Developmental psychology
Robert Kegan
b. 1946
Immunity to change explains why the leader's own composure is so often the constraint: a competing commitment quietly protects the thing being changed.
Read alongside: Stay · Shape
- Start with
- Immunity to Change (2009, with Lisa Lahey)
- Where they resist the book
- Stage models can be used to rank people. Nothing in the book licenses that, and the developmental claim is harder to evidence than it sounds.
Works worth the time
Immunity to Change · 2009
With Lisa Lahey. The competing-commitment map is the usable part.
Read further
- Harvard Graduate School of Education: Robert Kegan ↗
Harvard Graduate School of Education
- Wikipedia: Robert Kegan ↗
Wikipedia
Where Kegan appears
Threat narrows the field it most needs open.
Bion describes groups fleeing the work by fighting, fleeing, or waiting for a saviour. Edmondson's psychological safety is the condition under which a group can stay with an uncomfortable fact long enough to learn from it. Kegan's immunity to change explains why the leader's own composure is so often the constraint.
Expertise degrades without feedback that can wound.
Deliberate practice requires a task at the edge of capacity and feedback close enough to the act to be usable. Most senior roles supply neither, which is why experience and judgement diverge with seniority unless something is deliberately built to keep them together.