Write your own read before you hear theirs
Before feedback arrives, record your own assessment so their view lands as information beside yours, not a verdict that replaces it.
Why it works
In the 2001 study, learners with a Socializing way of knowing could sense when they had learned something but needed the teacher to confirm it before it counted; the early sign of growth the researchers describe is beginning to see the teacher’s perspective and expectations as separate from one’s own. Writing your assessment first gives that half-felt internal sense a form that exists before anyone else’s view, so there are two views to compare instead of one to absorb. It also keeps attention on the work itself rather than on what the feedback says about you.
How to do it
- Before a review, a grade, or anyone’s reaction to something you made, write three lines: what you think worked, what you think did not, and how sure you are.
- When their feedback arrives, write it in a second column, in their words where you can.
- Mark where the two agree, where they differ, and where theirs shows you something you had not seen.
- For each difference, decide what you now think — theirs, yours, or a third view — and write down your reason.
Evidence
The finding that Socializing learners needed a teacher’s acknowledgement to validate their own sense of learning, and that growth showed up as seeing the teacher’s expectations as separate from their own, comes from Kegan’s group (NCSALL, 2001). Kluger and DeNisi’s meta-analysis of 607 effect sizes found that feedback improved performance on average but decreased it in over a third of cases, and that feedback worked less well as attention moved away from the task and toward the self — which is why the exercise anchors your own judgment in the work. (observational)
Kluger and DeNisi studied how feedback affects task performance, not developmental stage; the link to the socialized mind is by reasoning, and the two-column exercise itself has not been tested.
Sources
- Kegan, R., Broderick, M., Drago-Severson, E., Helsing, D., Popp, N., & Portnow, K. (2001). Toward a New Pluralism in ABE/ESOL Classrooms: Teaching to Multiple “Cultures of Mind.” Executive Summary, NCSALL Reports #19a. Harvard Graduate School of Education / National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy.
- Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254–284. About this work
Common mistake
Writing a self-assessment that is really a guess at what they will say. If your first column predicts their verdict, you have only moved the authority earlier; it has to be what you actually think, even when you are unsure.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Kegan’s Socialized Mind: What It Gives You and How to Grow Beyond It
- Notice whose reaction decides whether you’re okay
Keep a short log of the moments your sense of being okay rose or fell on one specific person’s reaction.
- Disagree in small doses while naming the bond
Voice one small difference with someone you value, and say in the same breath that the relationship still stands.
- Bring a proposal, not just a question, to the person in charge
When you need direction at work, arrive with your own recommendation and reasoning before asking what they want.
- Trace one conviction back to the people it came from
Pick a strongly held belief and map whose voice first carried it to you, before deciding whether to keep it as your own.
- Name what this way of knowing gives you
List the real capacities the socialized mind carries before deciding what, if anything, you want to grow beyond.
- Find a group that holds you and stretches you
Join or form a steady group where you are accepted as you are and regularly meet perspectives different from yours.
- Name what growing might cost you
Write down what you fear losing if your way of seeing changes, so the fear can be weighed instead of quietly deciding for you.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Self-Authorship: Moving From the Socialized to the Self-Authored Mind
Kegan’s stages, subject-object moves, and authoring your own life
- The Immunity to Change Process, Step by Step
Why a change you truly want keeps not happening, and the step-by-step way Kegan and Lahey take it apart
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
- Vertical Development Practices: How Adults Grow, Not Just Add Skills
Heat, colliding perspectives, and sense-making — and what the research can and cannot promise
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