Adult Human Development
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“Your perfectionist tendencies are high (78th percentile), and your decisiveness is low (near the bottom percentile). This combination may be impacting your leadership effectiveness.”
After over a year of executive coaching, reading over 10 books about adult human development, and embracing a lifetime of a growth mindset, why was I getting this feedback?! My heart rate quickened as I processed the results of my Leadership Circle Profile . Where am I feeling this in my body? Tension on my temples and eyebrows and tightness in my shoulders and chest. Deep breaths. I’m ok. These findings will be valuable for my personal and professional growth.
In a typical workplace, statements like, “Nitin, you need to improve the speed of your decision-making,” are delivered as “constructive feedback.”? I’ve been hearing input like this for years. And I have tried! I’ve tried training my intuition, delving into numerous frameworks for every scenario that may come up, and I’ve sought guidance from numerous coaches, mentors, managers, and colleagues. I’ve tried flexing my approach, ‘acting’ a part until I develop the muscle, and pushing into discomfort to drive personal growth. But for some reason, I’ve had trouble moving the needle on this “actionable” feedback.
Naturally, the complexity of my work has also increased over time. The business has grown, my team has expanded, and the business dynamics have become even more demanding. Needs and interests from home, family, kids, self-care, work, and community only adds to the growing complexity of my environment. How can I grow fast enough to handle the increasing complexity of my surroundings?
Enter Adult Human Development.
Adult Human Development is the ability to handle higher and higher levels of complexity through deeper self-awareness (of values, purpose, emotions, etc.) and other-awareness. My personal vision is to help the people around me achieve their potential. And I envision a future where workplaces partner with employees to systematically improve the leadership capacity of every person in the company through an adult human development lens.?
The main topics I aim to explore related to this are:
Let’s begin.
Stages of Adult Human Development
Changing On The Job by Jennifer Garvey Berger (notes ) provides a great overview of the stages of adult human development from Robert Kegan’s perspective. Robert Kegan is a Harvard School of Education professor, and expert on adult human development. Several of Kegan’s books including, Everyone Culture (notes ), Immunity to Change (notes ), and How The Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work (notes ), provide an overview of adult human development.
There are two types of learning or development.
Leadership/psychological topics are adaptive because the people, situation, context, and environment are constantly changing. What might make sense yesterday may not make sense today given the evolving circumstances. This makes leadership/psychological learning more of an ‘adaptive’ topic. As Berger (notes ) states, “leaders’ biggest mistake is to try to solve adaptive challenges through technical means…You need an adaptive formulation for an adaptive challenge.” Kegan also states, “Significant problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
When Kegan and Berger discuss stages of adult development, they aim to describe how higher forms of mind enable leaders to navigate higher levels of complexity. They are not intending to be judgmental or evaluative. According to Berger and Kegan, there are 4 stages:
Per William A. Adams and Robert J. Anderson in Mastering Leadership (notes ), “Development of leadership effectiveness is a heroic journey of transformation through stages of structure of mind.”
Self-Sovereign
The Self-Sovereign form of mind is characterized by inherent selfishness, where individuals do not think beyond themselves. Kegan refers to this stage as an "impulsive" form of mind “driven by a survival instinct”. It is akin to children who, when hungry, demand immediate food without considering that dinner will take 45 minutes to prepare. There is no goal or purpose larger than one’s individual needs. Per Mastering Leadership (notes ), “growth at this stage is taking other people’s needs and expectations into account.”
Socialized Stage
In the Socialized form of mind, individuals start thinking beyond themselves to conform to societal or communal standards. At this stage, folks realize that there is a goal in life larger than themselves. With people in a socialized form of mind, per Mastering Leadership (notes ), “Our principal loyalty is no longer towards ourselves, but rather the relationship or organization.” They look to authority figures, experts, mentors, and frameworks for guidance. However, a challenge is that individuals don’t view themselves as the author of their thoughts and feelings. They are not in touch with their inner voice and rely largely on external sources to navigate and make meaning in the world.? Berger writes, “as a result, they can be torn between individual goals and societal goals”. While a socialized mind can follow other folks’ approach and frameworks, they have trouble creating their own. As William A. Adams and Robert J. Anderson write in Scaling Leadership (notes ), “When you drive to meet expectations of others it becomes limiting…exhausting physical, spiritual, and energy reserves.” The majority of professionals fall within this stage of human development.?
Self-Authored Stage
Self-authored form of mind is when folks start getting more attuned to their own voice, values, and frameworks to serve a greater goal. They are not looking “out there” to guide their behavior. Per Berger, “They are looking at their own filters and framework to understand and process the world.” Self-authored leaders do not feel as torn by inner conflict because they have a well established approach that has served them. Self-authored leaders have many characteristics that people expect from leaders - less emotionally reactive, thoughtful responses, sense of self, and more. When self-authored leaders face conflict or challenges to their approach, they update their internal frameworks to handle this new situation. In that sense, they are able to handle higher amounts of complexity. Coaching and mentorship often supports leaders in their evolution from a socialized form of mind trusting the views authored by others to a self authored form of mind where they trust themselves on how to contribute and serve the world.?
There are several challenges in the self-authored stage of development. For one - with a strong, confident, self-authored point of view that has served someone for years, these leaders can often become attached to or subjected to their own self-authored point of view. They may develop a ‘righteousness’ or lack of humility, given how well their self-authored points of view may have served them in the past. But the world is often too complex for one person's set of frameworks and lessons. They risk becoming less interested in others’ point of view - especially if it challenges their most deeply held assumptions.?
Self-Transforming Stage
The Self-Transforming form of mind embraces the idea that life is too complex for any single self-authored point of view. Individuals with a self-transforming mind can hold conflicting points of view within themselves. They recognize that multiple perspectives can coexist. Per Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey in Immunity to Change (notes ), “Self-transforming mind can look at mind in addition to through it and is wary of any one way…what makes sense today might not make sense tomorrow…”
Those with a self-transforming form of mind actively seek others’ perspectives to stretch their mind. They internalize multiple competing or opposite perspectives and can understand the wisdom in multiple approaches. This stage requires a high level of humility, openness to new ideas, and the ability to integrate diverse perspectives. It recognizes that one can never develop a self-authored perspective to handle all of life’s complexities.?
Per Changing on the Job (notes ), “Self-transforming mind sees connections everywhere…Those with a self-transforming mind will not see dichotomy…example: I want to be successful, and spend quality time with the family.” Self transforming mind softens one’s perspectives and causes them to be “willing to listen to other ideas, even when they challenge deeply held principles.”
Those with a self-transforming form of mind are less linear in their thinking about cause and effect. They see the complex patterns and polarities and opposites and complexity that all play a role in today’s situation. They realize the importance of helping people grow to become more complex in their own sense making.?
These stages of human development offer a developmental and coaching path for every leader. no matter what form of mind they are in today. Self-transforming mind is particularly challenging because it requires letting go of attachment to one's own viewpoint and embracing multiple conflicting perspectives. This form of mind is similar to Buddhist philosophies around the concepts of no self and interconnectedness.
Subject-Object Theory
Another important concept introduced by Robert Kegan is subject-object theory. Imagine a hungry baby. At that moment, the baby is hunger. It is subject to hunger. It is crying and screaming and its identity is enmeshed with hunger. Hunger has the baby. Now, compare this with a hungry teenager. A teenager also feels hunger, but relates to it differently. A teenager has hunger. But the teenager can also see hunger as separate from their identity, like an object. Unlike the baby, the teenager’s identity is not enmeshed with hunger. The teenager is able to accept and embrace the reality of hunger, but not be subjected to it.?
As leaders evolve in their stages of development, their journey involves making more and more of life object rather than subject. Per Immunity to Change (Notes ), “Subject is looking through whereas object is looking at.”
Most adults are in transition between stages, and these transitions can take years (and decades in some cases). Inner turmoil happens when adults transition between stages.?
As an example, imagine I’ve invested 10 years developing comprehensive frameworks and ideas around how I operate and make meaning in the world, and one of my self-authored values is on the importance of reliability and follow through to earn trust with my peers and colleagues.? In this scenario, I may have a self-authored value of promptness. But imagine that my manager is persistently late. While part of me has a self-authored value of promptness, another part (socialized mind) may be wanting to respect my authority. How do I reconcile not wanting to disappoint an authority figure with my own value of promptness?
The goal of a self-transforming mind is to perceive even our own points of view as objects. Our frameworks and perspectives are not absolute truth - but rather exist within our own minds. Others may have different approaches or perspectives. My self-authored point of view is an object and I do not need to be attached or subjected to it. Mastering Leadership (notes ) writes, “Those things for which we are subject are signposts for the biggest opportunities of growth for us.”
Asking ourselves, "What am I being subjected to right now? How can I make that an object?" becomes a valuable practice whenever I find myself being reactive in any given situation. This has played an important role in my own personal development and growth.
Immunity to Change
Robert Kegan also introduced the Immunity to Change framework (Notes ) that helps leaders in their development. Many people think about “weaknesses” or “growth opportunities” in isolation. For example, I may need to “improve my speed of decision making” or “be more confident.” The limitation with this approach is that it does not address the underlying commitments and assumptions that are governing the behavior. To drive meaningful and lasting transformation within oneself or others, one must be aware of the underlying factors governing the behavior at the root level. Most folks want to drive personal change, but are held back because of their underlying commitments and assumptions. “Immunity to Change” is the idea that folks have “a foot on the break and a foot on the gas.” This makes them “immune” to change.?
The book, How We Talk Can Change the Way We Work by? Lisa Laskow Lahey and Robert Kegan (notes ), goes deeper into the emotional component of personal change. They recommend “reframing your fear as an active commitment to not doing the thing you are afraid of…The language of competing commitments expresses genuinely held countervailing commitments…Competing commitments identify a commitment to self protection, for which the problematic behavior is effective, consistent, helpful, and brilliant.”
The best way to understand the Immunity to Change framework is to go through a personal example. Let’s consider four buckets:
Let’s assume that I need to improve the speed of my decision making. By following the Immunity to Change Framework, I’m able to go deeper into the root causes of growth opportunities rather than staying at the surface level.
Big Goal
The Big Goal, per Immunity to Change, is “one big thing to improve your own growth as a person.” Let’s assume my big goal is to be a “more timely and decisive decision maker.” I prefer choosing one, single idea to work on for a long period of time (such as a year or more). There’s a risk with choosing too many areas of feedback to work on in parallel.
Underlying Commitments and Assumptions
When going deeper into improving my speed of decision making, I start to uncover all sorts of underlying commitments and assumptions. First, let me define these terms:
The best way to understand your underlying commitments are, per Kegan, to create an “inventory of all the things you are doing or not doing that are working against your one big goal.”?
Oftentimes, underlying assumptions are driven by fear of breaking underlying commitments. As Immunity to Change (Notes ) notes, “Organizations are impeded by the emotional life underlying the dynamics.” As you inventory the things you are doing and not doing, try thinking through “what is the most scary or awful thing that would happen to me…if I do the opposite?”?
Per Immunity to Change, “Making an assumption apparent takes bringing it from subject (cannot see it because so attached and identified to it) to object (take perspective on it from outside ourselves)...Once you surface assumptions underlying immunity to change - you can work on it.” He also suggests going deep into the history and biography of your underlying assumptions and how it got started. An example may be easiest to digest:
.I may have underlying commitments to:
As a result of these underlying commitments, I might have several underlying assumptions. For example, I may assume the following about faster decision-making:?
Given my commitment to making deep, well considered decisions that consider the salient details, I have a tendency to:
By exploring my underlying commitments and assumptions, and the fears underlying them, I start to go beyond the surface level to understand the true factors guiding my behavior. Only through this awareness am I able to start experimenting with habits to break my underlying assumptions. Do I really need to be able to crisply articulate every decision? If I make a decision with 50% less information, does it actually lead to a shallow or poor decision? Am I, in reality, wasting folks' time more with a faster decision because of the consequences of the decision?
Immunity to Change summarizes this well. “This demonstrates how it is common to have one foot on the accelerator, and one foot on the break…The true barriers to change come from within the system…the question is can you <improve the big goal> and be true to yourself?”
One Big Liability
A person’s One Big Liability is their tendency that may be the biggest barrier to improvement. In the example above, it may be my tendency to clearly articulate a decision in a draft executive level comm before finalizing it. I think of a liability as something that can be positive in other contexts. But if relied upon too heavily or taken to an extreme, then the liability can start holding the leader back in terms of leading through increased complexity.
Start and Stop Behavior Experiments
Because something as simple as “improve your speed of decision making” can have so much depth and complexity underlying the behavior, it’s important to view behavior change as a process of experimentation, rather than wholesale behavior change. Per Immunity to Change (Notes ), it is important to “intentionally behave counter to the big assumption in order to test it and learn from it…when doing an experiment, take a research stance rather than a self-improvement stance…Design a modest or safe test for your big assumption and then bigger tests over time…An even small adjustment to biggest assumptions can have a big impact.”?
So, what are some example start and stop behavioral experiments that I can run to try improving on these dimensions? For example:
Start
Stop:
Imagine all the other examples in professional life. For example, someone:
I am confident that examining the underlying factors governing one’s behavior can unlock a key to continued growth over time.
15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership
Another book related to self-awareness and self-development is: 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, by Jim Dethmer and Diana Chapman (notes ). One concept that particularly resonates with me is the idea of being above or below the line (video ). When one is above the line, they are feeling open, safe, secure, curious, innovative, collaborative, and creative. When one is “below” the line, they are feeling closed, selfish, insecure, defensive, righteous, and reactive. The idea is to accept where you are at any given moment.?
Coincidentally, Brene Brown has a video about marriage along these lines. She discusses how she and her partner will communicate to each other if they are adding up to over “100” emotionally. If not, the important part is to have a plan for kindness.?
The Diana Chapman podcast interview with Tim Ferriss does a wonderful job of summarizing the actual 15 commitment questions.https://tim.blog/2021/10/06/diana-chapman/ . I will briefly quote the questions and my reflections on the question.
Commitment 1: Taking Radical Responsibility
“Commitment 1: Are you taking 100% responsibility right now? (no more and no less) Are you blaming or complaining about anyone or anything?” - Taking 100% responsibility is owning whatever is happening in your life. You are not looking “out there” to blame others or the external events or leaders or executives for what is happening. You are taking your part of the responsibility. Equally important is that you are not taking responsibility for someone else’s behavior. You cannot control other people’s behavior. You can challenge, encourage, and coach, but ultimately, you can only control your actions and therefore should take your part of the responsibility. Taking more than your part of the responsibility is trying to be a hero - which is not recommended. As Bryon Katie writes in Loving What Is (notes ), she focuses on understanding her part to contributing to the situation.
How We Talk Can Change the Way We Work (notes ) goes deeper into the topic of blame and responsibility: “Blame is non-transformational and rarely goes anywhere…Personal responsibility is transformational…Blame raises questions only for others, whereas personal responsibility raises questions for oneself.”
Commitment 2: Learning Through Curiosity
“Commitment 2: Are you wanting to be right about anything right now?” - One of my greatest learnings is developing an aversion to righteousness. The power of self-transforming form of mind is the ability to hold conflicting views in your head at the same time. If one is trying to be “right,” it becomes difficult to hold competing or conflicting points of views. Therefore, any time I’m trying to be right, it’s likely a signal of me being evaluative, judgmental, or righteous - which are all behaviors I’m trying to avoid.?
Above the line is “committed to growing in self-awareness and treating every interaction as an opportunity to learn.” Below the line is: “committed to being right as if a situation is happening to me and I’m defensive.”
Chapman also describes “shifting” as a “master skill for conscious leaders.” On the savannah, being “right” meant life or death, so we developed a natural righteousness, ego, and defensiveness. On the other hand, for today’s complex world, “presence” is “being here right now in a non-reactive, non-triggered way.” The “shift” is being able to change one’s mindset from righteousness to wonder (ie. open-ended curiosity) on a consistent basis.?
Commitment 3: Feeling all Feelings
“Commitment 3 - What feelings are you feeling right now? Where do you feel them in your body? Do you commit to feeling your feelings all the way through completion?” - I’m trying to get more in tune with my full range of emotions and feelings. I want to be able to quickly identify and name how I am feeling at any given moment. Am I happy? Sad? Fearful? Anxious? Angry? Irritated? Depressed? Stressed? Where am I physically feeling the sensation in my body? I believe emotion is a source of tremendous wisdom.?
David Bradford and Carole Robin in Connect (notes ) write, “Being in touch with emotions and expressing them appropriately is a key determinant in leadership success…Blowups are most likely because of a mismanagement of emotions, such as numbing emotions…The more you know your emotions, the less likely you are to be controlled by them…Owning is not suppressing - it’s expressing them productively…When you’re feeling angry, try getting curious about the deeper emotion.”
In Everyone Culture (notes ), “The number one reason people fail is their inability to manage their emotions…” 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership writes, “Emotional intelligence is essential for great leadership…emotion that isn’t dealt with comes back in a dysfunctional form in some way.” Hendricks in Genius Zone (notes ) writes, “[People are] happiest when greeting feelings with loving acceptance, rather than trying to control them.”
Per 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (notes ), below the line is to “repress, avoid, and withhold feelings.” People who struggle to experience sadness struggle to connect with others at the heart level. Leaders who do not experience joy struggle with celebrating and appreciating others. People with creation energy want to create something new in the world.?
15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership describes five primary emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, and creation. I think of anger as a sign that a value is being violated. Anger can also cover for other deeper emotions such as grief or sadness. Fear is trying to teach me something. Sadness is a signal that I may need to let go of something. Unhappiness typically results from me trying to control something outside of my control. Hope is longing for something “attainable,” per Gay Hendricks, whereas despair is longing for something “not attainable.”
While it’s important to feel our feelings all the way through, it is also important to recognize that “we are not our feelings.” Our feelings may change minute by minute or hour by hour. And counterintuitively, by getting in tune with and being able to observe and name and feel our feelings all the way through, we become less attached to them.?
As part of development, we should then be able to look at our feelings as an object, and take our learnings and wisdom from it. But part of development is learning to not over-attach or over-identify with our feelings such that we become subject to them and lose our equanimity. At the same time, if we are below the line or reactive in any given moment, we should accept and embrace ourselves in that moment.?
Feelings work never ends. 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership recommends considering, “have you felt all your feelings around your childhood, ended relationships, siblings, children, career, spouse, body, substances, drugs, alcohol, death, etc.?” Feelings are the source of interpersonal conflict and interpersonal creativity, innovation, and safety. I’m on a lifetime journey of getting more in tune with my own feelings and the emotional state of those around me to live a full and meaningful life.
Commitment 4: Speaking Candidly
“Commitment 4 - Is there anything that you’re concealing right now from anyone? Do you have any withholds right now? Are you willing to tell the complete truth right now?” - Sometimes, I have a “hard truth” that I want to share with someone else. But then I don’t share the truth for fear of hurting the relationship or the other person’s feelings. At this point, I have two choices. 1) Take a stand and share my “withhold” or share my truth. 2) Truly and genuinely “let go” of wanting to share this truth. But what I notice happens is that I both 1) don’t share the truth and 2) don’t truly ‘let go,’ causing tension within myself.?
Above the line is committing to “saying what is true for me and being someone with whom others can express themselves truly with candor.” Below the line is, “I commit to withholding my truth or “trying to change the other person.”
One of my favorite methods of sharing truths is starting with the phrase, “The story I’m telling myself is…” The idea is not to view one's own stories as “right,” but rather to notice them arising and sharing them. They are a story, a judgment, or an opinion. But they are not truth. “The opposite of your beliefs might also be true.” So if one can communicate that a judgment is a story coming up while remaining genuinely open minded and not trying to blame, then I think that’s a powerful way to communicate one’s truth. It is also possible to flip around these stories. If I am having a judgment about someone else, then how is that judgment true for myself?
Gay Hendricks suggests communicating “microscopic truths, especially around your emotions.” By communicating that you are sad, angry, scared, or you have dreams, feelings, or hopes, you are able to create connection in a relationship. As a side note, Gay Hendricks shares that, “relationships [are] the ultimate spiritual path because it gives us an opportunity to love and embrace connections we are prone to reject. The key to spiritual development in a relationship is being open to learning in every interaction.”
Another concept is the idea of being “inarguable.” When you talk about your own feelings, your judgments, or your bodily sensations - these thoughts are inarguable. If you start acting in terms of blame, righteousness, or mindreading what others are thinking - then others may disagree and this can cause interpersonal conflict. “Candor is a commitment to reveal and not conceal. Reveal our stories, hold them lightly. and express them lovingly.”
Commitment 5: Eliminating Gossip
“Commitment 5 - Are you gossiping instead of communicating directly to the person with whom you have an issue? Are you asking others to communicate their issues directly?” - It’s important to directly share feedback with the individual rather than behind their back. Above the line is “talk directly to those with whom you have a concern.” “Gossip is talking about someone with negative intent, or not in the same way as if someone was in the room.” Chapman recommends to “affirm relationships, state the facts, share the story- which could include judgments and opinions- share your feelings, own your part of the issue, state what you want.”
Commitment 6: Practicing Integrity
“Commitment 6 - Do you have a whole body ‘yes’ to what you’re doing right now? Are there any agreements that are not clear, that you’ve broken, or someone has broken with you?” - One benefit to getting more in tune with my emotions is that I can ‘listen’ to my body and see if I have a ‘whole body yes’ to the decisions I am making. If I do, then I can go all in on those decisions. If I don’t, then that may be a signal that I need to process my emotions more. Chapman writes, “Whole body yes is about your mind, gut, and heart and body being fully into the yes.” The “whole body yes” reminds me of a Derek Sivers post titled, “No yes. Either HELL YEAH! or no. ” The idea is to commit to a “HELL YEAH!” in your choices - otherwise treat it as a no.
Commitment 7: Generating Appreciation
“Commitment 7 - What do you appreciate right now? Who do you appreciate right now? Consider sharing it with them right now.” - Humans have a tendency to see what’s wrong, complain, criticize, and act like a victim. Expressing gratitude and appreciation is a way to counteract this natural tendency. I’ve tried making a gratitude practice a part of my regular habits. Chapman also suggests that “Your ability to appreciate starts with self appreciation…Some people have difficulty receiving appreciation - inner critic interception…When looking at people, try to catch something good.”
Commitment 8: Excelling in your Zone of Genius
“Commitment 8 - Are you in your zone of genius, excellence, competence, or incompetence right now?” - The recommendation is to live in your zone of genius. Your zone of incompetence is something you’re not good at. Your zone of competence is something you’re good at, but many other people could do it. Your zone of excellence is something you’re great at, get rewarded for doing, and may even get compensated well for doing. What’s tricky is that you will continue to get more and more work within your zone of excellence, but by having all your time being consumed in that zone, you crowd out the space to work within your zone of genius. Your zone of genius is when you’re in complete flow, loving every moment, contributing meaningfully, and operating at your highest level. The question is how you can increase the time you’re in your zone of genius and reduce the time you’re in the other zones? Gay Hendricks in The Genius Zone (notes ) goes deeper on this topic.?
Commitment 9: Living a Life of Play and Rest
“Commitment 9 - How can you get into a state of play right now? How can you rest for at least 30 seconds right now?” - Above the line is a “life of play, improvisation, and laughter.” Below the line is, “I commit to life as serious, hard work, and struggle.” Chapman recommends that those in a relaxed state of mind who “give up trying to control what life is giving them” are best positioned for “improvisational play.” She recommends trying to identify the style of play that most resonates: comedy, athletics, exploring, competing, collecting, storytelling, or creating art.?
Clayton Christen writes in How Will You Measure Your Life (notes ), “The danger for high achieving people is that they will allocate their resources to whatever has the most tangible short term benefits - usually their careers...high achievers spend a great deal of energy becoming the person they want to be at work but far too little becoming the person they want to be at home…” Chapman reinforces “There is an epidemic of workaholism that permeates our culture.”
Commitment 10: Exploring the Opposite
“Commitment 10 - How could you see the opposite of a story you’re believing right now?” This question has been a game changer. This also relates to the self-transforming form of mind. Above the line is committing to “seeing the opposite of my story as true or truer than my original story.” Below the line is “seeing my stories as the truth.”? Chapman continues, “Needing to be right is making you suffer and is a compulsion of the ego.” Byron Katie in Loving What Is (notes ) challenges us to consider 4 questions for any stories or stressors in our life: “Is it true? Can you absolutely know it’s true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without that thought?”
Commitment 11: Sourcing Approval, Control, and Security
“Commitment 11 - Are you willing to source your approval, control, and security from within right now?” - Over the years, I have been noticing my tendency to seek approval and security from ‘out there’ rather than within. Seeking approval from authorities or external sources is akin to socialized form of mind. 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership describes this well in their book: “Approval, Control, and Security are the three core wants…The problem with wanting is that it implies that you’re lacking…Those who feel they lack operate from fear.” Amy Edmonson in Fearless Organization (notes ) discusses how fear inhibits learning, is not an effective motivator, hinders the exchange of ideas, and robs the mind of its power of logical reasoning.?
Commitment 12: Having Enough of Everything
“Commitment 12 - Are you experiencing enough of everything right now, especially time? Reminder: Keep your attention out of the past and future.” - I’ve noticed tension created by not accepting and embracing reality. It sounds easy to type but is difficult in practice. The idea of ‘experiencing enough of everything right now’ is - to me - another way of saying “I accept and embrace reality as is.” I’m not looking for more. This is enough right now.?
Per Chapman, “I commit to experiencing that I have enough of everything, including love, time, money, space, and resources…’not enough’ grows into a mantra for an unfulfilled life…The ‘more is better’ assumption is so ingrained that few people question it, and it naturally leads to comparison and competition…Conscious leaders experience their lives as having enough of everything.”
Loving What Is by Byron Katie (notes ) covers the identical topic of embracing reality. Katie suggests that “we suffer when we believe a thought that argues with reality.” “Wanting reality to be different than it is is hopeless.” “Anything out of your control is God’s business…much of our stress is living outside of our own business.”
Commitment 13: Experience the World as Allies
“Commitment 13 - Are you willing to see everyone and everything in front of you as an ally right now? How are they perfectly suited for your learning and growth?” Per Chapman, “I commit to seeing all people and circumstances as allies perfectly suited to help me learn the most important things for my growth.” This means all the pain, heartache, stress, and challenge in my life are opportunities for learning. The Stoics reinforce this idea, beautifully written about in Ryan Holiday’s book, The Obstacle is the Way (notes ). Byron Katie reinforces that stressful that feelings are a sign that there is a thought that needs to be worked on. “Every potential problem is there for the sake of your learning.”
Commitment 14: Creating a Win for All Solutions
“Commitment 14 - How can you create a win-for-all right now with no compromise?” - Per Chapman, “I commit to creating solutions that are a win for me, win for the other person, win for the organization, and win for the whole for whatever challenges arise.”
Commitment 15: Being the Resolution
“Commitment 15 - What do you see as missing around you? Are you willing to be that right now?” - Per Chapman: “I commit to being the resolution or solution that’s needed. Seeing what’s missing in the world as an invitation to become that which is required.”
Leadership Circle Profile (LCP)
“The solutions to our current problems cannot be solved within the consciousness that created them” per Mastering Leadership (notes ). LCP uses the “best from organizational development, leadership, and psychology” to create the “first integrated model of leadership development.” The premise is that, while everyone agrees that leadership effectiveness is a significant driver in business performance, there is no systematic way to track, measure, and coach leadership effectiveness.?
LCP is a survey-based 360 evaluation to your closest peers and colleagues. The goal is to get a sense of your overall leadership effectiveness, strengths, creative tendencies, and reactive tendencies. There are a few essential concepts from LCP:
Creative vs. Reactive Tendencies
Perhaps coincidentally, the circle in 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership that points to “above the line” and “below the line” somewhat resembles the circle in The Leadership Circle Profile . In LCP:
LCP is a strengths-based tool and is not intended to imply “creative tendencies are good” or “reactive tendencies are bad.” Oftentimes, reactive tendencies enabled someone to grow as a leader. The benefit of nurturing creative tendencies, though, is the ability to handle larger and larger amounts of complexity. In general, I would recommend that people go through the actual 360 before reading the book.
Inner Game Runs the Outer Game
For LCP, leadership is an “inner game.” The idea is that all organizational change comes “inside out.” The inner game is about consciousness, one’s “inner operating system,” values, character, and approach. The outer game is the results and experience. “The inner game runs the outer game.” By changing and evolving our forms of mind, we are able to drive better results. If someone wants to transform the organization, they must transform themselves. “We are the primary obstacle to the very future we are committed to creating.” Leadership efforts must be long-term sustained, and focused on both the inner game and outer game.
Stages of Development
Reactive tendencies typically define themselves outside-in whereas creative tendencies define themselves inside-out. The 3 main reactive tendencies are:
Again - these reactive tendencies are not bad. Sometimes it’s important to defer to authorities, or leverage authority to influence others. The problem is when leaders need to deal with higher levels of complexity, then over-reliance on reactive tendencies can hold a leader back. For example, if someone is overly analytical, it can come across as distant or aloof. If someone is overly heart-driven, it can evolve to an overuse of complying tendencies.?
The goal is to shift the strengths from reactive tendencies into strengths from creative tendencies - self-authored, visionary, authentic, and courageous leadership. This may include: systems awareness, results-orientation, or strategy orientation. “Purposeful, visionary, and teamwork are the most highly correlated with leadership effectiveness.”
LCP loosely correlates its stages with Kegan's stages of adult human development. Generally, people in a socialized form of mind are likely to show up as reactive, and those in self-authored and self-transforming form of mind and beyond are likely to show up as creative. Since a large population of adult leaders are in stage 3 (Socialized) or in transition from socialized to self-authored, LCP is a great tool for understanding where one is in that journey.
Reactive mind is typically driven by fear and wants stability and homeostasis. Also, an overuse of reactive tendencies is negatively correlated with leadership effectiveness scores.?
“The path of development into a creative mind is to mature your core gift, to leverage the strength that is hung on a reactive structure…Harvest the shadow rather than fixing or self improving…Don’t develop the opposite side right away, but rather understand their natural strength and unhook it from the reactive tendency…I am microcosm of the system that needs to change so I need to do most of the changing”
Growth Edge
I will dig deeper into Growth Edge later in the article, but one of the most challenging realizations when going through this journey of adult human development, is the concept that I am the problem. Also - getting closer to the edge of something that should change is also accompanied by fear. "Growth edge" is the edge of our subject-object frame, and a tool for discovering what we are subject to and beginning to make object. People generally want to keep the status quo, so by getting close to the “growth edge” of change requires courage and the ability to overcome fear. It is not possible to pursue safety and purpose simultaneously. “Most of the courage needed is the courage to tell the truth...authentic courageous conversations are the lifeblood of high performance.”
I’ve found that combining the Leadership Circle Profile with the Immunity to Change framework can be a powerful combination in identifying your growth edge or areas of continuous development. Per Immunity to Change (Notes ), “Leader’s biggest mistake is to try to solve adaptive challenges through technical means…” LCP is an adaptive tool that enables the continued and systematic development of leadership capabilities.?
Stories I’m Telling Myself (Giving and Receiving Feedback)
Nothing has served my professional growth more than developing the habit of giving and receiving feedback. In 2021, I wrote a post titled Dear New Group Product Manager , where I shared my point of view on feedback. But as a result of studying adult human development, I’ve developed a more nuanced point of view on feedback.?
I have several critiques of the way that I’ve historically thought about feedback.
The feedback approach I describe below hopefully addresses these points. As quick responses to the critiques above, my newer approach:
Before giving feedback, my suggestions are:
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First show that you care (Psychological Safety)
One of the best methods of creating psychological safety is deeply caring about your colleagues and the people around you. Connect (notes ) writes, “In exceptional relationships, you feel seen, known, and appreciated for who you really are…People will be more ready to receive your concerns if they can see that your intent is in their best interest.” It continues “Feedback is a gift when both people genuinely care about the other.” In Fearless Organization (notes ), Amy Edmonson’s classic book on psychological safety, she writes that? psychological safety is when “interpersonal fear is minimized….people feel comfortable being themselves…[and] trust their colleagues.” Edmonson gives the story of Eileen Fischer who appreciates other folks, no matter what the situation. For knowledge work to flourish, people must feel safe enough to share concerns or half-formed thoughts.?
One mantra I keep in mind is that I would want my “positive:constructive” ratio to be at least “5:1.” Jon Gottman, the famous marriage researcher, discusses the “magic ratio” of “5:1” where he recommends at least 5 positive interactions for each negative one. I think building the habit of appreciation, positivity, and gratitude helps build the psychological safety to give feedback.
Connect also gives a great overview of psychological safety: “Relationships with no big, complex conflicts, nobody minces words when they feel a pinch, and they know how to resolve them, each person is committed to the others growth, and truth telling is core”
Set expectations up front
I had an old mentor who used to say, “Expectation setting is the root of happiness.” The first time I meet with someone, I try to set the expectation that I am open to hearing their feedback any time, but I am also open to giving feedback. If we are in a psychologically safe culture, then there should be a “climate of openness that makes it easier to report and discuss error.”?
Differentiate Stories and Reality
One of the most powerful methods I’ve learned to more deeply understand others and more clearly communicate what’s going on with me is through differentiating “stories” and “reality.”?
I think of a story as a thought, judgment, evaluation, or opinion. A story is disputable. If there’s anyone who would disagree with the characterization, then that is a story. Even if something is 99.9% true, and there’s only a small chance that it is not true, then I would call that a story. Bryon Katie, in Loving What Is (notes ), describes “Stories are sequences of thoughts that we convince ourselves are real…Stories are the untested and uninvestigated theories of what we think these things mean.”?
Facts, on the other hand, are reality. It is something that is visible through a camera or a mathematical formula. It is inarguable. Nobody would have a different opinion on it because it is 100% reality.?
I have found that so many thoughts and judgments and evaluations are not necessarily based in reality. But rather - they are stories that people are telling themselves. They are opinions. They are subjective.?
If someone is telling themselves a story, it is critical to be able to ask if the opposite story could be just as true if not truer than the story they’re telling themselves. Katie calls this the “turnaround” or “experiencing the opposite of what you believe is true…which could be as true if not truer….A judgment can be turned around to yourself, to the other, or to the opposite.”
For example, imagine the story you may be telling yourself is that “this person is being selfish and only thinking about themselves when they are complaining about XYZ part of the organization.” A “turnaround” would be exploring “how am I being selfish? How is the person being unselfish?”
Katie would argue that it is not our thoughts that cause suffering, but believing our thoughts that cause suffering. It is attachment to our thoughts, stories, and judgments that cause suffering. “Behind every stressful feeling is an attachment to an untrue thought.”
The other part of Katie’s philosophy that struck me is her love of reality. “Wanting reality to be different than it is is hopeless…Much of our stress is living outside of our own business…Katie is a lover of what is.”
The problem with believing our stories, per Connect, is that it causes curiosity to disappear. If we believe our stories, then through confirmation bias, we will collect data to support them. Connect also suggests that we challenge negative stories by creating alternative stories to drive us back to curiosity. This is why the phrase, “the story I’m telling myself is…” can be so powerful.
Humility
One of my favorite quotes is from Connect: “You need to hold onto the fundamental belief that you don’t know what’s going on with the other person.” Jennifer Berger in Changing on the Job (notes ) reinforces the same point: “The most important thing you can do when listening is to disregard or let go of any sense that you might understand what the other person is saying.” My hope is that by differentiating stories and facts, I can develop deeper humility. Byron Katie in Loving What Is (notes ) writes, “When you truly see that everyone is doing the best that they can, a lifetime of humility begins.”
Trauma survivors also operate in a world of perceived slights and oversensitivity to their outside environment. This causes them to believe they know what others are thinking and feeling and oftentimes causes false alarms. The advice from Complex PTSD (notes ) is, “no analyzing others or mind reading…I renounce over-noticing and dwelling on what’s wrong with what’s around me.”
If someone says a sentence that triggers you, Berger suggests that instead of mindreading, one should “Suspend judgment or slow judgment and pay close attention to the other…I see so many ways that you could have meant that sentence and would like to ask you what was true for you.”
Connect uses the metaphor of “staying on your side of the net.” The idea is to stick to your own reality, feelings, behaviors, needs, concerns, hopes, and experiences when sharing feedback. You should not be questioning the other person’s motives or intent. You must also maintain humility in not knowing where the other person is coming from.
Amy Edmonson, in Fearless Organizations, describes how a “learning mindset [blends] humility and curiosity.” When a leader demonstrates humility, teams engage in more learning behaviors. The humility of “I don’t know” or “I made a mistake” increases vulnerability and improves psychological safety.
Template
Now I’d like to review a template I’ve been experimenting with when giving and receiving feedback based on these learnings. My suggested template for giving and receiving feedback includes:
Let me summarize what I mean by each of these.
A fact is observable through a video camera or is inarguable. 2+2 = 4. Someone was late to 3 meetings you were running. Someone did not respond to an email. Although even in this case - your email server or their email server may have corrupted the message.
A feeling is an emotion. In my view, “I feel that you” is not a feeling. I felt <emotion> is the best way I’ve found to describe a feeling. And the emotion should be a feeling word. I felt irritated. I felt annoyed. I felt disappointed. I felt sad. I felt fearful, etc. Connect reinforces this: “Only use I feel statements to express emotions and not cognitions…An emotion word should follow feel. Not I feel “that” or “like”...“I feel like” usually expresses thoughts, not emotions.”
Stories are subjective and could represent judgments, ideas, or opinions that someone is telling themselves. Feelings are often generated in responses to stories that someone is telling themselves. For example, if someone is late to several meetings in a row, then the story I might be telling myself is that this person is not reliable or doesn’t respect others’ time. Another way of describing a story I’m telling myself is “what is an opinion” or “what is subjective?” Even if a story is 99% true, I find calling it a “story I’m telling myself” to be a more accurate reflection of what’s going on, rather than assuming that it is a fact.
There is a challenge with confusing stories and facts. So I’ve been making a deliberate practice to get more in tune with stories I’m telling myself vs. facts.
The most important part of the “stories I’m telling myself” is holding the humility that the opposite story may be just as true if not truer than the story I’m telling myself. This is incredibly challenging to internalize. Is it possible to hold the ‘conflicting’ point of view that the opposite story may be just as true if not truer than the story I’m telling myself? If I have a story in my head that someone else is not reliable or considerate - Can I turn it around and ask how I have not been reliable and considerate? This has been a game changer for me when observing myself and others I’m interacting with.
Oftentimes, when one experiences frustration, irritation, sadness, or depression, there is a hope behind the feeling. The wisdom behind the ‘negative’ emotion can often be the hope underlying it. So this is why I explicitly ask folks to share their hopes alongside the facts, feelings, and stories related to a piece of feedback.
I’m going to share my full feedback request template as an example of how I think about this.
—
Hi ABC,
I believe you have collaborated with XYZ in a meaningful way over the last 6 months. I'd love your open, honest, candid feedback on XYZ.
?
Please share bullet points of XYZ’s:
Note: While I tend to anonymize feedback, I do share anonymous excerpts/verbatims. Please let me know if you’re not comfortable with that.
Thank you.
Nitin
Ps. If you’re open to experimenting with me, for potential growth opportunities, please:
My intention is to avoid judgment and evaluation and focus more on behaviors, feelings, stories, and hopes.?
To help understand the type of feedback I’m looking for, let’s use a fictitious person, Popeye. Assume Popeye is a great leader that you work with, but you wish some things were different.?
Not what I'm looking for?
Popeye is slow at decision making.? Popeye delays several business critical decisions and sits on them for too long. He needs to improve on this.
Why is this not what I’m looking for? This is lacking specific examples, not sharing its impact on your feelings, and not explicitly sharing your stories and hope for the future.?
What I'm looking for
Speed of decision making: When we sent the alignment document to Popeye on XYZ date, it did not get resolved for 2 weeks. In another example on XYZ date, when I expressed concerns about collaboration with a XFN partner, I did not see action from Popeye. With these examples, it makes me fearful that when I am blocked, my issues will not be resolved in a timely way. The story I’m telling myself is that I can’t trust Popeye to help with my challenges. My hope is to view Popeye as a decisive leader that I feel confident partnering with to deliver greater business impact together in the future.?
—-
The goal of giving and receiving feedback is to serve the collective growth of everyone in the organization.?
The Empowerment Dynamic
The Power of TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic) by David Emerald and Robert Lanphear (notes ) gives a framework for taking more responsibility for our lives. This approach encourages treating “all of life’s experiences as teachers challenging us to grow and evolve.” It describes three roles of the Drama Triangle - Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer, - and three roles of the Empowerment Dynamic - Creator, Challenger, and Coach.
Victim
The victim believes situations are happening to them. They feel sorry for themselves and don’t see the path to improve their situation. They are dependent on others for self-worth. 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership describes victim consciousness as “to me” where the “world where happening ‘to me” and “external realities [are] responsible for happiness.” This is similar to Socialized Mind in Kegan’s Stages of Adult Human Development or Complying tendencies in the Leadership Circle Profile. Most people fall into the “victim” category.
Persecutor?
The persecutor is focused on blaming others for the situation. They “fear the loss of control.” If a person is getting defensive, then that is a sign that they are turning on the persecutor mentality.
Rescuer
The rescuer believes they can intervene on behalf of the victim to improve the situation. The rescuer reinforces a victim’s mentality. If someone has a fear of abandonment, then they may hold onto a relationship too tightly and become needy and clingy in their effort to save the relationship.
Creator
Per Emerald and Lanphear, “the opposite of victim is creator.” The creator is focused on co-creating with others to manifest the purpose or results they want to see in their life. “Creators move forward with courage in the face of fear and anxiety.” They experience a tension of both holding onto a vision of what they want while staying grounded in reality as it relates to their vision. Per 15 Commitments, Creator Consciousness is “through me” such that “leaders listen to life and see what the world wants through them…they surrender and let go of control.”
Challenger
The “challenger is the antidote for the persecutor.” Rather than trying to control the other person, the challenger embraces the reality that they cannot control the other person while simultaneously having the willingness to challenge the person to tap their inner creator. This is not about challenging a person to control them - but rather encouraging them to do the inner work to tap into their inner values and purpose.
Coach
The “coach is the antidote to rescuer.” A coach sees others as resourceful, creative, and whole. A coach “ignites inspiration” and stands behind you, no matter what. A coach “does not view people as broken or in need of fixing,” but rather aims for everyone to tap their inner creator. A coach asks “what do you really want?” and then supports people through questions to clarify their own envisioned future and dream.
Values and Parts
I’ve already published my thoughts on Internal Family Systems (IFS) in my article about Trauma in 2022. As a reminder, IFS describes how people are governed by multiple (ie. 10-30) internal personalities, and each has a full range of emotions. Per Internal Family Systems Therapy, “individual therapists can map inner families to clarify alliances, coalitions, and polarities…”?
The goal of trauma treatment is for people to achieve “self-leadership” and differentiate the parts from the self. “Self-acceptance is the ongoing process of welcoming all parts and banishing none.” People thrive most when they achieve a state where they are accepting and embracing all their parts. They should also be in tune with their separated self rather than allowing any single part to become blended with their self. A part of this, as described in It’s OK That You’re Not OK (notes ), is thinking “I trust myself to solve problems that come up.” Self-led people are calm, compassionate, and collaborative.?
Coincidentally, Mastering Leadership (notes ), reinforces this concept of the self being made of disparate and conflicting parts. “A part of us wants to be part of something great and another part of us is not up for that much risk.” The challenge is that what we most want is connected to what we most fear. Your “creative self fragments into an ecology of many selves.”
The concept of opposites is also reinforced in both Byron Katie’s work and Mastering Leadership. “Identity shifts from single authentic self to many selves with opposites in intention.” This is similar to “how can the opposite story be just as true if not truer than the story you’re telling yourself?”?
Trauma treatments around self-leadership are also nearly identical to the suggestions made in Mastering Leadership. They both maintain that each person at their core is a “uniquely gifted person.” And when transforming from reactive to creative mind, it is important to “disidentify with our ego’s core self limiting assumptions.”
Zone of Genius
Imagine spending the majority of your time doing what you love, expressing your full, unique creativity to the world, and inspiring others to do the same. From an LCP lens, this means following your creative tendencies the majority of the time. From a 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership lens, this means having a ‘whole body yes’ where your head, body, and heart are in alignment with your time. From a Kegan lens, this means living in a self-transforming form of mind with an accurate view of yourself, unique gifts, and strengths, and everything in the world is object.
Per Gay Hendricks, author of The Big Leap (notes ) and The Genius Zone (notes ), people are often so comfortable in their Zone of Excellence that they lack the courage to walk away and create the space to live in their Zone of Genius. Walking away from excellence is terrifying because excellence is secure, comfortable, and rewarded. But by living your life in excellence, you will feel that something is missing. This missing piece of life is your genius wanting to break out and express itself.
I’m going to cover the following topics:
Zone of Incompetence
Your Zone of Incompetence is doing work that others can do better than you. Gay Hendricks recommends avoiding your Zone of Incompetence altogether or delegating it. My personal view is there is risk in delegating too much because one may lose self-sufficiency. So my take is to learn to do an activity yourself, but if it’s too time-consuming, then consider delegating it.
Zone of Competence
Your Zone of Competence is doing work that others are able to do as well as you.?
Zone of Excellence
Your Zone of Excellence is the biggest trap and challenge. Your Zone of Excellence is doing work that you “consistently get positive feedback on” and “do better than anyone else.” The “majority of successful people get stuck in their zone of excellence.”?
The problem with the Zone of Excellence is that it costs psychic energy. Per Gay Hendricks, “getting stuck in your zone of excellence is the biggest burner of your genius energy…A deep, sacred part of you will wither and die if you stay in your zone of excellence.”?
One example that Gay Hendricks shares is someone who will not do creative work until the house is clean. But then, the person is spending the majority of their time cleaning their house, but does not have time for their creative pursuits.?
Zone of Genius
“Your most valuable asset is the innate genius that is yours to cultivate.” Gay Hendricks suggests that your Zone of Genius is the “one place where you will ultimately thrive and stay satisfied.” It’s “expressing your natural genius” in “what you are uniquely able to do” and “draws on your special gifts and strengths.” This is the place where your time invested doesn’t feel like work because you love doing it so much. Your work “generates the highest ratio of results compared to the time spent doing it.”
Gay Hendricks continues that you must surround yourself with people who honor and support your creative genius. One challenge Hendricks faced was choosing to withdraw time and energy from people who did not support his full creativity. Per Hendricks, “liberating and expressing your natural genius is your ultimate path to success and life satisfaction.”
A question that may come up is, “What is my zone of genius?” Hendricks has a simple solution here - email 30 to 50 of your closest colleagues and ask them for help. “What am I doing when you experience me at my most energized and happy? What special skill am I most gifted at?”?
Making Time for Genius
One of the trickiest ideas related to living your life of genius is making the time and space for it. There is so much work - family needs, work obligations, financial responsibility, and more. Hendricks suggests committing to “expressing my full creativity and enjoying every moment.”?
Hendricks suggests making a commitment that you are able to keep, given the other priorities in your life. Perhaps you want to commit to focusing on your genius 1 hour per day, or 4 hours per day, or all your waking hours. This is up to you to choose.
He also discusses how “creativity thrives in the midst of lavish attention.” This reminds me of Paul Graham’s classic essay, Maker Manager Schedule . Graham discusses the importance of having long chunks of time to tackle ambitious projects at the limit of your capacity. Hendricks suggests to “think carefully before putting any condition on your creativity, such as a time or place.”
While I have presented on Personal Productivity (demo , deck ) in the past, one of my favorite explanations of time is from Gay Hendricks. He explains the difference between Newtonian Time and Einsteinian Time.
“In your zone of genius, you don’t feel like you are working…the way time works is that you create the time.”
Upper Limit Problem
The upper limit problem, per Hendricks, is that folks artificially create their own limits on love and positive energy. There will inevitably be obstacles through the process of committing to living your life in your zone of genius. Therefore, commitment is “dedicating your body, mind, and soul to lifelong courtship of your true creativity.” Then, when you hit the obstacles, you recommit, and recommit, and recommit. This is what makes this a lifelong journey.
Growth Edge
Through an ongoing commitment to human development, people inevitably reach a boundary where their immunity to change prevents growth. Growth can feel scary and uncomfortable because it is challenging strongly held personal beliefs. I’ve had multiple instances in the last few years where I’ve realized that something that I’ve believed for the last 10-15+ years may be holding me back at this moment. This is challenging, difficult, and uncomfortable because the success that I may have had in the past may be holding me back in this moment. This is the “growth edge.”
There is no growth without personal risk. If something served me for many years and helped me become the person I am, then changing habits or reducing those tendencies becomes challenging. Everyone Culture (notes ) asks key questions to ask ourselves: “Does your organization help you identify a personal challenge meaningful to you and valuable to the company that you can work on to grow? Are others aware of your growing edge and care that you transcend? Are you given support? Do you actively work on transcending your growing edge daily or weekly? Are you given opportunities to keep growing?”
Scaling Leadership (notes ) describes that “generative tension is core to how we lead by looking at the gap between what we are and what we want.” Identifying your growth edge starts with understanding what we want with enough specificity, which is exactly what LCP does for leaders.?
Coaching helps leaders discover their growth edge and work to overcome their self-limiting beliefs to become bigger versions of themselves. Changing on the Job by Jennifer Garvey Berger (notes ) goes more in depth into coaching strategies dependent on the client’s form of mind. For example, those with a self-sovereign form of mind may get angry at even the questions. In this case, coaching can focus on skills training, giving and receiving feedback, self-reflection, and valuing other people’s words more than their own voice (which is counterintuitive for a coach.) For those with a socialized form of mind, the coach teaches the client that the client’s voice needs to be central in success making. For those with a self-authored form of mind, the coach can encourage the client to question all voices, including their own. The coach needs to be mirroring wherever the client is at any given moment. The more complex the form of mind of the client, the more demanding it is for the coach to mirror that complexity. Coaches can also ask boundary testing questions, such as, “what’s the best outcome?” or “the worst thing about that” or “most at risk?” Another question type would be “what would be your biggest fear if you were to ignore X?” These boundary setting questions are another approach to identifying the growth edge and self-limiting beliefs.
Integrated Unitive Leadership
Mastering Leadership (notes ) gives an excellent overview of integral leadership. An integrated unitive leader understands that there is no subject ‘self’ and only object. We are all each other, have oneness with life, and universal compassion. The integral mind is an “ecology of opposites”. The integral leader understands opposites, shadows, and similarities across humanity. There is joy, bliss, unity, and acceptance for those in integral mind. In this state, there are no ‘career goals,’ ‘seeking,’ or ‘striving,’ because there is no self. “Improving your effectiveness as a leader is improving your effectiveness as a human being.”
The integral leader is clear on their vision, purpose, and connecting it to action. They understand that, by dreaming their vision, they can embody that vision. They are in tune with subtle clues in life that give hints on their vision. They notice those small moments of joy or excitement or contentment. Their purpose is connected to the needs of the people around them, organization, and society. They look for the intersection between their passion, curiosity, talent, and need in the world. Per Mastering Leadership (notes ), “Alignment happens when individuals are able to achieve their personal purposes while working to achieve the organization‘s vision.”
Per Fearless Organization (notes ), leaders create psychological safety while simultaneously inspiring others to achieve the organizational goals. They help others discover their own growth edges. They know that higher purpose creates psychological safety. Per Scaling Leadership: “Leadership is scaling the capacity of yourself and others to create outcomes that matter…Great leaders catalyze the dreams and aspirations of the people who work with them.”?
The best leaders are coaching and nurturing the growth of the humans that make up their organization to handle higher and higher levels of complexity. Per Mastering Leadership, “Developing other leaders becomes the main job of leadership.” Adult human development enables people to understand their own emotions, purpose, vision, and others. Leaders will look back at their life and realize that what they thought was the ‘main action,’ was only a small part of their life. They realize that every interaction with another human being is related to both your form of mind and their form of mind.?
Leaders need to be leaders and learners at the same time. They know the demand on them as leaders grows with the scale and complexity of their scope. They also hold onto humility, knowing that their vision is an object and not objective truth.
Leaders must be the most self-aware people in the organization. They realize that organizational transformation happens inside-out, and that by changing yourself, you can then change the organization. They lead the organization personally, vulnerably, and openly while putting the entire organization through generative tension in the service of transformation. The job of the leader is to think of their team as a team of leaders. They architect the structure of the organization to focus on leadership development and sponsor their leadership team to do the work of mastering leadership.
Scaling Human Development
I am especially interested in systematically improving leadership development at an organizational level by leveraging tooling, automation, and intelligence. In my view, few organizations are excellent at people development. But limiting beliefs within people can be considered an entire organization’s opportunity.?
Per Everyone Culture (notes ), “people’s limitations should be viewed as the company’s edge or a growing resource.” I agree with Jennefer Berger in Changing on the Job (notes ) who states “our workplaces could become a central place to cultivate wisdom the planet needs to survive.”?
The challenging aspect of leadership development is that whatever strengths help a leader reach one level of effectiveness are the characteristics that limit a leader who is trying to manage the next level of complexity.?
I agree with Scaling Leadership (notes ) that “The primary job of leaders is to develop other leaders…leaders should own the development agenda, create a feedback rich environment, measure and track development, and continually” improve the system over time. I think of Scaling Adult Human Development within an organization as being about:
Curriculum and Pedagogy
I’ve had a lifelong interest in K-12 education. My wife is a former teacher and I’ve read dozens of articles about Robert Marzano, Zone of Proximal Development, Montessori, Understanding by Design, Bloom’s taxonomy, and so much more. Interestingly, Robert Kegan is a Professor in the Harvard School of Education!?
I wanted to learn as much as I could about teaching adults and thought a more deep understanding of curriculum design could help me. What I did not realize is that adult education and leadership development merge into the same field. Systematically improving the development of people within an organization requires a curricular approach to people development. Kegan discusses the two twin pillars of a school:
The challenge with some roles is that people take the same curriculum over and over. Meanwhile, in other roles, there is a challenging curriculum, but insufficient support. The goal of an organization is to build a “deliberately developmental organization” (or DDO), where people development is everyone’s responsibility. Further, Kegan points out,“there is a curriculum waiting in our everyday lives.”
Lead Out Loud
Another method of teaching is ‘large group lecture’ and this is why it is important for ‘leaders to lead out loud.’ Per Scaling Leadership (notes ), “The system will not change unless we do, and we must do it publicly and vulnerably.”
An organization needs public examples of the DDO approach. There is great benefit to leaders being public about their own development to create the psychological safety for everyone to work on themselves. “The benefit of being public about your limitations is that others can help coach you and help you grow as part of your day to day work.” Much of leadership is learning out loud and alongside your team.
Measuring Development
If a leader is aiming to scale leadership development, they must be able to measure leadership development. LCP is the most effective method I’ve seen to systematically measure one’s leadership development. The organization's business performance is highly related to leadership effectiveness. For any organizational transformation, it must first start with the transformation of the leaders. And the scaling of a business is highly related to scaling the leadership.
Feedback Rich Environment
A core part of scaling adult human development is building a psychologically safe, feedback rich culture. “The power to create the culture lies in authenticity telling the truth to one another.” Leaders must create a culture that is comfortable with ongoing assessment of leadership effectiveness, ongoing coaching, and group learning to up-level the collective organization’s development. Leadership should design “structures to elicit employee input.” The goal is to make every person in the organization responsible for helping every other person in the organization grow. A psychologically safe culture also helps folks provide feedback on the product, culture, and organization, leading to the best business outcomes.
Ideally, the feedback rich culture would not be fear-driven. Psychological safety requires a foundation of trust, gratitude, and appreciation. People on the team must believe that the leaders genuinely want what’s in the best interest of the individual. Making mistakes should be framed as part of learning.?
Finally, I would reiterate the points from above on giving feedback: First show that you care (psychological safety), set expectations up front, differentiate stories and reality, and be humble. It is especially important to avoid righteousness or the assumption that the more senior leader is “right” and “valid” in their assumptions.
Appreciation Culture
I believe that human nature makes us criticize, blame, and judge more readily, rather than appreciate and express gratitude. But I think appreciation can be a superpower. In How We Talk Can Change the Way We Work (notes ), it says that the leaders should “pay attention to what you’re appreciating - for example - is it only new initiatives, or existing? What types of contributions?” Appreciation can shape a culture and what is rewarded. The language around praise can also have an impact. If the praise is general, global, or based on comparison, then that praise could be construed as harmful. If the praise is specific, sincere, and authentic, then it is more likely to be effective.
Team Dynamics
Team dynamics, or groups of people interacting with each other, introduce significant complexity. Each person has their own creative and reactive tendencies, histories, strengths, underlying commitments, underlying assumptions, stories, forms of mind, and methods of interpreting reality. And when all these fallible humans across the organization are interacting with each other in order to coalesce around a joint vision or opportunity, the complexity becomes extremely humbling - to say the least.
Troubled, fear-based, or reactive relationships between co-workers can become the “poison well of work.” It is the leader’s job to get to the bottom of the team dynamics across the organization to build a psychologically safe, feedback rich, creative culture where each person can do their best work and continue to develop as leaders and humans.
Solving Problems Too Quickly
When navigating team dynamics, it is important to not solve problems too quickly. It is common for people to have a judgment or complaint, and think they can give “quick feedback.” In some cases, I’ve even seen folks quickly giving feedback via a Slack or Teams message. While I do think quick, “actionable” feedback can be effective for technical topics, I do not find this effective for leadership topics. I love how Robert Anderson writes about creating a “curricular, rather than punitive approach to discussing violations.” The idea is “don’t solve the problems too quickly, but rather allow the problems to solve us.” We can work with inner contradictions and opposites to serve our continuous learning.
I have a few explicit concerns with the idea of “actionable” feedback:
Learning Tooling
I believe there should be a suite of tools in organizations that help in the systematic development of humans in a workplace. LCP is one of my favorite tools. The books, Mastering Leadership and Scaling Leadership are written by the developers of LCP.
Ray Dalio, founder of the Bridgewater hedge fund, has also developed a suite of leadership development tools. For example, dot collector “provides summary ratings and specific feedback - and those data points are aggregated to provide a holistic picture.” Dalio also developed an “issues log - which captures questions, problems, and errors and what to do about them…A problem is anything that went wrong…It’s an act of good citizenship to call out even small things directly and candidly.” He also developed “A baseball card for each employee that includes their strengths and weaknesses, Myers-Briggs, and other data to describe a person.”
I expect advanced organizations to invest deeply in tooling to systematically develop their teams.
Conclusion
“Nitin, I’m noticing that your perfectionist tendencies have reduced from 78th% to 53rd% over the last year. Nice work. You don’t need to be thinking about that anymore. There’s nothing wrong with some perfectionist tendencies. As a leader, you want to hold a high bar. But I’m noticing your belonging part of complying tendencies is at the 82th percentile. Do you have a tendency to try too hard to conform to the group’s rules/norms? What are the underlying assumptions and commitments? This is likely impacting your speed of decision making and leadership effectiveness.” And so it continues!
Learning about adult human development has been one of the most transformational and rewarding topics of my life. I’m only two years deep on these topics and feel that I am only scratching the surface of self-understanding and other-understanding. But per Anderson in Mastering Leadership, “The process of developing extraordinary leadership is the same process for becoming an extraordinary person.”?
I’m confident that the stages of adult human development, subject-object theory, immunity to change framework, conscious leadership, LCP, stories we are telling ourselves, parts work, zone of genius, and growth edge are all pieces of the puzzle of helping humans achieve their potential and create the largest positive impact on the world.
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Book Referenced (with Notes)
Partnering with leaders to Navigate Uncertainty
12 个月Thanks for this. Complements some coursework I am doing. I need to take time to digest it all.
It's inspiring to see your dedication to personal growth and learning in the field of adult human development. Keep up the great work, Nitin Julka!
Engineering Manager @ Meta
1 年Thanks Nitin, great summary this article helps me to understand stages of adult human development, what are some more specific resources that can help me with development in this stages?
Delivery Leader| Practice Management| Digital Transformation| Communications and Technology Domain| Product Engineering
1 年Thank you Nitin Julka, amazing share. The weekend is sorted :)