Spiral Dynamics

Understanding How Values May Affect Decisions

A spiral continues to turn and change.

When you look back on your actions, decisions, and ways of coping with problems, were your responses consistent? Or have your reactions changed over the years? (Most people's do.) This is because our values and motivations change over time.

Psychologists have long been interested in these changing reactions. In fact, some of the best-known psychological theories on motivation have been derived from looking at this very phenomenon. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and McGregor's Theory X versus Theory Y are just two of the theories that have emerged to explain what motivates people and why. Although each theory is different, the question of what people value is central to the theories of motivation and human development.

Spiral Dynamics, a fascinating but less known theory of motivation, looks at the value systems that drive individuals' beliefs and actions. The concept originated in the 1930s with the work of Dr Clare Graves, but he died before publishing his theory. With the popularity of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Graves' theory slipped into obscurity until one of his students, Dr Don Beck, wrote "Spiral Dynamics Integral" in 1996. This "new" theory is an extended version of Graves' original.

Graves' original theory was called "The Theory of Levels of Human Existence." Graves' theory attempted to explain why people's reactions and motivations are so different. It was Beck's application that brought the idea into the main stream and applied it to workplace motivation.

Explaining the Idea:

Spiral Dynamics differs from other theories of human development and motivation in one key way: It doesn't argue that we travel towards an ultimate destination and stay there, it says that we continue to spiral through a helix of developmental stages depending on the biological, social, environmental, and psychological forces at work. As such, Spiral Dynamics attempts to explain "everything" that influences human experience.

Essentially Spiral Dynamics was developed in order to help us understand:

How people think about things (as opposed to "what" they think).
Why people make decisions in different ways.
Why people respond to different motivators.
Why and how values arise and spread.
The nature of change.

Spiral Dynamics: A Marriage of Two Concepts

Beck's theory of Spiral Dynamics developed from two similar, but distinct theories:

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