Your values - and how you want to grow.

Many of us are motivated by personal growth. In fact in today's chaotic world its not really an option - we have to be able to take control of our lives and in collaboration with others, work out a destiny that works for us and those that we are with.

One thing that we need is self knowledge, another is a roadmap. The work of Dudley Lynch in providing a simple, easy to use and affordable version of the powerful Graves Spiral model is really helpful.

Graves was a contemporary of Maslow who became interested in what happened to people who went past the self-actualisation stage in Maslow’s Hierarchy. He developed an approach known as the Graves Spiral which helps us describe people’s value systems, behaviour and hence what motivates them according to their degree of group vs. individual behaviour on one axis and their ability to tolerate ambiguity in their work situation on the other. The best known exposition of Graves’s ideas lies in Spiral Dynamics but we are going to refer to the work of Dudley Lynch here because it is both more accessible to the busy manager and because he integrates it with what we know about brain function and preferred styles of thinking.

Graves took the view that an individual’s development towards maturity was in the direction of being able to handle increased complexity of situations, the ability to view situations in an increasingly long term way and the ability to handle ambiguity. At a certain point in their development the individual becomes able to use ambiguity and create new rules to develop new systems and structures.

However this progress doesn’t take place in a linear way. Individuals meet with crises or changes of circumstances at different times in their lives and this can pop them from being primarily concerned with self to being primarily concerned with the group they are part of. At a different time they may move the other way..

Individuals may not go through the sequence completely or necessarily in order. As children and young people they adopt the prevailing norms of their family’s class or cultural domain. In Western societies they are generally levels 4, 5 and 6 although teen culture and gangs may show a lot of clan behaviour.

Whether the individual then moves on depends on what happens to them and how they respond to it. Many of us have the experience of rejecting our parents’ values for the alternative family – from capitalist to socialist or the reverse for instance. What happens after that first major jump depends on what the individual needs to achieve full autonomy of action and whether they are prepared to continue to strive for maturity.

Having issued this caution, what follows is an idealised journey which illustrates the kinds of issues and pressures that move the individual forward, up the spiral.

For instance they may develop from survival needs to being part of a group which delivers security. This is of course one of the main reasons why children and young people join a gang. However belonging to the group can be restrictive and people break free again to be on their own.

In practice they often find that the life of a loner is difficult and chaotic and they will often settle for belonging in a structured organisation like a church or an armed or other service which offers certainty and stability in exchange for a degree of sacrifice in freedom, earning power and personal achievement.

However over time they may find this irksome and they may start to hanker for the trappings of power, position and acquisition and display of status objects. This may lead them to switch allegiance to a more self-centred culture such as found in many corporate business cultures which rewards the individual for his performance and tends to see excess team orientation as a bit wet. For people with talent at certain stages of their life this can be a very enticing prospect.

However many find that after a period the strain of constantly competing and watching one’s back becomes wearisome and they “retire” and seek to work in a group that focuses on being more inclusive and helping people to develop as a group. “No-one wins until we all win” might be the motto.

A sizeable group spend their working lives in such groups but for a small proportion the characteristic inefficiency and therapy addiction of these groups become frustrating. Fired by the need to find elegant solutions that work, they strike out on their own to create something that works.

However they are qualitatively different from the previous self-orientated system in that they desire self-expression but not at the EXPENSE of the group. This drives them towards syntheses of left and right brain thinking to create systems that are both results and people focused.

This journey is summarised in the diagram. The colours of the systems are those used by Spiral Dynamics, the most popular “flavour” of the Graves theory. The names for the stages are Dudley Lynch’s.

 

The central arrows illustrate the emotional drivers that move people forward. The emotions on the outside are the characteristic forces that keep people embedded in these systems.

It’s important to recognise that individuals are not exclusively attached to one of these mindsets. It’s more as if these are expressions of value systems that may be adopted. In general, most individuals may have 2, 3 or 4 of these prominent in their make-ups. Often 2 adjacent ones may be in competition. One however will generally be the one most frequently adopted.

It’s also not necessary to go through these stages in strict sequence. Many of the baby boom generation went from "loyalist" to "involver" and then had to spend some time learning how to be compete effectively before they could move on.

This is Graves’s theory in summary. You may wonder “how does it all come about – what’s the underpinning rationale and evidence?”

Dudley Lynch’s interpretation is that these value systems develop out of the way we see the world – out of our thinking styles and preferences. A big trap we can fall into is the assumption that other people are like us and think the same way.

In truth we see the world the way we think. It’s a projection of our preferred thinking style.One tool that can disentangle this is The BrainMap®. It effectively relates thinking style to brain function.

The theoretical basis is quite simple. People vary in the way they assess information on 2 continuums – deliberate/intellectual vs. instinctive behaviour on 1 dimension and right vs. left brain on the other. So people’s motivations will vary according to whether they are more interested in results or in relationships and patterns and this bias will be filtered according to how instinctive or deliberate they are in their activities.

So this starts to give us a map of who we may be dealing with and what drives them. It can be summarised in the diagram here. Some characteristics are presented here. Dudley Lynch characterises them starting at top left and going clockwise as I – control, I-explore, I-preserve and I-pursue at bottom left.

 

However we tend not to see pure forms. Most people have a “centre of gravity” that will be in one or other quadrant. However it’s likely that 2 or 3 quadrants will be strongly represented in anyone’s make up.

A typical BrainMap output is shown here. This is a profile not uncommon for small business owners. The individual is something of a visionary but has good strengths in all areas.

However, some spots on this map have characteristics that map to the Graves Spiral. A lot of research carried out into how the pure forms of these characters behave and how they can be motivated and this is summarised in the MindMaker6® tool.

So to summarise, we believe that self knowledge is the key to self growth and an understanding of these models is a powerful advantage to people trying to build organisations that work in today's business and social climate where a capitalism in flux needs to be integrated with increasingly forceful social and environmental imperatives.

These tools are powerful, easy to use and understand and will deliver some really powerful and useful insights to help you equip yourself for this strange new world.

Dudley first put these ideas forward as the lead author of Strategy of the Dolphin and has given a powerful account of his own journey in Mother of All minds.

You can buy the BrainMap® and Mindmaker6® tools as a package for only £30 + £1.50 for postage within the UK. Please order here. We will include a copy our own e-book - notes from a business journey which explains how some of these ideas have been used in our own operations and thinking.