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Coaching for the Brilliantly Wired and Uniquely Weird

  • Spiral Dynamics and CliftonStrengths

    In our time, all the right conditions and contradictions for the Integral value meme of Spiral Dynamics have finally emerged — a cascade of “wicked problems” that can only be fully recognized and solved from an Integral perspective.

    Some have been around for a while, like racism, abortion, and power, and some have risen to general awareness lately, like free speech, disinformation, and artificial intelligence. Add to this list the pandemic, war, and climate change, and we have ourselves a systemic, complex situation that overwhelms previous value memes. And I have yet to mention the education crisis, and even then, the list is not exhaustive.

    Integral was ahead of its time. It emerged decades before the world really needed it. This gave us some time to lay some theoretical and social groundwork.

    On the other hand, new work has its own set of challenges. Silent quitting, flexibility around remote work, managers becoming coaches, and all new management forms like self-managing teams come to mind. And we can add the shift in the workplace caused by artificial intelligence and automation, which results in new professions and a loss of work for many.

    CliftonStrengths gives us tools to navigate this new work situation. It provides insight into ourselves and co-workers for more efficient teams. But not only that, it allows for whole new, individualized management practices and ways of working together.

    Spiral Dynamics and CliftonStrengths together are powerful in generating company and community cultures, a whole new set of solutions, and an integrative way of living together past mere acceptance of diversity.

    I will provide training for Spiral Dynamics coaches starting this year.

  • Spiral Dynamics and Positive Disintegration

    We are living in chaotic times. Thanks to Steven Pinker, we know that it is the most peaceful time in known human history, yet it certainly does not feel like it.

    Warfare is different today. More often than not, it is more of a culture war, a war of different worldviews, different ways of sense-making of our times.

    TPD (the Theory of Positive Disintegration) was developed by Dabrowski in a time of great bloodshed during, between, and after the two most horrible recent wars. Looking at our situation in the West, I came to believe that there is ample possibility for similar reactions to the ongoing culture war as there was to physical war. The change of worldview is traumatic and stressful and includes loss just as war does.

    Do not get me wrong: I am not belittling physical war. All I want is to show that TPD can help as much in overcoming PTSD from culture war as it did for many from physical war.

    Culture War 2.0

    Peter Limberg did a great treatise on culture war 2.0 in Welcome to Culture War 2.0

    If you are more a visual type, you can see an interview about it here: Culture War 2.0, Rebel Wisdom and Peter Limberg.

    There are three major sense-making strategies at work at the moment in the West. We usually call them traditionalism, modernity, and post-modernity.

    Several models try to explain why there is so much friction between the three. I think of models from people like Robert Kegan, Ken Wilber, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Jean Gebser, and the one I want to have a look at today, by Clare W. Graves and Don Beck.

    Their model is called Spiral Dynamics® and it states that humanity and individuals evolve through the same set of open-ended stages during their existence. For an explanation of the theory, visit the website of a partner of mine in the Netherlands, ValueMatch.

    This much here to understand the main players of culture war 2.0:

    Traditionalism has been coded Blue in Spiral Dynamics. It believes in absolute truth as seen in evangelical Christianity, Mormonism, and Islam. It is organized hierarchically by a higher power.

    Modernity, Orange in Spiral Dynamics, doubts god-given absolute truth and replaces it with scientific search and power of the human mind, strives for individual success, and has set up a materialistic worldview.

    But Orange with its idea of “everything is possible” did not think about the consequences. The exploitation of the earth, but also cheap labor, and the exclusion of the unsuccessful are direct consequences.

    Post-Modernity, coded Green, differs from Blue in that it no longer believes in the only truth, neither in the sense of religion nor in the sense of Orange science. Truth is subjective.

    Let’s have, just as an example, a deeper look into Green:

    Teamwork, harmonious joint decision-making, self-fulfillment, personal growth, psychology, psychiatry, personality testing, ecology, NGOs, people managers, and tolerance towards everybody but the intolerant are keywords.

    Green is often called the first trans-rational level, not solely relying on reason to solve problems. It is anti-hierarchical as well: while Red – an earlier worldview that we could dub “law of the jungle” – had power structures, Blue had its anointed ones, and Orange had meritocracies, Green abhors any kind of hierarchy.

    On its dark side, mean Green, as it often is called with a term coined by Ken Wilber, develops identity politics and intersectionality. It de-platforms people with different views, as it sees speech and opinion as possible violence.

    Interestingly enough, through intersectionality valuing victims over seeming oppressors, Green introduces a new hierarchy through the back door. The more groups of victims somebody belongs to, the more their understanding of truth is valued.

    Mean Green is a poster child for the problems of all worldviews so far: once I have battled through leaving one and growing into the next, I find those values and worldviews I just left childish, simple, and limited. Why can’t they see?

    Let us recap:

    Blue developed from Red to handle the egotistical power struggle through god-given laws and order. Only that way even the king has to subordinate himself to the law.

    Orange developed from Blue as it saw the problems Blue introduced in this world: a rigid system of law and order, not allowing for personal growth outside its parameters on one hand and stifling, even condemning all truth outside its own.

    Green developed from Orange because its value for individual strive and meritocracy almost destroyed our habitat.

    I wonder what kind of problems Green introduces it is not conscious of. Could it be said culture war, trying to push their values on previous worldviews? Just thinking aloud here.

    Then, the question would be: what is next? But not in this article, sorry. If you are interested in my thoughts about that, let me know, and I will gladly write something about it. Just a hint: we need to see that those worldviews, though they show an evolution, are not any hierarchy. None is better than the other, and each has solutions fit for the problems it evolved to solve in the first place.

    What I would like to look at is how it is that people grow from one worldview to the next.

    Or, as Spiral Dynamics would put it: how do people evolve in their consciousness and ability for complex thinking?

    The Change Process

    As you might know from other blog entries here, I also work with the theory of positive disintegration TPD, of which I make only a short recap here. After that, I will introduce the Spiral Dynamics model of change and show the parallels.

    Positive personal Disintegration

    Dabrowski saw psychological problems induced by trauma as a possible chance for growth of a person’s personality.

    Change in his theory is induced mainly by three thrives or factors:

    1. Factor 1: basic instincts like survival
    2. Factor 2: external influences from a social environment
    3. Factor 3: autonomous values

    A person can undergo 5 steps of change:

    1. Primary Integration: This is integration driven by the first two factors. Integration is basically instinctual or social. It builds the platform the person will develop from.
    2. Unilevel Disintegration: Initial brief and more or less intense crisis leads to discomfort and ambivalent thinking. According to Dabrowski, from this level there are three ways to proceed. (The third option will require great energy.)
      1. Fall back on an earlier level
      2. Suicide or psychosis
      3. Proceed to the next step.
    3. Spontaneous Multilevel Disintegration: Conflicts here are not only based on dis-ease with the former primary integration but with the hunch of a new paradigm. You start seeing things differently.
    4. Directed Multilevel Disintegration: This is the step beyond return. You now start to directly, consciously and deliberately review your interpretation of life instead of the involuntary spontaneous development at the previous step. This involves the conscious outworking of a new worldview or paradigm.
    5. Secondary Integration: At this step, one has found new harmony and integration and settled in a new paradigm.

    The third aspect of the theory: some people are more prone to successfully undergo the process of disintegration and reintegration through those 5 steps. According to Dabrowski, those people share a strong third factor due to what he called over-excitability.

    Over-excitability in short can be defined as a strong reaction or responsiveness to small triggers or stimuli. This can be true in five areas: psychomotor, emotional, sensual, imaginary, and intellectual over-excitability.

    Such over-excitability will reinforce the factors driving change, especially the third factor, if it is available.

    Spiral Dynamics Model of Change

    Spiral Dynamics has a five-stage change process as well, just as we have the levels in TPD.

    Level α: everything is pure sunshine. I share the values and worldview of my surroundings.

    Level β: I experience certain disagreements and see some shortcomings in the sense-making of level α. For a while, I manage with small changes to go back to my former comfort, but at some point, that is no longer possible.

    Level γ: I am deconstructing my former belief system, but hit a roadblock. To go further means to lose belonging as well as sense-making. The new is calling, but very distant and blurry.

    Level δ: After breaking through, there is no way back. I have not yet arrived at a new stable worldview quite yet but broke free from the old.

    New level α: I have settled in the new way of sense-making and found a new home.

    If you compare the model to Dabrowski’s levels, you see the parallels very easily – it’s basically Greek letters for numbers.

    To be precise, Spiral Dynamics has a shortcut from β to the new α called Flex. It is a rare route taken where somebody easily leaves the old and goes into the new.

    Since the Spiral Dynamics model of change is applicable for small changes as well, the smaller the problem and the possible loss caused by a decision, the more likely somebody will take the Flex route.

    It is very rarely taken in case of changes of worldview, with one exception.

    We saw that all humanity evolves through the different worldviews of Spiral Dynamics. When you look at the medieval age, you will find but Blue and previous worldviews. The reformation and industrial evolution brought about Orange, and the sixties are the breakthrough time for Green.

    If I, in my natural growth, change into a worldview that is already available for my surroundings, I might at times use the Flex route. To break through into something that my habitat does not yet have access to is much harder and will most probably involve the roadblock of γ, that is disintegration.

    The Third Factor

    Spiral Dynamics states that changes are brought about by life circumstances and instinctual drives. That maps to the first and second factors by Dabrowski respectively.

    Spiral Dynamics allows for those two factors only because these factors are present at every change of worldview, even those before Blue, which we have not talked about apart from Red.

    Dabrowski lived in Poland and later in Canada, was born in 1902. During his time in Poland, the country went through some drastic changes in sense-making.

    Poland before WWI was a very traditional Blue society that had access to Orange scientific and industrial thinking. WWI had the country digress, along with almost all Europe, into what Spiral Dynamics calls Red, a worldview dominated by the laws of the jungles, and the same happened again in WWII. In between and after, we see the resurrection of Blue and Orange values.

    In my opinion, Blue as the first rational worldview gives birth to a new drive Dabrowski calls the Third Factor. Jessie Mannisto in her piece Authentic Conscience: Unpacking Dabrowski’s Third Factor shows that the Third Factor can be likened to conscience. In the words of Dabrowski, quoting from said article:

    I have come to understand the following: If the first factor is ego-centric; the second factor is ethno/socio-centric; then I would term the third factor as conscience-centric.

    It is only when mankind has evolved to understand obedience and guilt that conscience is even possible. And though our modern interpretation puts this evolutionary step and revelation into the creation story, it does not show up there if read carefully.

    Adam and Eve had no idea of right and wrong and thus did not make a moral or legal mistake when biting into the forbidden fruit. The result was not guilt either, but shame and consciousness: “their eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked.” If you are interested, I wrote about this here: From Beige to Purple: Consciousness.

    The apostle Paul in the New Testament tells us that guilt is made possible by the law. And the law was the big attainment of Blue. Only a law given by a higher being can tame the law-of-the-jungle tyrants of Red, as we previously mentioned.

    Conscience has become a strong force in Blue. The third factor was born.

    That fits into the observations of Dabrowski. Polish people had access to Blue before the wars, and had not lost it during, but had their center of gravity in Red for survival and protection. The big changes of worldview necessary in the time were such from resurrected Blue into Orange. Most of Dabrowski’s patients would have fallen into that category, and therefore, the third factor was available to them.

    I now propose that the third factor is a major force for some in the change of all worldviews and sense-making systems past Blue, especially when somebody breaks through into a worldview not available to their surroundings.

    Conclusion

    Now is the time to have a look into the future.

    Clare W. Graves and Don Beck in their research for Spiral Dynamics saw individuals that had evolved from Green into a new worldview called Yellow or integral.

    The breakthrough of Yellow thinking? It for the first time sees the necessity of all prior complexities of thinking and toolboxes of solutions and combines them into integral sets of solutions for complex problems.

    It is also capable of talking to proponents of each worldview in their language, from the Red Hell’s Angel chapter to the Blue evangelical Christian, the Orange scientist, and the Green climate change activist – and translating between them.

    Clare W. Graves called this change to Yellow The Momentous Leap.

    This leap will require individuals that have strong third factors.

    The first people to undergo such change probably are over-excitable in one or the other fashion, as the stimuli for change are available and emergent, but not dominant. Stimuli for change of value systems are living conditions. Only dominant living conditions stimulate the first and second factors enough to undergo such a change.

    Dabrowski, a friend of Maslow’s and contemporary of Clare Graves, has developed a framework for change that in my opinion can be mapped easily to the change framework of Spiral Dynamics, but sheds light on especially one period of development, the shift from Blue to Orange, as it was at play in Dabrowski’s time. Spiral Dynamics gives us a model to apply this for upcoming necessary changes, giving us a language to name the forces behind and solutions for the ongoing culture war.

    There are further parallels between the two models which need us to dive a little further into Spiral Dynamics. And there are assessments and tools if you want to see the mix of worldviews that drive you. I would certainly be interested in a dialog.

  • Modes of Progression

    René Girard developed a theory called mimetic desire. I want to address part of this theory here and set it in a bigger arena.

    People are masters of imitation. As much as we often have the desire to be self-governed and independent, we learn most by imitating others. That is part of mimetic desire.

    Everyone will agree with this when it comes to the basic functions such as walking and talking, but of course it goes much further. Our convictions are shaped by our environment, as is our behavior.

    So many of our abilities are mimetic in nature, imitation of role models.

    In addition, we apply learned strategies to new problems. That way an individual learns a new trick, a new skill: by adapting and evolving the familiar. With higher abstraction ability, this happens on increasingly abstract levels and increases in speed and power.

    Once a skill has been developed, it can spread mimetically. Here we see the link to the almost identically written expression meme: on the Internet we speak of a meme when something goes viral. In Spiral Dynamics, we call worldviews memes, because within a meme, the same values are mimetically passed on and learned.

    Since we have integrated much of what we have learned mimetically in previous memes, our children learn the earlier mimetic values from us, as well as from their peers.

    Hardly anyone will develop further than to the meme of their surroundings, because mimetic learning stops, or slows down, because there are hardly any role models left that we can imitate.

    Only under the pressure of the environment do we learn new values, views, abilities, which then spread slowly, but soon exponentially. Or better, as an S-curve, because at some point the spread slows down again because of the resistance of the old memes or the saturation of the market.

    Hegel saw another way to learn new skills and views: the dialectical leap. When two or more memes meet, hypothesis and antithesis meet and trigger a tension. This brings about the possibility of synthesis. A synthesis can be a solution at a higher level of complexity and abstraction, but also a simple combination of previous solutions. So we come to new approaches or realize that thinking both-and is better than either-or.

    So how does a person grow through the value memes of Spiral Dynamics? As long as his environment lives in a later value meme than himself, through mimetic learning. In addition, the pressure of the environment is needed in the form of new challenges or dialectical jumps due to the clash of different values.

    So how can I grow? By consciously choosing my environment. I can deliberately surround myself with people who have a more complex worldview than me and imitate their way of thinking. And I surround myself with people who have a different worldview than me and try to develop common solutions from the tension that arises. Thirdly, I face the new demands that my environment places on me and thus develop new approaches through abstraction and adaptation.

    We are in an interesting place in history. Three value memes with a similar share in the population currently dominate the West: Blue, Orange and Green, or tradition, modernity, and post-modernity as their implementations. An absolutely ingenious prerequisite for dialectical learning, especially for the realization that we need both-and thinking. This realization is at the core of Yellow. A coincidence? I don’t think so.

    Your thoughts?

  • Soft Skills

    First, we probably have to define what soft skills are:

    Soft skills are non-technical skills that relate to how you work. They include how you interact with colleagues, how you solve problems, and how you manage your work.

    As a start, let me give you some examples for soft skills. This is a rather long list, so you might just skim through for the moment.

    Social Soft SkillsPersonal soft skills
    Teamwork skillsCommitment and proactive action
    Emotional intelligenceSelf-employment
    EmpathyDecision-making ability
    Intercultural competenceSelf-confidence
    Constructive feedbackDeterminedness and goal orientation
    Human knowledgeSelf-reflection
    Integration capacityWillingness to learn
    Personnel development and mentoringAnalytical thinking
    Team and employee leadership 
    Mediation 
    Resilience 
    Methodological Soft SkillsCommunicative Soft Skills
    CreativityPresentation techniques
    Motivation and enduranceRhetorical skill
    Organizational assetsActive listening
    FlexibilityDiscussion and negotiation
    Load capacityPersuasion and enthusiasm
    Problem-solving competenceAssertiveness
    Strategic approachNon-verbal communication
    Quick understandingOpen-mindedness and curiosity
    Structured way of workingNetworking
    CarefulnessKnowledge transfer
    Delegate 
    Other 
    ReliabilityLoyalty
    PunctualityWillingness to perform
    DiscretionProfessional appearance

    Strengths aficionados will discover some familiar labels here. Some soft skills seem to map one to one to talent themes. Think Empathy, Analytical Thinking.

    This might be the case because the definition of strengths and soft skills is so similar: both tell us how we approach our work, how we do the things we do.

    We know from CliftonStrengths that we have different strategies to approach talent themes that are not in our tool belt. We can either compensate or cooperate.

    To compensate means to use one or a combination of strengths that we actually have access to and mimic what the other talent theme would do naturally. The outcome might look pretty much the same, but the underlying motivation and tools are different.

    We all know that Learner naturally fulfils the soft skill of Willingness to Learn. Think for a moment how Adaptability might do the same, or a combination of Input and Responsibility?

    Now go to your own strengths and look for a way you approach Willingness to Learn. Could you find one?

    If not, there still is the possibility to outsource this soft skill in your team and cooperate with somebody that has the according strengths set.

    By the way, how about doing this exercise for a few if not all of the above soft skills? That would certainly help with your next job interview as you could point out what you bring to the table!

    So let’s have a look whether women have a better stab at soft skills than men, as it is often portrayed.

    Frankly, I do not think so. Here are a few reasons why.

    First, we just saw that soft skills can be approached with different strengths or strengths combinations, such that most people will be naturally able to fulfil some of the soft skills, and somehow work out others, while having to cooperate for some with other people. Just as it is with strengths themselves.

    Then, there are so many different soft skills. When people talk about women being better at soft skills than men, they usually only refer to the social soft skills.

    Let’s have a look at that.

    The distribution of talent themes does not vary much between women and men, but there are some expected differences: Empathy as a strength shows up more in the top 5 of women, and Strategic as well as Competition are more frequent for men. This can be seen in the frequency report provided by Gallup. But most other strengths are pretty much equal or similar in their frequency. Thus, there might be a slight advantage for women in social soft skills, while men might have an edge in some personal and methodological soft skills.

    So let’s get to other personality tests to find out whether the same holds true there:

    From studies using the Big 5 we learn that women are more people-oriented, while men lean towards things more. But this is only true in the order of one deviation of the normal distribution. What does this mean?

    An average woman and man will not differ much, but at the extremes, we will find much more women and men respectively, saying that out of a hundred people, the 3-5 most people caring will be women, the 3-5 most things oriented will all be men, usually.

    This does undergird our hypothesis, but also shows that the differences are smaller than we assume.

    It does lead to a paradox phenomenon though. It has been found that in countries with great gender equality, women tend to flock in traditional female jobs, while men tend to go into the traditionally male professions.

    Studies have been done that determined the grade of gender equality for many countries, ordered them accordingly, and looked at the percentages of women in jobs that are people-oriented like nursing or choosing STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) as field of study as opposed to the humanities or languages.

    What they found baffled them, but there is an explanation for it:

    • In countries with little gender equality, women were found in people-oriented jobs almost exclusively because those are available to them.
    • In countries with emerging gender equality, women are going more into jobs and studies that are things-oriented, as they are finally allowed to, but somehow also expected to do so to conquer traditionally patriarchal ground.
    • In countries with high gender equality like the Scandinavian countries, Denmark and the Netherlands, women are back in people-oriented jobs and studies. They now have gained the freedom to choose what they truly are drawn to.

    These studies again undergird that there are certain leanings in soft skills, motivations, and desires between different gender. But again, that only spans certain types of soft skills.

    How about the connection to Spiral Dynamics?

    Spiral Dynamics is a model to show the evolution of the human mind. Humans are the only creature with a prolonged infancy. Horses walk 20 minutes after birth, and chimps grab on to their mothers within minutes too. We humans need several months to learn to do the same. It is as if we prolonged the fetal state external to the womb, and that makes sense as the growth of our head and the narrowing of our hips due to upright walk do not allow for full maturation in the womb.

    But the growth of our head has given us other capabilities. Since homo sapiens, our hardware, our bodies have not adapted much, but we have grown in our ability to abstract. Abstraction has helped us to develop tools and even refine them as well as apply them to problems we have not encountered before. This made it possible for us to thrive in climates that we were not naturally adapted for using a thing like clothing, just to give you an example.

    This ability to abstract is akin to adaptability in Darwin’s evolution. Adaptability is linked to the slow adaption of body features, of hardware over generations, while abstraction can be likened to the adaption of the mind or software.

    Spiral Dynamics describes the major steps that humanity undertook in their adaptation of the mind. These steps are defined by the challenges the environment posed to us at a certain age and the values and tools we used to solve them.

    I used the word age on purpose, because it can be shown that humanity, societies, and the individual grow through the same stages in their respective lifetime. Individuals usually do not outgrow the society they live in, because usually, societies are well adapted to the challenges they face. But there are times when those challenges change and we need to adapt again.

    We call these stages value memes. Memes because we learn mimetically, that is by copying and imitating, from those around us, and like a meme in the internet, values will thus proliferate through a society by imitation and copying.

    Several such memes can be present in a society due to three facts:

    • some members of society might still be on their way to reach the value meme their society has its center of gravity in,
    • some might have decided long ago that they refuse to change their worldview and thus have constructed a sub culture,
    • and we all include previous value memes into our worldview, to the degree that we might live from different value memes in different areas of our lives like family, work, politics, and religion.

    Therefore, it makes sense that we have different business models within the same society. Let’s name a few:

    • Family businesses group around a patriarch that sees all employees as family members. There is a hierarchy of age and wisdom. This corresponds to the purple value meme.
    • Start-ups depend on a hierarchical system of power usually, with the founder being the person the buck stops with. This corresponds to the red value meme in Spiral Dynamics.
    • Institutions have strong bureaucracy and processes and usually work with a hierarchy by appointment, similar to the feudal system of the middle ages or the anointed by God in religions. Blue.
    • Most businesses today will have an orange model with a hierarchy of merit and a strong emphasis on personal success and hard skills (some soft skills start to emerge into importance).
    • Some businesses will have grown into green, with team management, bosses becoming coaches, an emphasis on consensus, sustainability, and soft skills. There will be self-management emerging.
    • Even fewer will reach yellow and integrate all of the above into a toolset that allows them to show up accordingly depending on who they are dealing with plus find solutions that apply tools from different value memes at the same time in a both-and manner. They will strongly emphasis self-management and therefore have great need for the full set of soft skills.

    For further information, you might want to read the book “The Turquoise Brick Road” by Rhys Photis.

    We can see that the importance of soft skills will grow, as much as the importance of our knowledge of our strengths. Both are tools in our adaptation to more complex systems and the evolution of our mind.

    To bind all this together:

    Soft skills will gain importance. We all have more natural mastery of some soft skills, depending on our strengths, can compensate for some, and need others to complement us in some areas. It is in the mix of the team that we will have all we need. Women have a slight tendency towards some soft skills, namely those that are people oriented, while men tend to be more oriented towards things. This difference is not very big, but will paradoxically show up more in societies with great gender equality, as women are more allowed to be truly themselves without societal pressure applied. In modern societies (orange), hard skills and certain classes of soft skills are emphasized, while in post-modern (green) societies, other classes of soft skills, namely social soft skills, come into focus.

    How now do we grow into all this?

    As I said, we learn mimetically, by imitation. So let us look for examples and role models we can imitate. We also learn when there are new challenges in our environment that pressure us to adapt. We need to look out for new classes of problems and throw our ingenuity at them. And we learn dialectically, if there are multiple hypothesis or worldviews, by coming into the realization that we need both-and solutions, not either-or, maybe not even compromise. With culture war 2.0 going on between blue, orange, and green in the West, we are in the best place for this to happen. Leave your filter bubble and allow for inspiration by the other.

    All this to say that we as humanity are on track into something great. If we allow for it.

    Would you like to dive in even deeper? Don’t hesitate to contact me.