Dr. Karl Kuhnert and Dr. Keith Eigel - Vertical Development

Karl W. Kuhnert, Ph.D. is Professor of the Practice of Organization and Management in the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Karl’s research focuses on how leaders cognitively, interpersonally, and emotionally develop over the life course.  Karl has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles, 13 book chapters and made over 100 conference presentations, and served on numerous editorial and review panels.  He teaches industrial and organizational psychology, leadership, organizational change, and professional ethics.  Karl has won numerous awards for teaching and research. Karl also regularly teaches leadership development in the Executive Ed. Programs at Emory, UCLA, HEC Paris, and UGA. He has served as a consultant with many large and small corporations, non-profit and government organizations including, United Parcel Service, The U.S. Dept. of Treasury, Siemens, The Jet Propulsion Lab, Cox Automotive, The Federal Reserve, Federal Home Loan Bank, The Robert Wood Foundation, Carnival Cruise Line, AECOM, and The American Cancer Society.

Keith Eigel, Ph.D. is the founder of The Leaders Lyceum (lye-see-um), an organization dedicated to leveraging challenges to accelerate the leaderʼs journey to sustained effectiveness. He is co-author of a forthcoming book on personality, leader effectiveness, and leveraging the diversity of perspective for team performance called The Vehicle.  Over the last twenty-five years, his research and writing have had a global reach, being cited in academic and best-selling publications on 5 continents. Keith and his team have honed a developmental curriculum that extends and leverages over sixty years of research to help executive and next-generation leaders measurably advance leader maturity, the best predictor of a leader’s effectiveness. Thousands of leaders from dozens of industries have been transformed by their experiences with The Leaders Lyceum. Additionally, he'sbeen an executive coach to several C-Level Fortune 50 leaders and University Presidents.

A Quote From This Episode

• "The higher the level of vertical development the more effective you are in all aspects of life and leadership. In fact, no single factor better predicts you’re effectiveness than where you are on your vertical journey."

Resources

• Article: Transactional and transformational leadership: A constructive/developmental analysis by Kuhnert and Lewis
• Article: Authentic development: Leadership development level and executive effectiveness by Eigel and Kuhnert
• Book: The Map by Eigel and Kuhnert
• Book: In over our heads by Robert Kegan
• Podcast: Growing as Grownups

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals with a keen interest in the study, practice, and teaching of leadership. 

Connect with Scott Allen

• Website

Transcript

Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate 

Scott Allen  0:01  
Good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening. Welcome to the Phronesis podcast. This is a special episode. We have some incredible thinkers with us today. And actually, it's the first time I have a co-host. So Dave Rosch from the University of Illinois is going to be co-hosting this episode. He's gonna jump in ask questions because I said, Hey, I need someone to help be on the balcony and swoop in and ask a better question than I just did. So, Dave, thank you for being here, sir.

David Rosch  0:29  
Very excited. Thanks for the invite, Scott.

Scott Allen  0:31  
Okay, I am going to place their bios in the show notes. Because we want to jump in right away and get to as much conversation as we can. Today, we have Karl Kuhnert. And we have Keith Eigel. And they have written a book released a few years back called the map. And this is I think, both of there's a large chunk of their life's work, as I was perusing Keith's dissertation this morning. And as I was reviewing, again, this article from what 1987 Karl, yeah, you probably started writing that in 86. So I'm, you know, let's start there. So we're gonna go, we're gonna go to this really fun place, we're going to put a whole bunch of resources in the show notes. So you can catch up, Karl, maybe you can take us back to the story of how, at a very in a very quick span, you take this work from Bob Keegan, at Harvard, and apply it to leadership? And so would you be willing to share that story of the genesis of some of that thinking because it was brilliant, it was in the throes of transformational and transactional leadership, that was just really kind of revving up that literature base? And would you tell us that story, sir?

Karl Kuhnert  1:47  
Sure. Well, this, this really came about, as a result of playing with a colleague of mine, who, at the time was actually beating me in tennis, and it was really hot. And I wasn't sure exactly whether I was gonna be able to make it through the match. And so we took a break. And I basically was stalling for time here. And so I asked him, What are you reading? He mentioned Bob's book. And I said, Tell me more, you know, I was I couldn't, you know, I was still trying to catch my breath. And he talked, he told me about this book. And I said that sounds really interesting. And so that was really the beginning of it. And what really fueled this was, for me two things. One is I had taken a class in graduate school, and leadership. And I couldn't imagine a subject that was more interesting. But somehow science made it more boring than it really needed to be. And in reading, reading, you know, Bob's book, it really was clear to me, that what we really needed to be doing was thinking about leadership growth, really across the lifespan. And this was the first book for me that really grabbed me and said, Hey, listen, there is a trajectory here. Yeah, there is a way in which we make sense of the world. And we do. So as we grow, we become right, we become more actually of who we really are. And this book was really instrumental, I think, obviously. And I said, Man, there's this idea here and transactional transformational leadership. And that's what it was, how can I put this? How can I take these ideas, which for most of the way, we've talked about leadership, or the static contracts, whether it's personality, what, and they're static? Well, how do we put this into motion? How do we move from this idea that leadership is something that we do that we say, rather than who we are? And so those really gave birth to that article? Which by the way, I have to tell you, I couldn't believe it got accepted. I mean, the reviews, the reviews were horrible.

Scott Allen  4:13  
Oh, really? Reviewer number two, you didn't like it? 

Karl Kuhnert  4:15  
Oh, no, that the end, what happened was that I mean, literally what happened is the editor put his arm around me says, This is really good call you this is a good paper, I'm gonna publish it. Awesome. So the reviews were terrible. And yet, the editor took a chance. And it's still, by the way, this is I just can't believe this, but I get probably, I get about, I get about 15 to 20 hits a week of people reading it still.

Scott Allen  4:40  
And Keith, you come along and tell us a little bit of that story. So so how do you get engaged in this work then? And what was the spark for you that really intrigued you in all of this? 

Keith Eigel  4:53  
Oh, the guy who just got through speaking was the spark. I mean, how, how lucky. I was nontraditional What I like to refer to as a nontraditional graduate student, I didn't start graduate school until I was 30. Karl was a relatively young professor just come over from Auburn, where he and Lewis did that work and came to the University of Georgia, they somehow led me into this program, I was really focused on kind of teams and diversity. And Karl just said, you have you got to read this book. You know, I've talked about this in other venues, but I've never had any one thing like that change the course of my life in such a significant way. Because to me, you know, Karl had the wisdom to just sort of hand me the book and not give me all of his perspective on it. He just said, read this, right. And this constructive developmental theory and the way, Keegan put it forward, and the Evolving Self-made sense of everyone that I admired, who I really respected, who had had significant influence in my life, shed new light on why they were the way they were. And as Karl just said, it wasn't the things they did, they were also different. It was, who they were, and how they and how they made sense of the world and, and at the highest levels, what a generative perspective they had with me. And Karl was one of those key players. And so I kind of shifted the effort of my research and my studies and my coursework and the things that I was trying to do. And Karl was my major professor. But given that the gap in our ages was not that gigantic, we became, I mean, Karl, you can double-check me on this, but we became great friends. And it was a little, it was a little weird for a while because it was the kind of friendship where one friend can give the other friend an F. Right, but that can't be reciprocated, so and so and so that's it. When I got out I did not I know coming into graduate school, I did not want to take an academic route, what moved me was making a difference in people's lives. And it was quite a journey. But Karl and I began to author a curriculum in 1996 was really our first application with the Food Science and Technology faculty at the University of Georgia. That was an exciting group. And, and, and we created this way to try and move a group of people along this developmental journey in the way that we both I think, had some luck and more one on one kind of what we would think of now is more of a coaching relationship. But could we scale that up into having an impact on people and and and since then, Krohn, I've had the privilege and the honor to be involved with, I don't know Karl 1000s and 1000s. Of people who have had exposure now to this developmental journey and, and, and the role of difficulty and challenge in their lives and how that fuels growth and so that's longer than you may have wanted, but that's a pretty short version of my story and integration into this.

Scott Allen  8:22  
I thought maybe you're gonna say 1000s and 1000s of food scientists at this point. We have literally worked with 10s of 1000s. Hey, Dave, you want to jump in any questions for you, sir?

David Rosch  8:38  
I would love to in your you're talking to a guy who first read Kegan's the mental demands of modern life whose life myself was changed so much. I ended up reading a passage of it at my sister's wedding, as part of wedding advice for her and her new husband. So level of geek, everyone like I hear what both of you are saying. And, Keith, you bring up the point of going to a group of people, in this case, food, food science, and technologists in it here where I work at the University of Illinois, those exact folks just woke up two floors above me here in my academic building. So I know these people, when you come in and you make the message that who you are your inner self is potentially even more important than what you do what you know, is less important than who you are. How does that message get received?

Keith Eigel  9:31  
I mean, in varied ways, right? I mean, there is a lot of crossed arms in the beginning. Like you're going to have to prove this to me. I think there are others who begin to it begins to intersect with their journeys the way they understand it so immediately that they are bought in and wanting to learn more, but I don't think you know, used to take us a lot longer to teach this than it does now but it's still a couple of hours to kind of initially lay it out for a group and then, but the points of application are so broad, that people start shifting their thinking about what they bring to the table and how they bring it to the table. The development of people when we talk about it, we've been calling it vertical development for a while, because the constructive developmental theory has a harder time connecting with people, but we contrast it to lateral development, kind of the things that we know. And we talk about how important the things that we know are they get us into the game, whatever game that we're playing whatever industry that we're a part of, but they're a hurdle to answer, they're not the distinguishing factor, right? They're not the thing that separates the people that have a huge influence from people who doubt. And, and I think people start to make those connections, Karl, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on what I just said, and what you how you might build on that or add to it or, or contradicted even

Karl Kuhnert  11:00  
The thing that surprises me. And we've seen some people really over a course of our program, which, which in many cases is a number of months, six months or something like that, we've seen some remarkable changes, but when we talk with them afterward, and you know, they're thanking us for the work that we've done, it was clear that they were ready to hear some sort of message, right, you're not going to get anybody in our program. I mean, we're not expecting anybody to change if they come into the program, as Keith said, because it's so obvious, you know, they're like, their arms are closed, and they didn't really want to be here, anyhow, we don't have much in the way of success with them. But you know, we tend to be dealing with, with people who are, you know, in organizations that are, if you will, growth-oriented, I mean, those are those gonna be the people that are gonna do our work. And so they're anxious to see how they can grow and how they can be more effective. 

Scott Allen  11:58  
You all have something in the book, The Map, that is an important statement. And it's a statement that we are working to build the case in this paper that we're working on. And the passage goes like this, "the higher the level of vertical development, the more effective you are in all aspects of life and leadership. In fact, no single factor better predicts your effectiveness than where you are on your vertical journey." I'd love to hear the two of you talk about that statement. Because it's something we're putting forward. The article is going to be titled, tentatively, from mission statements to mission-critical, because we have a lot of colleges of business out there with leadership and their mission statement. But they aren't necessarily taking that work incredibly seriously. And it's getting more and more critical that we really do develop individuals who are on that vertical trajectory, and on that horizontal trajectory of the lateral development. But that's our core thesis, right? From mission statements, just words, slogans, to actually truly taking this seriously and doing this work, and helping people begin on that trajectory.

Keith Eigel  13:09  
Karl, you want to go first? Do you want me to? I've got it's such a fun question, Scott.

Karl Kuhnert  13:14  
Yeah, it is. And I think I want to take the second part of Scott's question to us. And once you take this first part Keith

Keith Eigel  13:22  
okay, and...

Scott Allen  13:24  
I don't remember what I asked!

Keith Eigel  13:27  
So, so how do we, how do we defend kind of the boldness of that statement, in a way, and it's interesting, my dissertation work, which was the beginning of this journey, for me, really was looking at what everybody said about what made leaders effective. And so much of it was knowledge, skill, and ability related. And when we look at almost any knowledge, skill, or ability, it's normally distributed, you can sort of measure people on a scale within their community or against the larger population, or however, you might do that. And one of the things that we began noticing and then one of the things that we looked at in, in the research was that any of these knowledge, skills, and abilities while they are a hurdle to entry, into whatever you're doing, they don't really distinguish effectiveness based on follower ratings based on life satisfaction variables, you know, you can be any personality type. And by the way, we teach personality because we think it's a great way to challenge people's vertical understanding. Hmm, right, but it's but not saying everybody needs to be more of this type in these situations or anything like that. So you know, the thing that we kind of got lucky our I feel like I got lucky on is that I just played this kind of humble graduate student role. And I wrote all of these letters to these CEOs that met really specific criteria and asked them if they would allow me to do basically a subject-object interview on them a constructive Matter interview on them, and would they give me someone else from their organization who, and they never told these people this, who looks like they had all the talent in the world to keep achieving all the pieces were there. But for some reason, they kind of hit a ceiling. And so what I did is, is I started associating in multiple different ways, the things that characterize higher levels on the journey with a more global level of leadership effectiveness. And the end, the data just was overwhelmingly powerful in terms of people at the highest levels, not just positionally, but that, that their effectiveness had been validated in a way by either a board of directors or their tenure, or their ranking in the industry, or all, they had to meet several gigantic criteria for me to even send them a letter. And then I sent 75 letters out and 25 of them said yes, which was totally amazing. And they each gave me at least one person to interview beyond that. And so the conclusion we drew is that as long as the knowledge skills and abilities get you into the area of that you're operating the thing that predicted your effectiveness as a leader, and then when we tied this to other variables over time, yeah. life satisfaction variables. And Dave, back to your, you know, your introduction to Kagan, you said, the mental demands of modern life, but the opening title of that book is in over our heads, yes, right. Right. And when you begin looking at people who feel in over their heads, it is a vertical development problem, it's a leader levels problem, it's that something is being asked of me that's greater than my ability to construct or make sense of the world. And so I feel burned out, or I feel under stress, or I feel panicked, or I don't know what to do, or I'm, I'm checking with everybody else, which way the wind is blowing? Or what are they going to think of me? Or will my boss be happy with this, or, you know, all of these things? And as people move into a more self-authored what we call level four, but I think most people are using the word self-authoring. Now, a few people are not but most people are using self-authored, there is a groundedness and effectiveness that comes out of those higher levels of leadership. And yet, there's a large percentage of the population that is still stuck in this area where they're too concerned about the outside in things in their world. And so Karl, I didn't was that kind, Karl, was that the first half of the question?

Scott Allen  17:43  
I don't know, either, Karl, you're gonna have to let us know.

Karl Kuhnert  17:46  
Well, what's got you, you kind of ended in a really interesting place for me. And it was actually more interesting than the first part of that question, which was actually what you're working on, which is this idea of moving from mission statements to mission-critical. One of the things that, you know, we talk about, and the way we think about doing our programs is this distinction between "knowing that," and "knowing how," and the mistake, I think that we make in education, and I'll expand, expand is more than than the way Keith and I operate our programs, is that we spend a lot of time and I'll use the metaphor here of a bike. Right? And what happens is, we spend all our time in education describing the bike. You know, we can spend weeks on the gears. Yeah, the history, like, oh, my gosh, we have to do the history to buy Did you know that? And then we know we have eras we have epochs, right of time in which we use the bike and we used it more we use it less. And, you know, we talked about racing bikes, we can talk, you know, we talked about tricycle, I mean, like we're on, we're on the knowledge of the bike, we know that what we ended up not doing so much as what we should, is knowing how yes to ride that bike. And the interesting thing is, you will never get to "know how" to write you will never be sorry, you will never get to know actually all of that unless you actually ride the bike. Yeah, because you can't teach balance, right? No, you can't teach it. You have to ride the bike. And so so much of what we do is not so much create a curriculum around concepts it's around them and where they are. So they're riding the bike and you know, we know, right? We know that to ride a bike, you have to fall. You can't learn to ride a bike unless you fall and more than likely you're gonna skin your knee and it's gonna hurt. And this was one of the really great books on what I'm just talking about. Here is Richard Rohr. Our Oh, HR and he talks about growing by falling down. And one of the things that I think Keith and I would agree on is that growth doesn't happen so much because you want it to happen. It's because something usually isn't working. You know, yeah, made the same mistake about three or four times, right. And we see, we see actually a great deal of development of what people who, who either get fired or lose their jobs. And that was a time for them to think about things maybe differently.  

Scott Allen  20:28  
I almost...your example right there. You know, we could have a really fun conversation armchair, I'm sharing Steve Jobs, but him exiting apple, and then re-entering Apple, there was a shift, there was a shift in who he became when he re-entered Apple, then when he was fired, would you all at least agree that that,

Karl Kuhnert  20:50  
in fact, there's you know, there's literature on this very topic, probably in the 70s... Where they talked about all leaders are twice-born.

Scott Allen  21:01  
That's Zaleznik. It was Abraham Zaleznik Wow. But it's this good job. That was in some random spot back here.

Karl Kuhnert  21:11  
It was good. You know, I went there, I went there in my mind, and I went, I'm not gonna get this. 

Scott Allen  21:17  
You know I read my wife Abraham Zaleznik ay my wedding! No, I'm kidding!

David Rosch  21:23  
Touche! 

Karl Kuhnert  21:24  
And so that's the point of this. And it's, it's kind of interesting. I thought I thought that you know, after reading Keegan, or after listening to Keegan this past week, yes. He realizes, I mean, you know, we're all at this place now. Where it's very easy to talk about these levels of development and have people think, Oh, this is not that hard. I jokingly remind people that just because they can read the slide doesn't mean they're at level five. But, but what happens, what happens is, you know, we're all in some ways, most of us are in transition between levels. And oh, by the way, that's where life is. Good. Because guess what, you know, we're, if we're, if we're at a level, and we're comfortable, and we're stuck. And there's not a whole lot of growth going on. And the real growth happens in the transitions. 

Keith Eigel  22:20  
All we need to do to move from mission statements to mission-critical is start firing people, right? I'll grow them up. That's, I mean, what Karl is getting at, and I'm obviously being funny, but it is the challenges that fuel growth, and those challenges a lot of times are hard and difficult, and a lot of times have negative or collateral damage to them, right. But there's also when you start to wrap your arms around the principles of challenge, you can recognize that some of the high points of your life getting married, having children getting promoted finishing a degree when you really start to evaluate what made those so profound in your growth and your development. It was the fact that they were challenging, they challenge the way you understood the world, in the same way, a firing can. And when you get your arms around that you can begin to recognize that there are challenges in our life, everywhere. There's a rub with a colleague, right that is so easy to just sweep under the rug, or there is a thing that you don't fully understand or don't know how to do. Those are challenges we can engage in, that can grow us that don't have the same kind of collateral damage. 

Scott Allen  23:36  
And you also say something in the book that's very, very wise. And it gets too well, you know, the whole challenging life experiences accelerate, or they can arrest development. We hunker down, we don't confront, we don't seek out resources, we don't go for assistance and help and it causes us to entrench, would you agree maybe even at times deeper into where we are, as a self-protective response? What do you how do you think about that?

Keith Eigel  24:06  
I mean, I've interviewed so many people who are entrenched to the point of intractability, I think, I mean, there are people who have stopped growing at level two, and usually, they have a story that makes that that thing makes sense, right? There's where I, we've mentioned this in the book, but their teenage years were not about growth. They were about survival. Right. And survivals a very focused thing. And but yeah, you know, where you can see people that are entrenched in any place along the journey, and their ability to hold the challenge that can grow them to hold that growth at bay. It depends and it's complex, and, well, we've got ideas about it. I don't think we've really put our like there's no magic you can point to the thing and put your finger on it and Be and be done with it. But where it is hardest I think are, you know, you've got sort of in constructive developmental model, you've got the more independent stages of growth of two and four. And you've got the more integrated stages of growth at three and five, and we call it socialized. And then And then Bob is now using the word self-transforming for five. But Karl and I have always found that the names are more limiting than the numbers, you can be stuck at almost any place along that journey with perhaps the exception of five, right, but it's interesting how overtly narcissistic getting stuck at level two is how overtly Blamey getting stuck at level three is increasingly things are not your fault, right to the point of almost absurdity. And at level four stuckness. And this is how I use this a lot and it cracks people up. But it's, it's this idea of all of us have met cranky old people that start most of their sentences with Well, in my generation, right, and they're in there in that self-authored construction. But it has gotten as narrower and smaller as the world. And at level four, I think it's the easiest place to stop. Because usually, if you made it to level four, you have resources in success, that allow you to just create a bubble around your need to grow, you can hold it at bay by just running out to the golf course or down to the wine cellar or off on vacation, you know. So again, I don't know if I have a tendency to over-answer questions or not. So just raise your hand and rein me in. 

Scott Allen  26:45  
No, you're good. You're all good, Dave. Yeah.

David Rosch  26:48  
Well, in what I'm thinking about listening to the two of you talk is that the central theme of challenge in being able to put people in challenge, and I'm thinking about the context of education, and where we have, we have students in classrooms and on our college campuses, and in our, in our high schools getting involved and engaged. And I think we as educators have the privilege and honor of being able to engineer challenges in a lot of different ways, what we don't necessarily have the ability to do is fire our students, or put them in situations where we know they're gonna, they're going to skin their knees in a serious way to use Karl's analogy, when I'm thinking about and I would love some insight if you if the two of you have thoughts about this is, is where do we find the balance of being able to challenge and rock students to increase the chances that they're going to, they're going to transform it and begin to become more mature and vertically developed? What we'll also be creating as little collateral damage as possible.

Keith Eigel  27:41  
Yeah, Karl, your world, my friend, I differ immediately on this, because you've, uh, he's got some stories that are fantastic. Karl has fired students.

Karl Kuhnert  27:57  
And they've come back to thank me later. Hey, no, that's great, that's really a great question, David, I really appreciate that. And I'm gonna answer it this way, is that I think the most important thing that we can do, as I'm gonna say this as parents, right, but we can do this as teachers too. But I think what we need to do is make sure that we allow our children to make mistakes, to make errors to not take the challenge of dealing with that those interpersonal squabbles, you know, in eighth grade, you know, I have a couple of daughters, I know what this is like, and, and not fixing the problem. And it's really interesting. And actually, I actually had this woman put up her hand and say, "Does that mean I should stop helping my teenage daughter do her homework?" And I went, Oh, my gosh, did that mean the whole? The group? What all I mean, they kind of law? Rarely, is that what you're saying? And I was like, okay, okay, and understand. The problem here was really about how she understood what love meant, for her love meant taking care of your kids making sure they don't have a bad experience.

Scott Allen  29:11  
They don't skin their knee.

Karl Kuhnert  29:13  
They don't say their knee. They don't learn balance. And we see this, by the way. I mean, this is now you know, it's part of our everybody gets a trophy kind of thing. You know, we hear a lot about that. But we don't really understand the fact that these kids actually need to experience these kinds of losses. Because what's going to happen is I mean, that's our job as parents are to help them make sense of the loss, not to try to prevent the loss. Yes. Right. But again, I'm not I have to always be careful. I'm not saying that you don't scream at your kid if they're running out on the street in a busy street. I mean, that that's, that's different, but I'm talking about day-to-day living and not going all out to make sure that your daughter gets the lead role in the high school play and trying to make that Write for her. And so this is this idea. I mean Can Can love be more about being there for your kids challenging them, but know that you always got their back. But again, I'll challenge every teacher here on this one is that you have to meet people where they are. And I mean, I've had you know, is a bit very interesting for me because I've really had I have to change my curriculum by teaching class, depending on who I'm teaching. And so it's, it's, it's a great word I came across recently that I love, it's called attunement, which is essentially meeting people where they are. But I think, if we really want to make a difference in our coaching lives and in our leadership lives and in our daily lives, is to really go as far as we can to really understand what someone else is saying. And I can go even farther here and talk about cognitive empathy, not necessarily not there, say emotional empathy, but actually being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and understand where they're coming from.

Scott Allen  30:59  
Keith, you wanted to jump in? Sir?

Keith Eigel  31:01  
Yeah, you know, I've had the privilege of working with a lot of faculty and administrative leaders in higher ed and then over 150 teachers over a decade long period at the biggest independent school in the United and the continental United States, that happens to be located here in Atlanta. I think part of the, you know, teachers are playing an incredibly important role in the knowledge, skill and ability development of people, right. But you also have such unique insight. And this is, you know, I'm a father of four. I think I might have just said that. But so I think there is and this is me watching Karl as well a lot and hearing his stories, but when the challenges come up for a student that is bumping up against the way they're making sense of the world, the deal is not to give them advice that fixes the challenge. But give them advice on how to lean into the challenge in increasingly effective ways. Karl, I thought for sure you're going to tell the milk and my roommate's story. Yeah, right. It gave an indication of how to meet this person where they were because what they were struggling with is that their roommate Karl, check me if I'm wrong, but was drinking their milk? And should I call my parents? Right? Am I getting it close to right Karl?

Karl Kuhnert  32:27  
That's it. That's it. This is uh, this is the first week of school. And this was a dad who called me dad calls me and says My daughter just started UGA. I mean, she's a National Merit winner. Very smart. I mean, very talented. Very, you know, what happened was, you know, she's in school the first week, and she calls home and says, Dad, my roommates drink all the milk. What should I do? Yeah, no, Dad's response to me was gracious that I screw this up, you know? So he's Yeah, he's all concerned now. Yeah. The short answer is yes, of course. But the best part of this is right. And this is a this is actually the thing was that he took care of everything for Yeah, they had the biggest house, the 90 square foot TV, the pool, the refrigerator full of soft drinks, never had to make a friend or life because everybody wants to come to their house. And now the littlest thing that most people will not even think about derails her.

Scott Allen  33:26  
Yeah, she's not equipped, right? 

Karl Kuhnert  33:28  
There's no resilience, right? This is what happens. And I have to this is this. This happened just recently. And I just got to tell this story. So it was so profound when he told us to me, this was a group I was working with at UCLA. And I like going there because I always get different people. I get in the southeast. And so there's a movie director, and I'm talking about leader levels and talking about this stuff. And he comes up to me and he says, Hey, Karl, listen, I've been working, you know, as a director for 25 years. He says, you know, what I've known is true, is that when any one of my people hit stardom, they stopped growing. Wow, wow. That's the way they remarked they remain, they remain for the next 1520 years. They're the same person because they got stuck. It's all the fame, it's all glory. It's all the everything they want. They can do. Everybody, you know, loves them. And so what happens is, in 10 years, they're in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, because they can't now handle life without that particular environment that they're having. And we see this all-time we see this athlete, I mean, again, it goes on and on and on. But this is the power of getting comfortable and getting comfortable in a way that ultimately doesn't serve your growth and the consequences that follow.

Keith Eigel  34:47  
Yeah, it reinforces the homeostasis right, it reinforces that hold that holding environment. One more thing for people in higher education. I think one of the things that and this may be true for you may be a handful of juniors in high school. A few more seniors in high school, but certainly in higher education, is this idea of meeting people where they are, is very, it's a very complicated role for the teacher to play. Because you've got the girl who doesn't know what to do with her roommate drinking her milk. Yep. And you've got kids who have grown up in broken homes that have made incredible sense of this. And they're actually moving out of three into four. Yeah, they're beginning that journey of who they're going to be. Or maybe they were bullied. Or maybe they, maybe had to figure stuff out, because the challenge in their lives that other kids didn't have to figure out. And so what does it mean to set up an environment where you're allowing challenges to emerge, but not allowing someone to drown? Yes, in the challenges when one person there's no chance of drowning? Yeah, but the other person could go straight to the bottom of the pool. Right? And that I have the role of teachers as mentors, on the vertical journey is so critical. And I and most of the higher educators that I have worked with, I think, get that in theory, but they don't they like, well, what am I supposed to do about that? Right? And so they allow a lot of kids, they put challenges in front of them that are way beyond their stage of development, their level of development

David Rosch  36:28  
or not enough. They make it too easy, or

Keith Eigel  36:31  
Or not enough. Thank you. Yeah.

Karl Kuhnert  36:33  
Thank you. That's good.

Scott Allen  36:34  
Dave, we're short on time. Do you have another question you want to jump in with? Or would you like me to start? And then you ask us the last question, how would you like it? Yeah, go ahead, Scott. Yeah. Okay, since writing the map, and we're gonna have links to everything in the show notes so that people can access those resources. What are some recent insights that the two of you have had, as you think about this work? Because what I love Keith is that and both of you are actually in the field working to see if this can be operationalized, your practice practicing and you are learning and you're in this wonderful space of experimentation. Are there some insights that you've had recently that stand out for you?

Karl Kuhnert  37:16  
I can, either one, I'm ready,

Keith Eigel  37:18  
Go, go. I've got something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, that I think is the thing that's hitting me but you go,

Karl Kuhnert  37:24  
Thank you, that's where I kind of I am, this is something that's really been on my mind. And it's again, it's, it's, it's very recent, I'm always, I spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, our stuckness. Right. What keeps us in place? And I don't know where this came from, but it feels like that we are biased. I'm gonna say this, in a general sense, maybe in a human sense that we are biased to preserve our own rightness, right. And the reason I know that's true is that it's why it's so difficult to forgive someone. Because we're right. And I'm wondering, recently, if we were able to forgive more easily, and a lot of this is, it's pretty, pretty powerful stuff. But I think if we were able to forgive more easily, there would be more self-doubt in us. Interesting. I think that opens up. I think that self-doubt actually opens up avenues, new avenues for us, that we won't see because we're so concerned about our own ego. And, and being right, and as I look around, and I'll say this, and I'll let up, let chief go here, but I think I mean, how many mistakes get made in companies, by people who have to be right. Yeah, no, I think it's one of these areas where I would like to explore this idea of, are we willing to give up the right to be right? And what would that look like? If we could be a little more curious if we could be a little bit less demanding? less sure of ourselves. And again, you think about that Think, think of the curriculum we have right now in the world. I mean, we're living right now, the curriculum is unbelievable. You don't need a class. I mean, yeah, well limit it. You know, whether it's a pandemic, you know, whether it's social justice, you know, we can go on and on and on, whether it's technology, you know, what's going on with AI and ethics, and we go on and on and on. And this is the time when we really do need to be open. Yeah. to what's going on Bob's book about, you know, the mental demands, and they've never been higher. Yeah, for all of us. And so, I'm starting to get on my soapbox here. So I like to

Scott Allen  39:44  
go to an important box. It's an important box.

Keith Eigel  39:47  
What I'm gonna say is going to sound so much less deep than what Karl just said when he went to forgiveness. For me, I think, when we wrote the book, and really my understanding leading up to that, obviously, because that's what God Express there is that this idea of we're never not ourselves, I put a narrower range of kind of understanding on the developmental journey where we kind of had our position. And maybe within a fifth of a stage going either direction kind of categorized most of who we are. Yeah. Most of our experience, I think, especially in a series of coaching relationships, I've been engaging in with people who fully for moving in the direction of five really aggressive learners growers' wanting to lean in, I have been surprised at how many how wide that range might be around kind of our center, what Nancy pop, who worked with Kegan, called our center of gravity. Okay, right, right, that if we were going to score somebody, we'd say their center of gravity as kind of a three parenthesis for or, you know, whatever nomenclature you want to use, but within a range. But in a number of these coaching relationships, seen things almost emerge from unevaluated. Childhood family kinds of things that were really level three could even at times be kind of self-focused, all the way up to a magnanimous. And wisdom that is so far beyond where they are in these moments. And again, I say there probably is somewhat of a bell curve that forms around these things. But we should not be surprised when things that we thought we were well past, rear their head. Hmm. We should not be derailed by that we should embrace it, and say, Wow, how lucky am I to stumble on this thing? Yeah, in my life that I've not stumbled on before. And so I think that's the thing. Maybe that struck me a little bit over the last few years. Yeah. Is that this range of experience? Does that fuel this growth? Is it wider? Hmm. I think then I thought, I haven't put any research around that yet. But, but the anecdotal stuff doesn't lie a lot of times, right?

David Rosch  42:17  
Dave? Yeah, this is less.

Scott Allen  42:21  
The last question so well, Emily, as co-host, we need to end on a very, I don't know, I'm just thinking like the end of William Tell Overture where the drums are all just

David Rosch  42:32  
right. Right. The symbols are coming out. Yeah. Put a bow maybe it's to do with pressure. Right. Right. Right.

Scott Allen  42:43  
The Level 2 co-host.

David Rosch  42:50  
To that point, Scott. I don't even have a question I like I'm just reflecting, I guess more than anything else about how a common theme of what we've talked about is the need to have challenges in our life. And people in our lives, who could challenge us while also not doing that, where they're always poking at us, causing us to create thicker skin, but doing that in supportive ways to get us to open our eyes because it's about opening our eyes. That's the important part of the vertical growth that Karl and Keith are talking about. So I have let it be less of a question then. It seems like that's what we've been talking a lot about. 

Scott Allen  43:25  
You did it man! He wrapped it up in a bow! That was wonderful. And the only other thing I would kind of contribute to that would be this. I forget the phrasing. Vail used it. But in this book by John wagon that I was talking about a little bit with everyone before the show began deep learning in a disorienting world. He talks about kind of there's a curiosity, a continuous curiosity, and a humility about what we think we know. And curiosity and I heard this need for curiosity, and both Karl's and keys answer that we stay in this place of humility. And as these things are knocking, are we approaching them with curiosity and a level of humility versus and trenching and trenching ourselves in judgment and closing down and closing off from

Keith Eigel  44:12  
that is that that spirit of curiosity, that mindset of curiosity, and openness to what is new is just such an accelerant for the journey? You know, before we get off, Scot, thank you for your commitment to this podcast. I Karl, I'm sure I'm echoing this for Karl, but thank you, what an honor and a blast to be a part of this and just what you're doing, collectively across these episodes as a contribution to the field. You know, it's so much fun.

Scott Allen  44:47  
Well, thank Thank you. Thank you. Well, Dave, Dave was my first guest. And that episode was called I Have a Fear and, and he said, I have a fear that all this stuff we're doing isn't really making a difference. And that really in a nice way kind of set a tone for this journey and these conversations and explorations. And I'm so thankful for the experience because it's been one of great learning. And it's made me feel very humble as to what still needs to be learned. But it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And so really quick, how can individuals get in touch with you? We will put all of these links in the show notes. But Keith, Karl, how can people learn more about your work and learn more about you?

Keith Eigel  45:34  
For me, you can go to www.leaderslycium.com. And I can get you can connect with me there. I'm on LinkedIn, just Keith Eigel email addresses long, but it's keith.eigel@leaderslyceum.com - I'll let people figure out how to a that'll be in the show notes. Yeah. So...love to talk to people. Karl, you? 

Yeah, it's basically the same as my email at Emory, which is karl.kuhnert@emory.edu. And I'm on LinkedIn as well.

Scott Allen  46:07  
Great. Gentlemen, Dave, that was an awesome wrap-up. Great questions. Thank you, sir, for joining us today. Keith. Karl, thank you so much for the good work that you do. We really, really appreciate it. And it's core to how we're thinking about this work. Literally, we're meeting later today. And we will reflect on this conversation. And it'll be woven into what we write about in the coming months. So we can't thank you enough for your good work.

Keith Eigel  46:33  
It's an honor, Scott. Thank you. Okay, be well

Transcribed by https://otter.ai