Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
August 10 - October 30, 2018
It is that sense of “grown-up” and what it means to be “secure” that are explored by theories of adult development.
Leading in an uncertain world is the ability to consider multiple perspectives
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
Albert Einstein
Subject–Object Interview (SOI),
SOI a means of measuring self-complexity
“When Kathy tells you that she thinks that you’re losing your drive, does that change or shape the way you think about your drive in some way?”
Powerful question trying to surface whether the client is coming from the socialised or self authoring perspective.
It might be that one of the most important minds to change about what is possible during a coaching conversation is the coach’s mind.
Change your mind before trying to change others.
“Immunity to Change”
Kegan's technique to make the subject to object
Child psychologist Jean Piaget
These questions shape our reality because they shape the data we seek and thus the data we find.
What is gained if I fail here. What is lost if I succeed.
8
Book recommendation on managing polarities
that it is his own reaction to the person that’s the problem to fix rather than the way the other person is acting (which might be annoying but is not solvable).
Self authoring mind
we need to practice thinking together about leadership, not just to support individuals to grow, but also to help leaders create contexts where everyone can bring their biggest self to work.
What might this mean for a learning set?
Even thought leaders who don’t have any classic organizational leadership responsibilities still need to enroll people in their ideas, shape conversations and thinking, and support others to take on new ideas and new actions.
Enrollment is a form of leadership without power or authority. Instead it typically involves thought leadership around an idea.
Leaders are looked at as being more in control and able to make changes and see the big system, just as they move so far away from the actual work of the system that they feel themselves as having less and less control.
How do you remain connected to the work?
What would customers (or other key constituencies) love for us to do differently? What might they demand we not change? • What is the biggest potential opportunity we’re not paying enough attention to? What is the biggest area of risk or threat?
Ask different questions
“I noticed that there was quite a lot of tension and I heard your raised voice as I walked by your unit earlier today. I have some opinions about that which I’m happy to share, but I’m most interested in how you’re thinking about the working relationships in your team right now and how they might get improved.”).
Genuinely curious teaching questions which get straight to the heart of the matter.
This book does not mean to convince you that adult development is the most powerful idea the world has ever had, or that it is a unified theory of everything, or the answer to all the great secrets that puzzle you. It means to offer a lens through which you might view the sometimes mysterious terrain of human behavior, and to see whether we might use that lens to create the conditions that support our growth—and the growth of others.
Adult development
the shifting mindset that says, “Growing our people is our core business, because growing our people makes our core business better. These things are intertwined and impossible to separate; as our people grow, our capacity to do good work grows as well.”
Growth mindset
Changing the paradigm of modern work is no easy task; it will take all of us working together to figure out how to tip it into a new place.
The goal
Early on, we begin to be scolded for being curious and rewarded for knowing things, for being certain.
The shift from curiosity to knowing
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
