ME03a: When Growth Becomes a Trap
The Hidden Cost of Developmental Thinking
You’ve done all the right things.
Read the books. Showed up to the workshops. Practised reflection. Tried to lead more authentically. Stretch through discomfort. Grow through feedback.
You weren’t naive about it. You knew leadership wasn’t easy. But you believed in the idea that, with the right mindset and enough inner work, you could grow your way into it. Into coherence. Into traction. Into effectiveness.
Until you couldn’t. Until the growth started to feel… like a trap.
That’s where Maya found herself. A few years into a senior leadership role, she’d started to feel a quiet dissonance. Not quite burnout. Not quite disengagement. But something wasn’t adding up. The frameworks she’d relied on—about purpose, resilience, authenticity—were starting to feel thin. Or worse, performative.
She was still growing. Still reflecting. But the more she did, the more contradictions she saw. And the more contradictions she saw, the less the idea of “growth” seemed to help.
That’s when the trap snapped into view.
The Hope: Can Adults Still Grow?
Maya hadn’t lost faith in development entirely. She still believed something important was possible—if she could learn to read the system more clearly, and play her role with more flexibility, maybe things would shift.
So she went looking. Found Erikson. Found Piaget. Found her way to adult development theory—Robert Kegan’s stages, in particular. And at first, it made perfect sense.
The “socialised mind”? That had been most of her career. Absorbing the values around her, performing what leadership was supposed to look like. Sincerity, optimism, service. She’d worn the role well—too well. And she’d burned herself into the shape the system seemed to reward.
Kegan’s “self-authoring” stage gave her language for the change she was now living. She was no longer just adapting to the system—she was beginning to write her own script. To say no when needed. To notice when her leadership was drifting into performance. To pause before defaulting to comfort.
It wasn’t enlightenment. It was just... a better kind of difficulty.
She started to believe again. Not in transcendence. In traction.
The Turn: When Growth Becomes Another Ladder
But then the model kept going. “Self-transforming mind.” Meta-awareness. Holding contradictions. Leading through systems by seeing across perspectives.
She wanted to believe it. That there was a level beyond the mess. A stage where she could carry ambiguity with ease, shift between roles with grace, and hold complexity without collapse.
But the more she tried to reach for it, the more it felt like chasing smoke. The ideal leader started to sound inhuman: always reflective, never reactive; always curious, never constrained; always able to act with wisdom, no matter how incoherent the system.
That didn’t feel developmental. That felt performative again—just with more spiritual vocabulary.
Instead of getting free of the leadership myths, she was walking straight into another one. A higher, cleaner, better self who would never flinch, never fail, never freeze.
It sounded dangerously close to the same trap she’d been trying to escape: virtue performance dressed as growth.
The Myth of Consciousness Systems
Then came the organisations that claimed to be built around these higher stages of development. “Teal” systems. Evolutionary purpose. Wholeness. Shared leadership.
At first, Maya was captivated. Finally—a structure to match the self she was trying to become.
But something in her winced.
She’d seen it before. Teams where power was invisible, but still present. Cultures that preached trust but punished dissent. Leadership circles where developmental language became a shield against critique. Where disagreement was met not with engagement, but with diagnosis. You just haven’t reached the next stage yet.
She remembered Margaret Heffernan’s “super-chickens.” Systems where high performers dominated by suppressing others. Spiritualised leadership, she realised, could do the same thing. It just pecked with better language.
It wasn’t that the systems were fake. Some were sincerely trying. But many of the models she encountered lacked one crucial thing: a structural immune system. No checks. No feedback loops. Just vibes and vocabulary. And that made the developmental language dangerous.
Not because it was wrong. But because it became unfalsifiable.
The Turn Toward Ground
So Maya stopped climbing. Not out of despair. Out of discernment.
She returned to something simpler. More human. She started noticing the moments when she felt most like a leader—not during keynotes or town halls—but in the quiet relational space between people. A conversation that shifted a mood. A question that unlocked clarity. A moment of real presence that built trust.
That’s when she found Becky Andree’s work on high-quality connections. The idea that leadership isn’t just about cognition or strategy—but about relational energy. Micro-interactions that create trust, resonance, and possibility. Not mystical. Not heroic. Just real.
And suddenly, development didn’t feel like a solo ascent. It felt like something that happened between people.
Growth Without Ascension
What Maya realised—and what I suspect many of us are realising—is that real growth isn’t a ladder. It’s a capacity. To stay present. To hold tension. To perform a role with some kind of integrity in the middle of a system that won’t stabilise.
That doesn’t make you “transformed.” It makes you tired. But also trustworthy.
The trouble with becoming is that it never ends. And when we turn development into doctrine—when we measure maturity by who can speak the language of paradox while still hitting quarterly targets—we lose the point entirely.
Growth isn’t about escaping the mess. It’s about becoming someone who can stay in it—without being undone.
So here’s the shift:
From vertical ladders to horizontal coherence.
From self-transcendence to mutual presence.
From performance of maturity to practice of connection.
Let development be what it always was meant to be: not a badge. Not a destination. But a way of seeing more wisely and staying more intact in the middle of the mess.
If that’s growth, then it’s enough.
SELF – What am I performing in the name of growth?
When have I shaped myself to appear “developmental” rather than allowing myself to be human?
Consider whether your pursuit of growth has ever become a script—something you enact to be seen as capable or evolved. What have you sacrificed in that performance?
ROLE – Where does my role ask for coherence I don’t yet have?
What are the moments when my role demands clarity, decisiveness, or calm—but the system offers none of those things?
Reflect on how you respond in those moments. Do you compensate, hide, fake it, or name the tension? What would it mean to perform the role honestly, not just correctly?
SYSTEM – What does my organisation believe development looks like?
Whose growth is seen as real? Who gets seen as “ready,” “strategic,” or “mature”?
Surface the unwritten assumptions in your system about what developmental leadership looks like. Are they tied to language, presence, charisma—or something deeper? Who gets left out of that picture?
Read the next Maya Essay: The Real Terrain of Grown-Up Leadership
Ubuntu and co-regulation are two concepts that are regularly omitted from day to day business life and MBA programs yet are essential components of being human, integrated (Dan Siegel’s definition) and coherent (as outlined here).