Doing the Work

I've read more self-help books than I probably should admit. I've also spent my entire career as an educator, which means I genuinely love learning something new. But I keep running into the same problem: reading a book and learning something new is not the same as putting it into practice.

Knowing and doing are two vastly different things. At Managing Leadership we know this all too well so we build in training that helps bridge this gap.

I'm currently reading Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer, and in it he walks through Dr. Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich's Six Stage Spiritual Development Theory. Their claim, drawn from years of interviews and research, is that most people get stuck at Stage 3.

Stage 3 is called "Productive Life." On the surface, that doesn't sound like a trap — it sounds like arrival. You're competent. You're contributing. You're recognized for it.

Which is exactly what made me think of Robert Kegan's Stages of Adult Development. Kegan's model comes from a completely different tradition — secular, psychological, built on decades of developmental research rather than scripture and spiritual direction. And yet he arrives at the same diagnosis: most adults get stuck at Stage 3, what he calls the Socialized Mind.

Two traditions. Two vocabularies. One conclusion.

At Stage 3, in both models, we do things until they're productive and society agrees they're good. We orient ourselves around the expectations of the people and institutions around us — our field, our tribe, our audience. That's a perfectly functional way to operate. It's also, if you stay there, a ceiling. It's fine for a lemming. It's not enough for a leader.

What both models are pointing at, underneath their different language, is that we do enough to appear enough. We reach a level of competence that earns approval, and approval feels a lot like arrival, so we stop pushing. But both Comer and Kegan are asking for something further.

Kegan would say we need to move from being subject to our assumptions to being able to look at them objectively — to step outside the water we've been swimming in and actually examine it. Comer would say understanding has to become execution: it's not enough to know something is true internally, it has to be lived out externally, in practice, in community, in obedience. Different frameworks, same demand — don't stop at insight.

Here's the part I keep sitting with: change doesn't stop. We are works in progress, permanently. We weren't built to stop evolving the moment we become productive, or the moment we finally fit in. Kegan's model keeps going past Stage 3 — toward the self-authoring mind, where you can construct your own internal system of values rather than borrowing one wholesale, and eventually toward the self-transforming mind, where even your own systems become something you can hold loosely and revise. Comer, I suspect, would push back on the individualism baked into that language — too much self-authoring, not enough surrender to something larger than the self.

I don't think that argument needs to be settled today. What I do think is that it's time to stop debating why we should keep evolving, and just evolve.

If you agree, the next step isn't another book. It's Transformative Learning — sitting down with the beliefs you've held the longest, the ones you've never actually interrogated, and asking honestly whether they still deserve the authority you've given them.

What belief have you outgrown but not yet let go of?

If you need help assessing where you or your organization is out and want to construct a clear path forward contact us for a consultation. Our goal is to help leaders lead! Let us be your solution.