How (or under what circumstances), can people talk openly about their respective development stages?
A lot of mr-hire’s recent posts (and my own observations and goals) have updated me on the value of having an explicit model of development stages. Kegan levels are one such frame. I have a somewhat separate frame of “which people I consider ‘grown up’” (i.e. what sort of things they take responsibility for and how much that matters)
Previously, my take had been “hmm, it seems like people totally do go through development stages, which do typically come in particular order and later development stages are better than early ones. But all the conversations I’ve seen where anyone brought up development stages seem like terrible conversations.”
Basically, the social move of “you seem like you’re at a lower development level than me” is often legitimately read as a status attack, and worse, a plausibly-deniable status attack*.
But, also, it’s sometimes an important part of the conversation.
(*In particular, when people are within one level of each other, and it’s ambiguous. When people are two levels apart from each other, it’s usually more obvious to both of them and to third parties which is more cognitively sophisticated)
My recent updates, clarified by mr-hire, were that if you’re building an organization (and, perhaps, a community), you need some way to actually account for different people being at different development stages. This requires actually having a model of what’s going on. But even the construction of the model can be legitimately read as a plausibly deniable status attack – as the model gets fleshed out it’s going to become increasingly clear who it puts into positions of power.
For discussions between individuals about who is “more cognitively sophisticated”, my current best guess is that you can actually have this conversation reasonably easily in private (where by “reasonably easily”, I mean it maybe takes several hours of building trust and laying groundwork, but there’s nothing mysterious about it)
For discussions about how to build and developmental ontology in a mixed environment with no hierarchy and where people start off with very different frames on how to think, I feel pretty confused and/or worried.
For discussions between individuals about who is “more cognitively sophisticated”, my current best guess is that you can actually have this conversation reasonably easily in private (where by “reasonably easily”, I mean it maybe takes several hours of building trust and laying groundwork, but there’s nothing mysterious about it)
How (or under what circumstances), can people talk openly about their respective development stages?
Talking about one’s own is easy. Talking about someone else’s is, as you note, fraught. I’d like to focus on the “how can such conversations be effective” and “what do we want from such conversations” part of the issue.
I think a lot of harm is done by framing it as a linear set of stages, rather than a mesh of abstractions, and recognizing that object-level results are ALWAYS relevant, and the stages are mostly ways to take more factors into account for the models and beliefs that lead to results.
When it’s a stage-based system, it implies such an overt status signal that it’s hard to actually discuss anything else. People of higher levels can’t learn anything from those lower, and lower levels just have to accept whatever the higher-level says. This is not useful for anything.
Basically, the social move of “you seem like you’re at a lower development level than me” is often legitimately read as a status attack, and worse, a plausibly-deniable status attack*.
Go further. Phrased this way, it _IS_ a status attack. There’s no possible useful further discussion. This is not plausibly-deniable, it’s just plain asserting “I’m thinking deeper, so I’m right”.
If you phrase it not about the participants, but about the discussion, “consider this higher-level abstraction—does it not seem relevant to the point at hand?”, then you’ve got a hook to talk about it. You don’t need to bring up cognitive stages or categorize the participants, you only need to make clear what levels THIS discussion is about.
There _MAY_ be a place for talking directly about what levels someone can operate at, for elitists discussing or reinforcing a membership filter. “Don’t hire a CEO who can’t handle level-5 thinking” is good advice. And in such cases, it’s STILL entangled with status games, as the strong implication is that if you’re not on that level, you’re not part of the group.
Go further. Phrased this way, it _IS_ a status attack.
To be clear, I don’t every think anyone should phrase it that way (and I think usually people don’t). But it’s still just not hard to interpret through that lens even if you’re moderately careful in phrasing.
I think a lot of harm is done by framing it as a linear set of stages, rather than a mesh of abstractions, and recognizing that object-level results are ALWAYS relevant, and the stages are mostly ways to take more factors into account for the models and beliefs that lead to results.
Yeah, I basically agree with this.
My guess is to frame things in terms of skills to learn or particular attributes to acquire.
My guess is to frame things in terms of skills to learn or particular attributes to acquire.
IMO, even this is too status-ey and centered on attributes of the person rather than crux-ey and centered on the discussion you want to have.
Frame things in terms of models of thinking and level of abstraction/generalization to apply here and now. There may be skills to learn (or even attributes that can’t be acquired, making the conversation at that level impossible) in order to get there, but start with what you want to understand/communicate, not with an assumption of capability (or lack thereof).
Doing this is also a reminder that sometimes washing the dishes is just the fastest way to empty the sink—generalizing to some idealized division of labor and social reward scheme doesn’t have to happen every time. It often works better to generalize when there’s not an object-level decision to be made (but beware failing to tie it back to reality at all, or you’ll ignore important details).
How (or under what circumstances), can people talk openly about their respective development stages?
A lot of mr-hire’s recent posts (and my own observations and goals) have updated me on the value of having an explicit model of development stages. Kegan levels are one such frame. I have a somewhat separate frame of “which people I consider ‘grown up’” (i.e. what sort of things they take responsibility for and how much that matters)
Previously, my take had been “hmm, it seems like people totally do go through development stages, which do typically come in particular order and later development stages are better than early ones. But all the conversations I’ve seen where anyone brought up development stages seem like terrible conversations.”
Basically, the social move of “you seem like you’re at a lower development level than me” is often legitimately read as a status attack, and worse, a plausibly-deniable status attack*.
But, also, it’s sometimes an important part of the conversation.
(*In particular, when people are within one level of each other, and it’s ambiguous. When people are two levels apart from each other, it’s usually more obvious to both of them and to third parties which is more cognitively sophisticated)
My recent updates, clarified by mr-hire, were that if you’re building an organization (and, perhaps, a community), you need some way to actually account for different people being at different development stages. This requires actually having a model of what’s going on. But even the construction of the model can be legitimately read as a plausibly deniable status attack – as the model gets fleshed out it’s going to become increasingly clear who it puts into positions of power.
For discussions between individuals about who is “more cognitively sophisticated”, my current best guess is that you can actually have this conversation reasonably easily in private (where by “reasonably easily”, I mean it maybe takes several hours of building trust and laying groundwork, but there’s nothing mysterious about it)
For discussions about how to build and developmental ontology in a mixed environment with no hierarchy and where people start off with very different frames on how to think, I feel pretty confused and/or worried.
I can confirm this (anecdotally).
Talking about one’s own is easy. Talking about someone else’s is, as you note, fraught. I’d like to focus on the “how can such conversations be effective” and “what do we want from such conversations” part of the issue.
I think a lot of harm is done by framing it as a linear set of stages, rather than a mesh of abstractions, and recognizing that object-level results are ALWAYS relevant, and the stages are mostly ways to take more factors into account for the models and beliefs that lead to results.
When it’s a stage-based system, it implies such an overt status signal that it’s hard to actually discuss anything else. People of higher levels can’t learn anything from those lower, and lower levels just have to accept whatever the higher-level says. This is not useful for anything.
Go further. Phrased this way, it _IS_ a status attack. There’s no possible useful further discussion. This is not plausibly-deniable, it’s just plain asserting “I’m thinking deeper, so I’m right”.
If you phrase it not about the participants, but about the discussion, “consider this higher-level abstraction—does it not seem relevant to the point at hand?”, then you’ve got a hook to talk about it. You don’t need to bring up cognitive stages or categorize the participants, you only need to make clear what levels THIS discussion is about.
There _MAY_ be a place for talking directly about what levels someone can operate at, for elitists discussing or reinforcing a membership filter. “Don’t hire a CEO who can’t handle level-5 thinking” is good advice. And in such cases, it’s STILL entangled with status games, as the strong implication is that if you’re not on that level, you’re not part of the group.
To be clear, I don’t every think anyone should phrase it that way (and I think usually people don’t). But it’s still just not hard to interpret through that lens even if you’re moderately careful in phrasing.
Yeah, I basically agree with this.
My guess is to frame things in terms of skills to learn or particular attributes to acquire.
IMO, even this is too status-ey and centered on attributes of the person rather than crux-ey and centered on the discussion you want to have.
Frame things in terms of models of thinking and level of abstraction/generalization to apply here and now. There may be skills to learn (or even attributes that can’t be acquired, making the conversation at that level impossible) in order to get there, but start with what you want to understand/communicate, not with an assumption of capability (or lack thereof).
Doing this is also a reminder that sometimes washing the dishes is just the fastest way to empty the sink—generalizing to some idealized division of labor and social reward scheme doesn’t have to happen every time. It often works better to generalize when there’s not an object-level decision to be made (but beware failing to tie it back to reality at all, or you’ll ignore important details).