Conversations at the Growing Edge Workshop, with Carolyn Coughlin and Jennifer Garvey Berger of Cultivating Leadership 

Using sophisticated questioning and listening practices which emerge from adult development theories, workshop participants will learn to uncover the ways people make sense of their world and the way they understand their own stories. This new approach allows participants to support their clients as they move through developmental transitions, helping clients transform their stories and what they believe is possible.

In this intimate three-day workshop, we will explore the orders of mind described in Robert Kegan’s theory ofadult development, using interview data to unpack the nuances of the different developmental spaces. We’llbegin to understand the distinctions between skill-based issues (e.g., difficulties in making decisions) and developmentally-based issues (e.g., relying too much on the voices of others because there is no internal voice to turn to). We will practice new ways of questioning and listening. We will think and struggle and laugh and learn together. Participants will leave the workshop with the ability to support their clients—and find transformational leverage points—in an entirely different way.

Specifically, you will:

• Develop a richer and more nuanced understanding of complexity of mind

• Experiment with deep listening and what it means to engage in it—the demands it puts on you as a listener and the support it gives your clients

• Practice a new form of questioning which gives you the sense of how someone makes sense of the world

•  Learn how to take clients to the edge of their meaning-making system so that they can create new possibilities for themselves.