To ameliorate some of that difficulty, there are myriad theories we can draw on to help us understand other people while holding on to our own perspective. Theories of individual difference give us a way to make sense of the different meaning making of another person. Theories of personality, race, class, gender, or cultural difference (e.g., Gilligan, 1993; Heath, 1983; Jacobi, 1973; Lewis & Jacobs, 1995; Myers, 1993) are just as important to our work as a strong understanding of business models, systems theories, and so on (e.g., Senge, 1994). Another key factor, and perhaps the one most often overlooked, is the development of our clients.

The notion that adults grow and change over time hardly comes as a surprise. Lived experience suggests that some people are “farther along”; some have what we think of as “wisdom,” or are “more mature” than others. Still, few people have more than a gut-level sense of this idea of maturity, so it can be hard or impossible to know what to do about an “immature” client. How do you help someone with a narrow perspective? Are all forms of immaturity helped by the same interventions? How can we target our interventions to the particular place of the client? Theories of adult development offer insight into these questions.

Constructive-developmental theories tend to focus on development in particular and specific ways. They look at issues of authority, responsibility, and ability to tolerate complexity and ambiguity. The easiest way to understand them is as they relate to perspective taking and relationship to authority. As people develop, they become more and more able to understand and take into account the perspectives of others while, at the same time, becoming more aware of their own responsibility for their emotions, life events, and so on. As people develop, the content of their ideas may not necessarily change (e.g., someone might retain a belief he developed in his MBA program that a good leader maintains open lines of communication with his direct reports), but the form of their understanding is likely to change (e.g., what “open communication” means may be revised and expanded).

Of course, every theory has its limits. Constructive-developmental theories focus on complexity and perspective taking; thus they do not focus on many other aspects that make humans interesting and unique—nor do they focus on group or system interactions (although there is much to be learned about groups and systems from paying attention to the meaning making of individuals). These theories don’t claim that perspective taking is the most important part of an individual; they just attempt to understand (and sometimes measure) this one facet of human experience.

What does any of this have to do with coaching? Coaches are human, and it is the human tendency to assume that others see the world the way we do—at least if they see it right. Even coaches with sophisticated understandings about their clients’ differences are unlikely to fully understand the qualitatively different developmental forms of understanding adults have and the profoundly different worlds they construct as a result. An understanding of these differences allows us to be more careful listeners, to make connections we would not otherwise have made, and to suggest interventions that can lead to clients’ heightened success and development. The following section describes the rhythm of development and sketches out the four most common developmental forms of adulthood: Prince/Princess, Journeyman, CEO, and Elder.

The rhythm of this movement is about increasing our ability to see more complexity in the world. When we are young, we have very simple ways of understanding the world (the earliest form of understanding mostly just makes the distinction between “Mother” and “Not-mother”). We grow to see and understand more and more fine gradations in the world, and as we do this, we begin to question assumptions we had made before (perhaps there are differences among those beings formerly considered to be “Not-mother”). Many developmental theorists (e.g., Kegan, 1982, 1994; Piaget & Inhelder, 2000) name this as the distinction between subject (that which you cannot yet see) and object (that which you can see and make decisions about). As elements of understanding move from subject to object, our worldview becomes more complex, and constructive-developmental theorists would say we have developed. This can happen when we discover a choice where we once saw only one option, when we discover multiple perspectives where we once saw only through a single lens. Each small shift from subject to object increases our scope, but enough incremental changes actually add up to qualitatively different ways of seeing the world, to transformation, the creation of different forms of understanding.

According to constructive-developmental theorists, there is a recognizable pattern of those forms of understanding. These forms generally fall into identifiable, qualitatively different ways of making sense of the world in adulthood (as well as many identifiable in-between places where a person will have parts of one form and parts of another).¹ In the descriptions that follow, I offer metaphorical names for these different forms of understanding. These names are meant to be evocative, to give you an initial sense of what characterizes these different forms of understanding. They are not meant in any way to suggest that the metaphorical name offered is representative of actual people who might hold the position named (see Table 3.1 for a comparison of relationship to authority and perspective-taking across all the forms of understanding).

It is often easy for us to imagine a child or teenager having this form of understanding (and in fact that’s where you’ll find most Princes/ Princesses), but harder to picture an adult. As a quick example, let’s look at Michelle.² Michelle was a supervisor for a clothing manufacturing company. She had dropped out of school when she was 16 to work on this shop floor herself, and now, at 41, was managing 20 shop floor workers. Married with three children, Michelle thought she was doing pretty well in the world—she had worked up through the ranks, her people listened to her and did what she said, she rarely got in trouble with the higher-ups, and she was making an excellent salary. Understanding the world through the Princess form, Michelle knew that her job was to follow the rules and keep her people in line. As long as she didn’t rock the boat, the higher-ups would leave her alone and she could make her own way with her people. She had an understanding with those who worked under her; they knew that this was a world of give-and-take, of you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours. She knew that she could cut her people some slack and that they’d return the favor, but she also knew that she needed to use her power to keep folks in line. She was enormously frustrated with the managers who asked her to do something outside her job responsibility “for the sake of the team.” She felt great about this company and had worked there her whole life, but her job was her job—she knew it well, and if they wanted something done outside the parameters of the job, they’d better pay her outside the parameters of her job. Michelle had the most possible supervisees in a line position, and she knew that if she was going to get promoted, it would be off the shop floor and into a cube somewhere. Without direct connection to the people who were making the products, Michelle figured she’d be unhappy. She didn’t know what the higher-ups did, and she didn’t much care as long as they stayed out of her way. Michelle was happy staying right where she was.

In short, the Prince/Princess form of understanding has important strengths, weaknesses, and areas for growth that a developmentally aware coach can see.

This image is familiar to us when we think about teenagers who can seem to rely on friends—or, more largely, on popular culture—for their opinions about everything. Research done with constructive-developmental theories, however, shows that this form of understanding is far more typical in adults than anyone might assume. In fact, studies done using the Subject-Object Interview (SOI) (Lahey, Souvaine, Kegan, Goodman, & Felix, 1988), the measure of Robert Kegan’s theory of development, show that 13 percent of the population studied is in the Prince/Princess form of understanding (or on the way to the Journeyman form), 46 percent is at the Journeyman form or on the way to the CEO form, and 41 percent is fully at the CEO form or on the way to the Elder form (0 percent of the population is fully at the Elder form) (Kegan, 1994).⁴ As you see from these figures, it is likely that many executives and managers understand the world through the Journeyman form of understanding. (It is also likely that many executive coaches also see the world from this form of understanding; more on this later.)

What does the Journeyman form of understanding look like? Take Timothy as an example. Timothy had worked his way through the ranks of the pharmaceutical company and was now a vice president with five unit managers reporting to him. As a new vice president, he had faltered at first, and morale—and productivity—had briefly plummeted. The executive vice president (EVP) had stepped in, taken Timothy and the other VPs on a management retreat that offered a clear and coherent company theory of leadership, and given him access to the company’s best coaches and consultants to support his enacting of that theory. That intervention had turned things around for Timothy—he was a smart man and a fast learner. Now there was a serious sense of “our way” in Timothy’s division, and his loyalty to the EVP knew no bounds; Timothy’s highest compliment was for someone to say that he and the EVP were “of the same mind.” As long as Timothy could rely on the guidelines they had come up with together, he handled his job and his people with a consistency and kindness that won him accolades and respect. As the pharmaceutical business began to change—with increased pressure from global markets that did things quite differently—Timothy felt at sea. He doggedly pursued his former strategy—even when faced with data that showed that it wasn’t working—because he felt that it was “the company way.” With his Journeyman form of understanding, he could not create a new way from the new information.

The Journeyman, which is perhaps the most common form of understanding of adulthood, is vital for coaches to understand.

This CEO form of understanding looks most familiar to us as what adults are supposed to look like. CEOs are those (at, of course, any level of an organization) who own their own work, make their own decisions, and mediate among different perspectives with relative ease. While Journeymen embedded in a particularly robust surround might look as though they own their own work (as Timothy likely did earlier), that tendency comes from the circular direction of someone else telling them to own their own work. CEOs, by contrast, do not need (and generally do not particularly welcome) people to tell them what to do or how to do it. They are likely to have opinions about things they know well, and are likely to form opinions about things they don’t know well. CEOs may be frustrated by Journeyman employees (Why are they always asking for permission for everything?) and enraged by or discouraged about Journeyman bosses. Since Journeymen are more common in the population than CEOs, there is likely to be an ample store of these frustrations.

Samantha, who saw the world through her CEO form of understanding, was a middle manager in a small financial services company. She was hired by a manager she thought was wonderful, and he and Samantha had been very collaborative together. They didn’t always agree—as she often said, she saw things her way and he saw things his way—but they always worked through their differences in ways that arrived at the best outcomes. After a company reorganization, though, Samantha found herself with a manager whom she found overly rule-bound. Instead of encouraging her to have different opinions and work through the differences together as she had done in her previous position, Samantha’s new manager, a Journeyman, wanted them to think alike from the very beginning and seemed frustrated if her opinion was different from his. He seemed to think that if she were thinking about things in the right way (which equaled his way) then she would come to the same conclusions he had.

Samantha’s employees mostly valued her enormously; they thought she had a coherent vision for the group and that she could keep track of the day-to-day details it took to implement that vision. Part of that vision was about letting her employees have lots of control over their own work—as long as they were contributing to the overall shared mission of the division. Some of her employees, though, seemed at sea when Samantha asked them to think of her as a resource and not as a boss. “But you are our boss!” they told her. “How can we be sure we’re on the right track if you won’t tell us how you want us to do things?” Samantha tried to reassure them by explaining that she trusted them to find their own particular path toward the end goal they all shared, but they continued to want her input in ways that felt too dependent to her. With her needy (Journeyman) employees and her controlling (Journeyman) boss, Samantha, once a star performer, became less and less effective and began searching for a new position.

While CEOs have the form of understanding most stereotypically associated with adults, there is still much to be learned from developmental theory about their strengths and weaknesses—and about how to help them grow.

Elders are tuned in to all the various constituencies around them. They see multiple layers of every issue and can understand multiple perspectives. Unlike those making meaning from the CEO form of understanding, an Elder is likely to be less ideological, less easy to pin down about a particular opinion or idea. This is because the Elder is more oriented to the process of leadership than to any single product or outcome. This can make things disconcerting for her direct reports, and, as we see in the following example, can even make things disconcerting for the leader herself as she grows in this direction.

José, an EVP at an oil company, was widely respected because of his intelligence, his ability to manage people effectively, and his clear vision about what he wanted the world to be like. Through the years, he had felt that vision becoming clearer and had worked to find staff members who could share and add to that vision. A few years ago, though, José had begun to notice what seemed to him to be his own inability to believe in his single-minded goals any longer. He found that instead of advocating strongly for a single position, he began to see the validity in all the positions around the table. And it wasn’t just that his convictions were weakening; instead, it was as though the distinctions between his goals and other people’s goals had dissolved; even when their goals were quite different, he had a harder and harder time knowing which one he believed in most strongly. He found himself questioning his assumptions about the way the world worked, noticing what assumptions others were making, and understanding the ways those assumptions shaped their ideas about right and wrong. As he noticed these connections, he began reshaping his own assumptions to make them more inclusive.

As he developed, people began to be drawn to him in different ways. Instead of having only his division employees come to him to be told what to do, people all over the organization seemed to be coming to him for guidance or help in other ways—to get his perspective on an issue, to have him help them see where others were coming from. José really liked the new ways he and his colleagues were interacting, and he found himself less tied to organizational structures and opinions than ever before. He was also finding that he was less troubled by the daily irritations that used to bother him. Now when he felt irritated, he looked to himself to see where the problem lay, and he found that he was becoming more and more interested in the various reactions—even negative ones—that he found himself having. Even his negative reactions seemed a sign of his interest and vitality, and he began to appreciate his quick angry response (because he still had the temper that had troubled him throughout his career) as a key that there was some important assumption or value that was being challenged.

Still, with all that was good in his position and all the increased interaction with colleagues throughout the organization, José was finding himself more lonely than he had felt before. While he was able to offer help to colleagues throughout the organization, he found that there were few people in whom he could really confide, and while he constantly tried to unearth and question his own assumptions and the assumptions of others, there wasn’t anyone who helped him do that work. A bigger issue, though, was that José was noticing a major change in the boundaries around the persona he’d bring to work and the different persona that he thought of as his home self. He was feeling like those boundaries—which he once fought hard to create and maintain—were detrimental to his work in some way. Somehow it felt as though he was bringing only part of himself to his job, and that meant that he couldn’t really be with his work in the way that he’d most like to. He felt as if his whole sense of the work world more generally was shifting and he was not quite sure what was going to take the place of his old images. Now, when José was at the top of his career, he couldn’t find a place for himself anywhere. Although this was distressing, sometimes it felt very exciting. José found it amazingly liberating to be able to escape from the world he used to know and to forge his own path to a new place.

If Albert Einstein was right when he claimed, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them,” the need for Elders in organizations is clear. As the world becomes increasingly complex, the complexity of the Elder is going to be pivotal inside organizations. Given the tiny percentage of the population who has even begun to enter into the Elder stage, it is unlikely that any organization will have many people at this form of understanding. This is a particular problem because as the world gets increasingly complex, supporting leaders who can manage the complexity and ambiguity around them will be increasingly important; organizations need these leaders more than ever. From this perspective, the good news is that the aging of the baby boomer population and the longer productive work lives people are having now mean that perhaps our chances of supporting Elders are becoming more and more likely.

We are likely to coach far fewer people with the Elder form of understanding than any other, but keeping an eye on the possible trajectory of all clients may help them see how far it is possible for them to develop. And the opportunity to be good company for an Elder (especially for those of us who do not see the world through that form of understanding ourselves) requires an intentional look at their strengths and their needed support.

Also, like other theories of individual difference, developmental theories help us understand ourselves better—which is key if we are to get out of the way during the coaching process and not project ourselves onto our clients. We have to remember, though, not to impose the theory on the client, either; theories are useful lenses only if we can take them off—they become blinders if we are fused with them and cannot gain distance from them.

There are two major differences between developmental theories and other theories of individual difference. The first major difference between a theory about development and a theory about personality or gender is that development is hard to see initially, and even once you have a handle on it, it moves and changes; personality and gender (and other pieces of individual difference) tend to be easier to identify in the beginning, and, once identified, are likely to be more constant. The second major difference is that inherent in a developmental perspective is the sense that there is a higher place—and we tend to have a belief that if higher is better (more complex, more able to take perspectives), lower is less good. These two differences are both important in and of themselves, and also point to some particular ethical issues that are central to working with adult development theories.

I believe that while these are true, they are not inherently problematic. We all have judgments inside us about our clients (and our partners and our families and ourselves). Developmental theories don’t create such judgments, they shape them and offer a framework for making good decisions about them. The difference between “I’m frustrated with my client because he can’t ever make up his mind for himself” and “I’m frustrated about what to do with my client because he hasn’t yet developed the capacity to make up his mind for himself” is enormous. While both sentences point to the same issue, the second sentence—aided by a developmental perspective—points to a time in the future when the client may be able to do that which he cannot yet do and also hints at some practical ideas to support him before he gets there. Similarly, we all make decisions about more and less (we may have clients who are “really smart” or “incredibly high on emotional intelligence” or “really in need of people skills”). Development is just another way of categorizing our judgments so that we can test them and decide whether they’re worth holding on to—and worth helping our client work on.

I prefer the SOI because it is very client-friendly (people generally enjoy being interviewed), it deepens the relationship, and it offers a great deal of information to the coach about what is currently at the front of a client’s experience—and what is on the cutting edge.

The limitations of the SOI are all practical. It is very difficult to administer (and requires a huge amount of practice, study, and support), and it is time-consuming (and therefore expensive) as it is a 60-to-90-minute interview that then needs to be transcribed and scored. That said, I have found that the work of becoming a trained and reliable scorer of the SOI has profoundly changed the way I listen and the store of good questions I might ask—more than any other single thing I have learned about coaching, people, and so on. For that reason, it has seemed well worth the investment of my time. It may be that learning any developmental measure fully would offer some of these benefits, but the particular ways of listening, asking questions, and moving someone to the edge of his understanding that the SOI requires makes this a rich and valuable resource.

For example, Bonita has difficulty with conflict, a difficulty any coach would want to help her overcome. Developmental theory, unlike many other theories, does not first ask, Why does she have this difficulty? and What can we do about it? Instead, developmental theory first asks, What does conflict mean to Bonita? and How does conflict have meaning to Bonita? First a developmentalist can determine what we might reasonably assume about Bonita’s development by virtue of the information we have thus far. It seems unlikely that she makes sense in the Princess form of understanding; there is too much about her that is focused on understanding the perspectives of others. Similarly, it seems unlikely that Bonita is an Elder. One definitional element of the Elder form of understanding is that they do not see conflict as negative; to the contrary, conflict is life-affirming and helpful for an Elder.

This means that, given the minimal information we have about Bonita, we could begin by testing an early assumption that she is making meaning either from a Journeyman form of understanding or from a CEO form. Finding out which is more likely is pivotal to the kind of support she needs in order to be more skilled at conflict management (see Table 3.2 for a summary of these differences).

It might be that Bonita holds her conflict as a Journeyman. For a Journeyman, conflict can be wrenching, because conflict can tear at her own sense of herself. Because Journeymen do not yet have a self-authored system, their understanding is made up by the theories, ideas, opinions of important others. If an important other believes that Bonita is incompetent, or if two important others disagree, Bonita is likely to feel torn about her own competence, or about what to do next. Similarly, if she is a Journeyman, Bonita is likely to be embedded, to a certain degree, in her surroundings. If conflict is generally regarded as unpleasant in her work culture (as it is in many places), Bonita may feel the need to protect her team from the conflict as much as possible (even when, from a larger perspective, that is not a good idea).

If Bonita currently has a Journeyman form of understanding, a coach has several concurrent jobs: to convince her that good leaders engage in productive conflict (thus, if she wants to embody the role of good leader, she will have to do this, too); to provide some format Bonita can use to protect herself from becoming too embedded in the conflict itself; and also to give her the skills to handle the conflict well.

It might be, on the other hand, that Bonita sees her world through a CEO form of understanding. In that case, she may have decided that conflict is divisive or uninteresting, and/or she may not have skills to deal with it effectively. A coach can help Bonita uncover examples from her own experience where conflict assisted in a positive outcome, and can help her remember times when not addressing conflict was more problematic for a leader. A coach can also support Bonita to learn more about theories of conflict (thus helping her tweak her self-authored system). If Bonita is on her way to the Elder form, a coach can help her uncover some of the paradoxes of conflict (i.e., that it feels disruptive to relationships but can actually deepen them).

No matter what her form of understanding, Bonita is likely to also need some new skills around dealing with conflict because someone who avoids conflict is unlikely to become good at facing it simply because she has changed her mind about its benefit.

Notice that in neither of these cases was the coaching focused on helping Bonita develop; rather, the interventions were designed to meet Bonita at her current form of understanding. A developmental perspective can be helpful even if development (i.e., transformation to a more complex form of understanding) is not a goal. In fact, one of the benefits of a developmental theory is that it is easier to ascertain whether development is necessary to meet the current coaching goals. If Bonita can achieve success in her position without changing her form of understanding, that would be a wonderful outcome. Indeed, since developmental growth is always associated with some losses (because to acquire a new perspective necessarily means giving up an old one), helping a client make developmental gains is only one of a variety of possible positive outcomes.

Sometimes, however, development is a goal. For example, while the case study does not provide enough information to be certain, Bob’s story is quite consistent with a CEO frame of understanding.⁵ A developmentally-oriented coach would first check this assumption about Bob, testing for the possible Journeyman frame of understanding and the far less possible (given what we know about Bob’s lack of interest in other perspectives) Elder form of understanding.⁶ The key markers for his CEO form would be to find out whether his clear and enduring vision is of Bob’s own creation (as a self-authoring CEO would be) or is a vision he has adopted and internalized from some external source (as a Journeyman).

For the purposes of this chapter, though, let us assume that the coach has asked those questions and has discovered, indeed, that Bob is making meaning at the CEO form of understanding. With a client at this form, the coach’s own authority is likely not to get her very far; neither is a glowing recommendation from someone Bob knows well. Instead, she needs to show her competence. In this case, it may be particularly difficult to get Bob on board; a developmentally-oriented coach will have to explain to Bob that his stated coaching goals may well require some of the “soft side” work he initially has excluded if he is to succeed in the ways he most desires. While a coach can begin with Bob’s stated goals and wishes, she will have to help him understand that it is important for him to have a more complex set of goals. From a developmental perspective, a coach will see that (1) Bob’s current, CEO form of understanding may not be enough to keep up with the complexities in this boundary-spanning post-merger world, and (2) Bob is systematically hampering his own development by pushing his vision to the exclusion of all other perspectives.

For Bob to really thrive in this new cross-cultural work, he needs to loosen his hold on his own vision and begin to understand the perspectives, cultures, and ideas of others, not just to hold them up against his own thinking, but to really understand them as important and powerful—if different—perspectives/cultures. To do this Bob needs to grow toward the Elder form of understanding. A sophisticated coach may begin this process by simply looking for times when Bob’s current system is not complex enough to help him meet his challenges—and pointing that out to Bob. Similarly, a coach can look for times when Bob admires the thinking or perspective of someone else, and help him think about how to use that other perspective to escape his own.

It may be that introducing a developmental framework might eventually be an appropriate—and compelling—piece of information for a coach to share with Bob; it might help him understand that his goals are aligned with some development work on his part in a variety of ways, and that development is not simply a help on the “soft side” for which he seems to have little patience. It might be helpful to actually use a developmental measure with Bob so that he can understand his own growth trajectory and begin to outline the ways an Elder might be more suited to the central work of managing cross-culturally and also leaving a legacy behind. Any of these might become the “disorienting dilemma” that many theorists think is the key to helping someone see a new perspective (e.g., Mezirow, 2000, p. 22).

Once Bob has begun to see his own development as a goal, there are a variety of exercises he can do in order to begin to transcend his CEO form of understanding. The first is simply about listening well. Learning to listen well (and really begin to understand fully the perspective of another person as that person understands it) is a developmental activity for people at almost any form of understanding. Bob needs the company of a coach to understand that different perspectives can have their own wisdom and that there are often pieces of truth in opposite points. At the same time, to help Bob develop requires that he begin to understand the fallibility of his own internal system. Providing 360-degree feedback may help begin that understanding. An equally important piece of data will be Bob’s own search for ways his vision is partial. If he can begin to note (perhaps in a journal or by the use of any other record-keeping device) any way that his vision is not absolutely perfect, he may begin to understand the key Elder perspective that any vision, no matter how excellent and thoughtful, is necessarily partial. As Bob loosens his hold on his own vision, he may become more confused and less clear-headed; again, this is where the company of a developmentally knowledgeable coach is pivotal. Developmental theories make a rough map of paths taken by others, and even if Bob’s journey is quite different, the journeys of others can inform his journey and help him have patience for those times when the path is difficult.