Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen

Dr. Jonathan Reams - Integral Leadership

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 66

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Stretch your mind and explore the world of integral leadership! This quote stood out for me - I have a lot to learn! "Instead of looking at linear causality  ('well, we’ll have to figure out who’s to blame'), people can start to see that there are multiple considerations, multiple influences, systemic ways of looking at things. That has been one of the core elements of integral leadership."

Dr. Jonathan Reams has an insatiable curiosity about the essence of human nature and how to cultivate this essence in the service of leadership. He is a professor at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he teaches and researches 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 European Center for Leadership Practice and the Center for Transformative Leadership. 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. He brings awareness-based technology to this work, focusing on how the inner workings of human nature can develop leadership capacities for today’s complex challenges. 


Learn More About Jonathan's Work

Quotes From This Episode

  • (On consciousness) "the simple four-quadrant map where there’s the interior subjective world, but there’s also the external behavior of individuals. Then there’s the collective interior of how culture shapes how we show up as individuals, but there are also external systems, institutions, rewards, and all those kinds of things. So all of this helped me see that there’s more to it than just consciousness. There are interdependencies between these things. And nobody was really talking about this in terms of leadership."
  • "One that has been foremost in my thinking and work is really this developmental notion that we mature, as we grow older, and that the structures or forms or ways you can characterize that maturity, don’t stop just because our bodies stop growing."
  • "In terms of leadership, I’ve seen some things that a friend of mine would call 'proto-integral' - you see people who are starting to put more pieces together."

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

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. Today, ILA is the largest worldwide community committed to leadership scholarship, development, and practice. 

Connect with Your Host, Scott Allen

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

Scott Allen  0:00  
Jonathan, this is how we're going to start this episode. Top three concerts you've attended top three concerts you've ever attended.

Jonathan Reams  0:07  
All three concerts. Okay, so I think Wings over America definitely seen Paul McCartney live. That was cool the year after Led Zeppelin getting there at 11 in the morning and being in this big long party lineup all day and then the big rush get in and getting 50 feet from the stage with 40 foot high stacks of speakers, and legs move and a three and a half-hour concert. But the one that has to take the cake was in this little Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver with a sprung dance floor. Bo Diddley as the opening act 1979 in the Talking Heads, and they played, and they played, and they played it was their second album was out, and they did two encores and they went off and they turn the house lights on, and nobody would leave. 20 minutes later, they had to come back and play for another 20 minutes.

Scott Allen  1:08  
I love the song Cross-Eyed and Painless. I love that song. that those are some Led Zeppelin Paul McCartney Talking Heads. That's pretty darn good.

Jonathan Reams  1:18  
I remember seeing Chicago as a horn band and being able to dance in the auditorium. And yeah, Bob Segar was an opening act for Blue Oyster Cult.

Scott Allen  1:27  
Who was the opening act? I'm sorry.

Jonathan Reams  1:29  
Bob Seger. Heart played our high school dance.

Scott Allen  1:35  
See, you're growing up in Seattle at this point right

Jonathan Reams  1:38  
now. Vancouver and we drive to Seattle for concerts. Yeah.

Scott Allen  1:41  
Nice. Oh, Vancouver is a beautiful city. Yeah. But we have business to do here. Listeners want to hear about leadership. And they want to hear about you, and they want to hear about your work. And everybody. I've been kind of going back and forth a little bit with Jonathan Reams. And Jonathan is at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he teaches their courses in leadership, development, coaching, counseling, and he is the editor in chief of the Integral Review, a transdisciplinary, and transcultural journal for new thought, practice, and research. He did his Ph.D. in Spokane, Washington at Gonzaga, a fellow Jesuit institution. And I am so excited for this conversation, Jonathan, I have been having a conversation with a number of editors from different journals from around the world. And the opportunity to have this, this conversation with you. And specifically, on the topic of integral leadership. I know that that's an area that you've written in. And I think that's not a topic that I've explored on this podcast. So maybe share a little bit more about you. I've kind of dipped my toes. We know about your musical history and your professional life, but maybe there are some gaps you want to fill in about yourself? And then let's talk about integral leadership.

Jonathan Reams  3:02  
Okay, so you want the two-minute bio, born in Moscow, Idaho, moved to Canada with my parents, when I was about five grew up outside of Vancouver, BC, and we had 5000 pigs. So I know how to do all sorts of things around animals. We had cattle and sheep too, and stuff like that. But I was a college dropout. I dropped out of my second year of the University of British Columbia studying physics and philosophy when I was 18. Because I was bored with logical positivism. There was something just so deadening about that and I took a class on logic. And first I just walked in and walked out and the physics I liked, and I kind of followed up in indirect ways. But I really realized I wanted something more around consciousness development, I wanted inner work and personal growth. This is what I was really looking for. And so you know, I ended up taking up a spiritual practice and delivering pizzas, and working at a sawmill and, you know, then managing some farms over the years but eventually went back to school did correspondence, got tired of the correspondence and this is how I then ended up at Gonzaga. So I was living north of there a couple 100 miles in a little town in British Columbia called Nelson BC. Few have seen them. Steve Martin film Roxanne that was filmed there when I moved there. Okay, beautiful little mountain town, you know, where Esquire magazine called it the next new-age Nirvana, beautiful place. So I built a log house on the side of the mountain there, you know, raised to family did all that kind of stuff, but started commuting weekly to Gonzaga. And how I got into leadership was really the serendipity kind of in a way I thought I was going to be a high school teacher of history. Are you No English literature, and this is what I was studying a lot. And I went down and this Jesuit counselor was saying, Well, here's how you can finish your degree. And I went to a state school too. And, you know, Gonzaga was like six times the money on the discount for mature students. But the quality of service just blew me away. And I just said, "Oh, I gotta go here." But as he was talking, he said, "You know, we've got this new program, this Master's in organizational leadership, you might want to think about when you finish your bachelor's," and as he said that, this booming voice in my head said, "Do That!"

Scott Allen  5:35  
Oh, wow.

Jonathan Reams  5:37  
Really, it was just one of those moments of kind of divine intervention and guidance, it hit me. And so I signed up for that Master's in organizational leadership, had some wonderful mentors at Gonzaga, got exposed to a lot of people finished my master's degree. And you know, it's kind of hooked on student loans, and suddenly realized I better do a Ph.D. to keep extending the student loans. And so I ended up spending eight years there.

Scott Allen  6:09  
Wow, that's a lot of commuting. Jonathan, did you eventually moved to Spokane? Are you commuting this whole time?

Jonathan Reams  6:15  
I commuted every week for eight years. But a three and a half-hour drive in the wintertime. Sometimes it was pretty hairy, going through the mountains.

Scott Allen  6:24  
And so you know, Uncle Stafford very well, then uncle Stafford Loan?

Jonathan Reams  6:30  
Yes. maxed out on them. I think at the current rate, I'll be done paying when I'm 84.

Scott Allen  6:41  
I know uncle Stafford pretty well, we have a month we have a relationship for a few more years as well. Yeah. Well, that's great. So where did it hit you to really explore this whole area of integral leadership and integral studies?

Jonathan Reams  6:54  
Yeah, well, I think it was trying to find avenues in the world and resonated and connected with what I'd gotten. So I took up spiritual practice when I was 19. And when I went back to university at 31, I thought, I want something to make a bridge into the world. I'm tired of being a carpenter, dump truck driver, snow plow truck driver, doing whatever, yeah, and getting a master's degree. And somehow I wanted to kind of bring more integration into my life. So I was looking for ways and so when I got into the leadership program, I was explicitly saying, "How can I talk about consciousness?" which was this loose, fluffy term and you know, lots of ways of talking about a casually and informally a new age and this and that. But I remember, for instance, coming across a postcard for the Tucson, "Towards a Science of Consciousness" conference, and I got on their listserv and started engaging people and met some really cool people and got to a couple of conferences. Oh, okay. So there's something serious here. Yeah. So when I got into my Ph.D. program in I started at Gonzaga in 98, in the Ph.D. program, was about the same time that I was getting connected with some people in the Bay Area and others who were in kind of Ken Wilber's, Integral Circles. And there I think I read Journal of Consciousness article of his from '96, then a couple of other things in psychology in 2000. Okay, here's a place where there's not only a clear understanding of consciousness, but how it shows up in the world, you know, the simple four-quadrant map where there's the interior subjective world, but there's also the external behavior of individuals. Now, then there's the collective interior of how does culture shape how we show up as individuals, but there's also external systems, institutions, rewards, and all those kinds of things. So all of this helped me see that, okay, there's more to it than just consciousness. There are interdependencies between these things. And nobody's really talking about this in terms of leadership very much. There were people talking about spirituality. I saw in hindsight, there were people talking about agile development, people like Karl Kuhnert, or Bill Torbert who I met around that time. Yep. And those were kind of my ways into that one.

Scott Allen  9:21  
So then what are the next steps? Where does it go from there? So your

Jonathan Reams  9:25  
So then, I want to say, hey, all these serendipities I was looking to do my dissertation, and how do I bring these things together and I wanted to do a little course I want to build a course around this kind of stuff and try it out until of course, the only place I could find to get people interested was in the Bay Area. And I was, you know, meeting here and there with people and I went to the Chaordic Alliance Offices, okay. And was talking with the guy there and we got to say, Yeah, this consciousness the problem for them with How to lead chaotic organizations to require a different level of consciousness than they were encountering. So how do you develop and cultivate that? So he put me in touch with a bunch of people, one of whom had started a listserv called Integral Leadership and Organizational Development. And so I was on discussing with Susanne Cook-Greuter, and Bill Torbert, and Don Beck, and Jenny Wade, and all these kinds of people. Yep, being this naive newbie from the middle of nowhere in Canada. And one of the people there invited me to be on the board of an organization that they were founding as an alternative to Ken Wilber is Integral Institute, because one of the things that a number of people saw were the kind of personality centric nature of that organization had some limitations to it eventually. And so they thought, "Well, can we do this another way?" So I was involved in those conversations, and one of the people said, you know, if we're going to do all this kind of work, we should have a journal to publish what we do. And so that was the founding of Integral Review. And I got volunteered for the committee and the German guy, Reinhard Fuhr, who suggested it needed an English speaking, co-editor, to everybody else took one step back, and there I was.

Scott Allen  11:25  
Now, Jonathan, was Russ Volkman involved in this at this point?

Jonathan Reams  11:29  
So Russ was one of the co-founders in that group. Yes. Okay. The article I wrote in the first issue on what's the new rule about leadership was originally going to be a co-production with Ross. And we talked and we talked. And all I did, he has so much stuff he can pack in there. And at some point, I said, I can't deal with it all. I got to do a simple introductory article.

Scott Allen  11:55  
Well, I just remember meeting him at ILA conferences. Yeah. And we didn't really even ever speak all that much. But he was always kind of wandering around. And we always had this really nice kind of pleasant conversation. And, and then we'd kind of part ways, but that's great. That's great. So you were on the ground floor of the founding of that journal. Now, so bring people into some of the, let's go with just two or three introductory concepts as people think about integral leadership.

Jonathan Reams  12:26  
So I think the one that has been foremost in my thinking and work is really this developmental notion that we mature, as we grow older, and that the structures or forms or ways you can characterize that maturity, don't stop just because our bodies stopped growing. Yeah. But then they can go on, and that that has a big impact. Because basically, what leaders are doing or what individuals are doing, that affects their leadership, is they're kind of having a greater span of the width of what they can take a perspective on, and the degree to which they can coordinate them. So for instance, instead of looking at linear causality, well, we'll have to figure out who's to blame. Yeah, people can start to see that there are multiple considerations, multiple influences, systemic ways of looking at things. And that's the kind of developmental maturity. So that has been kind of one of the core elements of integral leadership because it really affects the kind of inner workings. I also find, though, that you know, the Jesuit motto of "head, heart, and hands," the integration of intellect with the heart or spirit, with the action in the world of service or whatever is a really key component as well, that is not just intellectual, it's not just behavioral. It's all of these and more needing to be accounted for and attended to.

Scott Allen  14:05  
Yeah. And if they're not in concert...

Jonathan Reams  14:08  
Well, a simple example. We have an article we published so 10 years, almost 10 years ago. Now in Norway, there was the kind of the biggest national tragedy you can say there's this guy, Anders Breivik set off a bomb in the Parliament Buildings in Oslo, and then went out to an island where these young liberal youth we're having a retreat, the machine gun and gun down 77 kids. And in Norway, four and a half, 5 million people. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody who was killed. Very traumatic naturally. Now, some people analyzed his writing and his mentors wrote in said, this person was actually very complex in their thinking, yeah, but the ethical foundation of what they were thinking about what they were trying to justify...and this is this as well, but about lagging lines of development notion or Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. Yeah, the fact that we have different domains that we show up in, and if you're so narrow down one area to that you totally neglect others. You know what, you've seen people who are super bright, but neglect the relational? Yep. Do I use Sheldon in Big Bang Theory as an example of this kind of thing? Right? Yes, people are intellectual, but social skills are a little lacking. That whole concept of the importance of moral-ethical skills, relational skills, all of these are necessary for leadership is not just enough to know the right thing or have the drive to do things. 

Scott Allen  15:47  
Well, and if some of those to your point, if that ethical domain is not, if that that "shop" is not in order, that can be incredibly tragic. Well, so what are you seeing in your role as editor of the integral review? You have a bird's eye view of this space. And I think that's a wonderful perspective. So what are you seeing what are some themes you're noticing in some of the current submissions? And then what are some of the opportunities that you see? And if we could kind of slant this a little bit towards leadership? That's great. We don't have to, but what are some of the themes you're seeing of what's coming in? And then what are some opportunities you see maybe even some gaps that people could be considering as spaces that are ripe for investigation?

Jonathan Reams  16:36  
Well, first of all, we would encourage people to think about submitting this is part of our biggest challenge is getting sufficient quality submissions. We're a bit picky. You know, that's true. But we're very friendly with authors who and we work with authors often for a long time, who and give feedback in multiple iterations to if we people have a good idea or a good way of thinking about something and just need some help, kind of developing it to a more robust way. We're glad to do that. I would say one of the things that I've seen is that there's almost a generational shift from the early things like when I first wrote it was mostly about Ken Wilber his notion of integral. But now there are much broader and more ways of understanding how other thinkers have moved to this kind of meta-systematic kind of more complex ways of thinking there are other models, there are way more ways of approaching things in an integral way, just using the determine and generic way rather than specifically related to Wilber. And I think that has opened up the possible ways we can look at this. And in terms of leadership, I've seen some things that are a friend of mine would call proto-integral, you see people who are starting to put more pieces together, right, that they're going in their journey, you know, their maturity and development, they encounter the limitations of certain models that they have come across or work within practice. And they start to see the need to include another dimension, and they start putting those together, and then you start to see it blossoming out. Yeah. And that there are better models for understanding things like change processes. So some of Thomas Jordan, a friend of mine here in Sweden, and one of the other founders of the journal has done a lot of research developmentally thinking about how do people out in practice, have theories of change models? And how are they informed by development without using those words or terms? But how do we see it happening in the world? So there's a more open-minded rather than jargon-driven way of looking at it.

Scott Allen  19:00  
Nice. Talk to me about opportunities that you see, what are some gaps, there are some missing components that you would like to see people exploring? And real quick before you answer that. I love the developmental perspective that you have just shared, that you all are willing to work with authors to help them develop their ideas because I think at times that world can be incredibly cold. You have reviewer number two, who's always a little too harsh, mean-spirited. You feel you feel bad about yourself after reading their 77 pieces of feedback.

Jonathan Reams  19:39  
I guess it's the diplomat in me that has and through this role, having to collate reviewer feedback and pass it on to people tried to see how can this be useful? I mean, we want to be helpful to people we don't want to be just you know, mean, and we're not So how would I say inundated with things that we can just kind of put a filter and push people away? Yeah, although it's not that there's there is there are times when we get things that are just not in scope and not up to snuff, and we just have to find somewhere else. And but the things that I think would be most interesting are these very grounded practical ways in which you can see things that are going on that you think somehow that works, why does it work? What is enabling leaders to develop here? And how can these theories help us be more granular and comprehensive about understanding what's going on so that we can then you know, create these kinds of Agile learning loops to constantly feedback because whatever is good enough now is not going to be good enough in five years?

Scott Allen  20:56  
So yeah, what would be an example of that? What's the closest thing you can think of that comes to that that you've come across? I love the question. Because it's, it's a fun, fun puzzle.

Jonathan Reams  21:08  
It's a tough quintile on supervised co-supervise on a Ph.D. in Australia right now. And one of the things this person did was they kind of have this is someone who, from South Africa has met and worked with Nelson Mandela, has global clients and tried to then bring the kind of academic credibility to her work. And of course, there's a big learning curve and trying to up the game there. But the practical example the on the ground experiences there. But in the process of having to kind of look at the literature and see, okay, what happened from when David Day wrote this, and how did that evolve? And how have people tried to build integrative models and what else needs to be integrated? Yeah, seeing that work, go on and get to support and help with that is super interesting. Now, taking that into case studies and saying, if we build a model, and we try to run people through this, can it do something useful? So the more kind of experimentation, not having to be comprehensive and say, here's what we think could be an improvement based on where we're at? And how do you have the meta-process of what is guiding our learning? What is informing it? What do we learn from reflecting on it afterward?

Scott Allen  22:32  
Jonathan, I'm jumping this question on you. So take a moment if you need to, let's say you wanted to, let's say you have a person standing in front of you. And they said I need to be developed. You need to develop me and my leadership abilities, knowledge, skills, abilities, mindsets, however, we want to think about it. What are a few pieces of that puzzle? What pieces would you put into place? As starting points?

Jonathan Reams  23:07  
Well, you will see if you're still excited. You know, the first thing that comes to my mind with a situation like that is you listen carefully and ask a lot of questions of the person.

Scott Allen  23:21  
Okay,

Jonathan Reams  23:22  
good. You really have to figure out what do they already know where what are what is kind of implicit or tacit knowledge for them already, that they maybe just haven't understood that they know, or possibly have some socialized influences that need to be taken out and polished up and upgraded. Yeah, but grounding it in their existing life world. To me, the first thing,

Scott Allen  23:53  
I love it.

Jonathan Reams  23:54  
I love it. And from there, you have to depend on, you know, having in your back pocket, so to speak, a broad range of models or ideas. So how we got in touch through this Prometheus Project where there's a meta-model framework to say how can somebody find themselves within all the constellation of things that are necessary for leading and developing yourself as a leader? And how can you learn to navigate in that? You need that in the back pocket, but you're not going to overwhelm a person with a meta-model like this. That's not going to be helpful, except for us theory geeks.

Scott Allen  24:36  
That would be a little overwhelming, right? Yeah.

Jonathan Reams  24:39  
And so I think this is a big role for coaches, facilitators, teachers, to be the kind of moderator or mediator of this, you know, growing rich body of integral and integrative models. And understanding what are the immediate needs and growth edges. And I think the other thing that I really liked from Karl Kuhnert, and Keith Eigel's book, The Map is this notion of life. Well, my teacher said this life will teach you better. The challenges that we need to grow from are always being presented to us. So the question is, can we lean into the challenges. And as Keegan and Lahey, say, you know, these are not challenges for us to solve, but challenges that can solve us 

Scott Allen 
Say more about that? 

Jonathan Reams
Well, I think this goes back to the kind of four quadrants of the universal world in a way. So we often have a view of, you know, the U.S. acting on the world. And we often neglect the way the world acts on us. We internalize it and become normative, we socialize with people who think alike, and look alike, and so on. And so that's just the way the world is, and we don't notice how much we're shaped by it. And yeah, formed at the same time. And this is where, you know, one of my big influences of David Boehm, you know, when he starts out this Thought as a System book is as well, the reason we have problems in the world is that we had other problems previously, and then we thought about them. And now we have new problems. And the source of those problems is simply the incoherence of the thinking process. Yeah, are the limitations of it. So if you think of agile development and maturity models in that way, what they're all saying is, there's something about how we shape the structure and construct meaning internally, that as it expands as the depth and breadth of it expand in the world, we're able to handle more things and so on. So how does that process happen? It happens by failure, we encounter the limits of the mental models and meaning-making that we have, by creating problems in the world and the world feeds them back to us. You know, karma works very nicely. And or as I use the Harbinger work a lot, you know, the notion of collusion, you know, we teach people how to treat us, or, as my friend in Oslo says, you know, we have unintended collaboration. And the thing is if you can help people reframe that and recognize that the challenges to break down some of the frustrations that come to us are simply life mirroring back to us the limits of our own being-ness in the world. Yeah, it's a what is it offering us as feedback that we can say, what have we been on autopilot, about habituated, internalized, and in an unquestioned way, acted on this producing incoherence in the way our worlds going? We see that this the first, you know, regime change begins at home. So if we can start changing ourselves, then we can make some progress.

Scott Allen  28:16  
I love it. Last question. Well, second to the last question. observations on the shift in the transition to Scandinavia. I grew up in North America, Moscow, Idaho, we've talked about Moscow before I love the Palouse. My favorite places in North America. Love Vancouver, and then you make the shift to Trump on Norway.

Jonathan Reams  28:39  
Yeah, yeah, there was definitely some culture shock. I mean, being in Canada is helpful because, you know, in Canada, Canadians often define their cultural identity as not American. Yeah. Even though there is, you know, a large influence that can't be held, but it is more socially oriented. So, you know, instead of the melting pot is the cultural mosaic. The good of the whole in the group is often foreground and to the right of the individual. Coming to Norway, it's more of that. Okay, so one of the things that I encountered a couple of things that shocked me when I first got here so you know, you have to go in lineups and do all these things. One, very technically advanced checks don't exist, haven't for decades. Everything's electronic banking forever. Yeah. So I but I'm going down to the tax office to get registered and all this and I find out well, they print these books every year where everybody's public record of everybody's tax return is open and available. It's a very high trust society. And it's a very one where everybody kind of looks after everybody else in certain ways and of course, that can lead to nosiness and so on. But the privacy of information is not a big thing. So the other way I encountered this was Going to the auto parts store. You know, I'm kind of poverty-driven mechanic of old cars. And so I'm looking for some parts for my car, give them the make and model and all these details, you know, give me your license plate number. What do you mean? That's my information? No, no, just give me your license plate number, and boom, it's in the system, they have the part. Wow. So it's a very high trust society in that sense that people trust the government. They trust them with their information. And that, of course, enables a lot of social kind of relational grease. Things can flow smoothly. Yeah, someone of the engineering companies, we did some leadership development work for here. They were responsible for microchips that rent touchscreens on eight out of 10 smartphones. And their engineers were good. And you see this, and they had offices in other places in the world. But they said, you know, you got to hire a lot of those engineers to make up for one good Norwegian engineer. And it's not that the Norwegians are so clever, but they have these other layers of maturity and other skill sets around because they've been in a society, that scaffolds and supported a kind of growth and development. Well, a couple of friends of mine wrote a book called The Nordic secret. Which basically said that why has Scandinavian society been so successful and their premises that are not economic? It's not resources, not this not? North Sea oil has helped in Norway, no doubt. But essentially, they said it was how enlightenment ideas which were essentially ego development ideas, going from self-centered to being more socially aware and being a good citizen, you eventually branching out on your own being self authored and thinking for yourself and Thomas Bjorkman, people like this, took these ideas. People fed this into the notion of "Bildung" which is doesn't translate well in English, but it's a kind of whole-person formation.

Scott Allen  32:08  
Would it almost be like, the Jesuits, Cura Personalis?

Jonathan Reams  32:13  
but yeah, a little bit, I think, I think, but it's not a kind of education, although it gets translated. Is that sometimes? Okay. Oh, what happened was it got brought into Denmark, who in the 1860s are saying, We've got a democracy now. And we've got a bunch of peasants out in the mud, how do we get people to participate in a meaningful way in society. And they created what they call folk high schools, which allowed 18-19-year-old kids to go and spend six months and get basically, not only the latest farming techniques, but things to help them associate and identify with a nation-state, which is a new concept, by expanding the breadth of their consciousness, also the maturity into being a citizen, rather than just an individual, going from a kind of egocentric to a socialized mind, and then eventually into thinking for yourself. So there's a lot of kind of individuation in a Scandinavian society driven by 60 years of up to 20% of the population going through these folk high schools. And in informed Swedish politics, Norwegian formal education. So these developmental ideas in a different form and name were part of the upbringing of the culture that enabled generations to grow up and have a greater kind of maturity. Now, same time, one of the things I observed when I came here was that these kind of higher-order values informed the governance and the constitutions and these kinds of things, but people tend to follow them as rules. It's just the cultural norms, and they don't always kind of mature to kind of author those themselves. They're just the norms of society. And the really interesting mix of a lot of support for growth and development and individuation, but a lot of don't think you're anybody and Tall Poppy Syndrome kind of stuff. Yep. A lot of conflict avoiding some really interesting mix, but it's certainly a rich ground. I mean, you guys in America are jealous. I mean, I got a position here that was full tenure to start with 50% research, full-time teaching loads of 54 contact hours a semester. They support education and tuition for students is about $100 a semester.

Scott Allen  34:43  
Well, Scandinavia is always at the top of what happiness, education, fitness every, like literally every metric. And so it's fun to hear your perspective on that question because you do wonder what's in the sauce and what's more What's happening there that facilitates those results? And okay, Jonathan. So we're gonna wind down here, sir. Actually, two more questions. One, if you were to point listeners who want to be readers, to a couple of sources, to help them become more familiar with integral leadership, I will put some links to some of your articles in the show notes. Are there a couple of seminal resources that you think listeners would like to know about?

Jonathan Reams  35:27  
I mean, I have an anthology that I edited. But I don't know if that's a good starting point. You know, I think one of the things that I would maybe make a comment about perspective or comment, and I think it comes from being, both in academia and editing an academic journal, is that there are a lot of consulting companies, consultancy brands, things going on, that are using the integral kind of ideas and labels, and these kinds of things. I mean, it's using those ideas. And it's not that they aren't good. And I've met him and heard him presented. It resonates very strongly. But the developmental challenges of getting people to enact that are much more complex, okay, that are often presented. So what often happens, I had to present this kind of developmental leadership for some people last year, just after Dave Snowden talked, okay, people know Dave Snowden, but

Scott Allen  36:36  
he's been on the podcast. Yep. Yep.

Jonathan Reams  36:38  
Yeah, really brilliant, brilliant guy. We did some work with him. But he made a comment to somebody about his question about developmental theories of leadership, and he just kind of poo-poo the whole thing suddenly. And that was what I was supposed to talk about coming on after him. But I anticipated this. And he's right about his comment that it is not an easy field, whether development or integral, or all of these, it really takes a long time to integrate and internalize, and this is not a weekend seminar, and you get some buzzwords. And I think there are many things out there that utilize, to varying degrees, these models, and sometimes can do as much harm as good because they're trying to press and push vertical development path, you know, if you've got to grow up, you've got to be a more natural development happens in certain ways. And maturity happens in certain ways. And it doesn't happen overnight, it can be accelerated, but it's a lot more sophisticated and complex than most of us understand yet. And so, in terms of articles, or research that people can do is really, how do we get more grounded, more realistic, rather than idealistic and espoused values and things around those kinds of things? So and I guess I said that in response to your question, there are lots of resources out there, and companies if you google stuff, they will have good summaries. So Nick Petrie did a good white paper for the Center for Creative Leadership, six, seven years ago, okay. It's a good white paper, it's a good introduction. Yep. And at the same time, you recognize the when you get further and deeper into that journey, there's a lot still to learn here. And it's not as easy as it looks. At first, it's very inspiring, but a lot harder to put into practice. And there's a lot of conflation of a map with the territory, then people read this off, and they work on the term I've learned lately, they downward assimilate the language. Wow, more complex concepts that have a lot of work behind the chunking. To get to what that really means to an act. You grab it out of some discourse, and you start sprinkling it liberally. But you don't really you haven't done the work to kind of internalize that yet. And we all do it when we're learning new things. It's, it's not a bad thing. But to mistake it for the thing itself is one of the big challenges, I think.

Scott Allen  39:21  
yeah. That's Well said. That's very, very well said,

Jonathan Reams  39:25  
Oh, I didn't really give you any good, easy, simple resources. I don't even think that the first article I wrote is very good. Anyway, I look back. It's okay. But yeah, so I do have some things on my website, some YouTube videos, from talks I've given trying to introduce this. So awesome. Sweden is doing some really interesting stuff to try to make adult development mainstream, like gender equity and sustainability to get it into the discourse and they're making good progress. So I've done a couple of talks that I have like To on my website that are maybe a good introduction to some of these things.

Scott Allen  40:04  
Great. Last question. The last three concerts you've been to. We started with your first few concerts. It's about I know it's been over a year since you've been to a concert.

Jonathan Reams  40:14  
What did I see?  So Trondheim is getting on the trail, or it's you know, a town of a couple 100,000. But almost two years ago, in the kind of University City festival thing, I got to see Robert Plant.

Scott Allen  40:39  
Oh, nice!

Jonathan Reams  40:40  
That was really nice. Yeah, he really put on and it was a just walk up to like a meter from the stage right when he started. So that was good. What else did we see? Peter Gabriel in London at the O2 Arena. That would have been wonderful. Yeah, the tour where he did the whole So album in black and white, and then did some stuff in color. It was, yeah, the 25th anniversary of that coming out. What else did we see? What was something? Oh, we saw Lenny Kravitz in London, Ace. And all you know, there's something there's a friend of mine who was in a doctoral class I taught who knows him because she was a writer for The Jeffersons. And his mother was an actress on there. Yeah, yeah. But he had a way of connecting...heartfelt connection with the audience. Wow. And you could just feel that vibe. So we saw him in Oslo more recently, actually. And he did this thing where he disappeared off the stage, you know. And then suddenly, he appeared again, and there's a video of this. And he comes down and he's in the middle of the balcony seats. And he comes over to where all the people in wheelchairs are and stops and visited everybody and doing let love rule or something like this, you know, you can really feel that the quality of love and energy and so that was race. So those are the last three that I can think of

Scott Allen  42:10  
one of my favorite albums is Mama Said that's good that's a very, very good album. So Jonathan, thank you so much for your time this evening. For you sir. I very much appreciate it. And I will put all kinds of information in the show notes so all of our listeners can find out more about you and your good work. And thank you, sir. Be well I hope to see you in Switzerland this fall. That's my goal.

Jonathan Reams  42:35  
That is one of my goals to meet in person. We haven't crossed paths at ILA somehow. But I want to thank you for inviting me. It's always a blast to talk and answer questions and yeah...

Scott Allen  42:49  
I appreciate it. I owe you a pint.

Jonathan Reams  42:51  
Good!

Scott Allen  42:52  
Okay, be well.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai