Many years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a weekend workshop with developmental psychologist, Dr. Robert Kegan. Being exposed to his ideas was a turning point for me, learning what he’s done to document adult levels of consciousness.  Much like Piaget did for children, Kegan managed to identify various levels of consciousness in adult development. 

Dr. Jeffery Martin, who I have been tracking all this year as part of my health and fundamental wellbeing challenge to myself, has built on Kegan’s work. He’s done so by suggesting how we can develop our levels of consciousness through tools such as gratitude, meditation and a trust in the unfolding mystery of life.

So, it was with pleasure that I found this article, which references the work of one of Kegan’s Phd students, Susanne Cook-Greuter. The unique contribution of this article is to take the work Kegan did and create a way to identify where one is in a leadership developmental continuum. Cook-Greuter shifts the framework from consciousness to leadership development.

The idea of developing our own levels of consciousness and moving along this leadership continuum dove-tail. The more we invest in leadership development as individuals, teams, organizations and communities, the more we can learn and grow and develop. In fact, the way we learn, grow and develop IS to grow our consciousness.

I’ve listed a short summary of the 7 types of developmental leadership below and here is your link to the more detailed list of the 7 types.

Here are the 7 types in brief:

1. The Opportunist Leader – focuses on survival, lives in fear and mistrust. This type of leader consciousness operates through covert, non-direct and individually-focused ways.
2. The Conformist Leader – sees the world as challenging but responds by “playing it safe.” This leader consciousness operates through giving their own power of choice to others and often complains in response.
3. The Specialist Leader – focuses on standing out through getting their own work done correctly in a type of continuous improvement strategy.
4. The Achiever Leader – focuses on the excellence of their work and focuses on the impact of their work on others, including creating feedback loops to learn.
5. The Catalyst Leader – moves into the personal growth zone where growing and evolving becomes the natural way of being.  They feel their way forward in the world despite uncertainty to lead a more purposeful and fulfilling life based on conscious intention and committed action. They attune to leveraging strengths, fueling personal growth and collaborating with others to exercise mutual power to co-create the best possible outcomes for the whole community
6. The Synergist Leader – has adopted the mantle of personal authentic power in the interests of serving the whole community. This represents a shift from “doing good” at Catalyst to “the greater good for all concerned” at Synergist.
7. The Alchemist Leader – ignites and generates social evolution as well as transforms global structures. The Alchemist embodies their own intuitive guidance and employs mutually collaborative power to generate transformational shifts in the world. They are able to hold and embrace wonderful future possibilities while standing firmly in the present. They look at events symbolically and value both the shadow and the light. They’ve surrendered their personal will, desiring to be, and trusting in being, an instrument in the divine orchestra on earth.

“Imagine so valuing the importance of developing people’s capabilities that you design a culture that itself immersively sweeps every member of the organization into an ongoing developmental journey in the course of working every day….Imagine finding yourself in a trustworthy environment, one that tolerates–even prefers–making your weaknesses public so that your colleagues can support you in the process of overcoming them…You’re imagining an organization that, through its culture, is an incubator or accelerator of people’s growth. In short, you’re imagining a deliberately developmental organization.”   … Robert Kegan, An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization

Some of you may have noticed by now that I have created a new project with Gordon White.  I am pleased to have the opportunity to combine my creative efforts with someone who has had as much mediation, restorative justice, teaching and writing experiences as he has.

Together, we have created an outstanding experience for those of you who want to dive deeper into how to make value-based decisions with others and increase your authentic, intimate conversations. Our course is called “How to Have Difficult Conversations” – but really – what are difficult conversations but opportunities to make change, where the stakes are high!

Check out our course here. We’ve made it on-demand and self-directed, so that you can buy it anytime and start learning about the practice, step-by-step method we put together – right now if you want to!

And, if the course doesn’t appeal to you, I also want to hear from you!  My deepest desire is to be a contribution – and I can’t do that if I don’t hear from you! So, it would be a real help to me if you could take a few short minutes to fill out this survey about what else I could do and offer you! Thank you again for your readership. It means the world to me that you open HEN and that you find my words of value to read.  To our visions of a better world! Thank you!

“Desires directs focus. If your desires are vague, your focus will be blurred. If your desires are heartfelt, however, your focus will be sharp and clear.”  Sonia Choquette

Avoidance is our number one strategy when faced with a difficult conversation so it’s a common occurrence to be faced with someone else trying to avoid talking with us! 

Let’s picture the scene. Here you are, all revved up to have your “conversation.”  Maybe you’ve done your work to prepare for it. You’ve prepared every which way to Sunday. You’ve talked about it in your head. Perhaps you’ve run over some possible scenarios with others.

What counts is you are ready!

You put out the invitation and a few things that can happen that you don’t want to happen:

1) The other person say “Yes” and then doesn’t show up.

2) The other says “Sure I’ll meet” but then cancels at the last minute.

3) The other says “Okay – when I have time” but is always too busy and doesn’t initiate.

What’s going on and how can this change?

Firstly, what’s going on. To give you a blanket statement for such complex creatures as humans, will be impossible. What I’m about to say might not be going on. And, if you are willing, play with this possibility for a moment.

None of us really do things we don’t want to do, at least not consciously.  Just like other mammals, and even little cells in petri dishes, we move away from perceived threat.

So, if you accept that, it is your insight and little opening. The other person is avoiding you because they perceive you, or something about the possibility of meeting with you, as a threat. 

That insight provides an opening that leads to a few useful questions: 

“What can I do to lessen the threat?”

“What’s in it for them to meet with me?”

These questions, although universal, can also provide you with some useful directions. I’ll give you three to entertain:

1) What’s the Benefit?

Sometimes you can frame the invitation (or re-invitation), by letting people know what’s in it for them. I’ll illustrate what I mean by way of a story.

I was coaching someone in a role play for a conflict resolution class once.  The woman was role playing with someone who was pretending to be her grown up daughter.  They were simulating a conversation the older woman wanted to have with her “real” daughter in “real life.”  The conversation was supposed to be about how the mother was financially supporting her daughter. 

The mother asked for the conversation with her “fake” daughter this way:
“I want to talk with you about cutting you off from your financial handouts you get from me.”

Because we had the luxury of it being a role play, we could stop right after that to ask the “fake” daughter:  “How did that land for you? What was the impact for you of hearing that as the topic to talk about?”

Fake daughter:  “Um.  That didn’t work for me at all!  This is NOT a conversation I want to have with this mother – at any cost.”

Believe it or not, this came as a surprise to the “real” mother!  Perhaps it seems obvious to you, but sometimes when we are in it, it’s not obvious to us.  The mother was stuck only seeing the topic from her own point of view. Just like if we are standing looking at a bitten apple, if we are standing on its smooth, unbitten side, that is all we see.

We reflected on how the mother might frame the topic in such a way that there could be “something in it” for the daughter. With the “fake” daughter’s input, mine, the mother’s and the other two students observing in the class, we came up with a new frame. This time, the mother said she wanted to talk about how she could support the daughter in her growing independence. The “fake daughter” was more open to this frame and that enabled them to come to the table to at least start the conversation.

You could say this is manipulation.  And, it is only manipulation if you are attached to a particular outcome. Finding something that is in it for both of you is what a values-based conversation is about. It starts with finding something to talk about that could be a “north star” for both of you, not just one of you!

2) What’s the Risk?

Sometimes what motivates people to come to the table is knowing what the risk is if they don’t come to the table.  This conversational move is much riskier than sharing a benefit, but can be part of one’s repertoire. What are you afraid of if you don’t have the conversation? And, more importantly, what might the other person be afraid of?  Spending some time thinking about these questions can help you, even if you don’t share what you’ve come up with.

In some hierarchical organizations, this idea of risk is used to good effect when an officer, for example, ranked lower than their boss, can point out some possible risk if they are not given the authority to speak in that situation:  “Respectfully, sir, there seems to be an issue it would benefit you to know about and that’s the reason why I’d like to request a time to talk…”

3) What Can I Both Acknowledge and Assert?

Sometimes people need space. The person might be feeling pressure to meet with you, and of course, that’s a turn off.  No one wants to be forced to do something.

Yet, there may be a need to meet from your point of view. So, in that circumstance, you want to let the other person know you want to meet and you want it to be when they are ready too.  Acknowledge and assert.

This starts with connection. You want to acknowledge that they may be busy or not quite ready to have a focused conversation with you and you want to respect their need for space. 

And, once there is connection, that they feel you understand where they are coming from, what can you assert?  Can you share that that you want to get to the root of the problem, and close enough to when it happened for it to meaningful? Can you share that if you don’t meet, you don’t get the opportunity to solve the problem together and get to the real root of the problem?  You won’t be able to truly get what’s going on for them so you can fix or change whatever they’d like you to and they won’t have a chance to hear from you, so that you can work out something that works for both of you.

Acknowledge, assert, then acknowledge again.  Let them know you want to give them time to think about what you talked about and to get back to you when they are ready.

In this way, you are telling them you want to respect that they may be busy and need time and you are also saying waiting may cause you both to miss the chance to resolve this in a good way. And you give them choice.

Let me know how it goes!

Click here to read this on my blog and leave a comment!

In many of my trainings, people struggle with others who have difficult behaviours.  Whether you are dealing with someone who you’re sure is a “bully” or someone who has “power over” you, believe it or not, the antidote is the same!

This I learned definitively by doing a podcast interview with Bill Eddy and one of his lead trainers, Michael Lomax. Bill started the High Conflict Institute and brings both his social work and legal backgrounds to his work with high conflict personalities.  What Bill has learned over the decades of taming these extreme behaviours, is counter-intuitive.

When faced with someone who has difficult behaviours, you need to pour on the respect and the assertiveness both!  Bill has devised an acronym he calls “EAR” – that stands for:

Empathy. Attention.  Respect.

Those with difficult personality traits need to know you respect them, to keep their attention, and because they are used to either getting their own way, or some can be triggered easily, the empathy, attention and respect is important.

At the same time, creating crystal clear requests and expectations are also important.  That’s where the balance of empathy and assertion comes in.

In my signature course, How to Have Difficult Conversations, these fundamental skills are embedded into the conversational model.  With difficult personalities, you need these skills on steroids.

The challenge is most of us, when faced with behaviours that trigger us, devolve into one of the common reptilian strategies: fleeing, fighting, submitting or freezing.  None of these advance our wants and needs or bring the other person’s into the arena.  My colleague Gordon White and I were approached by a leader recently, wanting to deal with another person they perceived as having inordinate power.  They thought the only option was to “get tough” because the other person displayed such “tough behaviours.”

There’s the trap!  You will not win with the same strategies as that person.  Don’t try to be more aggressive than someone who is using aggression.  Don’t try to be more dominating than someone who tends to dominant.  They are the masters of their strategies, so why would you want to ever try to “beat them”?

What is much more effective is to pour on both your empathy and your assertion.  The EAR strategy serves to start to disarm their more non-cooperative behaviours and your assertion helps you move forward constructively.  Assert, then listen, listen, listen.  Assert again.

If you find this kind of information stimulating and useful, keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks as I’ll be announcing that my How to Have Difficult Conversations course is going to be available in an on-line, 24-7, on demand basis!  Gordon and I have taken both our Difficult Conversation courses, and years of experience in conflict, and made this on-line version together! 

In the meantime, if you want to dive into how to deal with those difficult personalities, I highly recommend the podcast I mentioned, which you can find here.