paei, bd, and spiral dynamics theoretical background

Adizes Southeast Europe, 2009

PAEI, BD, and Spiral Dynamics Theoretical Background


CANDIDATE SELECTION

“Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.” Theodore Roosevelt

Introduction Although we know that even the longest journey starts with the first step, often we take that first step in the wrong direction and frequently make a series of hasty moves right at the beginning. Almost all of us would also agree with the statement that people are the most important resource of any organization and that practically all problems are both created and solved by people. How successful we will be and how many concerns or how much satisfaction our work together will bring depends on the people with whom we are working or will work. Even though this seems obvious and logical, it is a fact that many organizations face great difficulties caused by the inadequate choice of people and by appointment of staff to the wrong positions, positions to which they are not suited.

The reasons for this phenomenon are manifold, but there are several common denominators in all such cases:

• Unclear definition of job descriptions, • too laid-back an approach to the process of selection and to the act and criteria

of selection, • a lack of knowledge of contemporary methods and the techniques they entail, • an unreasonable lack of time and funds allocated to the task of selection, • Huge underestimation of the expense of wrong choice and staff fluctuation.

This subject is so important that it deserves many hundreds of pages written about it. However, we will take the opportunity here to summarize some new aspects of staff selection. The basic questions from which this process begins are:

• What do we need the person for? • What are the demands of the position? • How do we find the candidate? • What is the right time to advertise a vacancy internally or externally? • Who will participate in this task? • Who are the possible candidates? •

To this collection of essential questions we need to add several more vital considerations that are often forgotten:

1. Who are the other members of the team with whom the candidate is going to be

working? It is very important to form a complementary team whose members will be able to work together successfully.


2. If the candidate is a high-potential individual but does not fit into the immediate working environment because of, for example, his or her personal managerial style, then we need to see what other position might suit him or her best. Having talented individuals in your company, matching them to the right positions, motivating and keeping them in the team – this is the key to the art of management. This means analysis of the relationship between “superior and subordinate”. There are specific principles according to which these relationships can be investigated. Nobody needs assumptions that are going to constantly generate conflict.

3. If it is decided that a candidate is to be accepted for a trial period, he or she should be entered into the employee database; if a high-quality candidate has appeared for whom there is currently no vacancy, he or she should be entered into a database of potential candidates. Candidates who have not fulfilled the conditions in any way should also be documented, together with the reasons for their rejection, as it is not unknown for them to apply for other vacancies in the same company at a later date.

4. Also, the long-term aspects of the planned development of the company, department, or position itself need to be taken into account, and the career of the candidate projected forward so that it will be productive and motivating. For all this to be achieved properly, we need suitable selection methods and techniques, which, together with the appropriate procedures, form the basis of the system as a whole.

The PAEI Instrument These questionnaires serve to determine and compare the PAEI profiles of candidates and the PAEI requirements of the job position. For example, candidates applying for the job of salesman need to have highly-developed PI traits (to be energetic and persistent in seeing a job through while being good with people). Besides this, these questionnaires help to uncover positive PAEI traits (getting results, administration entrepreneurship, and integration skills), negative PAEI traits, ("lone-rider" syndrome, bureaucratic tendencies, incendiary behavior and super-subordination), and latent (hidden) PAEI traits.

The BD (Brain Dominance) Instrument Our brain is divided into four hemispheres that carry out differing mental functions. All those functions participate in varying measure in all of our activities, and it is just those relative measures that are characteristic of certain occupations. For example, people in whom the upper left brain hemisphere is dominant make good financial staff and managers, accountants, engineers, etc. People in whom the dominant hemisphere is the upper right are great entrepreneurs, artists, writers, etc. There are benchmarks for occupations categorized according to development of individual brain hemispheres and vice-versa. These benchmarks can also be


projected according to the desired requirements of a job position. The materials given below are examples of good and poor suitability of candidates to the demands of a job position.

Analysis of the Individual Value System Spiral dynamics and the new concept of “natural shaping” offer a framework for the analysis of the personal value system of a candidate and the value environment of the organization, department, and job position itself. By means of a “game” using “value cards” played according to a defined procedure, the dominant value levels of an individual are revealed, those which can easily, with some difficulty, or only with great difficulty be integrated into the value system of an organization. However much this may seem a “soft” indicator, failure to take it into account can lead to decisions that will sooner or later prove to have been flawed.


PAEI TYPOLOGY AND TOOLS

When we begin working on solutions to the problems caused by change, we very quickly discover that different people react to changes differently. People define problems differently and prefer different kinds of solutions.

After years of observation, Dr. Adizes has identified four different personality styles, which he labels “P”, “A”, “E”, and “I”. Most people naturally blend a few of these personality styles, and many of us develop skills in all four areas. However, nobody can be equally strong in all four areas. Everyone has at least one dominant style, and often a secondary style, which is almost as natural as the first.

Introducing PAEI Since the Adizes framework is geared towards management, the four personality styles are described in the language of management. We can even speak of them as four "management styles", although the underlying concepts are more generic and apply to more than just management. The Adizes model has labeled these four styles “P”, “A”, “E”, and “I”. “P” stands for “Producer”, “A” for “Administrator”, “E” for “Entrepreneur”, and “I” for “Integrator”. These people are easy to pick out in any organization.

The Producer is the individual who has the drive and the discipline necessary to see real results produced. Impatient, active, and always busy, the Producer has little time for idle chitchat. Direct and to the point, typical Producers are behind the scenes movers and shakers. Many Producers are attracted to high-intensity departments such as Sales. They are too busy to "waste time" with meetings. They prefer to cut the small talk and get out there to get the job done.

The Administrator ensures that rules are in place and followed, that plans are made and adhered to. Precise and accurate, the Administrator creates methods and procedures to make sure things are done “right”. Analytical and logical, administrators clean up other people’s carelessness. They like to keep the organization humming at a steady pace and are willing to do things more slowly and carefully, to make certain that procedures are followed properly. Administrators are drawn to tasks that require systemic thinking and precision, such as Accounting.

The Entrepreneur is an idea person, always asking “why?” or “why not?” A visionary with dreams, plans, and schemes, the Entrepreneur leads others to ideas that they would not pursue on their own. Success for an Entrepreneur requires both creativity and risk. They sometimes get bored with short-term tasks and prefer developing the long-term vision. Entrepreneurs are charismatic and often generate ideas for new projects, new approaches to problems, or even new businesses.


The Integrator is people-oriented. True Integrators value social harmony and thrive on peacemaking and teamwork. An organizer of social events, the Integrator’s pleasantness is unmistakable. Amiable and empathetic, the Integrator is the first to cooperate in helping with tasks or problems. Integrators make the workplace feel friendly. They prefer to work by consensus, instead of taking a strong position against others. Integrators are attracted to people-oriented occupations like Human Resources.

Adizes Management Style Indicator (PAEI)

This tool provides an indication of your management style in terms of the four Adizes Roles of Management. After you complete the Adizes Management Style or Personal Style Questionnaires, which will take around 20 to 30 minutes, you will be given a report that presents your apparent management or personal style.

The report includes both graphical and numerical representations of your results, an explanation of the four Adizes management roles and styles (PAEI), and tools for analysis in the comparison of workplace requirements and candidate profile. This tool can also be deployed to support a variety of Human Resources functions such as:

� Job Design � Job Placement � Hiring Assessment � Individual and 360 Assessments

This tool can be used over the web (www.adizes.co.yu/questionnaire/en) or can be deployed within your own corporate environment for use over your intranet (Candidate Selection – Client Application).

Human resource managers, facilitators, and change leaders have adopted and co-branded this tool for use as an integral part of their workshops. Adizes offers a comprehensive training and certification program for people who are interested in using and administering this tool for further delivery to their clients.


PAEI Characteristics

P+ (Producer), Positive P characteristic

P- (Lone Ranger) Negative P characteristic

P0 Potential, latent, or hidden “P” characteristic. The “P” characteristic develops into a positive or negative characteristic depending on the environment

The normal situation is when the candidate agrees with P+ and disagrees with P-. The problem is when the candidate agrees with P- or disagrees with P+.

A+ (Administrator) Positive A characteristic

A- (Bureaucrat) Negative A characteristic

A0 Potential, latent, or hidden “A” characteristic. The “A” characteristic develops into a positive or negative characteristic depending on the environment

The normal situation is when the candidate agrees with A+ and disagrees with A-. The problem is when the candidate agrees with A- or disagrees with A+.

E+ (Entrepreneur) Positive E characteristic

E- (Arsonist) Negative E characteristic

E0 Potential, latent, or hidden “E” characteristic. The “E” characteristic develops into a positive or negative characteristic depending on the environment.

The normal situation is when the candidate agrees with E+ and disagrees with E-. The problem is when the candidate agrees with E- or disagrees with E+. I+ (Integrator) I- (Super Follower) I0

Potential, latent or hidden “I” characteristic. The “I” characteristic develops into a positive or negative characteristic depending on

The normal situation is when the candidate agrees with I+ and disagrees with I-. The problem is when the candidate agrees with I- or disagrees with I+.


BRAIN DOMINANCE

The Brain Dominance model and assessment systems are based on the measurement of brain function and energy consumption in the brain. This study of brain function is a different science, and a more recent one than psychology and psychometrics (the study of brain function has for instance been particularly aided by the advent of recent brain scanning technologies).

People adapt their natural thinking and working styles to fit expectations of others, normally created by work career, tension and stress results. People are not happy and effective if they behave in unnatural ways.

The principal assessment system is called the Brain Dominance Assessment Tool, and it's also available online. Here is a brief overview of the model: The brain has four specialized areas. Each is responsible for different brain functions (which imply strengths, behavior, and thinking style). The specialized areas are called 'modes'.

Each of us possesses natural strengths in only one of these specialized areas, which cause us to favor and use a certain style ahead of others. (Outside of that one style, we may have strengths and weaknesses that are based on what competencies we have been exposed to or developed and indeed which competencies we have not been exposed to.)

The model illustrates a person's brain dominance (preferences and tendencies) in terms of a brain diagram (viewed from above) when the relative strengths for each specialized area are plotted using scores from an assessment to produce a rhombus or kite shape. There is no right or wrong shape. The diagram is simply a way of visualizing the bias of a person's brain and the parts used more and better than the others.


Examples of jobs often comfortable for people who have developed a particular combination of modes. The list is by no means exhaustive:

double lefts lawyers, physicians, intensive care nurses

double lefts, with frontal left leads

accountants, MBAs, electrical engineers, hospital directors, implementer leaders,

double lefts with basal left leads

bankers, machine operators, machine repairers

basal lefts

ordering and purchasing clerks, record-keepers, filing clerks, book-keepers, personnel clerks, supervisors, head nurses, personnel officers, school administrators

basal rights

receptionists, communications specialists, pediatrics nurses, staff nurses, teachers, staff development specialists, trainers, community and public relations,

double basals teachers, head nurses, supervisors

frontal rights entrepreneurs, geologists, architects, illustrators, woodcraftsmen,

double rights organizational development specialists, teachers, emergency doctors, dancers, painters, poets,

double rights with basal right leads

counselors, psychologists, therapists, actors, musicians, interior decorators,

double rights with frontal right leads

counselors, psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists

double frontals

inventors, chemists and chemical engineers, research scientists, economists, surgeons, hospital administrators, poets, composers, painters

basal left/frontal rights

journalists, librarians, community organizers,

triple-brain double right (right basal leads) with frontal lefts

poets, composers

triple-brain double left with frontal right leads

visionary leaders

whole-brained leaders of large complex concerns


On Spiral Dynamics

SPIRAL DYNAMICS is a way to think about complex things, both in organizations and in individual lives. The framework offers a fresh, powerful, and holistic approach to assessment of organizations and individuals.

Spiral Dynamics can help you to think better about processes of selection by addressing these questions:

• Use Spiral Dynamics to assess organizations that align the work to be done,

the people who will be doing it, and the management that fits those people. In other words, understand the organizational value system before trying to make the styles fit.

• Spiral Dynamics explores the core intelligences and deep values that flow beneath what we believe and do. The result is a dynamic model of emergent thinking systems - how values arise and spread, why people make decisions in different ways, and what to do with those differences to create positive changes.

The model describes and makes sense of the complexity of the human value system, and then shows how to craft elegant, systemic selection - solutions that meet people and address situations where they are.

Spiral Dynamics reveals the hidden complexity codes that shape human behavior, create diversities, and drive changes. These dynamic Spiral forces attract and repel individuals, form the webs and meshes that connect people within groups, communities, and organizations, and forge the rise and fall of nations and cultures. Spiral Dynamics meshes the new science of memetics with value systems. By exploring and describing the core intelligences and deep values that flow beneath what we believe and do, the model offers a profoundly incisive, dynamic perspective on complex matters such as:

• 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

This powerful conceptual system has been field-tested in some of the most complex environments on the planet, from inner-city Chicago to racially plagued South Africa.

MICRO applications of Spiral Dynamics are found around the world in a variety of developmental, counseling, and coaching projects.

MESO applications of Spiral Dynamics look through a wider lens between and among groups of people in large corporations, within local communities, and even as distinctive cultures in city-states and entire countries. As our world is now moving into


the next stage of cultural pluralism and diversity programs, Spiral Dynamics offers a point of view that looks at the evolutionary dynamic of the deep underlying values systems.

Spiral Dynamics is a versatile tool. Merge it into your wisdom and other selection insights.

Spiral Dynamics is, indeed, one of the major breakthroughs in mapping and managing complexity — that complexity being us. Our diverse worldviews, our beliefs, our very identities can be represented by eight "memes," or value systems, which apply as much to individuals as to organizations and entire cultures.

Spiral Dynamics is giving rise to a profound clarity of insight into the sweeping patterns of human psychologies, beliefs, and values that are, often unconsciously, guiding our choices and shaping our very identities. Spiral Dynamics is also resulting in an unexpected and liberating objectivity, because it places my own experience in the context of the entire history of human psychological development, the totality of which is present in each of us—from the most primitive survivalist instincts to evolved spiritual aspirations.

Spiral Dynamics posits that the evolution of human consciousness can best be represented in this way: by a dynamic, upward spiraling structure that charts our evolving thinking systems as they are higher and higher through levels of increasing complexity.

And indeed, as one becomes familiar with Spiral Dynamics, it easily becomes apparent why this compelling theory is called nothing less than "a new definition of human nature and of the evolutionary significance of human intelligence."

"What I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process, marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man's existential problems change."

Dr. Clare Graves


The Eight-Stage Spiral of Development

TURQUOISE Holistic MEME Basic theme: Experience the wholeness of existence through mind and spirit.

• The world is a single, dynamic organism with its own collective mind.

• Self is both distinct and a blended part of a larger, compassionate hole.

• Everything connects to everything else in ecological alignments.

• Energy and information permeate the Earth's total environment.

• Holistic, intuitive thinking and cooperative actions are to be expected.

YELLOW Integrative MEME

Basic theme: Live fully and responsibly as what you are and learn to become.

• Life is a kaleidoscope of natural hierarchies, systems, and forms.

• The magnificence of existence is valued over material possessions.

• Flexibility, spontaneity, and functionality have the highest priority.

• Differences can be integrated into interdependent, natural flows.

• Understands that chaos and change are natural.

GREEN Communitarian/Egalitarian MEME

Basic theme: Seek peace within the inner self and explore, with others, the caring

dimensions of community.

• The human spirit must be freed from greed, dogma, and divisiveness.

• Feelings, sensitivity, and caring supersede cold rationality.

• Spreads the Earth's resources and opportunities equally among all.

• Reaches decisions through reconciliation and consensus processes.

• Refreshes spirituality, brings harmony, and enriches human development.

ORANGE Achieving/Strategic MEME Basic theme: Act in your own self-interest by playing the game to win.

• Change and advancement are inherent within the scheme of things.

• Progresses by learning nature's secrets and seeking out best solutions.

• Manipulates Earth's resources to create and spread the abundant good life.

• Optimistic, risk-taking, and self-reliant people deserve success.

• Societies prosper through strategy, technology, and competitiveness.


BLUE Purposeful/Authoritarian MEME Basic theme: Life has meaning, direction, and purpose with predetermined outcomes.

• One sacrifices self to the transcendent Cause, Truth, or righteous Pathway.

• The Order enforces a code of conduct based on eternal, absolute principles.

• Righteous living produces stability now and guarantees future reward.

• Impulsivity is controlled through guilt; all people have their proper place.

• Laws, regulations, and discipline build character and moral fiber.

RED Impulsive/Egocentric MEME Basic theme: Be what you are and do what you want, regardless. • The world is a jungle full of threats and predators.

• Breaks free from any domination or constraint to please self as self-desires.

• Stands tall, expects attention, demands respect, and calls the shots.

• Enjoys self to the fullest right now without guilt or remorse.

• Conquers, out-foxes, and dominates other aggressive characters.

PURPLE Magical/Animistic MEME Basic theme: Keep the spirits happy and the tribe's nest warm and safe.

• Obeys the desires of the spirit being and mystical signs.

• Shows allegiance to chief, elders, ancestors, and the clan.

• Individual subsumed in group.

• Preserves sacred objects, places, events, and memories.

• Observes rites of passage, seasonal cycles, and tribal customs.

BEIGE Instinctive/Survivalist MEME Basic theme: Do what you must just to stay alive. • Uses instincts and habits just to survive.

• Distinct self is barely awakened or sustained.

• Food, water, warmth, sex, and safety have priority.

• Forms into survival bands to perpetuate life.

• Lives "off the land" much as other animals.

The concept of Spiral Dynamics is that human nature is not fixed; we're not set at birth. Rather, we have the capacities, in the nature of the mind/brain itself, to construct new conceptual worlds. So what we're trying to describe is simply how humans are able, when things get bad enough, to adapt to their situation by creating greater complexities of thinking to handle new problems.

Spiral Dynamics is based on the assumption that we have adaptive intelligences, "complex, adaptive, contextual intelligences," which develop in response to our life circumstances and challenges — what Spiral Dynamics calls Life Conditions. What


we're always focusing on is the causative dynamics created by the Life Conditions and then the kinds of coping mechanisms and collective intelligences that are forged in response to those conditions.

Like genes, viruses, and bacteria, memes respond to the same basic principle in the universe, which is this concept of renewal, this regenerating capacity. Each successive meme contains a more expansive horizon, a more complex organizing principle, with newly calibrated priorities, mindsets, and specific bottom lines. It's a way of solving problems. It's a way of assigning priorities to what's most important and why, formed in response to the Life Conditions. And just like a biological DNA code, which is a code that replicates itself throughout the body, a meme code is a bio-psycho-social-spiritual DNA-type script, a blueprint that spreads throughout a culture, and plays out in all areas of cultural expression, forming survival codes, myths of origin, artistic forms, lifestyles, and senses of community. And cultures, as well as countries, are formed by the emergence of these memes, or value systems, which are the glue that bonds a group together, defining who they are as a people and reflecting the place they inhabit on the planet.

The late Professor Clare Graves sensed that there were deeper patterns in the evolution of human consciousness and identified eight levels of psychological and cultural existence, or value systems, which became the basis for the spiral model. The same principles or levels of existence apply as much to a single person as to an organization or an entire society

paei, bd, and spiral dynamics theoretical background

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