Cultivating self-awareness and self-knowledge and increasing one’s cognitive capacity to take oneself as object depends on the ability to focus attention on one’s inner state, from a bigger perspective, and gain reliable competence in assessing and managing one’s mindset—those assumptions and attitudes that color how the world is perceived. Mindfulness practice, the value of which is supported by increasingly robust neuroscientific evidence, is a fundamental tool for paying attention to consciousness. A developmental coaching relationship in which client and coach are each individually engaged in the practice of mindfulness brings insight into the nature of the self for both.
The Lever and the Fulcrum
Developmental coaching conversations aim to uncover structures of mind and, in so doing, make the invisible visible, bringing what has been nonconscious into awareness. The client is helped to see, with new eyes, her meaning-making systems, the characteristic ways in which she makes sense of her world. Based on Robert Kegan’s theory of adult development, the most common structure of mind for adults is the socialized mind and the midzone between the socialized and the self-authored mind. In the socialized form of mind, the client sees her world through the meaning-making system of others. The validation of others is paramount in this form of mind because there is no sense of what “I want” outside of the expectations of others (Garvey Berger, p. 21).
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