Dr. Alis Anagnostakis is a group facilitator, coach, and adult development researcher walking the fine line between the study and the practice of leadership development and human transformation. Over the past 15 years, her work has focused on designing and implementing learning journeys that help foster leaders’ maturity and practical wisdom. She is also an ICF-accredited coach and coaching educator, training and mentoring professional coaches inside and outside organizations.
Alis' research centers on leaders’ consciousness transformation as they navigate long-form executive programs. As the founder of the Vertical Development Institute (VDI), Alis aspires to create a meeting place for the various schools of thought in the field. In working with leaders, teams, and organizations internationally, she hopes to make the practices of adult development ever more accessible at a time when mature leadership seems more needed than ever. She curates existing research on adult development and hosts a podcast as well!
Dr. Valerie Livesay explores the phenomenon of fallback––when, despite our optimal developmental capacities, what we often refer to as our developmental center-of-gravity—we make meaning, feel, and act from a smaller, less complex, less capable form of mind.
As Chief Illuminator at Ghost Light Leadership, Valerie accompanies individuals through their discovery of self, using the analogy of theater to set the stage for their historical and unfolding story. Through her writing, speaking, coaching, and workshop offerings, Valerie invites the many characters that comprise the full ensemble of one’s self to dance together to better meet their intentions. She is the author of Leaving the Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of the Fullness of You .
A Quote From The Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
Dr. Alis Anagnostakis is a group facilitator, coach, and adult development researcher walking the fine line between the study and the practice of leadership development and human transformation. Over the past 15 years, her work has focused on designing and implementing learning journeys that help foster leaders’ maturity and practical wisdom. She is also an ICF-accredited coach and coaching educator, training and mentoring professional coaches inside and outside organizations.
Alis' research centers on leaders’ consciousness transformation as they navigate long-form executive programs. As the founder of the Vertical Development Institute (VDI), Alis aspires to create a meeting place for the various schools of thought in the field. In working with leaders, teams, and organizations internationally, she hopes to make the practices of adult development ever more accessible at a time when mature leadership seems more needed than ever. She curates existing research on adult development and hosts a podcast as well!
Dr. Valerie Livesay explores the phenomenon of fallback––when, despite our optimal developmental capacities, what we often refer to as our developmental center-of-gravity—we make meaning, feel, and act from a smaller, less complex, less capable form of mind.
As Chief Illuminator at Ghost Light Leadership, Valerie accompanies individuals through their discovery of self, using the analogy of theater to set the stage for their historical and unfolding story. Through her writing, speaking, coaching, and workshop offerings, Valerie invites the many characters that comprise the full ensemble of one’s self to dance together to better meet their intentions. She is the author of Leaving the Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of the Fullness of You .
A Quote From The Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.
Scott Allen 0:00
Okay everybody, welcome to the Phronesis podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Today, I have two wonderful guests. We have Alis Anagnostakis, and she is a group facilitator, coach, and adult development researcher, walking the fine line between the study and the practice of leadership development and human transformation. Over the past 15 years, her work has focused on designing and implementing learning journeys that help foster leaders' maturity and practical wisdom. I like that phrasing.
She is also an International Coach Federation (ICF) accredited coach and coaching educator, training and mentoring professional coaches inside and outside of organizations. Alis holds a master's degree in Positive Psychology applied to leadership and has completed her Ph.D. studying leaders’ consciousness transformation as they navigate long-form executive programs. Her research illuminated a previously under-explored aspect of adult/vertical development, showing that growth into later stages is facilitated by embracing and skillfully navigating complex, contrasting emotions.
As the founder of the Vertical Development Institute, Alis aspires to create a meeting place for the various schools of thought in the field. And I love that so much as well. In working with leaders, teams, and organizations internationally, she hopes to make the practice of adult development even more accessible at a time when mature leadership seems more needed than ever. Favorite bio ever. She curates existing research on adult development on www.verticaldevelopmentinstitute.com, and writes about applied vertical development and hosts a podcast of her own which will be in the show notes.
I also have Dr. Val Livesay, and she is a returning guest. She is a co-host for this episode, and she has been thinking about and inquiring into the phenomenon of fallback, when despite our optimal development capacities, what we often refer to as our developmental center of gravity, we make meaning, feel, and act from a smaller, less complex, less capable form of mind. Following careers in the nonprofit field and later in higher education in both administration and faculty roles, Valerie's present endeavors seek to extend the concepts and experiences that she studies, teaches, and writes about outside of the halls of academia to the lives of all people trying to navigate the tricky business of showing up in alignment with their intentions in the many contexts of their world.
As Chief Illuminator at Ghost Light Leadership, Valerie accompanies individuals through their discovery of self, using the analogy of theatre to set the stage for their historical and unfolding story. She serves as documentarian, bringing to light the lesser known, lesser loved, and occasionally forgotten roles and scenes that make up one's full ensemble and storyline. Through her writing, speaking, consulting, coaching, and workshop offering, Val invites the many characters that comprise the full ensemble of oneself to dance together in order to better meet their intentions.
Val is the author of ‘Leaving the Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of the Fullness of You,’ in which she reveals both the despair and ecstasy that accompany a knowing of the fullness of oneself through the stories of four individuals and their experiences of fallback. This book allows the reader to find the fullness of themselves in the journey of development and the experience of being human.
Val earned her bachelor's degree from IU; Indiana University. She holds a master's degree in Nonprofit Leadership and Management, and a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies from the University of San Diego. Lovely; University of San Diego. Val lives in San Diego, California with her husband and two children, who serve simultaneously as the most frequent protagonists of and audience to her experience of fallback and the greatest source of her desire to do better. Two of the loveliest bios I have read on this podcast.
Now, Alis is joining us from Australia, Val is in San Diego. And Val, I just really, really appreciated our conversation when we were with David McCallum. And we had kind of gone back and forth a little bit and you said, you know, “You know who you have to have on the podcast,” and that's why Alis is here today. So, maybe we start there. What is it about Alis's work that just really draws you? And tell us a little bit more about her.
Valerie Livesay 4:21
What a beautiful invitation. I met Alis only about a year and a half ago and have become smitten with her and her excellent work in adult development and leadership development. And there are so many things that I'm drawn to about Alis. One is that she's done the hard work that I think is necessary for this space of adult development to figure out how we navigate the intersections of development, both adult and leadership development, in how we work with others. So, that's what Alis studied through her own research in a leadership development program with about 30 participants: how does growth happen? And what are the components of a leadership development program that allows developmental growth to happen? And what are the outcomes of that? I adore that because I think we're really at a crossroads where we have these theories that are kind of set. We learn more about the theories, but we're not really sure how to put them into practice in the real world, and the work that we're doing, and explain why that is important, why adult development is necessary for the exercise of leadership in the world today. But I also love Alis because she so consistently walks the talk of everything she does. She doesn't just research it, she doesn't just write about it, she's in the practice ongoingly. And I admire that so much in other humans, and particularly in other researchers and practitioners. So I am curious, Alis, about what you're up to these days, what you're finding in these spaces at the intersection of adult development and leadership development, and what excites you to move in these spaces.
Alis Anagnostakis 6:14
Thank you, Val. And thank you, Scott, for having me. I have to overcome how emotional I feel right now because Val has been my research hero long before we met when I came across her work on fallback while preparing my dissertation and thought, “This is the missing piece. We grow in very, very messy ways, and here's a researcher who explains how messy it is and why the mess is good for us.” So, it feels like we've known each other for a lifetime, not just for a year and a half. It's a very interesting feeling. I'll just say it is engaging and nourishing from a learning perspective space at the moment because, as it happened, I'm at the back end right now, at the tail end of two and a half weeks of facilitation where, in the span of these two and a half weeks, I've worked with police leaders from 10 countries exploring how adult development can actually impact global policing, collaboration, and leadership development.
Scott Allen 7:15
Wow.
Valerie Livesay 7:16
And then, I've been in Doha working with a telco company, with senior leaders who are training to become coaches from very, very diverse cultural backgrounds. So, from Spain to Oman, that diverse background has been an incredibly illuminating and rich experience. And then, yesterday, I had a part of a program that I've been running with an NGO here in Australia who are putting their whole organization through a year-long developmental program where individuals are working on themselves with a collective intention to transform and shape the culture of this NGO for the future. So, it's been this breadth of experiences, but all of them are at this intersection: can this work actually make an impact in the real world in very, very different contexts from government to private to not-for-profit, and also trying to bridge the individual and the collective developmental work? So, I'm learning a lot. That's, I think, my answer to that question. I'm learning a lot at the moment.
Valerie Livesay 8:18
I told you Alis was a good one to have here. She has so much real experience in the world, and I'm really fascinated. We talk so much about development as an individual experience, but what you've just described in your past two and a half weeks is the implications for the collective. And I'm curious about what you might be learning in these practice spaces.
Alis Anagnostakis 8:45
One thing that stands out for me, and I'd be very curious what your experiences are, is that organizations seem to be more and more concerned with how do we make space as a culture to create the capability to really deal effectively with the discombobulating nature of the challenges that we have to work through. People talk a lot about being overwhelmed and just feeling like reality almost doesn't make sense anymore, and the illusion that things will stop rushing by at the speed at which they're changing right now or giving up hope. Kind of contending with the fact that that hope is an illusion; things will probably never be exactly stable again, so we have to contend with that. So there's this tension between how much you put the onus on the individual to change and how much the onus on the organization to really step up and hold space for that collective change? And I don't think there are any easy answers, really. For example, in this organization in Qatar, one of the ways they're trying to make sense of all of this is to support developing the capacity internally to bring inquiry into the organization as a way of leading. So, these people who are training as professional coaches are business leaders. They could be working in operations or sales. So they're not trained HR people or a dedicated team. They do their day-to-day jobs, but they also serve as inquirers and supporters of others' development. So, they're really trying to build a self-sustaining developmental culture, which I think is a pretty brave thing to do.
Scott Allen 10:15
I'm thinking at least about one reference point that I have, which would be the deliberately developmental organizations by Robert Kegan where we're trying to create a culture where that culture is helping to support development and growth. How are these individuals being trained, are they experiencing this? Does it feel natural to them? Do they feel like this is left field, and, “Oh, my gosh”? What's the reaction been so far?
Alis Anagnostakis 10:42
So, people offered this program, but it's obviously an opt-in program. So, usually, what draws people into this kind of program is a personal itch, something they're looking for to grow. And then, there's this hunger to explore, “Is there a different way to go about things?” So, coaching is a fascinating science and practice when you get deep into it because it invites you to unlearn a lot of stuff that, as a leader, you've grown really good at, like being the expert and knowing what to do. So, they're getting into an experience where they're actually mastering the art of not knowing skillfully. It can be very discombobulating, and people talk about it very openly. And also, there is an interesting context in that particular culture. There are barriers. So, with the last group that I had last week, where most of the participants were coming from a Muslim background, we had a very open conversation about what is appropriate. So, how appropriate is it, for example, to ask probing questions that could be seen as too private or intruding into somebody's inner world? And by the end of the experience, I asked them, “Did you feel like you were intruding?” Because they were having really, really open conversations, and there's no role-playing in this kind of program, you're working on real stuff and being coached on your real challenges in real time by colleagues who might learn stuff about you that they will not normally know. And they said, “No, it didn't really feel intruding at all because there was this sense of challenge and safety.” So, I think people are finding it quite illuminating to them personally, and also relevant for them beyond work, which motivates them to bring it into the work as well. So, there's a positive virtuous cycle that's being created there.
Valerie Livesay 12:27
I was revisiting your research with this group of leaders and their development recently, and you noted that one of the things that you found was the participant's willingness to access their emotions, difficult emotions, really step into that space, and stay in that space, and bring something else in what's called an edge emotion such as curiosity. To just stay with that was really powerful in allowing them to grow. And I had to think in my own work about fallback and how to bring the fallback work into the organization. So, I'm very clear that fallback already exists in organizations. How do you actually surface it? How do you make it available? And a lot of times, people say, “It's really hard to sit within my existing team across from someone who you might have existing experiences with that are not positive, who are just waiting for a way to pounce in,” or with fear of undoing a long-standing relationship by what you may share, or just having your identity, your job, your security, at risk through putting at risk through something that you might say. Being vulnerable in that space. And I know that with your research design, you had different people from different organizations. So you didn't have that so much in the mix because they didn't have those existing relationships, but it sounds like these folks might that you're working with now. I've been so curious about how you create these safe spaces. How do you hold them in a way that allows folks to do the hard work we're asking them to do by bringing their full selves into the workplace?
Alis Anagnostakis 14:16
Yeah. That's such a good question, Val. So, the program I studied for my dissertation was a cross-sector, cross-industry program. So then, it's actually an enabler when people are very diverse in that way, an enabler of safety because there's not much at stake. There is still a lot at stake, but not in the same way as it is when you're working day in and day out with someone else. What I'm noticing in this internal program, so this is probably one of the deepest experiences I've had teaching this stuff internally because what you're pointing out there has always been a barrier; people putting up the armor, “Whatever I say here might be held against me later in some project or in some contexts.” There seems to be something about… This particular program with this Middle Eastern organization is a program where people are training to become professional coaches. So, it's not just a short two-day introduction into coaching, there's something about it being a full developmental journey. People really opting in. People see it as a really important developmental step for their career, maybe even beyond their current role, and I'm not sure what it is that it does, but I've noticed that they came in with more of an, “You know what? This is, for me. I'm going to make the most of it.” So I think that's one element. How the program is presented, and how the program is positioned internally. And the other thing is, yes, how it's facilitated. My personal preference is in belief; I deeply believe that I'm a learner alongside the people I support in my facilitation, and I'm very straightforward and open about that. I'm not there to teach anybody anything; I'm there to facilitate the process of harnessing the collective wisdom in the room and really honoring and recognizing both their cultural background and the wisdom they carry from their traditions that they are embedded in personally, spiritually, and so forth, but also the knowledge that they hold as leaders. So, there's, possibly, I believe, something very soothing about that for a group where they go, “You know what? There's no power imbalance; we're here together to support each other.” And there is also the fact that everybody practices and everybody is being coached, so nobody gets to opt-out, in a sense. You know what you're getting yourself into, and nobody will force you into it, but are you in? Once they are all in, there's a mutuality of vulnerability because somebody opens up, they're being coached, and everybody might witness that. We will unpack the quality of the coaching, always careful to honor confidentiality. I spend a lot of time building that safe space around double confidentiality. We don't even open the topic with the person outside the room, let alone let anything get outside the room. So, all of that, and the fact that everybody's invited into opening up in that way, I think, creates a lot of mutual trust.
Valerie Livesay 17:13
I also thought about when you shared your statement that the folks have all opted in. And so, the voluntary nature of the work, I think, is really incredibly important. And I know from your research that when they could identify their own reasons or goals and connect them specifically to what they wanted to accomplish, there was much more chance they were likely to develop. Before you came and we began recording, I talked to Scott about a paper that he had just finished with some colleagues on creating a vertical and horizontal developmental program, an academic program. And I wonder what you're hearing here, Scott, that might resonate with what you have studied and what you found yourself? And then, what doesn’t?
Scott Allen 18:04
So, the paper that David Rosch and I were kind of working on, we were calling it ‘Deliberately developmental degrees.’ So, within the context of an academic degree or a program, we could use different phrasing here, but can we help someone grow vertically as well? And what are the conditions? What are some of the topics that maybe we would expose people to? Maybe it's the skill of active listening, mindfulness, or awareness of cognitive biases. So, to your point, what are some of the topics that are kind of the holding environment? How do we create that space where people from… Yeah, the space. How do we design? I think design is a very important word here: intentionally design a space where that work can happen. It could be through critical reflection, or it could be through any number of different interventions, but I just love listening to how you're thinking about it because, at least, what I heard is the motivation to learn. These people have opted in. This is something they value, they want. There's a readiness to learn. They've opted in. They value it. They want it. And so, you have these individuals who are somewhat ripe. And another thing that you said that just really stood out for me, and I've been thinking a lot about this is, a lot of my work in organizations, I've come across leaders who are constructing the role as having the answers. And they're supposed to figure this out. And I think when we're dealing with a lot of the complexity that we're navigating in organizational life, kind of the permanent whitewater that just exists, it's about, for me, emerging the right questions and then creating a space where we can actually have that dialogue. And I just thought I heard you say something of that nature a little bit earlier because, for me, that kind of moves into some of the leader development piece. It's almost as if, “Am I mature enough to say I don't have all the answers? Let's figure this out.” (Laughs) And that takes guts.
Valerie Livesay 20:17
It does take guts. And I appreciate your raising that, Scott, because I know that Alis has a lot of work at the intersections of adult development and leader development. And it's clear to us how they're connected, but I wonder, within these organizations, you're working, what is clear and unclear for them about what it will allow and make possible?
Alis Anagnostakis 20:39
I want to say that I got the nerdy twinkle in my eye when I heard about that paper, Scott. (Laughs) I can't wait to read that paper.
Scott Allen 20:47
I’d love your feedback.
Alis Anagnostakis 20:49
I'm so keen to learn from you and what you've discovered because I think this topic of ‘How do we design for development?’ It is hugely important to me in my own work. And, actually, part of what fell out of the research that I did was a tentative design framework for vertically developmental programs, which was very much aligned with what you're looking at. So, I really see cross-pollination there. And I'm almost linking what you were both saying: how does this land in organizations, or what do they feel like they're ready for? Val, what you were saying. And this shift that you're noticing, Scott, is shifting from “I know, and I have the answers” to “I don't know, and my role is to ask the right questions.” And I've actually had a leader last week say, “It feels a bit like traditional corporate life is a continuation of high school.” You're chasing the grades, you're chasing the next promotion, you're chasing a good rating in your performance rating and review, you want the teacher to like you, you want to be the popular kid, you want not to be bullied. There are all of these archetypal patterns we've lived through through traditional schooling that, somehow, in a different form, continue almost unchanged in the conventional corporate space. So, I wonder if the change we're talking about is not of a more fundamental nature. What is it that we value in the organizational context? Even the belief that my worth… So many leaders hold this belief: my worth rests in my capacity to have the right answers. Because this has been reinforced in us for many years of traditional schooling. So, it's almost like… Literally, the leader I was coaching the other day, as we were reminiscing, we had very similar experiences of trying to be the straight-A student, and kind of your hand was up, and you were trying to come up with the right answer quickest. And he was saying it's so hard to unlearn this impulse of ‘I want to come up with a quick, great answer’ because that was the thing that was always rewarded. So, to learn that, actually, the way you bring value now, where your new, more mature version of worth lies, is to say, “I have no idea, but I'm going to facilitate a great conversation by asking really good questions.” How do you even start doing that? It's a very profound and very difficult change in personal mindset, but it also challenges the very structures of organizations because, for example, it clashes with performance management systems, which are still high school aligned, if you want, in that kind of paradigm. We have a bell curve, and only so many people can get a maximum rating, and that many people can get a medium rating, and you've got to have your outliers who don't get a good rating. Sometimes, managers will look at their team and say, “Oh, my people don't really fit our bell curve, but I have to squeeze them into it to make it work.” So, we're creating these. I sometimes use maybe it's a bit of a harsh word, but it's like schizophrenic incentives. On the one hand, we want that more post-conventional open-ended capacity to inquire and figure stuff out with others, but then we're still getting people to compete with each other, and there are just a few top spots. And money incentives are tied to those top spots around bonuses and things like that. So,I think it's a very, very complex and systemic challenge to solve.
Scott Allen 24:25
It is. And if I'm someone who, again, my habits of mind or kind of the lens through which I see the world, depending where I am, we could use Torbert, we could talk about Keegan, we could look at these different models, it's incomprehensible that I would admit that I didn't know the answer. Literally, my safety is at risk. And so that's why I just really, really appreciate both of your work. How do we shift that narrative? There's a lot of damage being done. Just cultures being ruined, and by people kind of barreling forward under that assumption and under the fear. Val, this is why your work is so incredibly valuable: "How do I behave when I'm fearful that I don't have the answer and everyone's going to know? What happens?” Well, I lock down and barrel forward. Well, oof, it won't get us where we want to be.
Valerie Livesay 25:29
And I think that's the point, too. Where we want to be requires so much more of us these days than what we were trained to believe leadership looked like back in the day. And that is still, as Alis noted, baked into the system, our rewards, our goals, and the way we are forced to interact or compete with each other. And that, to me, feels like the bigger, more challenging issue is how we change those systems. And so, it's heartening for me to hear you talk, Alis, about your work with the leaders in policing organizations internationally. That’s some big work that is really necessary right now. And it's heartening for me to hear about the work in a multinational telecommunications organization with folks for whom this is not their job. Coaching is not their job, but they're recognizing the limits of their horizontal knowledge, what they know, and how that can support them, their team, and their organization and shift these systems in the ongoing work that they're doing more broadly with building and shifting culture.
Scott Allen 26:44
And Alis I don't know if you see this value, you may see this in your work, but once we can kind of move… Another very simplistic heuristic I could share is Snowden and Boone's Harvard Business Review article. Dave Snowden and his work and the simple, complicated, complex, chaotic. That's one frame we could have a conversation through. And it's almost like a sigh of relief with leaders I'm working with when I share with them, “Look, when you're navigating complexity, that could be the question of how do I develop greater levels of trust in my team? Well, that's a question. There's no person we can call in the world who can give you the answer; that person doesn't exist. I can share no four-ingredient recipe with you to answer that. You're co-creating that in many ways with your team. Hopefully, you have some thinking partners that you're talking with and getting counsel from, but ultimately, you and your team are co-creating that.” And it's almost, oftentimes, if it's an individual who's fairly mature in their thinking, they'll say, “Oh, that actually makes me feel better, but I don't have all this pressure that I have to come up with these answers.” But that's literally how they've been constructing it. In their minds, it's so heavy what these individuals go to bed with every night. I work with a lot of nonprofit leaders who go to bed with heavy, heavy weights on their minds, and it's tragic because we're almost setting them up to be failures as well by constructing the role in that way. Does that make sense?
Alis Anagnostakis 28:20
Yeah. Completely. And I love that you bring Dave Snowden's perspective into this because I'm almost wondering if we have been educated, or all of our education, which is mostly horizontal development focused, is assuming that we inhabit a world where problems are either simple or complicated. So, for simple and complicated problems, a mindset where you need to know a lot to figure out the right solution may be appropriate. But if we assume a very complex and chaotic environment and a combination of those two, that kind of expert-focused achiever-focused mindset is no longer appropriate to link it back to the stages. So, I think the big kind of moment of insight when you frame it, and perhaps that sigh of relief you're talking about, is around, “Ah, so the feeling that I have been having that I'm out of depth and what I'm doing is not working is not a reflection of me being incompetent, it's actually a reflection of the world requiring something completely different than what we've been doing so far.” And then, that normalizing of the pain, confusion, and what, in my research, but this is not my term, comes from a Finnish researcher called Kaisu Mälkki. She calls them edge emotions. We feel overwhelmed by all of the difficult emotions, such as exhaustion, fear, shame, grief, and messy stuff, when we realize, “Oh, I have no idea how to solve this,” but we believe we're supposed to have an idea. So, letting go of that expectation that we're supposed to have an idea and going, “Oh, this is just another way of being that I need to learn how to lean into,” is possibly a huge relief for many leaders.
Scott Allen 30:04
Yes. And then it's how we help them. That's like hurdle one, that mental leap. Then, hurdle two is how I authentically create a space where my team can co-create and do the work. Revert back into command and control; lose them. The group now doesn't really genuinely believe that I care about their feedback, or we're not creating a space where we can have that dialogue because that's where the gold is, I think, in these complex adaptive challenges. We have to have all the perspectives to get all of those on the table, and then it's our best guess. What experiments are we going to run? What do we think? What is our best bet to move forward in this context and in this situation? But no one has the answer. I always give the example of strategy for an organization. The CEO can't call someone and ask, “What are the four things I must do? Can you give them to me real quick and then we'll be good, stocks will go up 5%?” Or, “How do we transform into a regenerative organization?” (Laughs)
Alis Anagnostakis 31:13
“Give me 15 minutes, I'll answer that.” (Laughs)
Scott Allen 31:15
Now, that's why your work is so incredibly important, too, because I think once we get into that messy space, it's gray. It's just gray. And I had a guest on, he's a former major league baseball pitcher, Josh Lindblom, and he had a beautiful phrase, he said, “Leaders are oftentimes a couple of steps ahead in the fog.” But it's gray. It's not clean, it's not clear, it's messy. And Val, to some of your work, we could want it to be clear, black and white, and lock it down. So that feels to me, intuitively, like hurdle two. Then, how do we truly create that space where we can have that dialogue? Push back, disagree.
Valerie Livesay 31:55
What I love about the image it creates is that we're all in the fog. We're all in the fog. The leader may also be a couple of steps out in the fog. And just acknowledging we're all in the fog. I'm in the fog, too. Stepping into those dark, constricted, achy spaces and naming that, I think the leader has to go first into the fog in this work and open up the possibilities for us to say, “I don't know.” What you mentioned, Alis, about the person that you were working with, the leader you were coaching saying, “It feels like I'm in high school,” that just rings so true to me, actually, because we still, no matter what we know, somehow walk into these contexts that are all around us that have these ‘this is what you do. This is how you show up; you must exhibit your knowledge.’ And it's really scary to know that that's what you're being measured against and say, “I'm not going to do that. I won't do it because I will be making something up if I do.” So, how can I harvest the wisdom in this space? And so often, that means I'm going to have to admit that I don't know this, and I will have to be okay with that. And what will that loosen up in the system when I do that?
Alis Anagnostakis 33:19
Yeah. And, also, what this brings up for me is that, alongside admitting I don't know, there needs to be a willingness or a capacity for leaders to really realize when they're messing up. I call it the awareness action gap. I think it's huge. It's like we are aware of stuff. So, hurdle number one was how to create awareness. But to your point, Scott, in my experience, you will unavoidably face the awareness action gap once you do. So, people will fall back but not realize they're falling back, but their team is seeing their fall back. So then they're not actually walking the talk. And I've got so many examples over the past 15 years. If I were to think of the number one hurdle for building trust for moving things forward, I think it's a system that incentivizes people to do the opposite of what they know should be the right thing. That's one big thing. But on a personal level, it is the incapacity to see yourself in fallback. Is the incapacity to realize, “I'm really being so obtuse right now, and cutting this person off, and belittling them without even realizing I'm doing it.” That creates the toxicity where people just don't trust that what you're saying you want is what you're really willing to live by as a leader. And I think that's a huge, huge hurdle.
Scott Allen 34:42
Yes. I had a retreat maybe ten years ago, and there was an authority figure in the room who gave a very beautiful speech at the beginning and created a space we thought we were ideating and envisioning. It was fascinating to watch because there was a little bit of discontent in the room. I commented at one point, “Look, I just hope we go somewhere new. We don't tread old ground, but we really, truly break some new ground and push ourselves to innovate and truly create.” And this leader constructed that as kind of I was pushing back. And he said, “Well if we're going to be negative for the next two days, we aren't going to get anywhere.” Again, Val’s work, it was a little bit messy, it was a little bit unclear, he wanted to lock it back down. It wasn't going where he thought it should be, and suddenly, he locked it down. I pushed back gently and said, “I'm not being negative; I'm just sharing that I hope we move forward. I'm excited about what we're doing.” And he kind of got gruffy. Killed it. dead. Done. Everyone just nodded for the next day and a half, and he had no clue that he had shut it down. He walked out, thinking that everyone was aligned and excited. And we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that did not work. It's tragic.
Valerie Livesay 36:11
We all have had a version of that story.
(Laughter)
Scott Allen 36:16
Yes. And then, again, Alis, to your point, no clue that he had done that, that he'd shut it down. In fact, I think he needed to tell himself the story, “Okay, I got us back on track.” And then the theatrical production ended and we just went in the direction he thought we should go.
Valerie Livesay 36:31
For sure. The improv was over, and that's the thing. The stories we create around these behaviors and what they elicit. And I'd love to get nerdy for a minute if you guys don't mind because one of the things that we think we know about development is our capacity to actually have some self-awareness and to reflect on the parts of self that feel inconsistent with who we want to be, who we want to be seen as is more and more available to us the further along we go developmentally and the post-conventional stages of development. But one of the things that I've been fascinated by in your research, Alis, is that the development of the folks in your research wasn't correlated with their developmental stage. It was correlated with their willingness to walk into, and I say walk into, step into, stay into, be curious about, and bring in these edge emotions. And what do you make of that? What does that tell us?
Scott Allen 37:39
Can you define edge emotion real quick for listeners, too?
Alis Anagnostakis 37:43
Yeah. So, when we face a disorienting dilemma, the fog, metaphorically, we experience these very strong, usually negative feelings-they're not pleasant feelings; they're unpleasant feelings - of panic, fear, anxiety. So, Chisumaki, the researcher who coined this term, calls edge emotions because she says they feel like our life is being threatened, but, in fact, they are indicators that we are hitting an edge, a growth edge. So, it's a paradox because when we are in our comfort zones, we don't necessarily develop psychologically or experience these unpleasant emotions. That's why comfort is a nice, pleasant place to be in. So, recognizing edge emotions as an opportunity rather than a threat seems to unlock developmental growth. But that comes with a certain level of self-awareness; people in my study somehow stumbled into it. I don't even know how else to define it because it emerged from their stories and the data I collected over six months, every week, where they journaled about their life, not just the program they were in, where I realized there was this pattern. So, the individuals who developed vertically through the six months of research were always the individuals who, when they encountered these "edge emotions" when they were in the middle of the fog with no clue what to do and felt completely panicked about it, they didn't just try to divert their attention to something else or blame the environment for what they were feeling, they were actually curious about, “What am I so anxious about? What's going on inside of me?” So they had this capacity to inquire into their own feelings, which then seemed to create a sort of internal emotional space that made the discomfort, the unpleasantness bearable for them to think about the perspectives they had missed. get feedback without being defensive. So, it allowed them to tolerate the pain so they could change their mind and then change their behaviors. But it was very interesting that the people who regressed most, so out of the research participants, 30% developed, 70% either stagnated or regressed, it was the post-conventionals who regressed most often. So, that really intrigued me. It was like our post-conventional capacities seemed to be fragile. The fact that you are capable of post-conventional thought does not mean that under stress, you're not actually very likely to fall back into conventional immature behaviors, or actually, it might mean you're even more likely to fall back because you have further back to fall if that makes sense. And I was having a conversation with a leader recently who said, “I feel like this kind of mature thinking and inquiry, and constant curiosity, and feeling your feelings, it takes a lot of effort. It's just hard work. So, it's easy to get exhausted from the hard work, or when the going gets really tough, it's just very easy to kind of let it all go and just go back to being a five-year-old,” this person said. “It's easy to be a five-year-old and just throw a tantrum because it's all like a relief like I don't have to do all this hard work anymore.” So, it's intriguing, in a way, that to grow, we need to do all of this work. And being in that later stage of growth does not mean we're going to stay there; it's actually a place we need to continue nurturing to be able to continue accessing it.
Scott Allen 41:19
And I imagine at times, if the context shifts, a shifting context can also be a trigger.
Alis Anagnostakis 41:27
To that point, when I did my studies, it was 2020. So, I was planning to study this in-person program, which suddenly turned virtual with more than half of the participants because there were more than 200 leaders in the program. I looked at a subset of 30,35 out of those 200. But most of them were in lockdown, in panic, moving their businesses into working from home; everybody still remembers what 2020 was like for all of us. And, in the end, one of the late-stage leaders who had regressed a lot, so he had scored much earlier in his development on the second measurement, told me, “I realized that I haven't actually reflected for maybe half a year, I've just been in survival mode, and just going from task to task, and going from what is the next absolutely urgent thing that requires my attention?” He was intrigued when he finally got his test results. He’s like, “What's going on? Why do I look less mature six months later than I was before?” And then we had a conversation and unpacked what had actually happened, and that was his big lightbulb moment. “I'm a very reflective person, and I've actually completely not accessed that capacity in me for months now. It's crazy. I didn't even realize I lost it.”
Valerie Livesay 42:43
I feel like he might be a kindred spirit with me.
(Laughter)
Valerie Livesay 42:49
I am certain that I regressed significantly during the pandemic, especially in those early days of it. There was so much to call to, and then you would just be stuck in that space. There was no relief from all the things that would trigger us to be our smaller selves, so I can relate to that. And, of course, the nerdy part of me wants you to go back and test him again now. In fact, I took a developmental assessment during the pandemic and scored earlier in my development, and I was not surprised about that. And I could claim, “Yep, that's where I am right now. That's really where I am. That's as big as I can get in this moment.”
Scott Allen 43:34
I think one other element, and Alis, maybe you have found this in your research, Val maybe in yours, but I yesterday spoke with Dr. Phil, who's my therapist, and I've been with him for probably 18, maybe almost 20 years now. And he's a thinking partner, and it's been wonderful to have him as a thinking partner. And then I have a mentor. I speak with Phil every two weeks and Gary every two weeks. And I go on a walk, and we talk. And then my wife and I walk every morning, and she's a thinking partner. And so those are three of the pillars of my support system that helped me kind of reflect on when I'm in that smaller space, or when I've not kind of been my full self or the self I'd like to be, or when I need to get curious about, “Okay, I'm feeling this way, what's going on with this, how should I think about this?” And Phil can at least be a thinking partner. Individuals who don't have that haven't built that system into their way of being, that's gotta be a hard place because my mind absent those three people is a scary place sometimes. (Laughs)
Valerie Livesay 44:41
I love that you highlighted this. And rock on Phil, Gary, and Scott's wife.
Scott Allen 44:49
Jessica. (Laughs)
Valerie Livesay 44:51
Bless you for the role that you play.
Scott Allen 44:52
Thanks for tooling around with me up here.
Valerie Livesay 44:55
Going to that crazy place in Scott’s mind. I am curious: are they the only thought partners, or are they…? Because related to what I found in my research, are they witnesses? Do they just sit with you in [Inaudible 45:10]?
Scott Allen 45:10
I think it changes. I think it shifts. That's a great question, to find a witness for me.
Valerie Livesay 45:16
For me, the witness is just someone who sits with you. And I say just someone who sits with you, that's not it because what you've pointed to, I think, is this aspect of perhaps challenge or, at least, illuminating something else that you hadn't thought about. However, the other important side of a developmental container is support. In my research on fallback, it was such an incredible component to people being willing to go into those dark spaces is just having someone who could see and hear them and their smallness, and accept them and say, “You're more human because you've revealed this part of you to me, and I'd love you more for it.”
Scott Allen 46:07
Yeah. I think all three are different and play different roles at different times. But if it's just a hardcore witness, just witnesses at all, My wife. She has a first-person account.
Valerie Livesay 46:23
Like it or not.
(Laughter)
Scott Allen 46:26
Okay. As we wind down our time, we always close out the conversation with what we've been listening to, reading, something that's caught our attention. It could be something we've been streaming. And so, Alis, what have you read, streamed, listened to? It could have something to do with what we've just discussed or nothing to do with what we just discussed. What do you think? What's caught your attention?
Alis Anagnostakis 46:52
The top of my mind right now is a book I read a while ago, but I returned to it recently, and I had conversations about it yesterday with my group of participants. It's called ‘Sand Talk.’
Scott Allen 47:04
Oh, good. Yeah.
Alis Anagnostakis 47:06
You know it? Yeah. Tyson Yunkaporta, a wonderful indigenous scholar here in Australia, is such an alchemical character in my mind. A very brave, bold disruptor of people's thinking. Who essentially invites us to kind of look at the world from an indigenous perspective or draw strands from indigenous wisdom that could help us in our day-to-day leadership, organizational, and societal challenges. And I just love the disruptive nature of his work. You can not read that book and feel like your mind is somehow blown. And I can't even describe the book, I don’t know if you had that feeling.
Scott Allen 47:47
Yeah, I have.
Alis Anagnostakis 47:48
If you try to talk about it, you really can't. But I think if you really want your mind disrupted, that's a great read.
Scott Allen 47:54
Alis, I listened to that book. And that is the most powerful book I've ever listened to because he reads it. And he is incredible. I couldn't wait to get into the car to listen to him because he's an incredible storyteller. And so, yes, Sand Talk. I'll put it in the show notes for sure. Wonderful, wonderful book. Wonderful book. And listeners, if you listen to it, and you don't like it, I'll buy you a copy.
Valerie Livesay 48:27
How does that work?
Scott Allen 48:28
I don't know, we will find out!
(Laughter)
Scott Allen 48:35
I will see if anyone is actually listening to this podcast because…
(Laughter)
Valerie Livesay 48:38
In my Pilates class, we have the little ball we're supposed to squeeze to work on whatever parts of our body. And the instructor always says, “If you pop it, you get to take it home.” And it sounds like a similar proposition. What am I going to do with a book I don't like?
Scott Allen 48:54
Let me know if you listen to that book, the whole book, and you don't like it. Val, how about you? What have you been listening to, streaming, or reading, or what's caught your attention?
Valerie Livesay 49:07
Okay, I didn't realize you would pop it over to me, but here's one; ‘The Amen Effect’ by Rabbi Sharon Brous. B-R-O-U-S, I think, is the right spelling for that. And I, too, have been reading that, but on an ebook, which is not my preferred way of doing things because I like to take notes, highlight, and all that. I would like for you to buy me that book, Scott. So I can take notes.
Scott Allen 49:35
Yeah. Listen to it. And then if you hate it, I will buy it for you. (Laughs)
Valerie Livesay 49:41
But it is just a really… I actually encountered her work in the New York Times. She wrote an opinion piece. And I'll just give you a brief version of what was in that piece, and the book expands on it. But it talks about an ancient practice in ancient Jewish texts, where people go to the temple or holy place. And if all is well in your heart, you walk in one direction. And if there is pain, loss, or sadness, you walk in the other direction. And the people walking in the direction that all feels well when they encounter the person coming from the other direction, the practice is to say, “What pains your heart?” And to just witness, listen, and then move on to the next person and ask again, “How can I hold you in your pain?” And it just really spoke to me as such a beautiful practice because I don't think, to your point, Scott, we don't have enough people in the world, many of us. And I think you're fortunate to have your big three. And I know Alis has many, and I have many, but I think, in general, humans in this world don't have enough people willing to ask them that question and just be with them in their pain. And so, I found this book that she's written about these practices and the power that they can have in people's lives. Incredibly powerful.
Scott Allen 51:25
Wow. Wow. ‘The Amen Effect.’
Valerie Livesay 51:27
‘The Amen effect.’
Scott Allen 51:29
Okay. I just started a book a couple days ago. He's a political scientist. The book is called ‘Corruptible.’ And it's all about human beings and power. It actually starts with a couple of stories off the coast of Australia. And it's very, very interesting. And so he's exploring whether it is power that corrupts like a moth to a flame. Is it people who need and seek power, they're attracted? Is it contextual? So, it's really caught my attention, and it's been a very, very fascinating read about just that concept and what human beings do with that power. And so, a lot of links to leadership, etc, etc. Some interesting studies from Alis, your neck of the woods, around police. So, you might be very interested in this, actually. But who is attracted to the role of having that authority versus… And how are we attracting those individuals to those roles? He cites some really interesting studies from New Zealand about their approach and how they frame the role of police officer in a very different way than maybe in some of the places the United States does, a more militaristic type of framing of, “Hey, join us.” Not what we want. So, it is a really interesting book, ‘Corruptible.’ Political scientist. Yeah, Val.
Valerie Livesay 52:55
I just wanted to add that Bill Torbert has done a lot of work around it, and Alis was clearly going to add that, as well, about developmental stages and how people at those stages hold power. And I think this also speaks to the systems that hold those systems. And, again, what do we reward? What do we acculturate people into developmentally and hold them there without offering any opportunity for expansion because the system is this way?
Scott Allen 53:29
Yes. Alis, did you want to add anything?
Alis Anagnostakis 53:32
I just want to say that if you want a test tube for maturity, you could look at just power and how people use power or engage with power to kind of assess. I think if we took everything else out and we just kept our relationship with power, that would be such a powerful indicator of whether wisdom and maturity are there or not. And perhaps if we can shift the dial on power, we can change the world for the better.
Scott Allen 53:59
We will end there. We will end there. We need to do this again, please. Can we? Yes?
Alis Anagnostakis 54:06
Oh sure.
Scott Allen 54:06
I'm so thankful for your time. Thank you. We will put all kinds of links in the show notes to Alis and Val's resources so you can access them. And, as always, everyone, thank you so much for checking in. Alis, I hope tomorrow is good because you're in the future. Is it a good day?
Alis Anagnostakis 54:25
It is a very good day.
Scott Allen 54:26
Awesome. Awesome. And Val, I hope you have a wonderful evening as well. And take care, everyone. Thank you, as always, for listening. Bye-bye.
[End of Recording]