It’s football season (🏈, not ⚽) here in the US and I couldn’t be more excited. My boys are playing football and my daughter is a cheerleader. My fantasy football drafts are complete. The college season started, and the NFL kicks off this Thursday.
I was texting my sister after my college team lost, and said that football season can be full of disappointment. Even after years of meditation and stoicism, I still get pretty emotionally invested in football! 🤣
I watched a high school varsity football game last week and it was fascinating to be dropped back into a high school scene after being out of it for 30 years.
The game was really interesting, but watching the kids was fascinating as well. You can see the kids forming into groups, as humans have done for millennia. There’s conformity (looking like each other) in order to be non-conforming (different than other people).
A few things I noticed at the game: ◦ Lululemon, an expensive athletic wear brand, was extremely popular. ◦ 80s rock band t-shirts. ◦ 70s car t-shirts, like Corvettes. ◦ Boys in overalls and no shirts. Just for the game? Who knows! ◦ Lots of mullets for the boys. ◦ Mustaches were surprisingly popular. ◦ The kids say "What's good!" in introduction.
For a lot of people their hair style essentially pauses after high school. That means we’re going to get mulleted and mustachioed politicians and business executives in 10-15 years. Weird, but I’m looking forward to it!
What are the interesting hair, or other aesthetic choices, for high schoolers in your area? What’s it like where you are?
Share with me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz. If I hear from enough people, I’ll share with everyone next week!
Kevin
A Quote
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Sometimes that means you need to shut out the critics for a while so you can discover who you are and how you are going to grow.
— Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen in "Thanks for the Feedback"
Three Things
1 - 🔪 Laguiole Knives - My 20-year-old knife set I got for $100 at Target after graduating college is finally starting to fall apart. They’ve had a good run! I like these French knives as a possible replacement. I heard good things in my research and they’ve got cool handle options. Are you a serrated or non-serrated steak knife person? (this is a debate I had no idea existed until I researched this)
2 - 📱 Anylist - This is an app to help you manage lists that I’ve happily used for years. The primary use case for our family is being able to have a shared grocery list. My wife can add things on her phone, and it updates on mine, and vice-versa. I created groups in the list based on the grocery store layout, so when someone adds “eggs” it automatically goes to the “back coolers” section I set up. We also use it for things like a “camping prep” list so we remember all the things we want to bring. Huge recommendation from me!
3 - 📻 April Dunford on Positioning - I’ve been confused by ‘positioning’ and ‘brand’ for the last year, and I haven’t discovered many resources to make it less confusing. I recently heard April Dunford on The Knowledge Project and she started to make it clear. I immediately downloaded a few episodes of her own podcast, Positioning, and put her book, “Obviously Awesome” in my to-read queue. If you’re curious about sales and positioning, check her out!
Deeper Dive on Forms of Mind
I love the concept of Forms of Mind.
Like the Drama Triangle and Metacognition, it’s one of those deeply foundations frameworks for understanding how things work.
Forms of mind, also called Adult Development Theory, is a framework that seeks to explain how humans understand the world; their ability to handle complexity, multiple perspectives, and abstraction.
It’s extremely critical for leaders, since effective leadership requires higher forms of mind.
Why? Because bigger leaders have to handle greater complexity, a higher number of competing perspectives, and lots of abstraction!
Today I’ll introduce the forms of mind, zoom in on each form, and show what leaders leading from each form look like.
“Looking at a population as a whole, mental complexity tends to increase with age, throughout adulthood, at least until old age. When an evolution occurs from one level of complexity to another, adults take greater responsibility for their thinking and feeling, can retain more layers of information, and can think further into the future, to name only some of the well-researched consequences of mental development.”
The foundational book that introduced me to forms of mind, and remains the deepest book on the topic that I know of, comes from Jennifer Garvey Berger’s “Changing on the Job”, which I read in 2020.
In it she outlines four main forms of mind, which I’ll summarize briefly below. I’ve placed the estimated percentages of adults with these forms of mind in parentheses.
Self-Sovereign (~5%) - This form is focused on concrete goals and personal gain. They see relationships as transactional (e.g. What can I get out of this?). This form primarily seeks rewards and avoids punishments.
Socialized (~55%) - This form has internalized social norms and expectations, thus they value relationships and social approval.
Self-Authored (~40%) - This form has the ability to live by their own principles, and thus value autonomy and internal consistency. They define their identity through their chosen belief system.
Self-Transforming (~1%) - This form embraces complexity and multiple perspectives, seeing the limitations of any one framework or identity. They can integrate contradictory viewpoints and are comfortable with ambiguity.
While these are generally stages that move in one direction (e.g. once you’ve reached maturity in self-authoring you don’t typically go back to self-sovereign), there are circumstances in which a person might move “back” to another form.
You may generally be self-authored, but you can revert back to socialized or self-sovereign in circumstances where heightened stress or emotion can reduce your ability to act more rationally.
There’s so much more interesting nuance to explore, so let’s zoom in on each form for more detail.
Zooming in on Each Form
Self-Sovereign
This form of mind is very self-centered. They are driven by what I need.
Self-sovereign is driven by personal gain.
In others they see obstacles or levers; relationships are transactional and only matter as it relates to satisfying their personal needs.
Any empathy they feel is used to further their aims. For example, they might understand someone’s emotions only in order to manipulate them.
They typically cannot name their emotions; they just have emotions. The emotions are not understood, and are not used as signals for anything.
Authority and power is respected because of its ability to grant rewards or mete out punishments.
“the person with the self- sovereign mind may well think others are being slippery or deceitful when they talk about an image of the world that is especially complex. Because things look fairly straightforward to the person with the self-sovereign mind (or incomprehensible—“Why would you even try figuring that out?”), those with more-complex images can look like tricksters or overcomplicators to these folks.”
This form of mind has grown beyond seeing themselves as the center of the universe and can take in the opinions, perspectives, and values of other people.
The fact that the majority of people are in this form shows why humans are such social animals. It allows us to integrate into communities and maintain relationships.
Our ability to do this is enabled by a socialized form of mind.
Since this form has internalized the feelings and ideas of others, they are guided by people or institutions that are important to them (e.g. religious groups, political parties, their company, or other organizations). These folks are active participants in these institutions, but their actions are largely informed by the expectations of the group.
People here are strongly influenced by their relationships.
They can start to see some of the complexities of the world, but they cannot do anything about them, so they use the guidelines and rules from trusted others in order to navigate life.
Unlike self-sovereign, they are not as concerned with rewards and punishments as they are of the approval of a social group. This is where people can engage in unlawful or destructive behavior if their group defines that behavior as acceptable.
Unfortunately our socialized form of mind can be harnessed by leaders in negative ways.
At this form of mind a person can name emotions, but cannot control or regulate them. They believe that the emotional response is inextricably tied to the situation; in x situation I respond with y emotion. They do not yet see that these responses can be influenced or reframed through internal reflection.
Most adults never develop beyond the socialized form of mind. No judgment, just a fact. Knowing that can explain a lot of behavior.
For example, why do change initiatives benefit from buy in from a few key members? If you can get influential members of the group to align, then all the socialized folks will change their mind because their respected authority did.
Someone with a socialized form of mind can have trouble owning a decision. Instead of coming to their own conclusion, they’ll work to see what other people think about it.
Why does marketing work? As Seth Godin says: “people like us do things like this.” Marketing is trying to establish that the “in” group - people you admire - are buying this, so you should, too.
“People with socialized minds can seem to be stuck in their powerlessness: They will tell you they cannot stop getting angry (and thus need other people to stop enraging them), cannot change their minds (and thus need others to change the conditions), cannot take on issues they consider to be outside “who I really am” even if they wish they could.”
The push to self-authoring comes when a person begins to see all the conflicting ideas, perspectives, and values in the world and has a difficult time incorporating them all. The mind needs some way to mediate between the perspectives they gather from various social groups.
The new form of mind has developed when a person decides that they themselves will have to reconcile these diverse perspectives. They start to build their own internal set of rules and regulations instead of absorbing them from others.
When you see people who act like owners, who guide themselves, motivate themselves, and evaluate themselves, they are operating from the self-authoring form of mind.
A self-authored leader is good at charging toward a goal.
They have developed their own values and guiding principles. When they reach a fork in the road, they run things through their own system of thinking to understand the path forward.
This form of mind can begin to reflect, analyze, and then regulate their emotions.
They become aware that they’re the author of their reactions to other people (e.g. their anger is something they create, not something inherent in the situation). They’ll ask, “I wonder what it is about me that makes me react with anger when that happens?”
Because of this growth in emotional authorship, a few things happen: a) This creates separation and they’re less likely to be emotionally reactive. b) They begin to expect others to regulate emotions, which isn’t possible for the socialized form that makes up the majority of society!
The self-authored form of mind looks a lot like what we think of as a leader! - They have a set of values and an internal compass. - They make decisions. - They aren’t emotionally reactive. - They can get perspective on a situation and see it more objectively. - They see their responsibility in a situation and take ownership.
This form of mind is similar to the self-sovereign in that there is a really strong sense of self. For the self-authored form of mind, their values and principles become linked with the self. This form believes that if they aren’t acting in accordance with their principles, they are not being themselves.
There’s a strong sense of identity. I do this. I believe this.
If a new, competing, perspective is shared, the self-authoring mind reflects to see if this can reinforce their thinking, or if it needs to be rejected.
Any reflection at this stage is only done to maintain internal coherence, ensuring that any new ideas align with their self-authored framework. While reflection and adjustment can occur within these bounds, perspectives that threaten this internal coherence are likely to be rejected.
“It’s easy to see how someone having a self-authoring mind could demonstrate an admirable capacity for focus, for distinguishing the important from the urgent, for making the best use of her limited time by having a means to cut through the unending and ever-mounting claims on her attention.”
At 1% of the adult population, this form of mind is rare. It is almost never seen before middle age.
These folks are distributed thinly across context and cultures. If you’ve got a team of 100 people, only one might be self-transforming.
The transition to self-transforming happens when a person begins to question whether the self-authored system they’ve relied on for so long is truly infallible. 🤔
Leaders who are starting to move beyond the self-authored stage start to ask themselves what they’re closed off to, and how they could open themselves up to more learning. They are putting their strongest held beliefs up for examination and risk.
They begin to see that not only is their system imperfect, but any single system will be imperfect. This form starts to see things not as opposing viewpoints, but as existing along a spectrum.
Distinctions between things become less valuable than understanding how they exist together inside of a larger system. This form can hold multiple, even contradictory, perspectives simultaneously and see beyond the limits of any single framework.
This form of mind is very comfortable with paradox and uncertainty. This form is characterized by a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of systems, ideas, and identities. Those in this form of mind have to be careful when communicating because their perspective can be bewildering to others!
This form of mind can very easily see patterns and abstractions. They thrive in complexity.
Emotions for this form of mind are like waves in the ocean. Their emotions are connected to other emotions at the same time.
For example, they can be sad, but they also see that the sadness connects them to others, they see that sadness is an integral part of the human experience, and lastly see that it’s transient and will be gone soon.
Emotions are like waves on the ocean; connected and transient.
“Those at this form of mind are tuned in to all the various constituencies around them. They see multiple layers of every issue and can hold even very different perspectives simultaneously. Instead of viewing others as people with separate and different inner systems, those making meaning with a self-transforming form of mind see across inner systems to look at the similarities that are hidden inside what used to look like differences. These people are less likely to see the world in terms of dichotomies or polarities. They are more likely to believe that what we often think of as black and white are just various shades of gray whose differences are made more visible by the lighter or darker colors around them.”
“Our Western dualistic minds do not process paradoxes very well. Without a contemplative mind, we do not know how to hold creative tensions. We are better at rushing to judgment and demanding a complete resolution to things before we have learned what they have to teach us. This is not the way of wisdom, and it is the way that people operate in the first half of life.”
Now that we’ve spent more time with each form, let’s talk about the leadership demands and mental complexity!
Leadership Capabilities Along Forms
Leadership places huge demands on a person. As your ability to engage in mental complexity grows, so does your capacity to serve as a leader.
There are very few leaders in the self-sovereign form of mind, but when you find them, they might look like: - Focused on power and personal gain - Use a command control leadership style - Quid pro quo; give support to receive loyalty - Lack of empathy - Short-term focus - Motivates through rewards and punishments
A leader with the socialized form of mind: - Emphasis on relationships - Decisions more by consensus - Sense of self derived from external validation - Follow norms and rules - Conflict-avoidant and risk-averse - Inclusive, supportive, and empathetic - Difficulty going out on their own
A leader with the self-authored form of mind: - Strong personal values - Vision for the future - Goal-oriented and driven - Autonomous and independent - Assertive and confident - Less emotionally reactive - Focused on results - Less receptive to feedback
A leader with self-transforming form of mind: - Embraces complexity and multiple perspectives - Strong systems thinking - Adaptive and open to change - Empowers others and encourages autonomy - Facilitates dialogue between groups - Can struggle communicating complexity - Can be slower in decision making as they consider multiple perspectives
These distinctions between forms are helpful to know for a few reasons.
One, it creates greater understanding. For example, if you’ve got a socialized form of mind leader, recognize that they’re going to struggle driving results, having a vision, working independently, and making decisions. You may want an empowering style, but you aren’t likely to get that from a self-authored leader.
Two, it can help you find the right leader for the job. - If you’ve got a lot of complexity and need system design, you’ll want to find a self-transforming leader. - If you’ve got a clear mandate and need it done, find a self-authored leader that’s aligned. - If you need someone to broadcast your thinking and create cohesion, a socialized leader might be best.
Third, tying it back to your development, you can see your own limitations and how they might relate to forms of mind / mental complexity, giving you another way to think about your development.
“This new mind must have the ability to author a view of how the organization should run and have the courage to hold steadfastly to that view. But more, the new mind also must be able to step outside its own ideology or framework, observe the framework’s limitations or defects, and author a more comprehensive view—a view it will hold with sufficient tentativeness that it may discover its limitations as well.”
I recognize this newsletter is already long, so I’m not going to continue talking about how you might develop along the forms of mind. If that’s something that interests you, let me know and I’ll incorporate it into a future edition of the newsletter.
Forms of mind is a really powerful framework for seeing how people operate in the world. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning more about this!
This is not about intelligence / IQ, but someone’s ability to handle complexity, multiple perspectives, and abstractions.
As leaders and people trying to navigate a complex and interconnected world, it’s really helpful to understand the framework and how one can develop an increased capacity for mental complexity.
Call to Action
For today’s concept, the call to action is to reflect.
Where do you see yourself exhibiting each of the different forms of mind? How is that helping or hindering you, your relationships, your work, and achieving your goals.
Have you received any feedback lately? If so, how might you view that feedback in relation to forms of mind? Is it giving you clues to how others perceive you?
The goal is to challenge yourself to think about yourself, to think about your thinking, in service of developing yourself further.
Like I said, I love this framework and find it really illuminating. Let me know what you think! Do you disagree? Is there anything you want to talk through? Email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz and let me know!
Kevin
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