In their wonderful (nay, more than wonderful–exciting–if you are into leadership development) new book, Immunity to Change, Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey lay out three easy-to-understand levels (which they call “minds”) of adult mental development. These represent plateaus of human maturation that encompass 99% of our population. While they are a distillation of more complex models of human development that include up to seven or eight levels, these three are all we need when looking to advance today’s crop of leaders in our organizations.

1. The Socialized Mind
   These individuals are true followers who just want to know the rules, the job duties, and what they are supposed to do. Their behavior is shaped by what is expected of them by important (i.e. more powerful) people in their world. They live their personal and work lives based on clear beliefs and ideologies usually handed to them by authority figures they’ve known or institutions they have attended. They make good team players and loyal followers. Roughly 20% of the population is at this stage or striving to attain it.
2. The Self-Authoring Mind
   These people have their own agenda and goals and they push hard to achieve them. They are guided by their own values and personal codes, rather than just accepting the expectations of others. They are not afraid to take firm stands. They drive themselves with a focus and work to get others to buy in to their goals. Research puts about 75% of people at or on the way to this level.
3. The Self-Transforming Mind
   While living a focused and purpose-driven lives, these people have the ability to step back and see the impact of their beliefs and goals in a wider context, especially in relation to stakeholders who have a different version of what is true, real and right. And they are open to considering the limitations of their own perceptions, assumptions, values and personal ideology. In fact, they pretty well assume that their perceptions fall short of the full truth of any situation.

Many managers you know are operating more at the socialized mind level of leadership. They believe it is their job to ensure that their employees conform to corporate policies, rules, conventions, job descriptions, etc. They don’t have a particular idea of what they want to be better in their unit, preferring either to clone last year or to implement whatever vision their boss has put forward. If they did have an agenda or vision for their unit, it would be evidence of upgrading their mental “operating system” to the self-authoring level.

Much of the work I do in training and coaching managers involves helping them to operate fully from a self-authoring mindset (“What do you want to be different in your operation in 12 months time?” “What do you want your unit to accomplish this year?”). The rest of the time I am inviting them to get curious about the pieces of the “truth” that their employees and others bring to any discussion or decision to be made, especially when these perspectives differ from the manager’s own assumptions about reality and what’s best.

What’s really interesting to me is that our ascent from socialized through self-authoring toward self-transforming involves having more of our personal experience in life shift from “subject” (what we do/believe unconsciously) to “object” (what we now recognize consciously, in other words, what we can see ourselves doing and feeling in our interactions with others.)

I, as your boss, may be having a heated argument about a task I want you to do. You are resisting me. All I see across from me is a “stubborn” employee who, furthermore, is “willfully shirking his/her job responsibility.” In fact, I am making judgments about you with out realizing it. All I am aware of is my anger toward you. Immersed in my frustration, I pull rank and tell you, “Just do it, dammit.” I am operating at the level somewhere between the Self-Authorizing Mind and the Socialized Mind–I have clear, demanding work standards for you and, besides, the “rules” say that the boss gets his way. By resisting me, you are breaking the rules.

Instead of letting my blood pressure go through the roof, however, what if I were to at least explore what’s behind your resistance? What if I became curious about your point-of-view, realizing that this will (1) show respect for you, even though you are resisting me, and (2) enable me to make a better management decision around your performance? By taking this approach, I will have taken a first-step up to the Self-Transforming Mind.

I firmly believe this is the arena for leadership development today. It’s where we at Fulcrum Associates have decided to focus our leadership development efforts. I invite you to consider what it can mean for your own growth and that of the managers in your organization.