Practice the orientation your stage is not leaning toward
If your stage leans individual, deliberately practice the collective view, and the reverse.
Why it works
One of the three STAGES questions is whether a stage leans toward an individual or a collective view; the model alternates between them (for example 3.5 Achiever leans individual, 4.0 Pluralist collective, 4.5 Strategist individual-and-collective). The lean shapes which perspectives come easily and which are effortful. Practicing the less-favored orientation widens what a person can take in without claiming to change their stage.
How to do it
- Notice your default when a decision comes up: do you first ask "what do I want and think?" or "what does the group need and feel?"
- For one week, in each meaningful decision, answer the other question first and in writing.
- Notice what the less-favored question surfaces that you would have missed.
- Keep what was useful; you are widening your range, not swapping one default for another.
Evidence
The individual/collective alternation is one of the three defining parameters of the STAGES matrix (O’Fallon, 2020; Murray & O’Fallon, 2020). The deliberate-practice exercise is an application of the parameter and has not been tested as an intervention. (mechanistic)
A person’s lean in a given decision may reflect role, culture, or temperament rather than developmental stage.
Sources
- Murray, T., & O’Fallon, T. (2020). A Summary of Research on and with the STAGES Developmental Model. Integral Review, 16(1).
- O’Fallon, T. (2020). States and STAGES: Waking up Developmentally. Integral Review, 16(1).
Common mistake
Concluding that the collective view is more developed than the individual one, or the reverse. In the model, both recur at every tier.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
- Notice what your attention treats as real objects
Sort a day’s concerns into concrete, subtle, and awareness-level objects to see which tier you mostly live in.
- Find the confusion your stage is working on
Use O’Fallon’s list of stage-specific confusions to locate the blind spot that is currently live for you.
- Shine a new capacity on the old confusion
Use whatever you can newly do — reflect on your thinking, notice context — to look straight at the confusion instead of around it.
- Turn your view back on yourself
Take the perspective you can now hold of others and turn it around so you see yourself from it.
- Walk an idea through four ways of holding it
Take one hard idea from receptive, to either/or, to both/and, to seeing how the two sides define each other.
- Use a scored assessment instead of self-typing
If you want to know your stage, take a sentence completion test scored by a trained rater rather than matching yourself to descriptions.
- Expect fallback and meet it without judgment
Plan for the times you make meaning from an earlier stage under stress, and treat them as information.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Spiral Dynamics, Made Practical
Understanding how value systems develop and how to navigate across them
- Self-Authorship: Moving From the Socialized to the Self-Authored Mind
Kegan’s stages, subject-object moves, and authoring your own life
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