Ego Development for Effective Coaching and Consulting E-Book

Thomas Binder

• Herausgeber: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 478

Beschreibung

Both in research and in practice, a number of basic competencies are considered necessary for successful process-oriented coaching and consulting activities. In the present research work, the extent to which these necessary competencies are related to vertical personality development was investigated. Loevinger's model of ego development, a stage theory of development, provides the frame of reference for this study. This paper fully summarizes the current state of research on the model in order to comprehensively analyze possible relationships with coaching and consulting competencies. As a first step, the competency requirements of selected coaching and consulting associations were analyzed to determine whether they are related to ego development and whether they express minimum requirements for ego development. The analysis revealed that the competency requirements of all associations show clear parallels to aspects of ego development. The majority of these requirements point to a fully developed, self-governed stage (E6) of ego development as a prerequisite for process-oriented coaching and consulting services. In a second step, empirical studies were examined to systematically analyze the relationship between ego development and aspects relevant to coaching and consulting. The results of the current empirical studies show a clear correlation between these competencies and ego development. This means that as ego development increases, higher coaching and consulting competencies become more likely. Many studies also indicate that a fully developed, self-governed stage of ego development can be expected as the basis for consistent work at an intermediate level of competence.

Leseprobe

Thomas Binder

Ego Development for Effective Coaching and Consulting

Including a Comprehensive Overview of Ego Development Theory, its Validation, Critique and Empirical Foundations

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

The translation into English was done by Susan Welsh. For further assistance with technical and linguistic subtleties, I thank Dr. Dagmar Frohning and Jason Kay.

This work has also been published in German by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht under the title »Ich-Entwicklung für effektives Beraten«.

ISBN: 978-3-525-40378-5

With 26 figures and 32 tables

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

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What others have to say about this book:

“Thomas Binder’s book, published in English for the first time, is a truly necessary book in the ongoing history of developmental psychology and its pragmatic impact on the coaching, consulting, and leadership development professions. It foregrounds and judiciously reviews the ego development work of Jane Loevinger and of the many scholars who have used her WUSCT (Washington University Sentence Completion Test) and its variants in their own work. We owe Binder a debt of gratitude for his labor of love and his contribution to the field.”

William R. Torbert

Leadership Professor Emeritus, Boston College, Founding Board Member, Global Leadership Associates, Author, Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, Organizations, and Social Science.

“If you want a deep and wide understanding of the theory and research behind vertical development, this is the book you want to read. The depth and rigor of scholarship is first class, yet the style of writing keeps it interesting and easy to understand. I doubt there is any study of vertical development in the last 40 years, that is relevant to coaches, consultants, and managers, that isn’t summarized somewhere in this book. It’s a treasure trove of models, evidence and dots connected between research and practice.”

Gervase Bushe

Professor of Leadership and Organization Development, Simon Fraser University Vancouver, Canada.

“It has been a pure, undiluted pleasure for me to read this book. I doubt that there is any other scholar worldwide that has such a comprehensive grasp ofthe accumulated literature on ego development from the beginnings in the 1960s up to now. Thomas Binder offers an extremely thorough and easily accessible review of empirical research on all the relevant aspects of the ego development framework that I could think of, with particular emphasis on coaching, consulting and leadership. This book will be a reference work that I believe will not have its equal for a generation to come. In terms of audiences, the book will be a treasure for academic scholars in the adult development field, but its main impact will be for coaches, organizational consultants and leadership development trainers, both those who are already practicing professionals and those who are in training. I sincerely hope that it will be used as course literature in academic and private programs on counseling, coaching and consulting.”

Thomas Jordan

PhD, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Work Science, Gothenburg University, Sweden.

“For those of us committed to supporting the learning and growth of others through the fields of leadership education, coaching, or consulting, the field of adult development is an invaluable resource and inspiration. The downside of becoming a mainstream feature of this area of practice is that adult development is often reduced to superficial, commodified concepts that have lost their depth, dimensionality, and nuance. Thomas Binder’s new contribution on the implications of ego development provides both theorists and practitioners a rigorous, critical, and comprehensive insight into the pioneering work of Jane Loevinger, the relationship between her vast empirical study and other prevailing theories of adult development, such as Robert Kegan’s, as well as helpful critical insights into the limits and possibilities of applying these powerful theories to the field of accompaniment. For anyone serious about supporting human growth, integration, and maturity, I highly recommend Binder’s Ego Development for Effective Coaching and Consulting.”

Rev. David C. McCallum, S.J.

Ed.D, Executive Director of the Discerning Leadership Program, The Pontifical Gregorian University

“Mid-life crises interrupt our lives and are costly in many ways. Few scholars examine the interstitial periods, between the liminal episodes of angst, and ask what people want or can handle during these stages, phases or eras in order to grow and develop. Using ego-development theories with Loevinger’s as the backbone, Binder does a magnificent job of explaining what both the coach/consultant needs to address in their own issues and needs, as well as those of their clients to be of most help. Beware, you ignore your stage at the peril of your clients! This book can enlighten and guide you to more effective coaching and consulting and a better life!”

Richard Boyatzis

PhD, Distinguished University Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Co-author of the International Best Seller, Primal Leadership and the new Helping People Change.

“If you love the ideas of adult development theory and coaching, Binder’s artful synthesis is a necessary addition to your library. Thoughtfully researched and clearly presented, this wide-ranging book will shore up any weaknesses in your foundation and open new doors to your exploration. A must-read for developmental coaches and anyone who cares about the research-based ideas of adult growth!”

Jennifer Garvey Berger

EdD, Former Associate Professor, George Mason University, CEO Cultivating Leadership, Author of Books on Adult Development, e. g. Changing on the Job, Simple Habits for Complex Times.

“Binder’s thoroughly researched and clearly written book is an extremely welcome first step toward better training and evaluation of management consultants. Moreover, what the book says about consultants also applies to their clients: namely, that organizational work is differentiated by developmental stages that can be comprehensively and unambiguously determined empirically.”

Otto Laske

PhD, Founder and Director Interdevelopmental Institute, Boston/MA, USA, Author of books like Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems or Dialectical Thinking for Integral Leaders: A Primer.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English edition

Foreword

List of figures

List of tables

Appendices

1 Introduction, relevance, and overview

1.1 Introduction and relevance

1.2 Overview of the work

2 Ego development

2.1 Detailed presentation of Loevinger’s ego development model

2.1.1 The ego (the “I”) – attempt at a definition

2.1.2 The “discovery” and development of the model

2.1.3 Stages of ego development

2.1.3.1 Early stages of ego development

2.1.3.2 Middle stages of ego development

2.1.3.3 Late stages of ego development

2.1.4 Aspects and areas of ego development

2.1.5 Ego development as transformation

2.1.6 Levels of development

2.1.6.1 Pre-conventional level

2.1.6.2 Conventional level

2.1.6.3 Post-conventional level

2.1.7 Extension of the post-conventional level by Cook-Greuter

2.1.7.1 Reinterpretation of the post-conventional level

2.1.7.2 The last two stages of ego development according to Cook-Greuter

2.1.8 Excursus: Kegan’s subject-object theory of the evolving self

2.1.8.1 The “discovery” of the subject-object model

2.1.8.2 Cognition and emotion as two sides of development

2.1.8.3 Subject-object relations as the basis of “meaning making”

2.1.8.4 The spiral process of the evolving self

2.1.8.5 Main stages of the self

2.1.9 Stability and changeability of ego stage

2.1.9.1 Age and ego development

2.1.9.2 Achieving a stable balance of ego stage

2.1.9.3 Mechanisms that promote stability or change in personality with reference to ego development

2.1.9.4 Conclusion on the changeability of ego stage in adulthood

2.1.10 Distribution of ego development stages in adulthood

2.1.10.1 Studies based on Loevinger’s work

2.1.10.2 Comparison with studies on Kegan’s model

2.1.11 Ego development and personality

2.1.11.1 Clarification of the term “personality”

2.1.11.2 Ego development and trait approaches to personality

2.1.11.3 Ego development in integrative personality approaches

2.1.11.3.1 Ego development in the context of McAdams’s three level-model of personality

2.1.11.3.2 Ego development in Kuhl’s theory of personality system interactions

2.1.12 Criticism of Loevinger’s ego development model

2.1.12.1 Lack of definitions of the ego and of ego development

2.1.12.2 Questioning the unity of the ego

2.1.12.3 No hard structure theory in Piaget’s sense

2.1.12.4 No method to measure the deep structure

2.1.12.5 Insufficient explanation of the mechanisms of ego development

2.1.12.6 Not considering mental health

2.2 Empirical validation of the ego development model

2.2.1 Reliability

2.2.2 Validity

2.2.2.1 Discriminant and incremental validity

2.2.2.1.1 Ego development and socio-economic status

2.2.2.1.2 Ego development and intelligence

2.2.2.1.3 Ego development and language skills

2.2.2.2 Convergent validity

2.2.2.2.1 Ego development and other methods and concepts of maturity

2.2.2.2.2 Ego development and methods for measuring individual aspects

2.2.2.2.2.1 Character as a domain of ego development

2.2.2.2.2.2 Interpersonal style as a domain of ego development

2.2.2.2.2.3 Conscious preoccupations as a domain of ego development

2.2.2.2.2.4 Cognitive style as a domain of ego development

2.2.2.3 Unity of the ego

2.2.2.4 Sequentiality of stages

2.2.2.4.1 Cross-sectional studies

2.2.2.4.2 Longitudinal studies

2.2.2.4.3 Intervention studies

2.2.2.4.4 Studies on the asymmetry of the understanding of ego development

2.2.2.4.5 Studies of the regularity of response patterns

2.2.2.4.6 Biographical research based on criteria of ego development

2.2.2.5 Cultural universality of ego development

2.2.3 Conclusion

3 Analyses of coaching/consulting competence and ego development

3.1 Questions

3.2 Clarification of the terms “coaching” and “consulting”

3.3 Clarification of the term “competence”

3.4 Substantive parallels between competence requirements for coaches/consultants and aspects of ego development

3.4.1 Methodology

3.4.1.1 Choice of professional associations

3.4.1.2 Choice and evaluation of competence requirements

3.4.2 Results: Aspects of ego development in competence requirements of coaching and consulting associations

3.4.3 Examples of underlying development requirements implicit in competence models

3.4.4 Conclusion

3.5 Empirical relationships between coaching and consulting competences and aspects of ego development

3.5.1 Studies within coaching and consulting contexts

3.5.1.1 Studies with focus on empathy

3.5.1.2 Studies with focus on the competence and/or effectiveness of coaching/consulting

3.5.1.3 Studies with focus on the fit between coach/consultant and client

3.5.1.4 Studies with focus on one’s own well-being and self-regulation

3.5.1.5 Studies with focus on morality, ethical attitudes and values

3.5.2 Other relevant studies outside coaching and consulting contexts

3.5.2.1 Studies with focus on self-competence

3.5.2.2 Studies with focus on dealing with complexity

3.5.3 Conclusion

4 Discussion and prospects

4.1 Discussion

4.1.1 Discussion on the model of ego development

4.1.2 Discussion on the relationship between coaching and consulting competence and ego development

4.1.2.1 Substantive parallels between competence requirements for coaches and consultants and aspects of ego development

4.1.2.2 Empirical relationships between coaching and consulting competences and aspects of ego development

4.2 Prospects

4.2.1 Prospects for further research

4.2.2 Prospects for practice

Bibliography

Appendix

When I was a boy of fourteen,my father was so ignorantI could hardly stand to havethe old man around.

But when I got to be 21, I was astonishedat how much he had learned in seven years.

Mark Twain(Loeb, 1996, p. 15)

Preface to the English edition

I am pleased that this book is now available in English, after a second edition has been published for the German market after only two years.

The issue of ego development has fascinated me since the early 1990s, when I began working at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. This issue raises many questions and continues to intrigue me to this day as a researcher, coach, teaching supervisor, organizational consultant as well as a human being wanting to develop with my family as well as others. Beyond my own spiritual practice – and perhaps even more directly than there – it is precisely the topic of ego development that confronts and connects me to the process of life – if I manage to live it.

By now I have analyzed well about 1500 ego development profiles and worked in countless coaching sessions with clients and various leadership development programs on the issue of ego development. This experience, as well as the intensive learning of measurement techniques of other developmental models (e. g. Kohlberg, Kegan) have profoundly changed my understanding of ego development and my practice. From this arose the desire to compile a well-founded scientific summary and critical classification of the theoretical and empirical questions of the ego development model. In addition my aim was to comprehensively research the connection with coaching/consulting competence, within the framework of a dissertation. This has not been done yet. This would not have been possible, had I not started studying this discipline about 30 years ago.

A lot has changed. Back then, it was still considered to be a niche discipline for only a few university professors, most of whom had a solid methodological background and no commercial interests. Today, the topic of “adult development” has increasingly arrived in everyday life, where it actually belongs and where it can be useful to a broader audience. In my view, the model of ego development in particular can contribute to many things that make a more conscious life possible.

For the individual, increasing ego development is first and foremost a “promise of freedom”. With regard to human societies, it is probably pivotal that as many people as possible reach a full Self-Governed Stage (E6) (with some signs of the next stage). This would allow for societies in which self-determination is a lived reality, whilst guaranteeing sufficient understanding of others. Reaching this stage is what I call the completion of the first journey in adult life (“freedom from others”). Given the political developments in many countries, this stage of development appears to be more necessary than ever for human society, and more relevant than focusing on ever later stages of development, as tempting as this may be (even for me).

In my opinion, the increasing dissemination of ideas and models of “vertical development” in everyday life is unfortunately also causing some questionable developments – exploitation interests and the claim to interpretative sovereignty are increasing. Concepts and models are compared1 with each other without deeper understanding and coaches and consulting companies “craft” their own “models” with a scientific veneer with a quick pen, to be sold to bona fide clients. Scientific concepts are abridged, “mixed” with others or expanded into all-encompassing models, so that one wonders what construct is actually involved – a question that should be at the beginning of any serious theorybuilding. Others promise a rapid stage development, leaving a critical person or one familiar with the research in doubt.

Despite these developments, I believe that the potential benefits for society outweigh the disadvantages. I would be pleased if my book contributes to a more sound understanding of ego development and helps researchers and practitioners alike to orient themselves in the “thicket” of publications and offerings.

Thomas Binder

Berlin, Germany

Note on gender-related formulations

In order to write as neutrally as possible, I use alternating masculine and feminine forms per paragraph. The only exceptions are quotations, in order not to change the original text afterwards.

1e. g. Ross, 2008b

Foreword

It is a rare pleasure to find oneself as an elder in the adult development research community to applaud a younger colleague’s clear and elegant writing and his intellectual contribution to the field. Thomas Binder and I have both spent most of our adult lives exploring, almost independently of one another, the pioneering work of Jane Loevinger on ego development, expanding it and making it available for practical applications. For him, this effort has been driven equally by his own dedication and his curiosity as a consultant, coach, and scientist. With this work, I hope that more and more researchers, consultants, and executives realize that understanding the reality of adult vertical development is a difference that makes a difference.

The model of ego development shows us how people develop during their lives through qualitatively different stages, each building upon the previous one. In the field of adult development, most models tend to privilege cognitive complexity as the sole index of maturity. I tend to call this “aboutism,” since one can learn to reason in a complex way “about” any topic – including selfdevelopment and morality – without embodying or translating that knowledge into real world action. In contrast, ego development is a whole person theory that takes thought, affect and action as well as context (historical and cultural) into account. It shows what needs people have, what they attend to, how they define themselves, interact with others, and how they think and feel. In short, what they have already mastered on the long and sometimes rocky road of a person’s development and what limits remain.

Thomas Binder puts forward the most comprehensive and thorough exploration in the world today of the concept of ego development: He describes its origin, its diverse facets, points of criticism, and its refinement as well as extensions since the 1960’s, and compares it with other personality models. He provides for the first time a complete picture of the empirical foundations of the ego development model and the projective testing procedure on which it is based. To this end, he carefully analyzes hundreds of studies that have tried to validate or refute Loevinger’s approach from every possible corner of psychometrics. He examines these issues with meticulous attention to psychometric knowledge and practices and offers telling data, diagrams, and arguments, in order to be able to systematize the various research results. The reference list spans 46 pages and follows psychological theory from its forerunners to today. This shows that the ego development model (and the proper measurement methodology for it) can now be considered as one of the best-substantiated stage models of development.

On this foundation, Binder offers his own carefully crafted research studies and makes a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between competence requirements in process-oriented coaching and consulting and aspects of ego development, showing vividly the diverse ways in which these are linked with vertical development. These empirical analyses also indicate the minimum level of personal maturity that is actually required for effective coaching and consulting. As his conclusions show, a large percentage of adults are not yet able to gain the necessary insights and to act accordingly.

Thomas Binder’s book can inspire many other fields – such as education, therapy, coaching, management, and leadership development – to address their questions from the perspective of ego development. Just as our outer world is ever more rapidly changing, so too are demands on adults increasing, to be more discerning and to more flexibly take a broader, longer-term, and more multi-faceted perspective. Without considering the interactions among individuals, groups, cultural systems, and global factors, we cannot adequately address the serious challenges that we face as humanity.

Binder in this labor of love demonstrates the continuing power of ego development theory for understanding human growth and thriving, and he substantiates it skillfully. In his chapter “Discussion and prospects”, he also shows what this could mean in coaching and consulting practice. I hope that he and this work will reach many more fields and people, because he proves, in a scientifically sound and readable manner, that personality development ceased being “esoteric” long ago, and that maturity can now be accurately measured and also purposefully promoted.

Susanne Cook-Greuter

List of figures

Fig. 1: Two sides of the “I”/ego/self: Subject and object

Fig. 2: Linear and curvilinear relationships using the example of ego development, cognitive complexity and conformism

Fig. 3: Typical progressions of ego development aspects

Fig. 4: Developmental directions: Horizontal and vertical

Fig. 5: In-formation vs. trans-formation

Fig. 6: Shift of the subject-object balance

Fig. 7: Helix of development with stage numbers following Loevinger (E) and Kegan (S)

Fig. 8: Ego development and age in various samples (Cohn, 1998, p. 140)

Fig. 9: Model for a milestone sequence (Loevinger, 1976, p. 167)

Fig. 12: Ego development evaluated by three procedures (Sutton & Swensen, 1983, p. 471)

Fig. 13: Ego development and emotional understanding (Labouvie-Vief, DeVoe & Bulka, 1989, p. 432)

Fig. 14: Ego development and responsiveness in two interview phases (Hauser, 1978, p. 343)

Fig. 15: Use of types of political reasoning by ego level (Candee, 1974, p. 624)

Fig. 16: Ego development and authoritarian attitudes (Browning, 1983, p. 143)

Fig. 17: Ego development and emotions (Hauser & Safyer, 1994, p. 495) 145

Fig. 18: Cross-sectional studies of ego development (Loevinger & Wessler, 1978, p. 50)

Fig. 19: Longitudinal studies of ego development (Redmore & Loevinger, 1979, p. 18)

Fig. 20: Ego-Development Profile distribution from the first survey (ID-37a)

Fig. 21: Ego development profile distribution from the second survey (ID-37b)

Fig. 23: Different levels of competences (Spencer & Spencer, 1993, p. 11) 169

Fig. 24: Ego development and effectiveness in leadership situations (Eigel & Kuhnert, 2005, p. 375) (LDL 3–4 ~ E5, LDL 4 ~ E6, LDL 5 ~ E8)

Fig. 25: Schematic representation of the relationship between maturity and adaptivity (Mickler, 2004, p. 26)

Fig. 26: Values of correlation coefficients and variable dispersion in relation to the scattering of variables (Kuhl, 2010, p. 37)

List of tables

Tab. 1: Four areas of ego development

Tab. 2: Levels of development

Tab. 3: Levels and ego development stages

Tab. 4: Levels and ego development stages with expansion following Cook-Greuter

Tab. 5: Subject-object balance at two stages of cognitive development

Tab. 6: Subject-object balance following Kegan and corresponding levels of ego development following Loevinger

Tab. 7: Ego development and participation in self-inquiry groups (Torbert & Fisher, 1992, p. 186)

Tab. 8: Meta-analysis of intervention studies with social role taking (Sprinthall, 1994, p. 89)

Tab. 9: Distribution of ego development stages of adult women in comparison to the total sample (Loevinger & Wessler, 1978, p. 28)

Tab. 10: Representative distribution of ego development stages in adolescence and adulthood (Holt, 1980, p. 916)

Tab. 11: Distribution of ego development stages in three aggregated samples

Tab. 12: Distribution of ego development stages compared –Kegan based studies (Kegan, 1996, p. 193)

Tab. 13: Three levels of personality and their relations to culture (McAdams & Pals, 2006, p. 212)

Tab. 14: The seven system levels of PSI Theory (Kuhl, 2010, p. 437)

Tab. 15: Correlation between ego development and SES measures by age group (Browning, 1987, p. 116)

Tab. 16: Correlation of ego development with occupation, education, social class, and work complexity (Snarey & Lydens, 1990, p. 90)

Tab. 17: Correlation between ego development and intelligence measures (Cohn & Westenberg, 2004, p. 765)

Tab. 18: Minnesota Q-Set items relating to two levels of ego development (Rozsnafszky, 1981, p. 114)

Tab. 19: Level of ego development and values of an aggregated measure for maturity (Novy, 1993, p. 337)

Tab. 20: Ego development and complexity of life goals (McAdams, Ruetzel & Foley, 1986, p. 805)

Tab. 21: Correlation between ego development and emotions (Hauser & Safyer, 1994, p. 495)

Tab. 22: Intra-individual changes in ego development (Adams & Fitch,1982, p. 581)

Tab. 23: Ego development response patterns (Davison et al., 1980, p. 126)

Tab. 24: Schein’s basic consultation models (according to Fatzer, 1999, pp. 22–23)

Tab. 25: Counseling ability (VPPS) and stage of ego development and training level (Borders & Fong, 1989, p. 79)

Tab. 26: Ego development and stages of moral judgment following Kohlberg (Lambert, 1972b, p. 116)

Tab. 27: Ego development and preferred social distance from persons with disabilities (Sheaffer, Sias, Toriello & Cubero, 2008, p. 152) 199

Tab. 28: Ego development and variability of the self (Pazy, 1985, p. 75)

Tab. 29: Evaluation scales on the ability to change, with inter-judge reliability (O’Connor & Wolfe, 1991, p. 330)

Tab. 30: Scope of transition and paradigm shift by ego level (O’Connor & Wolfe, 1991, p. 333)

Tab. 31: Ego development and percentage of second-order responses (Merron, 1985, p. 133)

Tab. 32: Ego development and percentage of collaborative responses (Merron, 1985, p. 134)

Appendices

Annex 1: Overview of ego development stages

Annex 2: Interpersonal Understanding Scale (Spencer & Spencer, 1993, p. 39)

Annex 3: Summary of the empirical survey (see Binder, 2014b)

1 Introduction, relevance, and overview

1.1 Introduction and relevance

My personal experiences in coaching, consulting and training form the starting point of this book. Since 1995 I have worked as an organizational consultant, and from 2002 also as a supervisor and coach, and the professional director of a year-long change management program. In 2005 I began lecturing on additional process-oriented coaching and consultancy trainings, in the context of systemic consulting and organizational development. Throughout this time, I have been interested in questions such as the following:

– What are the reasons for the trainees’ different skill application levels, when it comes to effectively using the approaches and methods they have learned?

– Why is it that some consultants seem to “stick” to the problem as it is described by the client, while others can easily reinterpret the situation, pose additional questions, and are thus capable of much more flexible coaching and consulting?

– Why is it that executives differ greatly in how they deal with feedback? Some request it, but still respond defensively to even the most discreet expression of it. Others seem more to welcome different perspectives as a gift.

These differences seemed to me not so much a matter of intelligence or personality characteristics, such as those described in the Big Five model of personality. Rather, I suspected that there was an underlying developmental component, familiar to me from my previous work as a project assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. At that time I was doing research in the department of Wolfgang Edelstein (e. g., Grundmann, Binder, Edelstein & Krettenauer, 1998) and conducted interviews, interviewer training, and scoring according to Kohlberg’s model of moral development. That was where I came into contact with the ego development model of Jane Loevinger, whose survey instrument was being used in an MPIB longitudinal study in Iceland (Edelstein & Krettenauer, 2004). I also became acquainted with Augusto Blasi, who had been one of Loevinger’s closest associates, and who also gave scorer training during his visits. The ego development model describes stages of personality development (Loevinger, 1997) rather than individual developmental aspects such as moral judgment or social perspective taking. Therefore it seemed to me particularly well suited to shed new light on my questions and to help answer them (Habecker & Binder, 2014). This made me determined to study these questions in detail, for their relevance to coaching and consulting.

If we consider the challenges that successful coaches and consultants must overcome, the competencies required have parallels to Loevinger’s ego development model. This is illustrated by the example of the German Professional Association for Coaching e.V. (DBVC). In the section of its “Coaching Compendium” on “The competence profile of a coach,” we find the following description of personal requirements (Wolf, 2009):

A coach must be able to use himself effectively as a tool in consultation – without submitting to the urge to over-represent himself, but also without denying himself. For this he requires cross-disciplinary qualifications, in particular realistic self-assessment, emotional stability, a healthy sense of selfworth, a sense of responsibility, intellectual flexibility, and empathy. (p. 36)

This description by the DBVC touches upon aspects of impulse control (“the urge to over-represent oneself”), interpersonal style (“sense of responsibility”), conscious preoccupations (“realistic self-assessment”), and cognitive development (“intellectual flexibility”) (see p. 48). These are all qualities that exist in Loevinger’s ego development model, but not before the Conscientious Stage (E6).

Combining this with my personal experience calls into question whether the requirements for consultants listed by the DBVC can be achieved by the majority, given their individual developmental level, because the majority of the adult population in Western societies has not reached a level that corresponds to the full Conscientious Stage (E6) of ego development (Cohn, 1998). In fact, ego development is stabilized by the middle of the second decade of life at the Self-Aware Stage (E5) for most adults (Loevinger, 1976; Westenberg & Gjerde, 1999; Syed & Seifge-Krenke, 2013). Therefore, coaches and consultants could, despite extensive training, end up in a state that Kegan (1996), in his analysis of the demands made upon adults, referred to as “in over our heads.”

This work is based upon the model of ego development of Loevinger, who retrospectively described herself as “a psychologist whose work has been on the fringe of psychometrics, of personality theory, and, at a stretch, of psychoanalytic theory and the philosophy of science” (Loevinger, 2002, p. 195). Her model is simultaneously a theory of personality and a developmental psychology model of stages (see p. 42). It therefore suggests a bridge between two disciplines, because “[p]ersonality theories often lack an appreciation of development, and developmental theories often lack an appreciation of individual differences” (Westenberg, Blasi & Cohn, 1998, p. 1). Loevinger’s model is a developmental psychology model within the field of stage theories. In this field development is not understood as continuous or “gradual transition with small behavioral changes” (Garz, 2008, p. 8), but rather as discontinuous, with qualitative developmental steps. Stage theories interpret development not as an internal maturation process or a response to the environment, but as a person’s active engagement with their environment, in which the person should be seen, at least from a certain stage of development, as a “reflexively active subject” (Hoff, 2003). Such theories thus take an “interactionist viewpoint” (Lerner, 2002, p. 372).

Loevinger’s model seems to contribute more effectively than other developmental models to explaining the differences in competence of coaches and consultants (or even managers). It is not a domain model of development (such as Kohlberg’s model of moral judgment), but rather understands the ego as a holistic construct. It is also not a purely cognitive development model, but it concerns also “impulses and methods for controlling impulses, personal preoccupations and ambitions, interpersonal attitudes and social values” (Blasi, 1998, p. 15). The ego development model also includes the aspect of identity formation (Blasi, 1988; Kroger, 2004; Jespersen, Kroger & Martinussen, 2013), especially the question of what we perceive as belonging to our own ego and how the boundary between our ego and others is drawn. This aspect, which Kegan (1982) also emphasizes in his model of ego development, is crucial for coaching and consultancy - for example, when acting independently of (presumed) expectations of others or gaining distance from one’s own constructions of reality (the latter being characteristic for post-conventional stages). Even in research on competence models ego development is often understood as an aspect of personality related to competence (Boyatzis, 1982, p. 33).

Coaches and consultants also often confront problem situations that place high demands on dealing with complexity. The following description of supervision taken from the German Society for Supervision illustrates this (Hausinger, 2011):

Supervision works at the points of intersection of person – activity – role/function – organization – environment – society, i. e., supervision considers different systems of reference, each with their own logic and dynamics. Therefore, supervision takes a multi-perspective approach. A subject is considered both from different individual perspectives and in detail, as well as in the broader context. In supervision, the general, the special, and that which underlies them can therefore all be considered simultaneously. (p. 9)

Consulting contexts such as these, which are typical of process-oriented consulting forms such as supervision, coaching, and organizational development, thus have many attributes of high complexity, as Dörner (2003) and Wilke (2006), for example, have identified them:

– Many influential factors

– Interconnectedness of the individual elements

– Rather poorly defined problems

– High impact of the decisions

– Consideration of different interests, feelings, motives, and behavior patterns

The more comprehensive and sophisticated coaches and consultants are in understanding their environment, themselves, and their role, and the more flexibly they can act in such contexts, the more they should be able to be effective, because there are a number of “adaptive advantages involved in functioning at advanced ego stages” (Manners & Durkin, 2000, p. 477). People who are at the late, so-called post-conventional stages of ego development more often show up with the following characteristics.

They:

– understand complex social situations easily,

– can change their perspective flexibly,

– keep process and objective in mind simultaneously,

– turn “either/or” questions into “both/and” and

– generally are able to adopt a meta-perspective.

Aspects such as these are described in process-oriented forms of consultation as a common repertoire of professional behavior. The fact that only from 7 to a maximum of 17 percent of the population has achieved a post-conventional level of ego development (Torbert, 1991, 2003; Rooke & Torbert, 2005; Cook-Greuter, 2010), suggests rather the oppositevthat many consultants are far from having such a repertoire.

The goal of this book is to review the literature on ego development for its relevance to the coaching and consultancy profession. A second goal ist to provide a complete overview of ego development theory and its empirical findings. The guiding question is to what extent there is a systematic relationship between competence requirements for coaches and consultants and aspects of ego development.

Loevinger’s ego development model has been discussed in hundreds of empirical studies and theoretical publications worldwide. In 1993 – almost 30 years after Loevinger’s work was first published – the journal Psychological Inquiry devoted an entire issue to her ego development model and invited researchers to pursue it. Loevinger herself also spent decades advancing the investigation and refinement of her model. Thus Kroger (2004, p. 124) concludes that “she has been one of the few social scientists studying identity or related phenomena to generate her model from a solid empirical base.”

Early on, ego development was discovered to be a relevant model for counseling (e. g., Swensen 1980; Young-Eisendrath, 1982). Cebik (1985) drew the following conclusion for supervisors: “Failure and ineffectiveness in the mental health disciplines could be reduced by allowing for the educating of persons with respect to their own stage of ego development” (p. 232). Likewise, many researchers have used Loevinger’s ego development model in empirical research about counseling, supervision, and organizational development. These studies have usually explored individual aspects such as its relationship to empathy (e. g., Carlozzi, Gaa & Liberman, 1983), the quality of interaction between counselor and client (Allen, 1980), counseling students’ perception of clients (Borders, Fong & Neimeyer, 1986), or attitudes towards potential clients (Sheaffer, Sias, Toriello & Cubero, 2008). These works mostly noted comparisons to other works dealing with similar aspects, but there was no systematic comparison and compilation of results relevant to coaching and consulting, such as were found in empirical studies of ego development. A subsequent survey by Borders (1998) also fails to do this. There is a significant research gap here.

In the last few years, developmental psychology stage models, especially those of Loevinger and Kegan, which pertain to personality development as a whole, appear to be increasingly applied in practice. This is especially relevant for counseling, coaching, consulting, mediation and management development (e. g. Torbert & Associates, 2004; Joiner & Joseph, 2007; McGuire & Rhodes, 2009, Bachkirova, 2010; Berger, 2012; Nicolaides & McCallum, 2013; Binder, 2010, 2014a, Laloux, 2014; Binder & Türk, 2015; Reams, 2020; Sharma, 2021; Binder, Langeder & Pichler, 2023) even to the development of political leaders (Fein & Jordan, 2016; Wagner & Fein, 2016). Thus, a structured reappraisal of the relationship between ego development and coaching and consulting seems advantageous, not only for research, but also for practice.

1.2 Overview of the work

This work is divided into two main parts and a final chapter on prospects for the future. The second chapter is an up-to-date and comprehensive presentation of ego development - the most comprehensive review on this subject published to date. It is divided into two sections: The first consists of a detailed overview of Loevinger’s ego development model in all its relevant facets. The second systematically reviews important studies conducted for the empirical validation of her model. This model deals with a very comprehensive personality construct, and one difficult to render accessible. Even renowned development experts do not always use the model correctly in their studies, for example by selecting unrealistic intervention periods. Therefore the studies are discussed in detail in this part. By this point, the issue has been explored in all its various facets to the extent that possible points of reference for coaching and consultancy may be apparent. The current state of research is presented in a synopsis, which has up to now not existed in such detail, including in the more recent overview articles (e. g., Manners and Durkin, 2001; Westenberg, Hauser & Cohn, 2004).

The third chapter pursues the question of whether there is a relationship between ego development and effective coaching and consulting. The first section examines, based on competence requirements of selected coaching and consultancy associations, to what extent there are parallels with the model of ego development. The second section pursues this question on the basis of empirical studies in which ego development and competence issues relevant to coaching and consultancy were researched together. A study overview is provided, arranging the available studies into thematic clusters (e. g., ego development and dealing with complexity) and commenting on their procedures and results.

In the fourth chapter, I discuss the results in light of prior research, identifying the consequences arising from this work. On the one hand, I discuss the research gaps and questions that have arisen in the controversy over the ego development model and the research behind it. On the other, I elaborate the practical consequences of this work for consultancy and consultancy training.

2 Ego development

2.1 Detailed presentation of Loevinger’s ego development model

2.1.1 The ego (the “I”) – attempt at a definition

I – what does it mean? In everyday speech we generally use this word without thinking about it. To use the word “I” seems to us the most natural thing in the world, as when we complete sentences such as the following:

– I think that …

– When I am criticized …

– I want …

– I am …

All of these sentences express an acting agent that positions itself in relation to the world, reacts to it or interprets it. But who is actually acting and reacting? And to what extent is what the “I” reacts to, dependent on this “I” - its specific structure or its developmental stage? Can we equate this structure with an individual’s personality? If we pursue this idea further, then we enter into a field that philosophers, mystics, founders of religions, and sociologists have struggled with for centuries. Psychologists too have been dealing with it for over a hundred years, and for several decades especially by means of empirical research.

Thinking about the “I,” one can find many similar terms in everyday language, such as ego, self, identity, and personality. When one enters the field of psychology (if not before), one experiences almost Babylonian linguistic confusion: self-concept, self-awareness, self-consciousness, self-image, I, superego, ego strength, ego control, ego functions, and many more terms. Plunging deeper into the conceptual world of the “I,” one notices that there is not only a multitude of similar terms, but that one and the same term is used completely differently or even understood in a completely opposite sense by another author. When Young-Eisendrath and Hall (1987) wanted to organize a small conference on “The Self” in 1983, they were surprised when more than 350 researchers and practitioners registered. But they all seemed to be speaking about different things, and above all: “No one shared a common language” (p. xi). This is particularly notable in the psychoanalytic literature (Redfearn, 1987); ever since Freud, with his structural model (id, ego, superego), the ego has also shifted toward a focus on psychoanalytical treatment, (Eagle, 1991). But when we compare all these different everyday and psychological terms, the “I” seems to have a special role. What the “I” is, and how it differs from other aspects of the personality, was best expressed by William James in his famous chapter about the Self (1892/1963). Figure 1 illustrates this.

The Me and the I – Whatever I may be thinking of, I am always at the same time more or less aware of myself, of my personal existence. At the same time it is I who am aware; so that the total self of me, being as it were duplex, partly known and partly knower, partly object and partly subject, must have two aspects discriminated in it, of which for shortness we may call one the Me and the other the I. (p. 166)

Fig. 1: Two sides of the “I”/ego/self: Subject and object

James’s essential distinction between the I and the Me was often not noticed or was mixed up in psychological research (McAdams, 1996a, 1996b). Usually only the object side (the Me) or part of it was investigated, and the knowing side (the I as subject) was eliminated, such as in trait approaches to personality (see p. 95).

In constructivist approaches to development, however, the knowing subject has been the main area of research since the pioneering work of Piaget (1932). He saw himself as an epistemologist, interested mainly in the question of how a person attains knowledge about the world and how the “cognitive apparatus” developed. This led to extensive studies of how a person obtains, for example, such complex skills such as the understanding of numbers, quantities, or causality. This process culminates in the fact that most people by about the age of 20 have developed what Piaget called a formal operational logic.

But the cognitive apparatus is only a part of James’s “I”, albeit a key one. If a person says “I,” this usually includes other aspects, such as wishes or goals, and a kind of attitude to the world is also always implied. The “I” cannot be limited to man’s purely cognitive apparatus, because thought and action always involve intention. According to Blasi (1988, p. 232) “his believing, desiring, controlling, or hoping – is not one component among others, but permeates every aspect of the action and gives unity to it.” For Piaget, these aspects were more in the background, but he recognized the issue and grappled at various points with the self or the I (Broughton, 1987). He also saw it as more than just a cognitive apparatus: “It is like the center of one’s own activity” (Piaget, 1967, p. 65).

If the I is the knowing subject and also the center of one’s own activity, the question arises how this I in its entirety “functions” or what really constitutes the I in its entirety. Loevinger pursued this question since the 1960s, by investigating the I (the ego) empirically, although she had not intended to do that at all when she began (see p. 38). Rather she stumbled accidentally upon patterns in her research data that she could not explain with the classic (linear) paradigm of adjustment and trait theories. It struck her especially that the persons being studied did not differ only in the complexity of their thinking, as per Piaget; they also showed great differences in how they could control their own impulses, for example. Due to the large number of interwoven aspects that occur at different levels of development, she called this variable “ego development.” She herself saw virtually no difference between the term “ego” and “self” (Loevinger, 1983, 1984; Loevinger & Blasi, 1991), and used both interchangeably, in contrast to Jung (Adam, 2011).

As a psychometrician, it was important to her to conceptualize this “ego” as a construct, so that it could be understood and validly measured. Therefore, she resisted defining the ego or ego development (1983, p. 344–345): “I maintain it [the ego] cannot and need not be defined. It need only be pointed to. Ego development is what is occurring as a person grows from impulsivity to selfprotectiveness to conformity, etc.” Loevinger’s conception of the ego complements, but also contrasts with other approaches. Especially in many psychoanalytic theories, the ego is conceived of differently (Mertens, 2010). An example is Freud’s above-mentioned structural model and the familiar division into its three entities: the id (drives/pleasure principle), the ego (consciousness/reality principle), and the superego (demands/moral authority). Another example is the later psychoanalytic ego psychology (e. g., Hartmann, Rapaport), which arose as a result of Anna Freud’s classic “The ego and the mechanisms of defense” (1937/2018). Here the ego was understood as a system of individual ego functions (e. g., to perceive, to think, to decide).

As a natural scientist, Loevinger was in principle suspicious of such postulated entities or functions (Loevinger, 1983), which notably contradicted what she had discovered from her research data about the ego as a whole. This data constituted a bundle of many interrelated aspects that resulted in a “structured whole” for each developmental stage. She understood the ego as a unity, which can be decoded from its many individual aspects once we understand the pattern that underlies it: “I am convinced that the self, ego, I, or me is in some sense real, not created by our definition. My purpose is to comprehend the way the person navigates through life, not to create artificially demarcated entities.” (Loevinger, 1984, p. 50). She describes how she understands the ego, in contrast to psychoanalytic conceptions, as follows:

Similarly, the ego is above all a process, not a thing. The ego is in a way like a gyroscope, whose upright position is maintained by its rotation. To use another metaphor, the ego resembles an arch; there is an architectural saying that “the arch never sleeps”. That means that the thrusts and counterthrusts of the arch maintain its shape as well as support the building. Piaget (1967) uses the term “mobile equilibrium” – the more mobile, the more stable. The striving to master, integrate, to make sense of experience is not one ego function among many but the essence of the ego. (Loevinger, 1969, p. 85)

McAdams (1996b) conceives of the ego quite similarly and coined the word “selfing” to describe it, which could be understood as “creating a self”: “Selfing is the I. Selfing is the process of appropriating experience as one’s own. In and through selfing, the person implicitly knows that he or she exists as a source, an agent, a locus of causality in the world” (p. 383). The ego is thus clearly on the “subject” side of James’s division (Fig. 1), and a process that reveals itself in every utterance and that organizes a person’s thoughts and experiences. This corresponds approximately to the division that Funk (1994, p. 12), also makes, with his distinction between “ego as process” (EPro) and “ego as representationindividualization” (ERep, the ego as object). He thus clearly rejects theories that split the ego into several different egos or selves. According to James (1892/1963, p. 182 ff.), there must be a kind of unity of the stream of consciousness, so that one experience can be connected to the next. Or, as Loevinger (1987a, p. 92) puts it: “I may have twelve selves at war with one another, but if I do, I will wake up tomorrow with the same twelve selves engaged in the same war.”

In summary, the question is how the ego deals with experiences, whether internal or external, interprets them and gives them meaning. According to Perry (1970), this is exactly what any organism does: to organize. For humans, this process is the organization of meaning. The ego provides a frame of meaning making (Kegan, 1980, 1982). Cook-Greuter (1994) expresses the point succinctly:

The need for coherent meaning seems to be a fundamental and driving force in human life. Whenever we are not quite certain of things because they are beyond the scope of our present understanding, most of us begin to feel anxiety. We want closure and certitude. One of the main functions of the ego is to provide this closure and to generate coherent meaning. (p. 120)

Thus when we study personality and its influence on relevant areas of life, the ego seems to play a central role, because “the ego is the executive I of the personality which is able, through its integrative powers, to construct the me, that is, to construct identity” (McAdams, 1985, p. 129). The ego is not, however, identical with the personality as a whole (see p. 94). It also should not be confused with individual ego functions (e. g., Blatt & Bermann, 1984), specific defense mechanisms (e. g., Cramer, 1999, 200; Levit, 1993; Vaillant, 1992) or coping strategies to protect the self (e. g., Harter, 1988), although these are undoubtedly related (e. g., Labouvie-Vief, Hakim-Larson & Hobart, 1987).

At the start of this section, four beginnings of sentences were listed. Everyone will complete these sentences in his own way. Two of them are from Loevinger’s measuring instrument for ego development. Although thousands of people continue such sentences in almost a thousand different ways, Loevinger was able to show that they conceal the structures of the ego, and analysis of these responses provides information about how fully developed the ego of the respondents is. Hundreds of empirical studies meanwhile show that the particular structure of the ego has significant effects on how people deal (or could deal) with key questions, issues, tasks, and aspects of their lives – both professionally and privately. After reading this section, you may be asking yourself, “How would I respond?”

2.1.2 The “discovery” and development of the model

Surprising though it may seem, the model of ego development did not originate from any deliberate research program, but was rather discovered “in passing.” At the beginning there was no theory, just pure data. Loevinger always stressed: “[O]ur conception has been shaped by our data” (1984, p. 56). This discovery and development, however, had a great deal to do with her way of dealing with data, as well as with her methodology of instrument development. Loevinger (1993a, 1993b), as a renowned psychometrician, always understood theorizing as a recursive process. She used the data she had collected not only for testing, but also for discovering, developing, modifying, and revising her model of ego development (Loevinger, 1957, 1978). This methodological approach ultimately enabled her to realize that, through her early research, an aspect such as ego development operated in the background of her data. And this approach allowed continuous development of the concept, which throughout her research program underwent many changes, small and large (Loevinger & Cohn, 1998).

At the beginning of the 1960s, Loevinger worked first on a research project on the attitudes of women to family problems. For this purpose, she constructed the “Family Problems Scale” (FPS) (Loevinger, Sweet, Ossorio & LaPerriere, 1962). The FPS initially consisted of 213 statements about different family problem situations, involving daily difficulties as well as difficulties over the entire life cycle. The FPS also included statements characteristic of how current theories covered attitudes toward the family and related personality characteristics (Loevinger & Sweet, 1961). The FPS statements were presented as pairs of opposites, and both possible answers were formulated in a socially acceptable way to avoid possible defensive reactions (e. g., “There is something is wrong with a child who hates his mother” vs. “Most children have times when they hate their mothers”).

The statistical analysis did not show the patterns that the researchers had hypothesized (e. g., acceptance of the feminine role or evidence of psychosexual stages as described by E. Erikson), but mainly a cluster of statements that apparently captured something like the attribute “punishment orientation versus permission orientation.” Interestingly, this cluster of statements could not be interpreted unambiguously, but it revealed other relationships than what she had expected. For example, the more punitive mothers tended to agree with the statement, “A father should be his son’s best pal” (instead of the opposite statement, “A father should not try to be his son’s best pal”). But Loevinger and her research team did not follow the common methodological approach of limiting themselves to the statements in a cluster that were easy to interpret and eliminating those that were difficult, in order to obtain a homogeneous scale. Instead, they pursued precisely these apparent contradictions and tried to describe the similarities that they still found in their data. For example, they characterized a woman who had a high score in this cluster as follows (Loevinger et al., 1962):

She has a punitive and controlling attitude towards many areas of child rearing; she has little ability to conceptualize the child’s inner life; and she has a view of family life at once hierarchical and sentimental. … she has a rigidly conventional conception of woman’s social role; some mistrust of other people and corresponding anxiety; an orderly scheduled approach to daily life; and perhaps a somewhat dim view of woman’s biological functions. (p. 113)

Comparing her results with other studies and concepts, Loevinger noticed that this characterization was quite similar to the “authoritarian personality” concept, developed in the Berkeley circle around Adorno (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson & Sanford, 1950). This was all the more surprising, because the FPS research was focused on family issues within the home environment, while Adorno’s research was politically oriented. Moreover, Loevinger’s team studied girls and women, while Adorno’s research mainly involved male participants. Both studies, however, showed that authoritarian people lack the ability to express their inner experience. Based on the clusters she had found and similarities to the concept of the “authoritarian personality,” Loevinger proceeded from the assumption that behind the feature she had detected was a more far-reaching aspect of personality than she had first assumed.

On this basis, she developed the “Authoritarian Family Ideology” questionnaire (AFI) (Ernhart & Loevinger, 1969), which her team used for further research. Comparing the results with clinical observations of troubled mothers, the research team noticed patterns that did not fit their previous theory. Some of these women had a personality structure that seemed chaotic and unstructured, that could barely control their impulses, and that rejected authorities. Therefore, there was nowhere to classify these women along the continuum between the two poles of “authoritarian–subservient to authority” vs. “democratic– flexible.” Thus, the researchers conjectured that the attribute measured by the AFI questionnaire was not linear, but that extreme authoritarianism is more a center point than an endpoint for this variable. It did not seem to be bipolar, but a sequence of milestones that indicate a developmental sequence. “This insight was a turning point in my intellectual history, changing me from a psychometric psychologist into a developmental one, from a trait theorist into a structuralist.” (Loevinger, 1978, p. 7).

To verify this assumption, the AFI questionnaire was used in further studies with larger and varied samples. The samples covered people from a whole range of ages, experience in dealing with children, religious orientations, and levels of education. The statistical analysis showed, as expected for a development variable, significant correlations with age, experience, and education (LaPerrière, 1962). Authoritarianism in these relationships was not linear, but curvilinear. When this variable was studied along with the variable “age,” for example, the value initially rises, reaches a peak (maximum expression of authoritarianism), and then falls again. However a variable that is not a milestone sequence usually behaves linearly. Figure 2 illustrates linear and curvilinear relationships of ego development based on the examples of cognitive complexity and conformism.

Fig. 2: Linear and curvilinear relationships using the example of ego development, cognitive complexity and conformism

It seemed that Loevinger was dealing with an elusive syndrome with many different aspects that had not hitherto been considered together. The previous focus on “authoritarianism” obviously covered only part of the variable, so that the previous concept no longer seemed suitable. At the same time the variable measured by the AFI questionnaire was a milestone sequence, which showed relationships with other variables and thus suggested a developing character. For these reasons, the research team decided to give it a new name: “[I]t seemed that no term less than ‘ego development’ encompassed this variable” (Loevinger, 1978, p. 11). This was all the more justified, since the attributes found in very different contexts occurred completely independently of the family context that was originally being studied. Evidently it was Loevinger’s approach – openly exploratory and always in pursuit of contradictions – that made this discovery possible:

The curvilinear relation between the milestones and the underlying developmental continuum has a major practical consequence. A psychologist can study intensively types of behavior that are in fact manifestations of ego level and he can be rigorously quantitative for years on end without ever having a glimmer of the variable of ego development (Loevinger, 1973, p. 16).