Robert Kegan - The Five Stages of Adult Development (And Why You Probably Aren't Stage 5)

Robert Kegan is a psychologist who teaches, researches, writes, and consults about adult development, adult learning, and professional development. His work explores the possibility and necessity of ongoing psychological transformation in adulthood. He is perhaps most well known as the author of The Evolving Self, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, and An Everyone Culture.

In this conversation we talk about:

What is a good definition of an 'adult'?

The phasic vision of adult development

The variety of developmental logics in the human mind

A tour of the 5 stages of adult development

What people get wrong about his 5 Stage model of human development

Why you are almost certainly not ‘Stage 5’ if you're under the age of 40

The gap between philosophical understanding and developmental attainments

Why you might take on a Stage 5 philosophical orientation from the Stage 4 developmental level (and what that might look like)

The most important developmental stage transition for the majority of humans

What transcending the limits of the socialized mind means for our planetary culture

The Monastic Academy Awakened Leadership Bootcamp