Stanford Business Books Changing on the Job: Developing Leaders for a Complex World

Excellent book for aspiring coaches and leaders.

I haven't finished reading this yet, but so far I have found it an easy and enjoyable read and importantly it explains Keegan's development theory in an accessible manner, I would highly recommend it to any coach or manager who wishes to deepen their understanding of how adults construct their worlds.

I delayed purchasing this book because from the title I mistakenly thought it was about career development. I wish I had read it earlier and I would say it is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in change on a personal, group and organisational level. As a coach and an organisational development practitioner, I hugely enjoyed the very rich and thought-provoking content and was thrilled with the fact that it includes both theory and practical advice for applying in the real world.The last chapters on "Cultivating Leadership" and "Cultivating Wisdom" were a particular treat. The last chapter taps into the idea of Deliberately Developmental Organisations but the framing of the concept resonated for me on a much deeper level in *Changing On The Job" than compared to other texts. [Original Comment Posted 2017]

Jennifer Berger’s book takes its rightful place within the noble tradition of leadership books that can actually help us to expand our minds in novel ways, beyond teaching us skills or abiding to management fads that within a decade would be long-forgotten. On the contrary, this book is likely to remain on our shelves for a long time, for we need to make sense of our complex world with meta-skills and Berger’s contribution is exactly delivering on that. I will first outline the structure of the book, I will then move on to comment on what I deem to be its key added value in today’s leaders work, and finally I will conclude with some remarks about open questions and lingering doubts.::Outline::Changing on the Job opens in the first two chapters with a description of that adult cognitive development is, outlining the intellectual frame of reference that is used throughout the book. This is a model of self-complexity borrowed from the works of many authors, most notably using Robert Kegan’s Subject-Object model and labeling of the stages of mind. It gives detailed descriptions of constructive development theory and of what the stages of complexity are.Chapter Three provides a beginner’s guide to assess where our own form of mind is, which can be quite practical as a way to explore it with the help of exercises that a reader can experiment by herself. Chapters 4, 5, and 6, show us in very practical ways how we can apply this approach to adult development in our work at three increasingly expanding levels: coaching an individual; creating small learning environments for teams; professional development throughout the organization.Chapter Four applies developmental theory to coaching and provides an insight into how to coach people with different forms of mind, what are the demands for both a coach and a coachee, and what are the best fits between the two if we are to coach with a client’s development in mind.Chapter Five tackles the issue of professional learning programs: while they are rolled out with a desire to change the way a leader can make sense of things, they often fail. Berger provides a fresh perspective in her distinction between informational and transformational learning, and gives great advice on how to design them: she suggests that we make these learning environments psychologically spacious (making room for people with different forms of mind to take something out of it) and geared towards changing a participant’s form of mind.Chapter Six advocates for (and gives tips towards) cultivating habits of the mind that can last even when a coaching intervention or a learning program have ended (and we have seen how often all we have learned defaults back to our super-busy normality). These habits of mind, the book argues, are inherently developmental, and are teachable: asking different questions, taking multiple perspectives, and seeing the whole systems, are recommended as core practices and hands-on advice is offered.Chapter Seven gives advice on how to cultivate leadership around the three core areas of Vision, People, and Task. As leaders move up the ladder and their jobs become more challenging, chances are they are more likely feel “over their heads” (as Kegan would say) and overwhelmed by the complexity they face. This chapter helps in broadening the perspective of a leader in time-frame, stakeholder view, and in a more subtle appreciation of the non-linearity of consequences of our actions.Chapter Eight begins with a compelling case for why we should create spaces where people can grow on their job, and outlines three areas where everyone (not just the leaders) can grow bigger in their meaning-making capacity. By growing curiosity (that is, broadening the range and depth of our questions); recognizing our nature as sense-makers; and by thinking together (where the author gives good advice on how to evolve the quality of our meetings).::The Key Added Value (i.e., who should read it and why)::At the heart of most leadership books and coaching interventions there is, in my view, a fundamental inconsistency: while they focus on “development”, only few can clearly articulate what this development is about, and fewer still can give us a useful map of the territory. If we are developing people, *from where to where* are we stewarding their journeys? While I believe it’s fair to critique any theory that runs the risk of putting people along a ladder or hierarchy of their mental capacity, adult development theory is perhaps one of the best frames of reference that we have at the moment (if not the best). Berger herself, also, is quite cautious in her approach presenting the theory not as a “theory of everything” but as a useful map to understand an otherwise messy and more uncertain territory. This book turns out to be extremely useful in making sense of the increased complexity of our world and gives practical tips to embrace this messiness with powerful tools of the mind that are at meta-level which I credit to be more useful when compared to the latest software, or management idea, or technological trend to make sense of our working environment.Employers can read this book and consider themselves as sense-makers, and assess what are the demands that their difficult job is making upon them, and what demands are they making on their own employees which might be over their current capacities. Employers have a vested interest in increasing their employees’ effectiveness at taking upon themselves complex, unknown challenges with more autonomy while recognizing the interdependence with others. The speed of our learning must accelerate to cognize our complex world in better ways, and this book provides ideas on how to cultivate these adaptive capacities to “see” more of the systems we are in, and of our own thinking about them.Coaches *must* read this book, for the simple reason that coaching has an inherently developmental vocation and yet there is relatively little conversation about this approach in the coaching community. Coaches are then left with the unspoken assumption that they are helping their clients to develop, without a useful guide of the territory, and without a developmental awareness of i) where the client is and what she needs; ii) where the coach is; and iii) whether the fit can actually work. As Otto Laske outlined in much greater detail (but without the gift of an enjoyable-to-read writing style) there is real danger in coaching someone without being aware of the developmental demands that the client is making on the coach.Facilitators and educators will find the book extremely useful, too. Case in point: for a few years I served as one of the pedagogy faculty of an MSc in leadership for sustainability, and we have always had a developmental aspiration in the design and delivery of our program, knowing that it is an education geared towards the transformation of the participants’ minds. In this field, Mezirow and others have contributed a great deal, and yet this book offers a new perspective (again with an idea of what and towards where we transform) and provides useful advice with practical tips for pedagogy design.Everyone else who is not an employer, a leader, a coach, or an educator, might still benefit from reading this book, for its insights go across the organizational boundaries and most of them, when taken to heart and practiced, can be inherently developmental.::Pending questions, doubts, critiques::I would definitely give five stars to the book: the added value in the fields of coaching, professional development, and leadership practices that we can bring into our daily work is too evident to be dismissed. With that in mind, I do have a few lingering questions and doubts.The starting assumption of the book goes more or less like this: leaders with more complex forms of mind are better able to tackle the levels of complexity of the challenges that today’s uncertain world is giving us. While it is true that leaders with broader forms of mind act differently (see Barrett Brown’s PhD dissertation, and Bill Torbert’s Action Inquiry) there isn’t much recent research that I am aware of that clearly states the benefits and the added value of having a leader with X form of mind acting more effectively at facing a given problem Y. This is an important omission, in my view, because the book is working with a hypothesis that should be more clearly stated (or could let me know where I can find more research if that link has been studied elsewhere).My second question is about yet another assumption –which in a way is a deepening of the first question, above. I have been reading about cognitive development theories for a while now, both from the integral community and from the (more academically sound, more reputable) community of Robert Kegan and his scholars. There is an unspoken optimism that if enough of our leaders grew a broader form of mind, the world would tilt towards a more sustainable, more compassionate planet. While I’d love to dream that it would be true, I want to hold that theory lightly as an assumption (read the very provocative “Assumption vs Assertion” piece by Susanne Cook-Greuter). Is it really true? How could we prove it true/not true?My last doubt is perhaps more directly connected to the book’s own merit (since the previous two seem to permeate the conversation on adult development across the board). I would have loved to see more references to other, already existing approaches. The book could have more intentionally linked to other management traditions such as the work of the vast systems thinking school on uncovering assumptions, paradigms, mental models, etc. Likewise, in Chapter Five it could have linked to the existing work of transformative education of Mezirow and others. It would have made it easier to draw more links and explicitly place itself, highlighting even with a sharper clarity its unique added value. Which, I want to remind once again, is quite outstanding.

This books is hidden jewel! I think that under the "change" title it hides ideas that are many time deeper than great majority of other change-management books. This is not about how to manage change in organization or in you, it a great exposition of Robert Kegan's thinking about adult development. It provides a perspective to see your own development and development of others that enables the reader to see facets of human thinking that are not readily available. The book is a must read for every coach and maybe even every manager that is trying to develop his/her people. It shows that teaching and learning new skills is important, but will not be sufficient for success in managing others. Unlike Kegan's own work that is very hard to read and comprehend, Berger is crystal clear - with the right amount of examples. It is as well a courageous book: it suggests steps that are not a common practice and dares to speculate on how to develop our maturity. If Kegan's work is considered a game changer in the field of human development, this book is first of many needed commentaries that explain more fully what does it actually means (for the majority of us who struggle with Kegan's work itself). Jennifer, Thank you.