He was the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education. He taught there for forty years until his retirement in 2016.[2] He was also Educational Chair for the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education and the co-director for the Change Leadership Group.[3]
In his book The Evolving Self (1982), Kegan explored human life problems from the perspective of a single process which he called meaning-making, the activity of making sense of experience through discovering and resolving problems.[4] As he wrote, "Thus it is not that a person makes meaning, as much as that activity of being a person is the activity of meaning-making."[5] The purpose of the book is primarily to give professional helpers (such as counselors, psychotherapists, and coaches) a broad, developmental framework for empathizing with their clients' different ways of making sense of their problems.[6]
Kegan described meaning-making as a lifelong activity that begins in early infancy and can evolve in complexity through a series of "evolutionary truces" (or "evolutionary balances") that establish a balance between self and other (in psychological terms), or subject and object (in philosophical terms), or organism and environment (in biological terms).[7] Each evolutionary truce is both an achievement of and a constraint on meaning-making, possessing both strengths and limitations.[8] Each subsequent evolutionary truce is a new, more refined, solution to the lifelong tension between how people are connected, attached, and included (integrated with other people and the world), and how people are distinct, independent, and autonomous (differentiated from other people and the rest of the world).[9]
Kegan adapted Donald Winnicott's idea of the holding environment and proposed that the evolution of meaning-making is a life history of holding environments, or cultures of embeddedness.[10] Kegan described cultures of embeddedness in terms of three processes: confirmation (holding on), contradiction (letting go), and continuity (staying put for reintegration).[11]
For Kegan, "the person is more than an individual;"[12] developmental psychology studies the evolution of cultures of embeddedness, not the study of isolated individuals. He wrote, "One of the most powerful features of this psychology, in fact, is its capacity to liberate psychological theory from the study of the decontextualized individual. Constructive-developmental psychology reconceives the whole question of the relationship between the individual and the social by reminding that the distinction is not absolute, that development is intrinsically about the continual settling and resettling of this very distinction."[13]
Kegan argued that some of the psychological distress that people experience (including some depression and anxiety) are a result of the "natural emergencies" that happen when "the terms of our evolutionary truce must be renegotiated" and a new, more refined, culture of embeddedness must emerge.[14]
Kegan presented a sequence of six evolutionary balances: incorporative, impulsive, imperial, interpersonal, institutional, and interindividual. The following table is a composite of several tables in The Evolving Self that summarize these balances.[19] The object (O) of each balance is the subject (S) of the preceding balance. Kegan uses the term subject to refer to things that people are "subject to" but not necessarily consciously aware of. He uses the term object to refer to things that people are aware of and can take control of.[20] The process of emergence of each evolutionary balance is described in detail in the text of the book; as Kegan said, his primary interest is the ontogeny of these balances, not just their taxonomy.[21]
Mothering culture. Mothering one(s) or primary caretaker(s).
Sensorimotor
—
Pre-social
Physiological survival orientation
—
—
(1) Impulsive
S: impulse and perception
O: reflexes, sensing, and moving
Parenting culture. Typically, the family triangle.
Preoperational
Punishment and obedience orientation
Impulsive
Physiological satisfaction orientation
—
Initiative vs. guilt
(2) Imperial
S: enduring disposition, needs, interests, wishes
O: impulse and perception
Role-recognizing culture. School and family as institutions of authority and role differentiation. Peer gang which requires role-taking.
Concrete operational
Instrumental orientation
Opportunistic
Safety orientation
Power orientation
Industry vs. inferiority
(3) Interpersonal (Socialized Mind)
S: mutuality, interpersonal concordance
O: enduring disposition, needs, interests, wishes
Culture of mutuality. Mutually reciprocal one-to-one relationships.
Early formal operational
Interpersonal concordance orientation
Conformist
Love, affection, belongingness orientation
Affiliation orientation
(Affiliation vs. abandonment?)
(4) Institutional (Self-authoring Mind)
S: personal autonomy, self-system identity
O: mutuality, interpersonal concordance
Culture of identity or self-authorship (in love or work). Typically: group involvement in career, admission to public arena.
Full formal operational
Societal orientation
Conscientious
Esteem and self-esteem orientation
Achievement orientation
Identity vs. identity diffusion
(5) Interindividual (Self-transforming Mind)
S: interpenetration of systems
O: personal autonomy, self-system identity
Culture of intimacy (in love and work). Typically: genuine adult love relationship.
(Post-formal; Dialectical?)
Principled orientation
Autonomous
Self-actualization
(Intimacy orientation?)
—
The final chapter of The Evolving Self, titled "Natural Therapy," is a meditation on the philosophical and ethical fundamentals of the helping professions.[22] Kegan argued, similarly to later theorists of asset-based community development, that professional helpers should base their practice on people's existing strengths and "natural" capabilities.[23] The careful practice of "unnatural" (self-conscious) professional intervention may be important and valuable, said Kegan; nevertheless "rather than being the panacea for modern maladies, it is actually a second-best means of support, and arguably a sign that the natural facilitation of development has somehow and for some reason broken down."[24] Helping professionals need a way of evaluating the quality of people's evolving cultures of embeddedness to provide opportunities for problem-solving and growth, while acknowledging that the evaluators too have their own evolving cultures of embeddedness.[25] Kegan warned that professional helpers should not delude themselves into thinking that their conceptions of health and development are unbiased by their particular circumstances or partialities.[25] He acknowledged the importance of Thomas Szasz's "suggestion that mental illness is a kind of myth," and he said that we need a way to address what Szasz calls "problems in living" while protecting clients as much as possible from the helping professional's partialities and limitations.[26]
Kegan's book In Over Our Heads (1994) extends his perspective on psychological development formulated in The Evolving Self.[29] What he earlier called "evolutionary truces" of increasing subject–object complexity are now called "orders of consciousness." The book explores what happens, and how people feel, when new orders of consciousness emerge, or fail to emerge, in various domains. These domains include parenting (families), partnering (couples), working (companies), healing (psychotherapies), and learning (schools).[30] He connects the idea of orders of consciousness with the idea of a hidden curriculum of everyday life.[31]
Kegan repeatedly points to the suffering that can result when people are presented with challenging tasks and expectations without the necessary support to master them.[32] In addition, he now distinguishes between orders of consciousness (cognitive complexity) and styles (stylistic diversity). Theories of style describe "preferences about the way we know, rather than competencies or capacities in our knowing, as is the case with subject–object principles."[33] The book continues the same combination of detailed storytelling and theoretical analysis found in his earlier book, but presents a "more complex bi-theoretical approach" rather than the single subject–object theory he presented in The Evolving Self.[34]
In the last chapter, "On Being Good Company for the Wrong Journey," Kegan warns that it is easy to misconceive the nature of the mental transformations that a person needs or seeks to make.[35] Whatever the virtues of higher orders of consciousness, no one should expect us to master them when we are not ready or when we are without the necessary support; and we are unlikely to be helped by someone who assumes that we are engaged at a certain order of consciousness when we are not.[36] He ends with an epilogue on the value of passionate engagement and the creative unpredictability of human lives.[37]
The book How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work (2001), co-authored by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, jettisons the theoretical framework of Kegan's earlier books The Evolving Self and In Over Our Heads and instead presents a practical method, called the immunity map, intended to help readers overcome an immunity to change.[39] An immunity to change is the "processes of dynamic equilibrium, which, like an immune system, powerfully and mysteriously tend to keep things pretty much as they are" in people's mindsets and behavior.[40]
The immunity map continues the general dialectical pattern of Kegan's earlier thinking but without any explicit use of the concept of "evolutionary truces" or "orders of consciousness." The immunity map primarily consists of a four-column worksheet that is gradually filled in by individuals or groups of people during a structured process of self-reflective inquiry. This involves asking questions such as: What are the changes that we think we need to make? What are we doing or not doing to prevent ourselves (immunize ourselves) from making those changes? What anxieties and big assumptions does our doing or not doing imply? How can we test those big assumptions so as to disturb our immunity to change and make possible new learning and change?[41]
Kegan and Lahey progressively introduce each of the four columns of the immunity map in four chapters that show how to transform people's way of talking to themselves and others.[42] In each case, the transformation in people's way of talking is a shift from a habitual and unreflective pattern to a more deliberate and self-reflective pattern. The four transformations, each of which corresponds to a column of the immunity map, are:[42]
"From the language of complaint to the language of commitment"
"From the language of blame to the language of personal responsibility"
"From the language of New Year's resolutions to the language of competing commitments"
"From the language of big assumptions that hold us to the language of assumptions we hold"
In three subsequent chapters, Kegan and Lahey present three transformations that groups of people can make in their social behavior, again from a lesser to greater self-reflective pattern:[42]
"From the language of prizes and praising to the language of ongoing regard"
"From the language of rules and policies to the language of public agreement"
"From the language of constructive criticism to the language of deconstructive criticism"
Immunity to Change (2009), the next book by Kegan and Lahey, revisits the immunity map of their previous book.[43] The authors describe three dimensions of immunity to change: the change-preventing system (thwarting challenging aspirations), the feeling system (managing anxiety), and the knowing system (organizing reality).[44] They further illustrate their method with a number of actual case studies from their experiences as consultants, and they connect the method to a dialectic of three mindsets, called socialized mind, self-authoring mind, and self-transforming mind.[45] (These correspond to Interpersonal, Institutional, and Inter-individuals "evolutionary truces" or "orders of consciousness" in Kegan's earlier books.) Kegan and Lahey also borrow and incorporate some frameworks and methods from other thinkers, including Ronald A. Heifetz's distinction between technical and adaptive learning,[46]Chris Argyris's ladder of inference,[47] and a reworded version of the four stages of competence.[48] They also provide more detailed guidance on how to test big assumptions.[49]
The revised immunity map worksheet, introduced in Immunity to Change, has five interlinked columns designed to target anxiety mechanisms that contribute to an immunity to change:[50]
(0) Generating ideas: Individuals will undergo self-reflective processes to diagnose problems in life that inhibit development. These problems typically transcend both the workplace and home life and affect most aspects of life, including relationships.
(1) Commitment (improvement) goals: In this column, individuals make commitment goals stated in a positive way focusing on development rather than what actions will cease. These goals emphasize proactive actions, solidifying commitment. The goal is something that an individual feels a deep need to improve.
(2) Doing / not doing: This step includes identifying actions that hinder individuals from achieving their commitment goals. It goes beyond general behavior and focuses on individual actions that occur throughout everyday life.
(3) Hidden competing commitment (and worry box): The hidden competing commitment column often evokes a visceral reaction as it develops into unpleasant emotions stemming from deep-rooted fears and worries. To fill this column, individuals examine the doing and not doing column and imagine doing the opposite. Hidden competing commitments represent unspoken or unconscious actions that protect individuals from experiencing their worries and fears.
(4) Big assumption: The big assumption refers to an individual's relevant views of the world, the foundation for the hidden competing commitments. Many individuals hold on to such views, even if they are misconstrued or inaccurately represent life.
(5) First S-M-A-R-T test: Safe, Modest, Actionable, Research stance (not a self-improvement stance), Testable: Such tests are employed to challenge big assumptions. The tests are safe and modest in what actions an individual can undertake. It is testable because there of a source of measurement to compare data.
The book An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization (2016) was co-authored by Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey, Matthew L. Miller, Andy Fleming, and Deborah Helsing.[52] The authors connect the concept of the deliberately developmental organization (DDO) with adult development theory and argue that creating conditions for employees to successfully navigate through the transitions from socialized mind to self-authoring mind to self-transforming mind (described in Kegan's earlier works) "has a business value," at least in part because they expect demand for employees with more complex mindsets "will intensify in the years ahead."[53] Three different and successful DDOs are introduced and analyzed throughout the book. These DDOs are Next Jump, Bridgewater Associates, and The Decurion Corporation. Kegan, along with his fellow co-authors, explore the successful business practices that promote a culture where individual growth and personal satisfaction can flourish.
The book elaborates on three concepts that the authors believe to be critical to the success of a DDO. These three concepts are what they refer to as "edge," "groove," and "home."[54] The "edge" of a DDO is the drive of the organization to uncover weaknesses and to develop. The "groove" is the practices or "flow" of the company from day-to-day that foster development. "Home" is the supportive community within a DDO that allows people to be vulnerable and trust each other. The authors emphasize that underlying each of these parts of a DDO is the idea that adults are truly capable of continuous improvement and development. The authors also explain that for DDOs, the goals of adult development and business success are not mutually exclusive, but both ultimately become one objective.
Criticism
Adult education professor Ann K. Brooks criticized Kegan's book In Over Our Heads. She claimed that Kegan fell victim to a cultural "myopia" that "perfectly reflects the rationalist values of modern academia."[55] Brooks also said that Kegan excluded "the possibility of a developmental trajectory aimed at increased connection with others."[56]Ruthellen Josselson, in contrast, said that Kegan "has made the most heroic efforts" to balance individuality and connection with others in his work.[57]
In an interview with Otto Scharmer in 2000, Kegan expressed self-criticism toward his earlier writings; Kegan told Scharmer: "I can go back and look at things I've written and think, ugh, this is a pretty raw and distorted way of stating what I think I understand much better now."[1]
In the 2009 book Psychotherapy as a Developmental Process by psychologists Michael Basseches and Michael Mascolo—a book which Kegan called "the closest thing we have to a 'unified field theory' for psychotherapy"[58]—Basseches and Mascolo said that they "embrace both Piagetian models of psychological change and their organization into justifications of what constitutes epistemic progress (the development of more adequate knowledge)." However, Basseches and Mascolo rejected theories of global developmental stages, such as those in Kegan's earlier writings, in favor of a more finely differentiated conception of development that focuses on "the emergence of specific skills, experiences, and behavioral dispositions over the course of psychotherapy as a developmental process."[lower-alpha 1]
1 2 Kegan cites the dialectical psychology of Michael Basseches, and Basseches in turn was influenced by Kegan.[16] In Basseches (1989), Basseches argued that structural developmental stage theories such as those proposed in Kegan (1982) and Kegan (1994) are best understood as general philosophical frameworks, not as psychological constructs that explain the complexity and diversity of individuals' meaning-making. Later, Basseches and Mascolo explained: "Although we embrace both Piagetian models of psychological change and their organization into justifications of what constitutes epistemic progress (the development of more adequate knowledge), there are several aspects of Piagetian theory that we find limiting and attempt to transcend in our view of the nature of development. Most prominent among these are (a) the theory of global stages, (b) imprecision in identifying levels of psychological development, and (c) a lack of emphasis on social and cultural relations as constitutive of developmental change."[17]
Jean William Fritz Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology".
In medicine and the social sciences, a young adult is generally a person in the years following adolescence, sometimes with some overlap. Definitions and opinions on what qualifies as a young adult vary, with works such as Erik Erikson's stages of human development significantly influencing the definition of the term; generally, the term is often used to refer to adults in approximately the age range of 18 to 40 years, with some more inclusive definitions extending the definition into the early to mid 40s. The young adult stage in human development precedes middle adulthood.
Action research is a philosophy and methodology of research generally applied in the social sciences. It seeks transformative change through the simultaneous process of taking action and doing research, which are linked together by critical reflection. Kurt Lewin, then a professor at MIT, first coined the term "action research" in 1944. In his 1946 paper "Action Research and Minority Problems" he described action research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action" that uses "a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action".
Chris Argyris was an American business theorist and professor at Yale School of Management and Harvard Business School. Argyris, like Richard Beckhard, Edgar Schein and Warren Bennis, is known as a co-founder of organization development, and known for seminal work on learning organizations.
Transformative learning, as a theory, says that the process of "perspective transformation" has three dimensions: psychological, convictional, and behavioral.
Transformative learning is the expansion of consciousness through the transformation of basic worldview and specific capacities of the self; transformative learning is facilitated through consciously directed processes such as appreciatively accessing and receiving the symbolic contents of the unconscious and critically analyzing underlying premises.
In psychology, developmental stage theories are theories that divide psychological development into distinct stages which are characterized by qualitative differences in behavior.
Reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one's actions so as to take a critical stance or attitude towards one's own practice and that of one's peers, engaging in a process of continuous adaptation and learning. According to one definition it involves "paying critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively. This leads to developmental insight". A key rationale for reflective practice is that experience alone does not necessarily lead to learning; deliberate reflection on experience is essential.
Testability is a primary aspect of science and the scientific method. There are two components to testability:
Falsifiability or defeasibility, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logically possible.
The practical feasibility of observing a reproducible series of such counterexamples if they do exist.
William G. Perry Jr. was an educational psychologist who studied the cognitive development of students during their college years.
Student development theory refers to a body of scholarship that seeks to understand and explain the developmental processes of how students learn, grow, and develop in post-secondary education. Student development theory has been defined as a “collection of theories related to college students that explain how they grow and develop holistically, with increased complexity, while enrolled in a postsecondary educational environment”.
Personal development or self-improvement consists of activities that develop a person's capabilities and potential, build human capital, facilitate employability, enhance quality of life, and facilitate the realization of dreams and aspirations. Personal development may take place over the course of an individual's entire lifespan and is not limited to one stage of a person's life. It can include official and informal actions for developing others in roles such as teacher, guide, counselor, manager, coach, or mentor, and it is not restricted to self-help. When personal development takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems offered to support positive adult development at the individual level in organizations.
Positive adult development is a subfield of developmental psychology that studies positive development during adulthood. It is one of four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified, according to Michael Commons; the other three forms are directionless change, stasis, and decline. Commons divided positive adult developmental processes into at least six areas of study: hierarchical complexity, knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality.
Adult development encompasses the changes that occur in biological and psychological domains of human life from the end of adolescence until the end of one's life. Changes occur at the cellular level and are partially explained by biological theories of adult development and aging. Biological changes influence psychological and interpersonal/social developmental changes, which are often described by stage theories of human development. Stage theories typically focus on "age-appropriate" developmental tasks to be achieved at each stage. Erik Erikson and Carl Jung proposed stage theories of human development that encompass the entire life span, and emphasized the potential for positive change very late in life.
In psychology, constructivism refers to many schools of thought that, though extraordinarily different in their techniques, are all connected by a common critique of previous standard approaches, and by shared assumptions about the active constructive nature of human knowledge. In particular, the critique is aimed at the "associationist" postulate of empiricism, "by which the mind is conceived as a passive system that gathers its contents from its environment and, through the act of knowing, produces a copy of the order of reality".
Next Jump is a privately-held technology and services company that provides employee engagement and rewards programs to large corporations. The firm was founded in 1994 by Charlie Kim and is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Boston, San Francisco, and London.
The constructive developmental framework (CDF) is a theoretical framework for epistemological and psychological assessment of adults. The framework is based on empirical developmental research showing that an individual's perception of reality is an actively constructed "world of their own", unique to them and which they continue to develop over their lifespan.
Developmental psychology initially focused on childhood development through Jean Piaget's four stages of human cognitive development, the last stage of which is known as the formal operational stage. Extending developmental psychology to adults, most neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development have posited one or more stages of postformal thought. Postformal thought is also addressed by some non-Piagetian theories of developmental psychology, including Michael Commons' model of hierarchical complexity and Otto Laske's constructive developmental framework.
In psychology, meaning-making is the process of how people construe, understand, or make sense of life events, relationships, and the self.
Self-authorship is stage of adult developments where the individual has extended beyond the need to be socialized among their community and has developed their own identity, ideologies, and beliefs which they hold fast to. Important theorists such as Robert Kegan and Marcia Baxter Magolda have contributed extensively to our understanding of self-authorship and its public recognition. Self-authorship has three primary parts, cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal dimensions. It also involves how individual's turn experiences into growth opportunities.
Epistemic cognition, sometimes known as epistemological beliefs, or personal epistemology, is "cognition about knowledge and knowing", an area of research in the learning sciences and educational psychology. Research into epistemic cognition investigates people's beliefs regarding the characteristics of knowledge and knowing—as distinct from thinking or believing in general—and the impact of this on learning.
Bachkirova, Tatiana; Kegan, Robert (March 2009). "Cognitive-developmental approach to coaching: an interview with Robert Kegan". Coaching. 2 (1): 10–22. doi:10.1080/17521880802645951. S2CID144864631.
Bochman, David J; Kroth, Michael (2010). "Immunity to transformational learning and change". The Learning Organization. 17 (4): 328–342. doi:10.1108/09696471011043090.
Kaiser, Robert B; Kaplan, Robert E (December 2006). "The deeper work of executive development: outgrowing sensitivities". Academy of Management Learning and Education. 5 (4): 463–483. CiteSeerX10.1.1.695.337. doi:10.5465/AMLE.2006.23473207.
Kegan, Robert; Congleton, Christina; David, Susan A (2013). "The goals behind the goals: pursuing adult development in the coaching enterprise". In David, Susan A; Clutterbuck, David; Megginson, David (eds.). Beyond goals: effective strategies for coaching and mentoring. Farnham, Surrey: Gower Publishing Limited. pp.229–244. ISBN9781409418511. OCLC828416668.
Lahey, Lisa Laskow; Souvaine, Emily; Kegan, Robert; Goodman, Robert; Felix, Sally (1988). A guide to the subject–object interview: its administration and interpretation. Cambridge, MA: The Subject–Object Research Group, Laboratory of Human Development, Harvard Graduate School of Education. OCLC31995875.
"Minds at Work | Who We Are". Consulting group co-founded by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. 2001. Archived from the original on December 10, 2019. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
"Team – The Developmental Edge". Consulting group co-founded by Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey, Andy Fleming, and Claire Lee. Archived from the original on December 10, 2019. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
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