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Jennifer Garvey Berger’s Simple Habits for Complex Times

Three habits of mind for leading in complex times, and the five traps a later book names

What are Jennifer Garvey Berger’s habits for complexity?

Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston’s Simple Habits for Complex Times (Stanford University Press, 2015) proposes three habits of mind for leading in complex times: asking different questions, taking multiple perspectives, and seeing systems. Garvey Berger’s later book, Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps (2020), names five traps that steer leaders wrong. No outcome study of either framework was found.

Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston wrote Simple Habits for Complex Times to offer leaders a small set of habits for situations where the outcome cannot be predicted or controlled. The book describes three habits of mind rather than a list of tactics: asking different questions instead of having the answers, taking multiple perspectives, and seeing systems, including emergence (patterns that arise from many interacting parts rather than from any single cause). Garvey Berger’s later book, Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps, is a separate work that names five traps that steer leaders wrong. The practices below are drawn from what those works name. No outcome study of either framework was found, so the evidence level on each practice is stated as anecdotal.

Practices

How these practices connect

Each practice on this page holds a question, several views, or the whole pattern open for longer than a sure answer would allow, so that a leader can act on what becomes visible rather than on the first explanation they reached.

How do the three habits in Garvey Berger and Johnston’s book fit together?

Garvey Berger and Johnston describe three habits of mind for leading in complex times: asking different questions, taking multiple perspectives, and seeing systems. The review summarising the book presents them as one set and does not rank them. This page’s inference: asking learning questions opens a situation, taking other views adds to what is visible, and seeing the system shows the patterns those views sit within. No outcome study of either framework was found.

How can I tell when one of my habitual leadership traps is running?

Garvey Berger’s Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps (2020) names five traps that steer leaders wrong: the desire for simple stories, our sense that we are right, our desire to get along with others in our group, our fixation with control, and our constant quest to protect and defend our egos. The book names these as traps; the sources read do not link them to the 2015 habits. This page’s own inference is that a single tidy explanation or a sure feeling can end the search for what else is true. Two practices here are written around specific traps: noticing a simple story, and testing the sense of being right. The other three traps are named in the source and are not written up on this page.

Why do the authors suggest asking what can be learned instead of asking for the answer?

The Integral Leadership Review’s summary says the shift is toward questions about what can be learned in a given situation, and links that to enhancing a capacity for listening. It also ties the questions to a feedback mindset, which addresses the assumption that the person giving feedback holds the whole truth. This is the review’s account of the book’s framing. No outcome study was found that measures whether the shift changes what leaders do.

What should I do when a problem is too messy to map and I cannot tell what kind of problem it is?

Sort the situation before you choose a response. The Integral Leadership Review reports that the authors draw on David Snowden’s Cynefin framework to sort situations into the complex, the complicated, the chaotic and the simple. This page’s inference: then move in short steps, naming the next small action, taking it, and letting what you see decide the step after. Sorting tells you what kind of situation you are in, and short action cycles keep the next move small while you find out.

How do you choose between these?

When a decision is being made faster than the situation has been understood, start with sorting the situation by its domain to see what kind of problem it is. When a plan keeps stalling because the whole picture cannot be planned in advance, start with acting on the next small step. When a disagreement has become a contest of positions, start with the view you disagree with. When you feel certain and the people around you do not, test the sense of being right before you act on it.

What these approaches do not settle

No outcome study of either framework was found. The habit names here come from a 2015 review and a Cultivating Leadership book page, not from the authors’ own chapters. The five traps are named on a Cultivating Leadership book page, and the sources read do not link them to the 2015 habits. The mindtraps book’s publication details (Stanford University Press, 2020, ISBN 9781503609785, one author) come from Crossref. The 2015 habits book’s DOI resolves to its 2020 e-edition record, so its 2015 date rests on the review. The practices on this page cover two of the five traps; the other three are named in the source but not written up here.

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Frequently asked questions

What are Jennifer Garvey Berger’s habits for complexity?

Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston’s Simple Habits for Complex Times (Stanford University Press, 2015) proposes three habits of mind for leading in complex times: asking different questions, taking multiple perspectives, and seeing systems. Garvey Berger’s later book, Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps (2020), names five traps that steer leaders wrong. No outcome study of either framework was found.

How do you ask what can we learn here?

Garvey Berger and Johnston’s first habit is asking different questions instead of having the answers. The Integral Leadership Review’s summary of the book describes the shift as moving toward questions about what can be learned in a given situation, and links that to enhancing a leader’s capacity for listening. This page’s inference, not the review’s: a question keeps a situation open, while a verdict tends to close it before the next piece of information has arrived.

How do you hold feedback as one partial view?

According to the Integral Leadership Review’s summary, the development of a feedback mindset is what enhances the questions a leader asks. The review pairs this with addressing the assumption that the giver of feedback is the sole possessor of the truth. This page’s inference, not the review’s: once a leader stops treating the critic as the one who holds the whole picture, the question shifts from who is right to what this person can see that I cannot.

How do you take a view you disagree with seriously?

The second habit is taking multiple perspectives. The phrase “even when we disagree” is stated in the review, which lists it from the book. The disagreement is the material of the habit, not a reason to stop listening. The review’s summary does not spell out a mechanism for why this works. The reasoning given here is an inference: a view that clashes with yours is the one most likely to show a part of the situation your current frame leaves out.

How do you map the system around a problem, not its single cause?

The third habit, seeing systems, shifts a leader away from cause-and-effect narratives toward the patterns and emergence within a whole system. The Integral Leadership Review’s summary describes seeing the system as recognising “ever changing and shifting boundaries and patterns”. This page’s inference, not the review’s: a single-cause account closes the question early when the cause is itself part of a pattern, while a map keeps the situation open to what the interactions produce.

How do you sort the situation by its domain before you decide?

The Integral Leadership Review reports that the authors draw on David Snowden’s Cynefin framework (a way of sorting situations into domains), which sorts unpredictable and predictable elements into the complex, the complicated, the chaotic and the simple. This page’s inference, not the review’s: sorting first matters because a response chosen before the kind of situation is known can be aimed at the wrong kind of problem. The review summaries do not map responses to domains, so this page does not either.

How do you act on what the present shows and let the next step appear?

The Integral Leadership Review summarises the authors’ approach as involving “staying in the present and unfolding our actions as the present becomes clear.” The review gives no further mechanism. The reasoning here is an inference: a plan fixed before the situation has shown itself can be wrong for conditions that have since changed, so short cycles of action and observation keep the plan tied to what is actually happening.

How do you notice when you reach for a simple story?

In Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps the first of five traps is “the desire for simple stories”. This page’s inference, not the book’s: writing the explanation down as one account, instead of as what happened, makes room for other accounts that fit the same facts, and that room may change what a leader does next.

How do you test the sense that you are right?

The second trap, as a Cultivating Leadership book page lists it, is “our sense that we are right”. The practice treats that sense as a claim to be checked. This page’s inference, not the book’s: a confident sense of being right can end the search for other evidence before anyone has looked for it.

How do the three habits in Garvey Berger and Johnston’s book fit together?

Garvey Berger and Johnston describe three habits of mind for leading in complex times: asking different questions, taking multiple perspectives, and seeing systems. The review summarising the book presents them as one set and does not rank them. This page’s inference: asking learning questions opens a situation, taking other views adds to what is visible, and seeing the system shows the patterns those views sit within. No outcome study of either framework was found.

How can I tell when one of my habitual leadership traps is running?

Garvey Berger’s Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps (2020) names five traps that steer leaders wrong: the desire for simple stories, our sense that we are right, our desire to get along with others in our group, our fixation with control, and our constant quest to protect and defend our egos. The book names these as traps; the sources read do not link them to the 2015 habits. This page’s own inference is that a single tidy explanation or a sure feeling can end the search for what else is true. Two practices here are written around specific traps: noticing a simple story, and testing the sense of being right. The other three traps are named in the source and are not written up on this page.

Why do the authors suggest asking what can be learned instead of asking for the answer?

The Integral Leadership Review’s summary says the shift is toward questions about what can be learned in a given situation, and links that to enhancing a capacity for listening. It also ties the questions to a feedback mindset, which addresses the assumption that the person giving feedback holds the whole truth. This is the review’s account of the book’s framing. No outcome study was found that measures whether the shift changes what leaders do.

What should I do when a problem is too messy to map and I cannot tell what kind of problem it is?

Sort the situation before you choose a response. The Integral Leadership Review reports that the authors draw on David Snowden’s Cynefin framework to sort situations into the complex, the complicated, the chaotic and the simple. This page’s inference: then move in short steps, naming the next small action, taking it, and letting what you see decide the step after. Sorting tells you what kind of situation you are in, and short action cycles keep the next move small while you find out.

Research

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