Key Words:

mind construction adults lives meaning-making life learning support parents fit

Summary:

Kegan is profoundly interested in development, but he has a very focused interest on the development of qualitatively different ways of constructing meaning about the world.

The importance of Order of mind in terms of our effectiveness and happiness in our lives involves the developmental fit between us and the demands made upon us.

One is better than the other in one quite circumstantial way: All stick-shift drivers can also drive automatic cars, but not all automatic drivers can necessarily drive stick-shift cars.

Stick-shift drivers are not better people, they aren't even necessarily better drivers, but they can definitely drive certain kinds of cars that many automatic drivers cannot drive, and the opposite cannot be said.

More precisely, stick-shift drivers are themselves able to take responsibility for an important feature in a car's operation---changing gear---over which drivers of automatics do not exercise responsibility.

The fact that the driver of an automatic who is unable to shift the gears himself is dependent on some aspect of the bigger context in which he is operating to perform this action really doesn't matter at all so long as there are always plenty of automatic cars around and they work well.

Does this mean that a parent must be able to perform at the level of fourth order consciousness in order to "operate" a family successfully?

While there's emerging research about what things may help adults to develop, there are not now (and, given the complexity of human development, there might never be) hard and fast rules about helping people develop.

Each new challenge makes development possible, however, as long as these challenges are combined with support.

Transformation: Transformation is more than simply adding information into the container (your mind, for example) that already exists.

Kegan (1994) says transformative learning happens when someone changes, "not just the way he behaves, not just the way he feels, but the way he knows---not just what he knows but the way he knows" (p. 17).

Each of the five Orders is described briefly below, but the ones to pay closest attention to are the ones where the majority of adults spend most of their lives---the Third and Fourth Orders of mind.

To help understand this system, I'm going to offer a fictional tribal village made up of members from all five Orders.

They believe that others in their lives can live in their minds and are mystified when others hold different opinions (about bed time, for instance) or can't pick right up on a game in an imaginary world.

If we imagine a member of our village at this Order, we'd see someone who needs constant supervision and is not yet ready to police himself because he simply can't remember the laws from moment to moment (we'd keep him firmly under adult supervision).

While they are aware that others have feelings and desires, empathy isn't possible for them yet because the distance between their minds and other minds is great.

They internalize the feelings and emotions of others and are guided by those people or institutions (like a church or synagogue or a political party) that are most important to them.

The major limitation of this Order is that, when there is a conflict between important others (or between a single important other---like a spouse---and an institution---like a political party), people at the Third Order feel "torn in two" and cannot find a way to make a decision.

Personality Kegan on Personality The constructive-developmental psychologists are likely to agree that there are personality/style differences among people, but these differences aren't very interesting to them in their theory-building.

1. How people make meaning regarding their understanding of themselves and the world, 2.

These parents think of these qualities as personality flaws that need to be trained out of their kids.

Children at the First and Second Order, though, are necessarily egocentric and selfish (as in, they think about their own needs above the needs of others) simply because they have not yet developed enough to take the perspective of another person.

Like the parent worried about the First or Second Order child, leaders and colleagues of a Third Order person should understand that, far from being a personality flaw, the Third Order is a developmental stage that all adults must spend some time in if they are to make their way to the Fourth Order.

Dealing with difference in developmental Orders in those around you Different levels of development, like different backgrounds or personality types, can cause conflict and misunderstandings.

If the opinion is held as true, there isn't anything you can do about it---it's out of your control.

While it's clear that this is a theoretical model (not everyone in a Traditionalist society followed those notions or was at the Third Order), it's helpful to look at the society at large and see how it makes demands upon its citizens.

Modernism: The Modern era began when people became more mobile, and society transformed from small, relatively homogenous groups to larger, more diverse groups.

If it takes both challenge and support in order for someone to grow, giving more challenge and providing less support seems an unfair curriculum indeed.

Just as students in a particularly challenging school might seek outside help from parents or tutors, some organizations and individuals have sought support in coaching, training, and career development activities of many kinds to help them keep up with the ever-changing curriculum.

Coaches are uniquely suited to meet some of the very specific demands of people in organizations, particularly if the coaches have some understanding of---and ability to accommodate---the needs of people at different Orders of mind.

· Provide individualized support that meets the specific needs of the client by identifying the challenges the client faces and suggesting (or creating) specific supports to help the clients meet the challenges.

There are two main points a constructive-developmentalist might make about training: 1) One size does not fit all, and 2) A one time event may add information, but transformation requires more time.

Third Order learners may exhibit trust in the authority of the content and/or the teacher, and may adopt the knowledge learned and take it back, whole, to their own situations.

A trainer who feels that people need to accept ideas unchanged and in their entirety may feel unsuccessful with the learning of Fourth Order students.

If trainers have some understanding about these developmental differences, they may be able to accommodate different approaches to learning in their training designs and may be less frustrated and critical of participants.