And I do have many thoughts about the development equation and type which are informed by my coaching and consulting practice, and the development research that gives us a pretty good picture of the challenges or issues adult development entails. Some may say it is "my type" and in the spirit of sharing biases, I am highly skeptical of formulas and neatly symmetrical models when it comes to understanding the human experience.
This means that principles, guiding rules of thumb, trends, and working propositions govern my thinking. The difference between nomothetic (population studies) and idiographic (study of individual experience) makes the point for me--what may be true of a million people is not necessarily true of the human being sitting in front of me. This is one of the reasons that Step II of the MBTI or Subscales of the Golden or Majors assessments are so attractive--you get at some of the differences within the type, largely a by-product of individual experience.
I've found that for each type we can sort development into three general buckets across three kinds of changes. The buckets are the agile, typical, and frozen. Agile types are those who learn both how to use their type processes and quickly integrate the new learning into how they operate in the world. Typical types are what gets described in most booklets about type. Frozen types are those whose typology is a caricature of the type--a rigid form of type expression where learning is really difficult and the individual generally has his or her nose just about the waterline.
The three kinds of changes I see are horizontal, vertical, and integral. Horizontal is when the individual adds a new skill--say a Feeling type begins to employ de Bono's logical models as an expression of Thinking qualities. Vertical is when the individual shifts a point of view or embraces a paradigm that is inclusive of old and new information such that a qualitative choice about behavior exists that didn't before. This is the kind of shift that goes from practicing empathetic-like listening to experiencing empathy and all it means in an interaction. Integral is when a shift occurs that changes the whole way an individual operates in the world. Integral is related to becoming more whole, complete, and fully integrated. And you might find this shocking--a frozen type who believes he or she "has arrived" and is "whole" sees the world with such profound negativity that the energy of anyone near the person is completely sapped. Metaphorically, this is like engaging with a vampire.
Of course, the bucket analogy is a way of organizing complex information and removes subtleties which are always present. Nonetheless, several important reminders emerge from this kind of thinking.
First, adding skills helps us use various type related processes and is a way to explore how to do something from your perspective at the moment. Second, if you've added skills and you've noticed that there continues to be that feeling that there is a gap between how you operate now and how you want to operate in the world, the change that is required is more than adding skills. Important work on the assumptions, biases, frames of reference that you use to make sense of things needs review and adjustment. Type is a system of psychological energies which is dynamic and influx. Learning how to be more conscious of that system requires work but the pay off is rich. Finally, type is connected to the whole of who you are. There is no escaping that if you are open to experience and willing to learn, the whole system shifts and your way of adapting and being in the world through your type is more satisfying.
My task in future blogs is to give more examples for the sake of learning from others to move us forward. And one nagging issue is the relationship between health--emotional, mental, moral, behavioral, physical--and developmental correlates.
Let me know if this interests you.
Roger
No comments:
Post a Comment