* Note, this episode is (in part) a reflection on episodes 154-163. A series about the intersection of adult development and leadership: listening to those episodes will provide context for this discussion.
David V. Day holds appointments as Professor of Psychology and Leadership, and as Academic Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, International Association of Applied Psychology, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters, many pertaining to the core topics of leadership and leadership development. He received the Walter Ulmer Research Award from the Center for Creative Leadership in 2010 for outstanding, career-long contributions to applied leadership research.
Dr. Jonathan Reams is driven by an insatiable curiosity about the essence of human nature and how to cultivate this essence in the service of leadership. He uses various outlets to achieve this. He currently has a position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he teaches and does research on leadership development, coaching, and counseling. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Integral Review, A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal for New Thought, Praxis and Research. He is also a co-founder of the Center for Transformative Leadership and the European Center for Leadership Practice. Jonathan’s Ph.D. is in Leadership Studies from Gonzaga University. Jonathan practices the cultivation of leadership through consulting and leadership development program design and delivery.
A Couple Quotes
Resources/Authors Mentioned in This Episode
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
* Note, this episode is (in part) a reflection on episodes 154-163. A series about the intersection of adult development and leadership: listening to those episodes will provide context for this discussion.
David V. Day holds appointments as Professor of Psychology and Leadership, and as Academic Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, International Association of Applied Psychology, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters, many pertaining to the core topics of leadership and leadership development. He received the Walter Ulmer Research Award from the Center for Creative Leadership in 2010 for outstanding, career-long contributions to applied leadership research.
Dr. Jonathan Reams is driven by an insatiable curiosity about the essence of human nature and how to cultivate this essence in the service of leadership. He uses various outlets to achieve this. He currently has a position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he teaches and does research on leadership development, coaching, and counseling. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Integral Review, A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal for New Thought, Praxis and Research. He is also a co-founder of the Center for Transformative Leadership and the European Center for Leadership Practice. Jonathan’s Ph.D. is in Leadership Studies from Gonzaga University. Jonathan practices the cultivation of leadership through consulting and leadership development program design and delivery.
A Couple Quotes
Resources/Authors Mentioned in This Episode
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.
Scott Allen 0:00
Okay, everybody, welcome to the Phronesis Podcast. And today, I have two guests. I’m going to keep you in suspense on one of them. First guest; Dr. David Day. He holds appointments as a professor of psychology and leadership and as academic director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, International Association of Applied Psychology, and the Society for Industrial and organizational psychology. He has published more than 100 awesome peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters, many pertaining to core topics of leadership and leadership development. He received the Walter Omer Research Award from the Center for Creative Leadership in 2010 for outstanding career-long contributions to Applied Leadership Research. I also have a returning guest; Dr. Jonathan Reams. He is driven by an insatiable curiosity about the essence of human nature and how to cultivate this essence in the service of leadership. He uses various outlets to achieve this, and he currently has a position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology where he teaches and does research on leadership development, coaching, and counseling. He serves as editor-in-chief of the Integral Review. And he is also co-founder of the Center for Transformative Leadership and the European Center for Leadership Practice. Jonathan's Ph.D. is in Leadership Studies from Gonzaga University. Jonathan practices the cultivation of leadership through consulting and leadership development, program delivery, and design. He brings awareness-based technology to this work, focusing on how the inner workings of human nature can develop leadership capacity for today's complex challenges. And Jonathan, we had just finished this monster series, it was probably 10 episodes on this intersection of adult development, and leadership, and your book ‘Maturing Leadership.’ We had a wonderful response to that series of episodes, probably seven episodes in, I think you reminded me that David Day had written the foreword to the book. And I said, “We need to have him on. We need to have him listen to these episodes, and then, check in and see what he thinks, see what his impressions were of this whole experience.” And Jonathan, you said, “Send him an email and see if we can set this up,” didn't you?
Jonathan Reams 2:21
I'm just bursting with curiosity here to see what happens. (Laughs)
Scott Allen 2:27
Well, we are so happy, Dave, that you are with us today. We can't thank you enough for A) Listening to all those episodes, and B) Spending some time with us today to just share your perspective. What were a couple of themes that bubbled out for you? And we're very, very excited to jump into this conversation. So, thanks for being with us, sir.
David Day 2:49
Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Jonathan. My only concern is that you're going to try to put a quiz in front of me on these different podcasts. I did listen to them all, but I'm not sure how my performance on the quiz would be. But I enjoyed listening to them immensely. The way I think about this is I feel like I just came out of a Michelin-starred restaurant and having a 10-course tasting menu. You know how you feel after you have one of these tasting menus, you just got to bursting at the seams. So, that's how my head feels like it's kind of bursting at the seams with all the delicious nuggets of insight that were in these podcasts.
Scott Allen 3:30
Well, that's a great place for us to start today. So, at minute 10:30 of our conversation with Aiden Harney, did you agree with his assertions in that episode, were you in agreement with that?
David Day 3:43
I'll get you, Scott. I will get you.
(Laughter)
Scott Allen 3:49
Marianne Rue, around 32 minutes, started talking about… No. Well…
David Day 3:54
What I remember about Marianne is that she just named check me several times. So, that was my favorite one. If you have to ask me what was my favorite one.
(Laughter)
Scott Allen 4:03
That was kind of the best one, I'm thinking. Yes, yes. Well, let's jump in. So, at a high level, what are some things that kind of pop into your mind as you think about these conversations? We're just really excited.
David Day 4:19
Well, for the most part, these were people I was not familiar with, I was not familiar with their work. The only ones that I really knew, besides Jonathan, were Chuck Paulus and John McGuire because of the time that I was in residence and worked with them when I was at CCL. But the other ones, for the most part, I knew a little bit of them, but not a lot about their work. And the thing that impressed me was how people were doing such different things out there, and doing practical things with very abstract complex constructs in meaningful ways. And one example that just leaps to mind was David McCallum, the Jesuit priest. And this was just an epiphany that the Catholic Church would think about the development of the priests and the priesthood, and build things around this notion of helping people develop into adulthood and develop deeper levels of complexity in terms of their thinking, that was just a really insightful, wonderful course in the tasting menu. What he was doing makes so much sense but it was just the context of him doing it within the Roman Catholic Church was just something that I never thought that would happen.
Scott Allen 5:40
I had the exact same experience. I would never have imagined. Obviously, Jonathan, you knew of this work because of your relationship with David. But yeah, I too, as he was talking about, “How do we help develop…” And I believe there were some words in his phrasing, like a less hierarchical and more participative environment within that culture. I, too, was taken aback.
Jonathan Reams 6:06
I think, for me, this is representative of my kind of experience at dabbling here and there in these different relationships, and recognizing that there are people in all sorts of pockets and corners who are advocating these models, these kinds of work and practices, and just trying to find pockets of space and context where they can get a little power, get a little bit of a mandate. And frame it in a way that it doesn't scare people off, but actually seems useful.
David Day 6:41
Yeah. I'm looking at the quote from that episode, which kind of just summarizes everything “We are all on that journey of trying to show up as our better selves, but the reality is that our context and the conditions in which we're situated are constantly squeezing our developmental capacity.” This was just a… I think, that sums up a lot of the challenges as well as the importance of the goal in terms of helping people show up as their better selves across their lifespan.
Scott Allen 7:10
And Jonathan, to your point, whether it was a Fortune 500 organization like Intel, or Home Depot, or some of Marianne’s work in working in a large multinational organization, the work is happening in so many different types of organizations, right?
Jonathan Reams 7:28
Yeah. And I think this is part of… So, in terms of the people in the book, I didn't put out a call, I just kind of tapped people on the shoulder who I knew were doing interesting things in diverse areas. And that was part of my kind of criteria, was thinking, “How can I create a robust breadth of both theoretical models, types of applications, and contexts?”
Scott Allen 7:58
Dave, as you think about some of the other observations you made over the course of listening, what else stands out for you?
David Day 8:06
A couple of things that stand out and have given me fodder for deeper reflection and thinking about this is one that came from the podcast with Harriet Rasmussen and Muhammad Rai on trust. And one of their key points of argument was the notion that trust is different based on your developmental level. That was really a provocative statement. And it made me think, is that where some of the problems with trust in organizations come to the forefront? Which is if we have people who we would hope are in leadership positions at higher levels of complexity, are they conceptualizing trust in ways that don't make sense to people who are younger, who are maybe not as cognitively complex or as mature, in Jonathan's words, and that's creating, inadvertently, some gap in trust or some mistrust based on what trust means at different levels of developmental complexity.
Jonathan Reams 9:10
Yeah. And I think that goes to some of the things I've been learning from people I try to hang out with and absorb things from. And some of that is, I can imagine people like you're describing being given kind of messages or models from leaders, and it feels like a kind of an undifferentiated blur, and you're supposed to trust it. And what they really need is some clear distinctions that are in their Goldilocks zone. And this is not always recognized. So, people think they're being cutting edge or clever or advanced by speaking in these nuanced ways, or they're appropriating jargon they've heard and they don't actually even fully understand it, but it's the latest trend, and they think that's what they should do.
David Day 10:04
Yeah, interesting. I noticed you use the Goldilocks zone, which is from Theo Dawson, which basically means it's just right, just in the sweet spot. But if you follow the people who are developmental theorists, they would say that there's kind of an intransitivity here, or lack of transitivity. And that people who are at higher levels of complexity should be able to think and relate to people at lower levels of complexity, but not the other way around. But that's in theory. In actuality, maybe they have the capacity to do that, but they just don't take the time or the intention to do it, and that's creating this kind of mismatch or gap.
Scott Allen 10:46
Well, in Jennifer Garvey Berger’s book ‘Changing on the Job,’ she does a really nice job, to your point, Dave. And I'd never thought of it this way, but she's using the context of a training environment where she's communicating a message in a training function, I believe that was the example in the book or a message of a leader. And she will talk about how the same message can be delivered at different levels. So, in the context of one single training experience, she's going to design for three or four levels and ensure that, at least, some of it is going to hit those different spaces, which, Jonathan, you might have a greater context for that.
Jonathan Reams 11:28
Well, no, I agree. And I'm always reminded of watching Obama's first inaugural speech. And I could hear him speaking like five different value systems in one paragraph. So, that notion of understanding that you need to pitch your message to different audiences, it’s as simple as that. And I think to some of your point, David, people that may be further down the road in a given domain of experience or expertise don't necessarily have the additional lens to understand that people who don't have as much experience, or context, or background, or complexity of thinking, need some scaffolding. And that's almost another lens and skill set. So, they're not always able to explicitly apply developmental theory to how they're talking about things.
Scott Allen 12:26
I go back to some of the conversations, I forget if it was (John) Kerry or (Al) Gore, who was saying things like, “Well, I see complexity.” And I think, for a large faction of people, that was a little kind of ‘woo-woo,’ ‘fu-fu,’ I don't get it. And you had Bush communicating in very clear, you're a flip-flopper, that's fuzzy math, just very, very clear English that… AdLouis talked about this in their original article that applied Keegan’s work to leadership, talking about how it may be difficult for someone from -- to be simplistic about this -- stage four, communicate and really resonate with someone who's at stage two or three.
David Day 13:12
Yeah. And you think about, going back to the Obama example, what were some of the biggest criticisms of Obama is that he was kind of ‘aloof’ was the word that was used. He was speaking over our heads about these kinds of things, and this was part of the attraction to other leaders who were much more down to earth, much more speaking in a language that could be more easily understood by those who, arguably, may not be at a higher level of development. But that's arguably.
Jonathan Reams 13:44
Well, I always like to refer to the research that Theo (Dawson) did a few years ago, where they use the electrical system to analyze the first three interviews of Obama, Trump, Clinton, and Bush. And in the one from Obama, he scored at the far end of the scale, except for the third one, which scored quite lower. And in that interview, he explicitly said, “I've been told I'm too complex in my language, and so I'm working to bring it down.”
Scott Allen 14:18
Yeah. Professorial was another word that would be, we're being…
David Day 14:22
What’s wrong with that?
(Laughter)
David Day 14:25
Sorry, there are three professors here. Sorry.
Scott Allen 14:32
Oh, what else. Dave? What else stood out for you?
David Day 14:34
The interview with Jimmy Parker about what he was doing? Was it at Home Depot? I can't remember the organization. Okay. This notion of ‘we have a measurement problem.’ I think that is endemic to the whole human development and adult development space. A lot of these measures are ones that are based on interviews. And the interviews then have to be then coded and scored by expert judges, and this has always been something that has, I think, really held back the field in an empirical sense because of this measurement problem. Now, the thing that's interesting or tantalizing, if you would, is what will artificial intelligence and machine learning be able to do with scoring these kinds of protocols going forward?
Jonathan Reams 15:23
A couple of things. One is that I actually just spoke with Theo this morning, and she has managed to create a cache of developmental interviews from 1955 up; they are all in the electrical system now, so you can do longitudinal research on all sorts of things. So, I'm really excited to see what comes of that, really, 25-year effort to understand development in this way. The second is I saw an interview with Susanne Cook-Greuter, Robb Smith and maybe Corey deVos. And they had ChatGPT fill in sentence stems 36 sentence stems. And then, they asked Suzanne to score it without knowing that. And then, they were discussing, and looking, and analyzing it. And it was very clear that the AI system was pulling from the mainstream, and all of the responses fell within a very narrow band, which is very unusual for a normal set of responses. They were all about the same length, they all followed the same structure, it became quite clear where the limitations were there. The other thing that Theo was mentioning is that one of the challenges is those systems are pulling from what's out there in general. Peer-reviewed articles held back through paywalls from academic journal publishers are not giving access to those things to look at more sophisticated understanding. So, I think there can be a number of issues in relation to the limits of AI in these ways.
David Day 17:07
That raises the issue of will these AI bots or technologies continue to learn or not? In order for them to keep improving, them being like ChatGPT, to keep improving, it needs more data, it needs to have more to work with. So, what we're seeing now, I think, in terms of the applications is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the potential is, but the potential is going to require that there is still the interest to keep kind of feeding the machine, feeding the monster, if you would, then who knows where that'll lead.
Jonathan Reams 17:41
And my sense is that there is a band within which there's enough data for these things to start to learn how to represent different levels of complexity. But there's also the tail end where there's less and less evidence. And if you look at some of the EO development models, when you get into construct-aware uses of language, then language is no longer really adequately representing thinking because the way people relate to the language and thought structures starts to evolve in a different way.
Scott Allen 18:22
But can you imagine that, let's say we have 400 interviews with people who have been termed stage four, and we feed that into an AI system. And we have conversations with 1000 people who have been pinged stage two. And all of a sudden, we're able to do some pretty innovative and creative things. Is that in part where maybe you are going, Dave, a little bit?
David Day 18:50
Yeah, absolutely. It's this notion of who's the expert and the expert judge. Are we going to try to train ChatGPT to be a Susanne Greuter, or is there a different judgment out there that might be even more refined? I don't know. But then, the other question is, what other kinds of measurement, kinds of tools could we invent that don't require this kind of interview or verbal protocol analysis? And I'm not smart enough or insightful enough to know where that's going, but there are so many potential opportunities with new technologies coming on board to do measurement in a very different way. And that's exciting to think about that once we have these kinds of more refined and accessible measures, what we might be able to do in terms of research.
Jonathan Reams 19:41
I think, I want to say, hesitant about the AI stuff. And part of it is informed by a conversation a guy named Donald Clark, and he did a conversation held at our university a few years ago and is heavily invested in AI work. And he said, “AI can do the first couple of levels of Bloom's Taxonomy very well, a teacher shouldn't try to do that. But it won't get to these later levels because there's just far too big a gap in the types of ways humans can think compared to the way machines are able to learn for the foreseeable future, at least.” So, that's one part of my hesitancy around enthusiasm. But the other thing is around what Jimmy was talking about, and I followed his Ph.D. process for a few years with it. What he was trying to look at is, can we major organizational development? Can we look at collective development in some way? That was his hypothesis and the very robust research he did showed basically that it was nearly impossible because individuals' perception and judgments colored by their own development came through more than any collective way to measure it.
Scott Allen 21:00
I don't know, Jonathan. I'm maybe a little more... I think there are opportunities. I think we have to think differently about AI, how we would use the technology to… Because artificial intelligence is great at noticing patterns. It notices patterns.
Jonathan Reams 21:22
Well, what do you do with it? It will use straight things, but can it teach us how to emulate how to build capacity?
Scott Allen 21:32
Well, some interesting things could happen. I'm literally talking off the top of my head, so jump in here if you all disagree with me, but could we imagine putting me into a scenario where I am leading a group of people through some type of activity, and we record it, and we get some behavioral analysis on me. We then also put me through a subject-object interview and we have that data on me. And maybe we have me leading six, or seven activities. And what's happening for me after having been kind of scoring at stage three as a leader from a behavioral standpoint, what am I doing? How does that show up? And what can we learn from some of the patterns or themes of how I communicate? Of how I engage? I don't know…
Jonathan Reams 22:23
Like the feedback tool.
Scott Allen 22:25
Well, potentially, I don't know. I think there are just creative opportunities of how we could either triangulate or how we could… To at least provide some data points. Because...I don't know, Dave, how are you thinking about it?
David Day 22:38
Well, you said, behavior. So, much of this adult development stuff is about how people talk and how they think, or how they're talking is supposed to reflect their thinking. But what about behaviors? And moving away from artificial intelligence, but not completely, is the notion of virtual reality. How can we use virtual reality to put people into situations that they could not either be exposed to or be exposed to safely and seeing how they navigate that? The other one about terms of capacity are just wearable devices. And I think there has been some research out of MIT that has looked at how people interact with each other and using social network kinds of analyses to track the changes in the patterns of people interacting with each other, which could be taken as manifestations of building some sort of capacity over time. These are all very exciting potential developments, but they haven't really spilled over into the adult development or the maturity kind of literature. They're into things like social network analysis, or they're into gaming kinds of things. But I don't know of people who are thinking about applications in terms of leader development and adult development.
Jonathan Reams 23:54
There is a couple of things, one in the VR space. I'm working with some people who are doing that. They have a very robustly visually developed VR system for people to do crisis training. And I think it speaks to this knowing-doing gap. People can intellectually know about and score very high on some assessments, but not know how to act in a context. And I think this is what I've appreciated about skill theory from Fisher's work in the FOLA (Foundations of Lectical Assessments) and so on that it's much more about performance in context. And being able to take robust knowledge and understand when and how to apply it in a skillful way is much more useful. And there are ways that AI or VR can help people get feedback on how they're performing, and what's going on with that compared to just how they think about it.
Scott Allen 24:52
So much that can be done with the VR and the AR space, sensor technology, the sociometric badges, to your point Dave. I think there's a lot of opportunity. And I think it's going to be… What is a simulator? Thankfully, Sully had spent some time in the simulator. Thankfully, they'd gone through some scenarios. And so, I think we have an opportunity down the road to really provide people with simulation activities. But think about this you all, you could have a simulator, let's say it's a simple negotiation simulation, and it's in a VR headset. But think about that any number of different ways that we could be slicing the data from that hour-long interchange, whether it's they implement the process or the model, whether it's how is this person thinking, it just opens up the doors to so many… What were the results that they achieved? What were the options that they missed? We have access to so many different ways to slice up one one-hour conversation, whether that's an adult development lens, whether that's a skill lens, it's just so cool. I think of the Holodeck from Star Trek, how cool would that be? Okay, leave the meeting, go. (Laughs)
David Day 26:21
It’s coming at you. You mentioned Captain Sully, and you and you alluded to simulations. My understanding of that was, he is an accomplished glider pilot, as well as a passenger jet pilot, and he used his glider pilot skills when the engines went out on his passenger jet. And it raises another interesting issue that ties into what Jonathan was talking about in terms of context. And development is kind of context-specific. And that's very much in skill theory, and Fisher's work, and the[Inaudible 26:55] work. But can we use things like virtual reality to take people into different contexts? To broaden and deepen their development in ways that are safe, but also stretching as well? And that way, it enhances the development across contexts, and not just keep getting deeper, and deeper, and deeper, within one context.
Jonathan Reams 27:17
The project that I'm involved in is looking at crisis management, putting people in a crisis situation. They found that, in the beta test, 15 minutes after that, people got seasick. It was actually so realistic and intense. But what we're looking at is how can we track a whole bunch of measures. Whether it's heart rate variability, neurological measures, debriefing, thinking, what were you intending how it's set up for communication and collaboration between a kind of command center and people out in the simulation? So, you can bring multiple elements into it. And I think the opportunity to apply, and those of us involved have many of these theories behind what we're looking at doing for the learning, is helping understand how are people constructing meaning, how are they applying in that situation? What is the variability in their performance under stress? How do we help them regulate their emotional stress? So, it's kind of the cleaning up part where they can learn how to become more aware of triggers that happen, desensitize to them, process that, and build competency to be kind of calm and cool in the situation. So, that, like Sully, they can draw on broader domain knowledge too and act in a context.
David Day 28:43
Yeah. This is really fascinating stuff, and I think we're only touching a very small bit of the potential on this. But we've kind of wandered away from using artificial intelligence and other things for measurement purposes to actually assisting with development. And I think this is where the real promise of AI is. And, Scott, I heard you mentioned Ray Dalio in one of your podcasts. I'm a huge fan of how he thinks about development, even though he's not a scientist or developmental theorist. What he's doing in his organization and how he thinks about development, I think, is very provocative. And I use his book ‘Principles’ with my undergraduate students. And he doesn't talk about development; he talks about evolution. And he likes to put things into natural science, the natural phenomenon that we're all experiencing. And so, his point is that AI is not going to replace people, and it's not going to replace their decision-making, but it will assist them in such ways that it will accelerate evolution. It will accelerate the development of individuals and collectives, which may help solve the intractable problem in adult development that so few people reach the higher level stages in Keegan's model, for example, like self-transforming leaders or self-transforming individuals. The data that he presents is, what about 5% or even less? Most are at those levels, but what's really exciting is can we use these different technologies to accelerate evolution and development so more people are reaching these higher levels, which may open up a lot of capacity and capabilities we don't have now?
Scott Allen 30:42
A lot of the conversations I've been in recently, they've said just what you're saying, Dave, and they refer to the AI as a co-pilot. That the AI can be a co-pilot for you in any number of different domains. It could be a co-pilot to help you brainstorm if it's a ChatGPT-type situation. I have this vision of the future where… I was in an organization probably about a year ago, half a year ago, and the individual started the presentation. This is the leader of the organization; they said, “I know a lot of you don't really want to be here, but this is Scott,” (Laughs). “And what we need is in their AR glasses, a little thing to blink that says ‘not how you start a meeting Jim.’”
Jonathan Reams 31:29
Or it reads what they're thinking and says, “No, no, don't go there.”
Scott Allen 31:34
80% of people would not be motivated at this moment, Jim. My mind goes to that future where, in real-time, I might be giving a presentation, and I have on my AR glasses, and it could be that I'm speaking too quickly and it's coaching me in real-time, or again, any number of other things that developmentally could be going on for me. I too, I'm excited about the future and the possibilities of how it can accelerate development, serve as a co-pilot, and hopefully help us evolve.
Jonathan Reams 32:08
Well, back to where we started. I'm thinking, what else happened in the podcast we might touch on, but it's actually coming back to where you started, David, with Father David McCallum. And what I remember his research was looking at performance in people in a group dynamic situation, Tavistock kind of situation, and then finding that this notional fallback. That people didn't operate just from a center of gravity; no, their performance varied. No, that's central to (Kurt) Fisher's approach to how skill and performance is that it's always variable depending on the context. So then, I think one of the central things that comes out too is the way in which affect and emotions governs where our attention goes. Does our awareness look out and in and be curious, or does it kind of collapse in and create defense mechanisms that are habituated? And how do we create feedback that supports that kind of emotional maturity?
David Day 33:13
Yeah. It's emotional maturity, and from what I hear you saying, it's also this notion of open-mindedness, of being radically open-minded and taking in things that may prove you to be wrong but knowing that that's very helpful. And I think it was Daniel Kahneman that says, “I love being shown wrong because that's one less thing I'll be wrong about in the future.” So, that's a great learning mindset and open-mindedness about being shown wrong. And so few people actually demonstrate that, especially when we get into performance kinds of organizations, there's so much of a fear of criticism and being shown wrong, rightly for career reasons and job security reasons in many cases.
Jonathan Reams 33:56
The notion of perspectival humility was another one of the things I took away from one of the conversations, I think it might have been Aiden Harney. But this notion that… And it goes to Edgar Schein’s; access your ignorance and ‘Humble Inquiry.’ The more we can be maintaining an awareness of the limits of our own perspective, the more likely you were to be open-minded. But then, I'm reminded of a quote from Charles Tart, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology said, “There's a big difference between being open-minded and having a hole in the head.” And so, how do you bring out the discernment to use feedback to understand what is good feedback?
David Day 34:40
Yeah, that's a great point. And it's another one that is so easy to teach, to provide good feedback. You can do it around just making it more concrete and more objective using things like situation behavior impact, which you can learn in five minutes, and yet so few people actually use it because it takes a lifetime to perfect it that requires the discipline to use it on a regular basis.
Scott Allen 35:08
David, anything else stand out for you that you wanted to make sure we got to?
David Day 35:13
I think there's one other point I took away that kind of goes to something we were talking about, I think, before we were recording, which is some of the pushback about thinking about adult development in stages. And going back to Piaget, and the whole development literature is really about different kinds of stage models, where they're hard stages, soft stages, whatever. But I think a different way of thinking about this is really we're trying to capture reality inflight. This development is going on all the time every day, and the stages are helpful to a point, but then they sort of get in the way of what's going on in someone's developmental trajectory that's happening on a more ongoing kind of basis.
Jonathan Reams 36:04
Yeah. And my understanding of Piaget, of Kegan, of Torbert, and all these people is that the stages were just heuristics to describe gross chunks of things for convenience, but the real interest was in the process. What is the work of evolution, genetic epistemology? How does the central nervous system… And if you look at some of the more recent neuroscience, and Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work, and so on, there’s something that very much aligns with this, even though the terminology and technology is much more modern. But if there's something going on in our central nervous system that’s continually learning and evolving, we can try to map that process out, and we can characterize it in different ways to help us back to the Goldilocks Zone or the zone of proximal development. There is a way in which we can be more helpful if we understand what's the next step for a given person in a given context.
David Day 37:13
Right on. And not to beat this AI horse to death or anything, or technology, but having advanced wearable devices that we can use to track people on a daily basis, and maybe have ways of appreciating from the data that's provided by these devices when there's some sort of impactful experience. We kind of know this from 20th-century procedures, about challenging experiences and getting people out of their comfort zones, but that is very individualized. So, with devices, can we actually tailor this kind of uncomfortableness or challenge to particular kinds of events or situational factors that can then answer another important issue when it comes to development? And that is tailoring it to the individual who we’re trying to develop or who is developing.
Jonathan Reams 38:16
Well, I can imagine from that something that's tracking heart rate variability or electrical conductivity in the skin suddenly and says, “Hey, are you triggered by something that's going on? Pay attention to it, reflect on it, and build in some habits around that?”
Scott Allen 38:33
Jonathan, are you kind of coming on the AI side here? I kind of hear maybe some curiosity, some…
Jonathan Reams 38:40
I think, for me, it's not about being against the AI, I just perceive the limits of getting to try to replicate or teach this kind of complexity as a feedback tool, to help us have data to work with, to augment how we make sense of our environment, or get clues and cues in conjunction with processes that we can help train people with to take advantage of those cues. I think that can be very powerful.
Scott Allen 39:12
Oh, sure. Yes, it's happening right now if you look at just to healthcare. And David, you have your gym analogy when it comes to leader development, which I love. But, what is the Apple Watch trying to do sometimes? It's trying to nudge our behavior, whether that's, “Hey, you got to stand up a little bit more,” or, “You haven't hit your actual steps today.” It's nudging behavior. It's a co-pilot for us to be healthy in some ways. And I think that can happen in other domains. I really do.
Jonathan Reams 39:40
So, what is healthy leadership, and what's the smart app for that?
Scott Allen 39:45
That's what we're developing as we speak, Jonathan. (Laughs)
David Day 39:51
It’s all data fed into the AI machine that will make us better and help us evolve more quickly.
Jonathan Reams 40:01
I'm just mindful, though, of the voices that say are there openness and transparency about the data and where it comes from, and the heuristics. Somebody I know who runs this thing called Oxford Review, David Wilkinson, did an analysis of this, and found all sorts of ways in which it was not necessarily performing well in terms of making false attribution citations. So, it's early days with it. But what is it geared to serve? How is it programmed? Who is programming it, and what interests? I think the things we're talking about are very good ideals, are they held by the people who are programming those things?
Scott Allen 40:50
I think you're exactly right, Jonathan. Yes, the bias in the algorithms, we have challenges of the unintended consequences. If you watch the social dilemma, the individual who developed the ‘like’ button never would have imagined that people's self-esteem would revolve around how many likes they received in there. And so, you're exactly right. Obviously, we have to be incredibly mindful and careful because, I think, at times, that's not the case.
David Day 41:19
As we know, ethics has a very long philosophical history to it. And we're in this 21st century, where all kinds of new ethical challenges are presenting themselves. So, this is potentially an accelerator to what we know about ethics as a branch of philosophy as well.
Jonathan Reams 41:43
So, it's like a phrase that I heard from a guy named Tom Atlee, “Everything is getting worse and worse, and better and better, faster and faster.”
(Laughter)
Scott Allen 41:55
We will end there; we will end there. Okay. What have the two of you been reading, listening to, consuming, streaming? What's caught your attention in recent times? I'm going to start. Rick Rubin's ‘The Creative Act.’ If the two of you have not had a chance to check out Rick Rubin's ‘The Creative Act’, there are so many connections beautiful connections to leadership, especially if we get into advanced notions of navigating complexity. It's just a really, really interesting, interesting book. And Dave, I know you're a music fan. Jonathan, I know you are a music fan. And I think the two of you will appreciate his perspective. I listened to it, and he read it. It's like a four-and-a-half-hour listen. He was great. He was absolutely wonderful. Jonathan, what have you been listening to, sir, or reading or steaming?
Jonathan Reams 42:50
I'll start with in-person. So we thought Weird Al Yankovic Tuesday night in Oslo.
(Laughter)
David Day 43:01
Alert the border patrol.
Jonathan Reams 43:06
That's one thing. I think one of the more interesting things I've read lately is AH Almaas' ‘The Unfolding Now.’ And what I appreciate about it is a very careful kind of analysis and deconstruction of the limits of the way the mind ratifies thought, takes those ratifications to be objects, builds emotional attachment to them and identifications, and then has all these secondary things that come from it. And we often then become unable to be present to our immediate experience. And I like kind of looking upstream at these things about this. David Bohm’s ‘Thought as a System’ is one of my favorite books just because of his analysis of that interconnection between thinking and emotion and physiology, and how it gets triggered in a moment, and we get lost inside those things and don't often step outside of that system.
Scott Allen 44:09
Okay. I will put that in the show notes for sure, Jonathan. Dave.
David Day 44:14
I'm reading a really interesting book called ‘Faith, Hope, and Carnage’. It's ‘Faith, Hope, and Carnage.’ Yeah. I was thinking it's going to be courage, but it's not; it's carnage. It's a book by Nick Cave, the musician, in conversation with a journalist named Sean O'Hagan. So, it's not a memoir; it's a series of interviews that they did during the pandemic. And it's almost like Scott's podcast only in written format, and only with one guest being Nick Cave, whose band ‘The Bad Seeds’ is one of my favorites. But he's talking about how he has changed over his lifespan, how his music has changed, and what the world has brought to him that fostered those changes. And, at one point, Sean O'Hagan asked him, “Surely your outlook is completely different now than it was when you were young.” And let me read you this one paragraph on how Nick Cave responds because I think it ties in very nicely with this podcast. So Nick Cave says, “Well, the young Nick Cave could afford to hold the world in some form of disdain because he had no idea of what was coming down the line. I can see now that this disdain or contempt for the world was a kind of luxury or indulgence, even a vanity. He had no notion of the precariousness of life, the fragility. He had no idea how difficult but essential it is to love the world and to treat the world with mercy. And, like I said, he had no idea what was coming down the road.” And I think that pretty much sums it up for all of us. We don't know what's coming down the road, but we know it's going to affect this in a big way.
Scott Allen 46:02
Wow. What a wonderful place to end for today. David, we really, really appreciate your time. Jonathan, always so much fun to be back in the saddle with you, sir. And it's such a pleasure. And thanks so much for the conversation, you two. I know that listeners will walk away with something to reflect upon. And thanks for your good work, gentlemen.
Jonathan Reams 46:24
Thank you, Scott.
David Day 46:26
Pleasure, as always. Bye bye.
Scott Allen 46:30
So, Jonathan, so much fun to be back in the saddle with you co-hosting and joining again to have this conversation with David Day, who wrote the foreword to the book ‘Maturing Leadership.’ And as we mentioned in the episode, we thought, “Hey, let's have Dave come in. And let's have a conversation with him and see how he made sense of these episodes.” So, what are some of your reflections on that conversation?
Jonathan Reams 46:54
Well, I had a few points, Scott. First of all, it was fun. It's kind of addictive. I'm wondering when's the next time we're going to do something?
(Laughter)
Jonathan Reams 47:06
So, one of the things, of course, was, my intention had been to show people that there was a broader, more diverse set of perspectives and lineages of work. And that was one of the things that Dave talked about. He had an appreciation that there was so much diverse meaningful work, taking abstract theories and doing practical things with them. So, that was great to hear that he picked up and noticed that. I think he also really appreciated this thing about how does this work when you talk about trust? What if you zoom in and look at an issue like that, and say, “Hey, we tend to think about it in these kinds of terms, but there's a whole layer of how adult development relates to it that we should really take some account of.” The other one was, and I think we got into talking about that with different talks, I'd mentioned Obama's inaugural address. How do you speak to different levels? Just because you're more developed in a certain area doesn't mean you have the additional skill of learning how to modulate your conversation so that it's picked up by a wider range of people.
Scott Allen 48:25
Yes, yes. We got into the whole conversation around technology, which wasn't a direction I thought we were going to go in, necessarily, but that was really, really interesting. And, as I reflected on that, it was fun to kind of banter back and forth with you a little bit, and explore with Dave, and just kind of look at the nooks and crannies. That's a dimension that I just think of the possibilities, of the developmental possibilities, of the assessment possibilities. How can we leverage technology to aid in this work? In a few different ways I'm thinking about that. But, to your point, I think there's considerations, important considerations, whether it's some of the ethical use of some of these technologies, are we engaging in work that is doing and having the results we hope it does, and not some adverse effects that maybe we weren't expecting. So, going into that eyes wide open about the potential downsides.
Jonathan Reams 49:32
What I recall was my hesitation around how this was related to the measurement issue. Can we assess things? Can we use it in that way? And I said, “Whoa, I think there's lots of landmines there.” But where I remember the conversation headed, eventually, was, how can this be used to augment feedback so that we can create more robust individualized support for people's development?
Scott Allen 49:58
Yes. And maybe, at some point, we have another conversation because I think at least exploring the conversation around the assessment piece could be at least an interesting conversation. How could it augment? How could it help and aid? I don't know. It's fun. And it was a fun conversation. And again, I think it went in some directions we weren't expecting, but that was… I love that about this.
Jonathan Reams 50:25
That's the fun part of it. The last note I remember picking up on was the value of emotional maturity and openness to experience, and the contrast with having a hole in the head. And then, this whole dynamic thing that, yes, it's great to be open, but you have to have some discernment as well. And I think this relates to the AI conversation that we want to be open to possibilities and explore, but don't be naive about it. And especially, I think that the challenge should really be thinking ahead because there's unintended consequences that we really need to think more thoroughly about.
Scott Allen 51:09
Exactly. I think I shared the example in the episode of ‘the like button,’ and how people's emotional and mental state at times now is determined on whether or not they've gotten enough likes. The developer was not thinking about that.
Jonathan Reams 51:27
No, indeed. It was great fun, Scott.
Scott Allen 51:31
I agree. I agree. And we will do it again. We will do it again.
Jonathan Reams 51:36
Yes, trial logs are fun.
Scott Allen 51:39
Well, have a wonderful, wonderful day, sir. As always, so much fun to be with you. For listeners, thanks for checking in, we appreciate it. Take care, be well.
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