Simon Brown (00:02.146)
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Simon Brown and today I'm here with my co-author Paul Ashcroft. We haven't got Gary unfortunate with us today.

Paul (00:12.617)
Hi there.

Simon Brown (00:17.473)
Today we're joined by Professor Bob Keegan. Bob is one of the world's leading thinkers on adult development. He's a psychologist whose work explores how we continue to grow, to learn, and to make sense of an increasingly complex world. I've been exposed to his work for quite a few years now, and it's helped me personally, which I'm sure we'll talk about as we go on. He's a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education. He's also co-author of the influential books

including immunities to change and in over our heads. And they examine why lasting change is so difficult and how individuals and organisations can unlock deeper transformation. So, Bob, a warm welcome to the Curious Advantage podcast.

Robert Kegan (01:03.202)
Thank you, Simon, and good to see you, Paul, as well. And yeah, whenever I'm introduced as the world's leading living authority on something, I think to myself, well, I don't know if it's true, if it is, it's because a lot of other very talented people have died. And that is a way you can become the world's leading living authority on something. Just keep living for very long time.

Paul (01:23.39)
Just outlive them, Bob, huh?

Simon Brown (01:30.325)
It's a good lesson. Live longer than anyone else and you'll excel. I think you're being very humble in your words, Bob. So maybe let's start where we often do on curiosity itself. So from your own perspective, Bob, how do you think about curiosity? How do you define curiosity? And maybe what role has it played in your life and work over the years?

Robert Kegan (01:55.597)
Yeah, so I confess that I did, you know, give a little thought to this in advance of our discussion, like, do I have a definition of curiosity? Because it's going to be an amateur's possibly oddball definition since I haven't, I'm not, I don't consider myself anything like an expert on the literature of curiosity. But for me, I think of curiosity as kind of a delightful variant.

of the experience of what I'll call the knowing gap. So I would want to just remind all of our listeners of a very familiar space that we all experience regularly, and that is the gap between what we know at the moment and what we would like to know. And I think most of the time we actually experience this gap.

as unpleasant. know, I recently got a new computer and now I'm having to deal with a whole different interface and I don't know how to perform functions that I just took for granted, you know, for the last several years. And I experienced this gap between what I currently know and what I would like to know. And there's no delight in that experience at all. It's frustrating. You know, it's annoying. You know, when I, when I forget for the hundredth time that when my wife brings me a challenge, she really doesn't want my advice.

Simon Brown (03:03.597)
and

Robert Kegan (03:14.978)
You know, she wants my empathy. She's smarter than I am. you know, she could have already come up kind of with the advice. I experience again a gap between, you know, what I actually know to how to be a good husband and what I wish I knew better that I would respond more spontaneously to her. I don't experience, you know, that.

you know, as delightful. I'm self-critical and berating myself. So I think much of our experience of the knowing gap is, you know, is negative. To my mind, curiosity is when you are experiencing that gap and you're actually experiencing it not with frustration, not with annoyance, not with self-criticism, but actually with delight. So...

I noticed that when I'm about to meet for the very first time a new coaching client, what I really feel in that moment is curiosity. I've done it long enough that I have no worries as to whether I'm going to quote unquote do a good job. Even if I don't do a good job, I'm fine with it. What I'm mainly feeling is the pleasure and the privilege of actually having the chance, which coaching affords you, to really go deep with

someone and to get to know another person. in that moment, I think I'm feeling curiosity because there's a gap. I don't know this person at all. And I'm orienting to the prospect of that really with delight. That's my definition of curiosity.

Simon Brown (04:50.697)
it. so it's yeah the pleasure of filling that in. Yeah, sorry for going.

Paul (04:51.338)
To pick up on that.

Paul (04:59.114)
Yeah, Bob, to pick up on that, you've spent as many people know your career, not only studying, but working with adults and helping them to grow and evolve. You mentioned about how curiosity helps us develop what we know and bridge that knowing gap. But how does curiosity help us develop how we think? Do you have a view on that as well?

Robert Kegan (05:22.476)
Yeah, I mean, people will often ask, you know, if I think like, is curiosity a strong kind of contributor to our development? Because I've studied not just kind of the development of how people think, but the development of how people organize their experience, how they make meaning, how they construct reality. And that, you know,

surely has a cognitive kind of base to it, but it also has to do with the way we structure our emotions, the way we structure our relationships. you know, perhaps oddly, if you were to ask me, do I think curiosity plays a big role in people's development? I know you might like me to say yes to that, you know, sort of unequivocally, but actually, I think what curiosity helps us to do is to learn.

If I'm interested in a subject and I'm curious about it, it will help me to further explore that subject. Or if I'm not very interested but I'm in the presence of a very talented teacher, that teacher can somehow provoke in me a kind of interest I didn't even know I had and that curiosity kind of propels me to learn. But there's a big difference between sort of learning and psychological growth or development. Learning is about kind of going deep

within your existing kind of frame of knowing, whereas development or growth is transformative, where you're actually stepping out of the very frame of your own knowing. And interestingly,

and I could be totally wrong about this and everything else I'm going to say to you, but from my own way of thinking, I don't think that curiosity is kind of the primary engine that supports growth. think, you know, interestingly, that pain and the experience of limitation and the sense that I'm really missing something is what propels us on the scary voyage

Robert Kegan (07:35.957)
of leaving home, of leaving the familiar way that we know to make sense of the world. And so, you know, that I think that experience of somehow a limit or a lack is a more powerful propellant to development than pure curiosity.

you

Simon Brown (08:01.761)
I it. I'd like to point you made in the middle there around so learning being around sort of something that we already know and sort of extracting that versus developing and being something new that is not yet known. I I catch that correctly in terms of how you differentiate between learning and development?

Robert Kegan (08:18.542)
Yeah, learning increases are kind of like increasing your fund of knowledge within a given frame of how you know. Psychological growth or development is about actually transcending the limits of the frame itself. And that is a hard, scary, only very gradual thing we do.

And, you know, as somebody said, wisdom is just the consequence of the defeat of all the more attractive alternatives. You you try, how do you get wise? By failing a lot, by trying very hard to make it all work.

within the system you've already constructed and just coming to find that that's not going to work, which kind of fits with Thomas Kuhn, history of science kind of thing, that we have scientific paradigms. We hold onto them dearly. When we come up with things that seem to challenge them, we start making exceptions. Pretty soon you have so many exceptions that the system itself starts to just give out. And only then

You know, do we gradually take up, you know, this difficult, I think somewhat heroic voyage of, you know, shifting to a whole new frame.

Paul (09:35.273)
Bob, you made many interesting points there, two which I'd like to pick up.

Robert Kegan (09:37.583)
Let me just say, people don't leave home just out of curiosity. You don't give up your home and your connection. I'm an American, right? People didn't come to this country just out of curiosity. They came because they were miserable in some way in their home situation.

Paul (09:42.705)
Right, yeah, they're driven by, yeah.

Paul (09:59.816)
Yeah. And Bob, that, you said two things that just dive into there for me. One, when you say people have a perceived lack or a perception of something better or other than they can go to, that sort of drives them forwards. But also you said, and I agree with this, that whenever you step into that or you embark on a curious journey, there's an element of fear involved because you're stepping into unknowing. What's your experience of that and how do you

How do you advise or help people through that bridging those two gaps of I'm about to embark on something I know I should, I want to, and I have the desire, but I'm also fearful of it, to step out of my existing frame and into a new frame.

Robert Kegan (10:41.612)
Yes. I'm giving you a possibly useful or unuseful definition of curiosity that has in it this ruling element is more delight than fear. And when you're moving from fear. So if the doctor tells me, we think we found something on your x-ray and we need to explore that more fully, what is my fundamental feeling about that curiosity? No, it's stark terror. might

Simon Brown (11:10.521)
Yes.

Robert Kegan (11:11.416)
die. So to me, I don't call that curiosity. I reserve curiosity as this rarer feeling of delight at the prospect that there's something that I don't know. To maybe go into your question about kind of the...

and maybe even just get deeper into, because it's pretty vague to just talk about development, to maybe kind of, you know, distinguish a little bit some of the different stages that we've uncovered in psychological development, which we see happens, you know, with, with men and with women and with people from Asia and with people from Europe, that it just seems to be a universal feature, you know, of the human being and

Simon Brown (11:44.129)
Hmm.

Robert Kegan (11:58.447)
I thought to try to convey this, you know, through story, which I think is what tends to make it more memorable. So I was not too long ago talking with a friend who is a psychologist who works in our court system. And a lot of what she does is kind of she's like a court appointed counselor to adolescents who are on probation, you know, for having committed crimes or have been released, you know, from some kind of, you know,

confinement. And she was telling me that about this, I think like 17 or 18 year old young man that she was working with who was part of a gang of kids who stole cars and he got arrested and was actually confined for a period of time. And anyway, she's telling me that

they have a meeting and he starts the session by saying, think you would be proud of me. And she says, really? Like, so tell me more. And he says, you know, I know you've told me I should stop hanging out with what you call my hoodlum friends. And and I have tried to do that less, but I'm going to be honest with you. You know, I still do hang out with them. And, you know, last night we were walking through a neighborhood and we saw this really cool motorcycle. And my friend said, you know, let's take it and,

take it for a joyride. And, you know, I thought to myself, my friends can kind of do this because none of them have yet been arrested. And if we got caught, they would probably get a stern warning. But I, you know, I'm on probation now. And I know that if I get caught,

you know, I'm going to be thrown back in the clink. And so I told them, you know, I'm not doing it. I don't think you should do it. But if you're going to do it, you know, I'm leaving. And I thought to myself, you know, that this would be a good story to tell you, you know, that you'd be proud of me. And she told me that what she said to him was, well, I'm really glad you didn't steal the motorcycle. But if I'm completely honest.

Robert Kegan (14:21.686)
I kind of wish that the reason that you didn't steal it was not because you you were going to suffer too big a punishment if you did, but because you actually thought about you know like if that were your motorcycle and somebody stole it you know how you would feel about having somebody take your property. And she told me that when she said that to him he kind of paused for a second and then he said to her, yeah I'm not there yet.

And that was, I think, an absolutely brilliant and true statement that he made. And where did he say that he wasn't yet? The difference between orienting to the world essentially instrumentally and on behalf of kind of what you can get out of it and kind of avoiding punishment versus wanting to avoid

you know, someone's disapproval or taking another person's perspective and being influenced not just by your own immediate needs, but by your wish to kind of preserve the relationship, your ability to have empathy kind of for the person who would have lost their motorcycle. That's a qualitatively different stage of development, which typically does occur sometime in adolescence, usually a bit earlier than, you know, this 17 year olds. And that's what she was really asking for.

When she said I wish the reason that you didn't take it was a whole different reason and when he kind of listened to that and said Yeah, I'm not there yet. I think he was doing an absolutely accurate Self-assessment of kind of where he was in his development this is the difference between what I call the instrumental stage and The which every typical ten-year-old, you know is in I always say a ten-year-old would sell their parents for a cold drink on a hot day and then later they would kind of regret it when they needed their

Paul (16:16.658)
Hehe.

Robert Kegan (16:18.064)
parents again but at the moment it would seem like a good deal because you wanted a cold drink. It's a typical way of making sense when you're a child. In adolescence we start bringing other people's perspective into our own internal life and the self isn't just about meeting its own needs. The self is actually about holding up its end of relationships and this moves us into what I call the socialized stage of development.

or socialization psychologically as you become more a part of society because society has become more a part of you. And that, you know, that is a triumph.

in adolescence to begin to be able to have empathy and to take your place in a trustworthy relationship. But it is clearly not itself the last stage of development. So let me tell you one other quick story that distinguishes the socialized mind from the stage that follows it. staying current, I'm sure many of our listeners

you know, watched aspects of the Winter Olympics recently. And I'm thinking of the gold medal woman's figure skater, Alyssa Liu, who I'm sure many people watched. If you didn't watch it, don't leave our podcast now. But when it's over, you might want to just Google her gold medal skate. OK, Alyssa Liu is nothing like a typical woman's figure skater who are typically

Simon Brown (17:41.867)
you

Robert Kegan (17:51.489)
They're typically young adolescents. Their bodies are perfect for the kinds of incredible gyrations that a skater is going to put them through. And Alyssa Liu was identified by her own father kind of quite early as somebody who was an incredibly talented skater. And she had the very typical kind of, difficult but very unusual kind of training experience.

experience that these very young athletes have her her father, you know was a kind of helicopter You know parent who kind of managed her coaching and that's what she did You know 12 hours a day six days a week, know year after year after year and in her early teens She actually became an Olympic skater and she she meddled in an earlier Olympics And when she did she then I think at the age of 16 or whatever she quit she just

announced that she didn't want to do that anymore. Her father, to his credit, apparently, allowed her to do that and to begin to have a much more normal kind of life, which she did without any skating for like four years, you know, finished high school, went to college and so on. And then found herself on a vacation, thrilled to be downhill skiing. And she kind of said to herself, I absolutely love the exhilaration of this experience and the

that it reminds me of is what I loved best about figure skating. And she said she had this idea, maybe I could go back to skating, but in a completely different way, not under the direction of my father and my coaches, who basically shaped kind of every moment of my waking day. But I'll be in charge. I'll be in charge of the way that I'm a figure skater. She had now the body of a grown woman, which typically is not the preferred

you know, physical form, you know, of a figure skater. She said, I will hire, I will hire my coaches. I will determine my choreography. I will pick out my costume. I'm going to kind of be in charge of this. And her coaches initially discouraged her because they said no one stops for four years, comes back and competes at the level you want to compete. You want to go back to the Olympics. You know, it's never done. And she convinced them through her own force of kind of her own authority as to

Robert Kegan (20:21.008)
how she was going to essentially author and create her way of being a figure skater. And she went into the Olympics with all these younger skaters and they clearly saw that she had none of the terror. She wasn't carrying any of the burdens of responsibility to not let down her coaches and her parents and so on. That she was not just there, but she was there in a state.

and I would say at a developmental level, understandably, she was older than they were as well, that none of them had experienced before. She wasn't going into the competition with all the usual fear of these 15-year-old kids. She said she was there to just express her art and whatever happened, happened. And I just want to say to every one of your listeners, if you want to experience a pure joy, just watch her gold medal Olympic skate. It isn't just like technically,

superior. There's a kind of pure joy, there's no other word for it, that gets conveyed by the fact that she's not only doing this, but she's doing this by her own lights, by her own definition. And this is kind of a glorious kind of...

non-academic definition of the stage beyond the socialized mind, which we call the stage of self authorship, where you're not just being loyal to and faithful to the expectations and values of those around you and seeking to hold a self together by meeting those expectations, where you're not just sort of written upon, you know, by your culture, but where you seize the pen yourself and you are the author or the creator of how you are going to live.

And that is an incredibly empowering move, which is kind of a key move in the development, in adulthood. Okay, I've probably gone on too long with these stories.

Paul (22:13.531)
Bob, I love the story. I'm sure Simon too. I play golf. I don't know if you watch the golf or the Masters that has just happened recently, but there's a very famous Irish golfer called Rory McIlroy who won the Masters again this year. Sorry to spoil the Netflix season if you're watching next year. Right. But I mean, I'd love to hear your view on this because he has gone through so many trials trying to get that final

Simon Brown (22:17.005)
Yeah.

Robert Kegan (22:25.836)
Yes, yes, yes.

Yes, I did watch that.

Paul (22:42.759)
Masters victory to finish the majors victory, right, to finish it. But then the way he played this year was like a man that had been freed. He was playing without fear and he got to this massive lead, lost it and then still won. a similar, strikes me as a similar sort of situation, right? What happens to somebody when they break through that barrier they didn't believe was possible.

Robert Kegan (22:44.194)
Yeah, the major so that he had the grants. Yeah, yeah.

Robert Kegan (22:53.272)
Yes.

Robert Kegan (22:57.922)
Yes, yes.

Robert Kegan (23:07.01)
Yes, yes, and I did watch that. In fact, I watched it with my wife when we both said afterwards, when is the last time the two of us actually sat through an entire, you know, golf tournament? You know, I don't think we ever had and we were asking ourselves, you know, what is it that we found so compelling?

you know about Roar, you know, and I think it's the fact that he's not a machine, you know, it's the fact that he's so human. It's the fact that he can make a brilliant shot one moment, you know, and then, you know, a really not very good shot the next. mean, the second two rounds of that Masters Championship, you know, I think he just played par golf, right? I mean, he wasn't, he was like missing fairways left and right, you know, but he just, you're so drawn to him because

is you know he's so human you can see him in the you know the very struggle of sort of putting it together but yeah i think you know he said himself what he was proudest about was not winning a second time but that he was able to maintain his own equanimity pick himself up you know failure after failure and not be you know kind of defeated by that well clearly he's kind of you know living now by his own by his own lights

Simon Brown (24:20.707)
So this is such an important concept, Bob. So for us to go from that sort of feeling.

pressured by everyone else around you, having to sort of conform, to, maybe sort of own self-worth being defined by what other people think of you into this sort of, actually it's about what I believe, what I think is valuable, what I see in my self-worth, and it takes away that pressure. It's such a powerful concept. How, for our listeners who are thinking, I'd like to be in that state, how do people, how would the people get to

Robert Kegan (24:38.723)
Yes.

Simon Brown (24:57.275)
that sort of self-authored state in order to take away that sort of pressure and yeah feeling of conforming and feeling of it's so important what everyone else thinks of me rather than actually it's about what I believe and what I think of myself.

Robert Kegan (25:14.35)
Yeah, that's definitely a million dollar question because sure I mean people can listen to that and say Okay, like Alyssa Liu kind of like accomplished that you know in her mid 20s or something I'm in my 40s, and I'm still kind of worrying every day You know does my boss think I'm doing enough and deserve my salary or whatever it might be and you know

Simon Brown (25:18.883)
Ha ha ha.

Robert Kegan (25:36.065)
And I'm not telling the story for the purpose of people berating themselves. It's a gradual kind of transition. And again, I mean, this is the thing that I think might be a bit contrarian, but I don't think it's curiosity that enables us to do this. think, again, I think it's the experience kind of over and over again that somehow

that this isn't working for me and that kind of giving myself over to kind of meeting other people's expectations just starts to feel insufficient and you start gradually paying more respect.

to some of your own interior views, which might be a little bit different than people's expectations. I like I myself, I trace my beginnings of my own evolution from the interpersonal mindset to the more self-authoring one to beginning somewhere in like around 20 or 21 when just...

as it happened in my own life, you know, as an American in the late 60s that...

I just happened as my whole generation did, at least of all able-bodied men, to run into history. what was happening at that moment for me was that my country was committing itself to a war in Southeast Asia. And I joined the ROTC early on in college. I was advised by my father, everybody has to do their military service and why go in?

Robert Kegan (27:34.753)
you know, as a lowly, you know, private or something when you can be an officer. So you have the opportunity for officer training in college and then you can go in. That made good sense to me. You know, I basically followed my father's advice as I've been doing for 20 years. But as my undergraduate years developed and as the war developed, you know, I found myself increasingly feeling that this didn't make sense to me. The war didn't make sense. I didn't see how I should be used.

as an instrument of violence to kill people in Southeast Asia. I'd never met and frankly didn't have any quarrel with. And yet, and people forget that there was a long period in the United States where the country was behind that war. And to speak out against it was a very difficult thing to do. And it wasn't curiosity that propelled me to start believing in my own view. And I did it with terror. can remember my father,

It was a proud World War II veteran telling me, every generation fights its war, we fought ours, and you're going to fight yours. And I remember thinking to him, I didn't have the courage to say it to him at that moment, but I remember thinking to him, no, I'm not. But also, in feeling that, it's like leaving your family's religion. It's like leaving the faith of your father's kind of thing. Where do you get the courage for this?

in a certain way it's almost it's almost more magnificent that it isn't curiosity and delight that drives this because it's admirable courage the courage to trust in this case some of your own convictions and i remember

very vividly I went to school in a small New England town, the center of which is a common or a green. at that time, I think was the Quaker movement had started an hour of silent vigil on Wednesdays all over America, where people were invited to go and stand in some visible prominent space with others and stand just silently for an hour.

Robert Kegan (29:43.395)
you know, opposition to the war. And I remember joining that group when there were maybe seven or eight, you know, scruffy undergraduates, and we stood there silently, you know, as the football players walked by us and, you know, cast aspersions at us or the townies and called us cowards and, you know.

other horrible words I remember. And then I remember over the course of my senior year, how a few the line started to get a little longer gradually, a few more people joined the line. I remember to this day, you know, we're talking like, you know, more than 50 years ago, when the first faculty member joined that line, the first, you know, representative of my parents generation, and how important it was to kind of get that support. And I remember on the week before I graduated in my senior

year, I shiver just thinking about this again, going to that vigil and seeing the line stretch all the way across the common. And some of those football players, you know, who had castigated us before, and some of those townies who called us cowards, had actually joined the line. And, you know, that is a form of an answer to your good question, Simon, as well, that you can't do these things alone, like having the support of other people, you know, who would acknowledge

kind of your outlying choice certainly, you know, was an encouragement to trust increasingly your own gradually developing internal frame of reference.

Simon Brown (31:23.168)
I it. So the, think to maybe do justice to your theory, there's a final stage we haven't covered, I think, isn't there? after self authoring, yes, so maybe let's cover that one and then I'd like to dive into immunity to change. And I'd also love to get some of your thoughts on what's happening with AI today as well.

Robert Kegan (31:31.788)
Yes.

Robert Kegan (31:42.735)
Sure. Yes, so the gradual move into self authorship, I think, the predominant move in adult development. And for some, it can start earlier, some later. For some people, they may never actually make that move.

you know, these developments are spurred on also by the demands of our society. you live in a, if one lived, say, I don't know, hundreds of years ago in a very traditionalist culture, where basically there was a single definition of what it was like to be a grown person or a grown man or a grown woman in this culture. And so you had living examples of that all around you. There wouldn't be all that much need for self authorship because basically how you were supposed to

you know, was kind of clearly conveyed to you in a single voice. Modernity, the modern world, is partly characterized by having a plurality of kind of ideologies and frameworks. So you ultimately end up sort of having to choose, and that's another kind of thing that sort of impels the development of self-authorship. But self-authorship, we find, you know, this is not a philosophical theory. It's a, you know, hardworking pedestrian theory that comes from

interviewing thousands of people and following them over many years. And what you notice is that some people, it's a small percentage of the population in any country, but

some people, and typically this does not occur before midlife, some people actually come to the limits of self-authorship, where you begin to challenge not just the expectations that are being provided to you from outside yourself, but you begin to challenge in some way or feel a certain dissatisfaction or confinement, even with your own personal theory or framework or way. You come to feel like, yes, it might have the attractive

Robert Kegan (33:50.131)
features of kind of internal consistency, but it might be leaving things out. Carl Jung, who was probably the first psychologist of midlife, talked about the way that such a such a development was possible where

for example, the polarities can be more internalized, know, that the man discovers in himself that he is not only masculine, you know, that he has a feminine side. But he hasn't been able to sort of, you know, claim that because of, you know, all kinds of cultural pressures or whatever. And so, you know, as might typically happen, let's say in a heterosexual relationship, the way, one way that I might

get close to my feminine side is to find a woman I fall in love with and be close to it that way. When you move beyond self-authorship, know, he says the man discovers the woman within him, you know, the adult discovers the child, the creative person discovers the destroyer. Instead of projecting, you know, these other sides of yourself onto other people, that you can actually begin to hold more of this kind of multiplicity with

within yourself. And that we call the next stage, you could call it anything, but we call it the self-transforming mind because you come to see that the self as a project has its own kind of limitations and is a bit of a fiction and that you can more easily kind of hold on to contradictions and begin to

to move beyond sort of a single definition of the self. All of this is kind of the are the features of the the self-transforming mind.

Paul (35:42.497)
Bob, you say a very small percentage of adults achieve this state and you told us, you know, there's beautiful stories relating to self authorship and also sort of early stages in life about what's driving and motivating behaviours. you have a, like real, like an example, a story or something that brings this life? The only person I could think of is Neo in The Matrix, but that seems like science fiction.

Robert Kegan (36:07.776)
You

Paul (36:08.409)
And I think you've probably got some science fact that you could share.

Robert Kegan (36:12.824)
Sure.

At some level, there's something unfortunate about the fact that we turn to people like Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln or something as exemplars of stage five. The unfortunate aspect of it is it seems to of reinforce the notion that it's only a small handful of very famous luminaries. In fact, what the studies show is that somewhere around maybe 5 % of the adult population kind of moves beyond self-authorship. And you can say, well, 5 % is a small number.

If you talk about a country with a hundred million people in it, that's you know, five million people. So that's five million Abraham Lincoln's or Gandhi's. So we can use those kind of as exemplars just to quickly, you know, create a narrative, which I will do, but I don't mean to suggest that it's not a way of making meaning that, know, that quote-unquote ordinary people sort of might come to. But think, for example, of Lincoln's notion

of a team of rivals, right? Take the difference, not to get too terribly political in our own American moment, but we have a president today who is serving for a second time in the White House and who explicitly, given the experiences he had in his first term,

chose a cabinet of people, the first criterion of which is absolute, unswerving devotion to the beliefs of the president. contrast that with a president who intentionally and purposely

Robert Kegan (37:59.287)
puts together as a cabinet a team of people who not only disagree with each other but disagree with him as well and actually seeks that out, seeks that out, you know, in contrast to a leader who when anybody comes up with a position contrary to his immediately starts attacking them personally. I mean, you you couldn't have a greater contrast than, you know, our current president and our 16th, I think it was, Abraham Lincoln.

Simon Brown (38:31.992)
Thank

So coming on to immunity to change, another area you've done a huge amount of research and led the thinking in and which I've personally experienced on several occasions and it's helped me in realizing why change is so difficult. Maybe for our listeners, you share an overview of your thinking around why we find it so difficult to change and why we get stuck

and how through your research you've found the key to maybe make it slightly, I wouldn't say easy because change is hard even with all of this, but at least more possible to be able to change our beliefs.

Robert Kegan (39:19.086)
Sure. Simon and Paul, you're asking me all these questions like, can you describe in three minutes kind of the sum of the last 20 years of your research? So I usually begin talking about immunity to change, or ITC as we call it for short.

Simon Brown (39:26.263)
you

Paul (39:29.956)
Summarised, 20 years of research.

Simon Brown (39:30.04)
Best years of work.

Robert Kegan (39:43.631)
with a little riddle, like a 13 frogs sat on a log and four of them decided to jump into the pond, how many frogs would be left on the log? And most people kind of want to say, let's see, I think that would be nine. And I think that the better answer is 13, because there's a big difference between deciding to do it and actually doing it. Okay. And here again, we have a bit of this, you know, knowing gap.

which for the most part we do not regard with delight, which is my definition of curiosity. People tend not to be just curious as to why is it when I know that I want to be less of a micromanager and a better delegator, or I know that I want to eat less and lose weight, I even put myself on a diet to do it.

I still find that I can't do it, or I can only do it temporarily and after a while I'm back to micromanaging or overeating. And I don't think it's curiosity that actually solves that problem. I don't regard with delight my inability to do the very thing that I've decided to do.

Simon Brown (40:57.41)
Ha ha ha ha.

Robert Kegan (41:01.676)
So why is it that it's so hard to close that particular gap between the genuine intentions to change and our inability to do it? And immunity to change is just a very kind of elegant way of bundling together what we've really learned about

you know, this extraordinary neurological equipment that we, been evolving for over thousands of years and that each of us is sort of carrying around up there between our, between our ears. And without going into a huge, you know, psycho-neurology, neurological lecture, let's just agree, you know, that we have a part of the brain that is capable of forming intentions and actually deciding that it wants to do something or accomplish something.

And many of our hopes for change are sort of pinned on that part of us. That we can form a conviction and we can make a plan to carry it out and we put our chips kind of on that side of ourselves. But if we only put our chips on that side, we ignore the fact that that's not the only thing that's going on, you know, up there in our brains and that there's also a part of that equipment that has a whole other purpose. It isn't oriented to

identifying goals and accomplishing them. It's oriented to basically protecting ourselves from loss. Protecting ourselves from loss. I say that there are two big endeavors to being a human being. One is to grow, to honor the miracle that we are living beings and that we share with all other living beings. The capacity, even the need to keep growing and developing. know, a caterpillar is has a destiny to not just become a bigger and stronger

caterpillar, which is kind what the strength-based movement will give you. That's kind of the prevailing notion of how to think about talent and people development today, which is kind of like, let's ignore people's weaknesses and why torture them with that? Let's just identify people's strengths and give them opportunities, you know, to just exercise those strengths. That's a kind of prevailing idea and it seems like a very humane kind of idea, like, you know, let's not bother people kind of with their weaknesses.

Robert Kegan (43:27.13)
a mentalist point of view, that approach actually sells people short and basically says, know, Al will always be Al by the time you're 40 years old, you are who you are, and you're not going to change. And I think that that way leads us to

maybe bigger and stronger caterpillars, but it doesn't get us to that many butterflies. A developmental approach says not that we should wallow in our weaknesses and beat ourselves up about them, but that actually there's a gift in attending to what we're calling, quote unquote, a weakness or an inability. that that inability is trying to tell us something that we need to listen to. So what are the two big

endeavors, think I may not have completed that thought. The first is to grow, as I said.

But the second big endeavor, put most bluntly, I would say, is to not die. OK. Or from a psychological point of view, to not suffer big losses. So I say we are simultaneously growth oriented as humans, and we are also risk mitigating. We seek to avoid loss. And there's absolutely nothing to be apologetic about that side of ourselves. Some psychologists will call that our defenses, and that we have to be less defensive and get over our defenses.

Simon Brown (44:26.38)
you

Robert Kegan (44:49.424)
defensive structure and so on. But I think we need to kind of celebrate as well, not just the side of us that wants to grow, but the side of us that wants to protect ourselves from loss. So just to give an example, I might be a leader who has gotten a lot of feedback, you know, that

I'm not a very good listener. And you know, we do processes where we interview people around the leader so we can kind of, you know, show here's what people think about you and here's what people admire and appreciate about you. And there are always lots of things on that side of the ledger. And hearing those things makes it easier to kind of also accept the fact that God's not done with me and I'm not a perfect person. I may also have weaknesses. So after we've gone through kind of sharing those strengths, you know, also share, look, here are the ways that people

say that you don't listen very well and that you basically have an agenda. You listen to kind of think about how you can sort of in a polite way win the argument. You're listening to what I'm having to say so you can better say something next that will actually get me aligned with your agenda. And that in the end kind of discourages open conversation. This is just an example of the feedback. So I've worked with leaders who've listened to that.

and come to the conclusion, that's probably true. I'm not a very good listener, so I want to be a better listener. So what is the usual way that one will now try to do that, having formed that intention? Well, you say, I'm going to just, you

keep track of this. gonna just I'm gonna just try harder, you know, to listen better. And that usually works for a little while. But just like deciding I'm going to lose weight by putting myself on a on a behavior change regimen called a diet.

Robert Kegan (46:46.316)
That works too. People lose tons of weight on diets. The problem is they regain, you know, tons of weight. Most studies show that people regain more weight than they take off, right? So what's happening there? All you're doing is trying to change your behavior. You're not actually considering sort of the underlying mindset that is giving rise to that behavior.

What immunity to change that process does is very quickly help you understand the internal mindset that is making it difficult for you to change. And so you come to me or we over time identify a change aspiration, like I want to be a better listener. We then invite people to be really honest and kind of identify all the ways they operate counter to that.

You know, just as I was saying before, I tend to listen to win. I tend to listen to get people on the side of my position. I tend to demonstrate a kind of impatience with, you know, opposing views. All of these kinds of things, then the usual process would be, okay, that was very brave of you to identify all those counterproductive behaviors. Excuse me.

Now I'm going to just try to eliminate those behaviors. And that's the dieting approach to change, the New Year's resolution approach to change. What we say is we have to actually listen to the brilliance in all that counterproductive behavior. Why really do you not listen? And we have a process that invites people to consider, imagine you would do the opposite of all these things.

And what are the biggest worries that would come up if you would actually listen with an open mind to somebody's opposing view? What are the biggest worries about that? We call that meeting our monsters because we all have these monsters sleeping inside our internal forest. And the person says, my god, if I actually listen, I might discover that I'm wrong, or I might lose the argument, or whatever it might be. And every single one of those fears is

Robert Kegan (48:58.704)
worthy of respect. That's naming the side of you that doesn't want to die, the side of you that spends energy protecting yourself from certain loss. And then we invite people to kind of consider, you don't just have these worries, you don't realize it, but you're in the grip of a sort of second set of commitments. You have a commitment to be a better listener, but you also have a commitment to having things done your way. You have a commitment to winning the argument. You have a commitment to not lose

control. You know, you have a commitment to being seen as a strong leader. And once the person sees that, you know, there's two things going on here. I genuinely want to be a better listener, but I also want things to be done my way. Now you start to see how you have sort of one foot on the gas pedal, but you have one foot on the brake. And as long as you're putting both feet on both pedals, the car's not going anywhere. You're not getting any better.

at being a better listener. Why? Because some part of you feels, I'm not in control, if I do lose the argument, if I don't seem like a strong leader, you know, I'll just die. You don't say that to yourself, but basically it's pretty primitive the way this system works. When you're threatened, when you're triggered, you know, it's like, What you're basically feeling at some deep level, you know, is some version of, you know, the possibility of your own extinction. So you start to see, I have an internal operating system.

system that's doing a wonderful job protecting me from these losses, but it's also not fit for the purpose of accomplishing the goal of being a better listener. Because the reason I do all these counterproductive things is not because there's something wrong with me or because I'm weak. You ask people, so you all agree that people have intentions they don't carry out. Why do you think that is?

The most common answer is, because we're weak. We're sinners. And our answer is no. That's not the reason that you're unable to do these things. You're unable to do these things because you're doing a second job. One part of you wants to be a better listener, but another part of you doesn't want to die. Another part of you doesn't want to suffer big psychological losses. So once people see that system, as you yourself, Simon, have experienced for yourself, that can be a little bit discouraging for a moment, because it

Simon Brown (51:11.201)
it.

Simon Brown (51:18.54)
Mmm, yes.

Robert Kegan (51:22.592)
It looks like if we stopped the dialogue at that point, that basically, you you've hired me to show you that in spite of your genuine desire to be a better listener or whatever the goal is, you're never going to. Thank you very much. I hope you loved our conversation.

Simon Brown (51:36.761)
I remember that. I remember that first time we sort of went in and it was like going into that worry box. was like, yeah, my team won't like me. I won't be to get anything done. I'm going to get fired. If I get fired, I won't be to get another job. If I can't get another job, my wife will leave me. And you sort of go through this spiral and at least there is a next stage after. Yeah.

Robert Kegan (51:52.301)
Yes, yes. Yeah, it always comes down to, I'm out on the street penniless and alone. I mean, that's the kind of the end of the story. So this internal system, you know, has done a good job protecting us. And that's why we call it an immune system, you know, because we believe that the mind, like the body, is in possession of this extraordinary instrument, which is working all the time, mostly out of our consciousness, you know, saving us and protecting us from loss. And

just like the body's immune system, the immune system is most of the time working beautifully without our even noticing it. mean, a global pandemic is a good reminder of how valuable an immune system is. So there's nothing wrong with an immune system. The thing we're helping people discover is nothing wrong about them. There's nothing bad about having an immune system. On the contrary, it's a beautiful thing. But an interesting feature of an immune system, whether it's the body's or the mind's,

is that it is not a perfect threat detector. It can sometimes regard something as a potential enemy or danger, which actually would be an ally. If you need an organ transplanted into your body, and your immune system decides that it's an enemy intruder, it's going to do everything it can to reject that organ. And it's doing that in order to save you, but it could actually kill you, because it's basically making a mistake. And the mind's immune system is similarly subject

to imperfection. can regard certain threats, know, the threat that maybe I don't have the best idea in the room if I really open myself up and listen. You know, maybe that threat.

is actually not so great. I'm making an assumption that it would be terrible. But is that assumption true? And that brings us, as you well know, Simon, to kind of the fourth step in the ITC process, which is to recognize that our internal operating systems rest on certain assumptions, which we have no curiosity about. Curiosity, there it is, right? We basically take that assumption as true. So we call those the big assumptions.

Robert Kegan (54:05.932)
the things which literally are just assumptions. I assume that if my idea is found out, you know, in an exchange, you know, of ideas to actually be inferior, that I'm going to lose all credibility. That's not an unreasonable assumption, but it's not certainly true. It's not absolutely certainly true. It's just an assumption. And so, yes, it is true. We do invoke the spirit of curiosity. We invite people

You know, we say the best mindset, just playing on this word set, S-E-T, surface. The S is for surfacing your assumptions. The E is for engaging them through experimentation. And the T is for the purpose of testing that assumption and possibly transcending it. That's the real work.

of overcoming immunity to change. Recognizing your internal mindset, recognizing the assumptions it rests on, and then having a certain curiosity about those assumptions sufficient that you would be willing to run little experiments and let the world show you what it's probably been dying to show you for quite some time about your assumption. And it's the accumulated weight of the counter experience.

that causes people to change their assumptions. Many of the assumptions we recognize that we come to see in the ITC process, some part of us already feels that assumption is wrong. We kind of like, I know my team wouldn't lose all confidence in me, like if I made one mistake. But we say, but some little part of me still operates as if that were true. And that little part is having an enormous influence. So we invite people to run experiments. And to be honest,

We're probably glossing over the word curiosity in just the way I started this interview because most people don't take up those experiments in the spirit of pure delight. They take it up courageously in a white-knuckled fashion. I'm gonna what? I'm gonna do things I would normally not do and see if I die? You know, most people's prospect toward that is not actually pure curiosity. It actually takes courage, which I think should be recognized, as your own did, Simon, when you ran your experiments.

Paul (56:22.274)
I mean, I love that. I'd love us to talk for a moment or two, if we could, immunity to one of the biggest present moment changes around AI, as sort of Simon mentioned earlier. AI, just listen to the things you said, is causing, I guess, all of those things that would bring about an immunity and a lack of wanting to change. It's causing a massive sense of optimism at one end of the spectrum, but also really a fear of extinction.

genuinely a fear of extinction. It's dismantling the scaffolds that we live around, our organisational structures, our professional identity, what it means to be an expert. And even my experience of this a couple of years ago was, is this going to genuinely destroy my business? And I think people are still grappling with that. So I guess, as we think through some of the things you just said, but also love to hear your thoughts on why are people reluctant to...

Robert Kegan (56:53.197)
Yes.

Paul (57:19.741)
adopt to adapt to AI. What does this mean in terms of thinking about their development so that, you know, perhaps they do then emerge and we do emerge as AI butterflies, if that indeed is a thing.

Robert Kegan (57:32.461)
Yes. So good question. And in a way, maybe we can use AI as, you know, there's almost no conversation that can go on very long, especially in a work context that doesn't eventually get to AI.

We can kind of use that to maybe bring together the two different intellectual strands of this conversation, which is one, the possibility and in fact the need for continuing development in adulthood. And then two, this phenomenon of what we call an immunity to change. So.

On the developmental side, the kind of intersection of AI with adult development, and again, I'm just gonna do this in a quick headline kind of way, is to kind of recognize, for example, how might we regard the...

how might we regard what AI can do with us and for us from these different developmental positions? And this will also be quick way of reminding people, you know, of the difference between, the socialized mind, the self-authoring mind, and the self-transforming mind. So, the big, one of the big threats of AI to the socialized mind is granting an enormous amount of authority to the AI.

mechanism, right? I mean, this is the socialized mind is very influenceable. It orients kind of to expertise and authority. And the AI can kind of churn out, you know, these answers and these responses that are just kind of breathtaking, just in their physical beauty. It's all laid out there. You want it in slides, you want it in bullets, but also in their substance. so one risk there, you know, is a risk similar to the, you know, the

Simon Brown (59:20.311)
You

Robert Kegan (59:29.98)
the risk of the prior revolution of the internet. The internet will send information at a faster rate to more people in greater volumes than we had before the internet age. But that information is also making a claim on your attention, on your loyalty, on your wallet. And the question becomes, who's going to be in charge of that information?

you know is it the sender of the information is going to be in charge or is it the receiver

And that is a developmental question. We used to talk about the information highway. And I would say, it's great to build an information highway, but we also need a transformation highway. Because it's a developmental question as to whether I will be in charge of the information or the information will basically be in charge of me. It takes self authorship and just the way we've talked about to use the information that way. And that's true for the information.

and you know, highway of the internet and it's also true, you know, the whole for AI, since very large percentages of the adult population are, are seeing the world through the socialized mind. That is one big risk that the AI becomes kind of the super intelligence as we call it today. And, you know, I am overly influenced by it.

So one antidote to that is increasing self authorship. But there's a risk of AI even to the self authoring mind. The self authoring mind is proud of its own, the integrity, the consistency, the wholeness of your own internal theory. And AI has a very sneaky way of

Robert Kegan (01:01:23.112)
gratifying, you know, your own intelligence. Bob, what a wonderful question you've just asked. So if you don't teach your AI to be like skeptical and to be challenging, its natural default is to basically ingratiate your particular position, right, which can be a real risk at self authoring mind, you're getting all these people applauding and saying the way you're thinking about things is absolutely right. And let me

you know, just stay within kind of that frame. So I think one thing we need to do is sort of teach, you know, our agent, you know, to not try to ingratiate itself to us, but you know, to actually challenge us. And that in itself then can be useful to our own, you know, movement out of self authorship. So that's just a quick riff on kind of the intersection of AI and different developmental places.

Now, the second part of your question, a way of relating to your question, is to consider the fact, as you say, that there's also an enormous amount of trepidation about AI. Everything from, we're building the instrument of our own extinction to this extraordinary optimism on the other side. For that, think the whole immunity change process would be a very, very useful

kind of addition to this inquiry and rather than either just living off our our terror and our triggered notion that 40 % of the workforce is going to disappear and all of these, you know, we're to be taken over by all this and it's going to be just like the movie 2001 and Hal is basically going to run the universe, you know, or just totally indulge our optimism about how this is going to transform everything, you know, for good. What if we instead

tried to create a richer kind of dialogue or relationship between our own internal operating model as it relates to AI and the phenomenon of AI. And this is a kind of work which we've, with my own colleagues and team that we've begun to do is to kind of begin mapping out.

Robert Kegan (01:03:40.623)
you can start with you know people's like reluctant you know so in their first column goal would be a you know i want to be uh... uh... uh... a more effective you know adapter you know of a i or something i want to be a more intelligent user of it or whatever and then in the second column you know you would track the various ways that you are resisting you know uh... forming you know this exploration or disconnect and then that would get us into the third and fourth columns of a

change map? What are the real fears if I don't do this? What then are the counter commitments? What are the losses that I'm imagining that I'm needing to protect myself from? And then finally, what are the fundamental underlying assumptions that are preserving a mindset that makes me resistant to AI? And then we need to explore and test those assumptions. And we can do that at an individual level and we can do it kind of at a collective level. And we'll probably have a much more productive relationship.

you know, to this extraordinary new technology and the revolution, you know, that it is creating. If we go to that same mindset idea, SET, surface, what are our underlying assumptions that cause us to feel and act in relationship to AI that we do, and then engage through experimentation, that's the E part, those assumptions, for the purpose of testing them and possibly transcending them.

news is that it almost always turns out that when people start exploring their assumptions, they see that there are some limitations to them and that they can be then transcended.

Simon Brown (01:05:22.359)
We could go on for hours on this book. I think I probably need to need to wrap us up, but Maybe in a moment. I'll come back to you for us of some

final thoughts and sort of guidance for our listeners maybe building on some of those things we just talked about. But I'll do my best first to sort of wrap up what's been an inspiring conversation. So we heard first of all around your definition on curiosity and sort of around how it's a delightful variant on the knowing gap that you described and how often the knowing gap is negative. But actually with curiosity, it maybe can make that not knowing, that knowing gap as

actually a positive thing and get rid of that frustration and self-criticism that actually creates the pleasure for us to go deeper into to not knowing. We heard about how curiosity helps us to learn, how that helps us to go towards psychological growth. We went into things like getting wise by failing a lot around a perceived lack of something that drives people forward and that some people are driven by that curiosity, some are driven by

by something that's driving them forward in a different way. We get more delight from curiosity than fear. We heard then some of your stories to give us some of the detail around the different development stages from that socialized stage. And we heard around the young individual who decided not to steal a motorcycle, self-authoring and the experience of our Olympic champion and how it went back into the Olympics.

Robert Kegan (01:06:56.302)
Thanks.

Simon Brown (01:07:03.477)
in a new way without those expectations and what that lifted. And then we heard about the 5 % of people that fall into that self-transforming category often later in life where they then become more comfortable with polarities and with multiplicity in themselves and these contradictions being held at the same time. We heard about having the benefits of maybe having teams of rivals and welcoming dissenting views. And then we dived into

Robert Kegan (01:07:32.43)
you

Simon Brown (01:07:33.13)
immunity to change and to remember that if you have 13 frogs on the log and four of those frogs decide to jump you've still got 13 frogs on the log. went into those...

Robert Kegan (01:07:45.326)
If nothing else, remember the frogs on the log. If nothing else.

Simon Brown (01:07:50.75)
Exactly, it's a very visual way of four frogs that decided to jump but didn't. The endeavors of human beings, so our desire not to die and protecting ourselves from loss and our desire to grow and develop. And then the analogy of the caterpillar and how do we go from getting to a bigger caterpillar to actually transforming to get to a butterfly. Dive deeper into

ITC and that our aim is to change our internal mindset and how we often hold counterproductive thoughts. We went into our worry box and how we should challenge ourselves. What happens if the opposite happens and getting into our commitments and then our one biggest assumption or our assumptions that hold us back and how that's our immune system which sometimes maybe is identifying the wrong threats that can make a mistake.

Robert Kegan (01:08:46.286)
Thank

Simon Brown (01:08:50.553)
and we need to be curious around the assumptions that we hold. Then we went into AI and yeah, how maybe to get the most out of AI, we need to actually teach our agents to be skeptical and that that maybe keeps us then in the self authoring mind rather than just gratifying us and telling us what we hold to be true, that holding that curiosity around, is it true that that challenge them and to get the most out of our agents, yeah, give them that challenging mindset.

Robert Kegan (01:08:56.235)
you

Simon Brown (01:09:20.473)
Quite a lot there. out of all of that, any particular takeaways you'd like to leave our listeners with?

Robert Kegan (01:09:23.03)
Yes, quite a lot there. Quite a summary.

Robert Kegan (01:09:31.448)
Well, I'm just thinking of this example that I gave, you know, a leader wanting to be a better listener. maybe just to leave your own listeners or viewers kind of, you know, with the thoughts that when you start taking up these kinds of inquiry, you never really can fully anticipate what all the benefits ultimately might be of kind of...

engaging your own interior. think as leaders, we tend to spend so much time on kind of what I call the horizontal, moving things along in time, getting things done, you know, kind of the doing a part of kind of like human doing. And all that horizontal dimension is incredibly important, but it's not the whole of life. There's also the vertical dimension of kind of dropping down into our own interior and understanding that we do have kind of an interior kind of operating model.

and connecting not just with human doing, let's say, but with human being. And you never know once you start this what the treasures of it all might be. And so what I was thinking about is some years ago I was actually working with a large multinational company. We were working with the top 300 senior leaders and to reach that many people we were making videos that people could access on their phones or on their laptops.

little bit of a celebrity in the tiny ecology of this company. And I walked into its lobby one day and across the lobby a guy kind of immediately saw me and pointed to me he said, started walking over to me and he said, know, you're the guy who's, you know, helping us with our leadership development. And I said, yes, I am. And he said, it's really funny I'm running into you because just the other day my wife said to me that if I should, you know, meet anybody who, you know, was responsible for this leadership development program,

I should thank them on her behalf." And I said, well, that's, you know, that's the lovely thing to hear. Do you want to tell me more? And he proceeded to tell me...

Robert Kegan (01:11:40.013)
that as he said that he and his wife have a very challenging teenage son. And he was saying to his wife, have you noticed that Timmy seems to turned a corner? And there are days when it's actually a pleasure to have him in the family or something like this. And he told me that she said to him, have noticed this. And what I wonder is if you have noticed that you have completely changed the way that you listen to him. And he said to her, well, what do you mean? She said, look, I'm not saying that you were ever

a bad father. But if I had to kind of characterize the way that you tended to talk to Tim, I would call it friendly managerial, kind of just checking up on him. You know, are you getting this thing done? Are you looking out for this thing? Are you avoiding this danger? And so on. She said, today, you come to him in a very, very different way. I would say it's kind of like without an agenda. Maybe as befits the theme of this program, you come to him more with curiosity.

just wanting to know what it is he's thinking about. And as a result, I don't think you realize it, but this is so disarming that he's just literally quantitatively talking to you more. And as a result of his talking to you more, I think the connection between the two of you is richer. And I think that's been the biggest contributor to the ways that we've seen that he's changed. And he said this kind of with tears in his eyes. And as I later come to learn, the goal that he had been working on was in the context of his team.

to be a better listener. He'd gotten a lot of appreciative feedback, but that was the critical feedback. And he'd been working on that, and he'd been making real progress on that with his team. But he had no recognition or realization that the same things that he was learning in relationship to his team, he was bringing into his family, and that that was altering a relationship that was probably much more important to him than that of his relationship with any of his team members. And it's kind of that idea that you don't know kind of the gifts that this kind of work

can ultimately bring when you started and maybe I would end by just wishing for, you know, any listener or viewer of this podcast that you yourself might benefit from such gifts.

Simon Brown (01:13:53.719)
I think that story just shows the power of the research and the work that you've done, Bob. So similar to Timmy and his mother and father. I mean, thank you personally as well for the impact your work has had on me. It's super powerful. So huge thank you for joining us today, and it's been a real pleasure to listen to you. Thank you.

Paul (01:14:15.7)
Thank you, Bob.

Robert Kegan (01:14:15.864)
Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you both.

Simon Brown (01:14:18.007)
you

So I would urge our listeners to check out Bob's work. There's a huge amount there to take away from it. So you've been listening to a Curious Advantage podcast. This series is about how individuals and organizations use the power of curiosity to drive success in their lives and businesses, especially in the context of our new digital realities. And it brings to life the latest understanding from neuroscience, anthropology, history, business, and behaviorism about curiosity and makes these useful for everyone. As always, we're curious to hear from you.

So do use our social channels to get back to us and do check out the Curious Advantage book which is available on Amazon worldwide to explore our seven seas model for being more curious. Subscribe today and keep exploring curiously. See you next time.