an overview of “need for achievement” as a characteristic of certain kinds of children’s stories, (2) a way to elicit stories that may meet “need for achievement” criteria, (3) a process to evaluate these stories for “need for achievement,” and (4) and exploration of the ways entrepreneurs and others talk about entrepreneurship. This chapter ends with a suggestion that viewing “need for achievement” as an act of imagination impacts teaching entrepreneurship as a way of thinking about individual agency rather than as a personality characteristic.