Spiral Dynamics and the Graves Value Model

What is the Graves Value Model?

Clare W. Graves taught psychology at Union College in Schenectady (New York) and, from the 1950s onwards, studied how people's values develop. He concluded that value systems are not a fixed trait of a person, but emerge as a response to the conditions of life people encounter – and to the capacities they develop to cope with them. He called his theory the “Emergent Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory” (ECLET); today it is mostly known as the Graves model or Graves Value Model.

A few basic ideas shape the model:

• Life conditions and responses: when conditions change, a new value system can emerge. Graves therefore labelled the systems with pairs of letters – the first letter stands for the life conditions, the second for the way of coping with them.
• Alternating between I and we: value systems that emphasise the individual and those that emphasise the community follow one another.
• Open-ended: development has no final goal; Graves spoke of a never-ending quest.
• Under pressure, earlier value systems often come to the fore.

What is Spiral Dynamics?

Don Beck and Christopher Cowan developed Graves' model further and presented it to a wide audience in 1996 in their book “Spiral Dynamics”. They give the value systems colours and apply the model to leadership, organisations and change processes. The image of the spiral stands for value systems building on one another without replacing the earlier ones: they remain available and become important again depending on the situation.

Every value system has its strengths – and its exaggeration: order can turn into bureaucracy, achievement into exploitation, community into endless consensus-seeking. What matters, therefore, is not which colour ranks “higher”, but whether the mix fits the tasks, the people and the environment.

Graves Value Model and Spiral Dynamics: the difference

The Graves Value Model is the original research with its theory of life conditions and ways of coping. Spiral Dynamics builds on it, makes the model tangible with colours and explicitly applies it to organisations, leadership and change. If you want to explore the foundations, read Graves; if you want to talk about culture and change in a company, Spiral Dynamics offers an easily understood language for it.

How I use the models

In my 8-Level Model I use Spiral Dynamics – alongside Theory U and the Dilts pyramid – to talk about the culture of teams and organisations. Typical occasions are changes that fail because “we've always done it this way”, tensions between departments with different priorities, or the question of why one person feels at home in a company straight away and another never does. Good questions for the conversation include:

• Which rules really carry us – and which have outlived their purpose?
• What do we reward in everyday work, and does that match what we say?
• What becomes more important for us under pressure – and what gets lost then?

To get started, I have developed two free questionnaires, the values profile for organisations and for individuals. They show the weight that seven value systems carry today, and if you wish also in the desired picture and under pressure. The Values U-Compass combines the values profile with Theory U. The questionnaires run in the browser and transmit no data:

• Open the organisation's values profile
• Open the personal values profile

A values profile is a guide, not a label. The questionnaires are trial versions and have not been scientifically validated; they serve as a starting point for conversation. Coaching is an advisory activity and is not a substitute for psychotherapy.

If you would like to discuss the values in your team or organisation, or plan a change with an eye on culture, I will gladly support you in personal and team development and in business change management.

Sources: Graves, C. W. (2005): The Never Ending Quest. Ed. by C. C. Cowan and N. Todorovic. Santa Barbara: ECLET Publishing. – Beck, D. E.; Cowan, C. C. (1996): Spiral Dynamics. Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change. Malden: Blackwell.

Trademark notice: Spiral Dynamics® is a registered trademark of National Values Center Consulting. The name refers here only to the underlying model; there is no connection with the trademark owners, and my questionnaires are neither certified nor authorised by them.