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Fallback – Spring Forward. Developmental Advice from Dr. Val

Dr. Valerie Livesay is a leader in articulating and advancing the theory of adult development. Val’s research highlights just how nonlinear our journey of adult development is. Her work is about how we fall back – and spring forward – in our ability to handle complexity.  Recently I read Val’s very readable article on how we may collapse into “fallback” and shared it in various coLABs. And I wondered how Valerie might help us practice “at our developmental edge,” that space that allows us respond to eco-social crisis as we cultivate repertoire for the transformation unfurling within and around us.

First a bit of practical and intellectual context.

Why is it that some people respond creatively to disruptive complexity, say of Covid 19? Adult constructivist developmental theory – a field only 50 years old – has provocative answers. Its implications are important for our praxis of reflexivity and our understanding of the ARTists repertoire.

The theory of adult constructivist development has important implications for agents of transformation. Especially, or perhaps only, if we are willing, also, to be subjects of transformation. It expands our notion of possible resources.

Transformation resources are available to us in many forms, financial, relational, educational etc. Psychological resources – e.g., sensemaking or practices for getting a bigger picture while also turning the camera around on ourselves – are also super important. Not least because psychological resources can be cultivated. 

Around AR+ we talk about the importance of integrating three perspectives. There’s first person or subjective perspective, and then the shared perspective of others, alongside  awareness of bird’s-eye view of systems. So ART is a journey to juggle these multiple perspectives. Importantly it’s not just a cognitive and detached understanding of what’s out there. It turns out that what’s “out there” is actually “in here.” In our capacity to make sense of and respond in a learning-full way to complexity. In learning to see in new ways, we see who we are.  

The theory of adult constructivist development – more recently called vertical development in the executive coaching field where it is spreading like wildfire – has been evolving within the academic field of developmental psychology. That’s the field associated with Jean Piaget whose ideas shape education to this day. In the 1970’s Jane Loevinger came on the academic scene with empirical study of how adults make sense of the world – using sentence completion assessments. And since then, her work has opened up our understanding of the psychological resources that can be developed over an entire lifetime. Turns out we don’t have to just work with our inner 15 year old’s way of interpreting the world (don’t tell Trump?!). 

In the field of action research, we see Bill Torbert’s approach to action inquiry uses the insights of adult vertical development to address the difficulties we run into when learning in the midst of commitment to transformation. If action science had shown how we stay defended against learning, e.g., often arguing righteously, not asking questions and  acting in contradiction to how we actually want to be, (oops!), then adult constructivist development approaches inherent in action research,  help us see how we throw up obstacles  on our own (and others) path.

How then do I get off my high-horse when confronted with complexity I prefer would simply disappear? Good inquiry, eh! Given that “developmental reflexivity” is part of the ARTists repertoire, how do we actually use the rich insights of adult development in our transformation work, so that we may respond to reality? This is the inquiry I brought to Dr. Val.

Hilary
Thanks for offering your time. I know I am catching you between your research – writing and before you shuffle your kids to school at this confusing time of Covid. How about I call you Dr. Val, till you turn back to Mom-Val.

Dr. Val
I’m glad to take the time!

Hilary
Around AR+ we want to locate more creative versions of ourselves so we can be better at responding to the eco-social crises of our time. Therefore I am particularly interested in how we can learn from you about how we fall back, and spring forward, from reactive patterns which close off our creativity. As a starter question then – and to frame things – how do you see adult development theory as useful at this moment in history?

Dr. Val
This moment in history is so full. I’m finding myself filled up with this particular one. And an understanding of adult development is useful as it’s easy to really lose your way and to watch other people lose their way and have some big judgments. One of the big gifts of understanding adult development theory for me has been the gift of compassion that it offers, because it shows us not only where we’re going, but where we’ve come from.

Hilary
And perhaps how we struggle each in a unique way to grow and learn?

Dr. Val:
The theory allows us to reconnect with those moments when maybe we didn’t have as big a perspective or as many tools, as much capacity to take in the complexity all around us. And to be able to tune into what that experience is like for other people who may not have those capacities to grapple with complexity, perhaps because they’ve not yet gained those capacities, or perhaps because they’ve gained those capacities and in this moment they can’t access them.

Hilary:
Seems it grants you access to more compassion for others, but also for you and for ourselves? So adult development is a journey, to put it very simply, of increasing capacity to deal with complexity. For taking in more perspectives and becoming capable despite the complexity. So given that what is fallback? How does fallback relate to our response to complexity?

Dr. Val
Fallback is a temporary loss of perspective and capacities to grapple with complexity. In adult development theory, we talk about having one center-of-gravity which we can think of as our normal capacity to respond, to make sense of self and of the world around us. It’s our level of sense-making, this thing we call our center-of-gravity.

Hilary
Could we say it’s usually our everyday best self, or best learning zone, our best action logic to use Bill Torbert’s term. It’s not that we’re just sitting around making sense of the world through a cognitive window. We are in the world. We’re responding to what shows up. And sometimes we’re creative, but too often we’re reactive. 

Dr. Val:
I know for myself to get to my center-of-gravity, the birds need to be chirping and the breeze needs to be blowing. So, it usually takes some context to support my intention of being responsive in a way that is aligned with my bigger self to respond to what shows up.

But, fallback is when we are not at our everyday best for a period of time. And that period of time could be moments. It could be days. It could be weeks. It could be as long as years. In fallback we are not capable of making sense, and not capable of feeling or acting, or behaving in the way that we would were we to have our center-of-gravity way of making sense of the world and our place in it.

Hilary:
So fallback is a really bad hair day on steroids. But it’s not just some walled off me falling apart. We are helped or hindered by our context, by people in our midst. And we can fall back more or spring forward to use the terms of your article.

Before we go further, how would you distinguish the center of gravity – your everyday best – from your developmental edge, what you’re leaning into as a preferred self. The self that you may feel tugging on your sleeve.

Around AR+ that’s an edge where we become more invested in mutuality and seeking feedback. And we want more of it if that’s not an embarrassing admission – to want more mutuality, damn it!

Dr. Val:
There’s a really nuanced distinction. The center-of-gravity is something that takes a lot of intention and support to get there. Still you’re comfortable in that space. You may not bring it all the time to get into that space, but you’re comfortable in that space. The developmental edge, on the other hand, is uncomfortable. It is that step beyond; that you haven’t taken before. You’re not sure that you can take it. You’re not sure that if you take it, you’re not going to fall on your face. So, I would say that’s the distinction for me.

Hilary:
O yea, that’s the edge we want! Cause clearly life is demanding more of us now. But it takes a little bit of curiosity.

I was watching this lovely documentary last night about a love affair between a man and an octopus in South Africa.  This one is called “My Octopus Teacher.” I was enchanted by the octopus more than the man. You see the octopus had to, or so it seems to me, overcome all her instinctual fears to relate to this very strange looking. The love story was surely less instinctually scary for the man. And I was touched in some deep way. Perhaps by the sense that to grow, we have to allow ourselves to make mistakes. Humans and just a few other creatures are distinguished for not having to follow instinct. We can learn. And we can make huge mistakes. And also huge breakthroughs. Octopi are right up there with us. So yea, you see I am making this connection to compassion for fallback. Am I communicating at all?

Is there some connection to our center-of-gravity and the threat of fallback and how do you work with that? Especially if an attractive octopus crosses our path.

Dr. Val:
Here’s an analogy I like to also help bring color to what development and fallback is.

When I was doing my research on fallback in human development, I did a theoretical study with six key thinkers in the fields of human development and leadership development. And one of those key thinkers is Jennifer Garvey Berger. She used a house as kind of analogy for our development. She said in this house of development, I have access to an increasing number of rooms. And then at some point, I go to open a door to one of the rooms, and I can’t get access to it. In fallback, I am locked out of that room for a period of time. That was super helpful to me. So, I’ll just expand on it a little bit.

Hilary
I am imagining that as you speak, Val. Actually there’s a handsome octopus in my salt water swimming pool.

Val

Ok! So let’s borrow this analogy from Jennifer Garvey Berger to help explain what adult development is. Overall, when we start out in our development, we might have a couple of rooms. We might have a studio apartment, right? We have a kitchen and a bathroom and a living room that also contains our daybed and that makes for our bedroom. And, we’re pretty comfortable in that space. And over time we happen to discover a door in this apartment that we have, and we, we go to open the door, and it’s locked. And so, we go into the junk drawer in our kitchen and we rummage around and see if we can find a key for it. And, we pull out the 20 keys that live in that junk drawer, but we don’t know what they go to. And, we try each of those, and that’s not working, and it’s hard, and we give up, and we go and sit down and wait a while. And, then we get curious again. And so, we kind of put a little bit more muscle into it, find another key somewhere else and are able to actually get that door open.

And when we open up that door, we’re able to discover things in that room that we never knew existed. There are all sorts of different patterns. There are tools in here that weren’t in the original studio. There’s a window that looks out on this side yard and there’s a tree that’s blooming beautifully. We never knew that tree existed. So, we’re discovering new things about what is actually in our house, but also seeing new things outside of our house that we never saw before. But, when we turn around, as we look back through that door to what, what was this studio, now we have another, at least a one-, two-room house. We have a different perspective on that house, that studio apartment that we’ve lived in all this time. And we can notice different things about that. So, our first couch that wasn’t a hand-me-down, it’s looking a little threadbare now, right? And that favorite chair that we love to cuddle up in with our book, we think about how comforting and lovely that is.

And throughout our development, we discover new doors in our house and we open them up. It takes a long time. Sometimes we give up. Then, again, we redirect ourselves to being able to open those doors up. And, then we walk in those rooms and we discover more. We discover things that we never knew existed, and those things become incorporated into our house.

So, we can also understand fallback through this developmental house analogy. During my research, Jennifer Garvey Berger referred to this door that she tries to get into. This is one of those doors in our house that, over time. we’ve discovered. And, we used to have access. We could walk into it whenever we wanted, and we could sit down in the chair. We could do our yoga. We had our mat, our blocks, our yoga balls. We had everything that we needed. And, all of a sudden, we don’t in these moments of fallback. We cannot access those things for a period of time. It’s like our all access pass to our developmental house is gone. It has been taken away.

And so, that’s what fallback feels like. You knew that you had a capacity before. You knew that there was something behind that door. And in the moment of fallback, you can’t get access to whatever that is.

Hilary:
I’m inspired with a little example that may unpack your analogy. And you can tell me if this feels right. For some reason, the image came to mind of being very young and driving with my young parents to celebrate Christmas day with my grandmother. An Irish Christmas is huge for everyone. At least I thought so. And as we’re driving, I see some kids who were playing on the shoreline in Dublin. And they don’t look to me to be dressed up properly for Christmas. Now I’m in my Christmas beautiful dress. And I am stunned, just stunned that somebody doesn’t celebrate Christmas like me and my family. So the developmental door opens first in my fighting this idea of their otherness and then just finally allowing like, wow, people do it differently! That’s a wow.

So if this was when I was relatively young, now that I’m so much older and wiser (!) today I might fight with my spouse about something. In a way some of the fallback is that I’ve closed my door to the otherness of my spouse. My difficulty – analogically – is that he’s not dressed for Christmas. Or perhaps that he is not an octopus?! So I that’s how I’m tracking with you. Does that seem right?

Dr. Val
I love that example. I think that’s really rich and descriptive. When you were referring to seeing these kids by the shore, and it’s Christmas, and asking why aren’t you dressed? Why are you not prepared to go in the way that I expect that you should be? What you described is, in the theory of adult development, a disorienting dilemma. And disorienting dilemmas are often catalysts for the opening of doors in our developmental house, for the opening up of perspectives and seeing things differently. And, a disorienting dilemma is something that, that usually just takes us off guard. It runs counter to the assumptions that we’ve had about the way things are in the world. And when we confront them, we can’t deny that they exist anymore.

And so, development can often be prompted by reshifting our relationship to that. Our understanding about the way things are in the world, the way things happen, what happens on Christmas day, how you dress for that, that kind of thing. Now, as you note, fallback can happen in the same way. There’s also some disorientation, and somehow I close the door rather than try to keep going through the door that would allow me to see the situation through a broader perspective. I think that that can be a trigger for fallback.

Hilary
What are other triggers?

Val
There are a number of overarching triggers that I identified in my research. One is unresolved trauma. I think that unresolved trauma might be a big cause of a disorienting dilemma that we’ve kind of grown past. We’ve opened that door before, and then we encounter something or someone that resembled a trauma that happened at an earlier point in our development that causes that door to shut on us, again. In your example, you describe yourself as a child growing your capacity to understand that yours is not the only way to celebrate and dress for Christmas, but then later expecting that your spouse would fall in line with Christmas day apparel expectations. I would say that might be the closest connection that I’d see there.

Another trigger is context. So, just as we have this center-of-gravity for our individual development, we also have a systemic center-of-gravity. Our relationships have a center of gravity, a developmental stage or action logic. So, too, our organizations, our cultures, our societies. So, we are pulled. The gravitational pull of those contexts has a powerful impact on our own development in the moment and how we are able to show up to a given situation.

Hilary:
We talked about what’s happening in this moment. Is fallback more likely in this period?

Dr. Val
I think that so many of our contexts are on lockdown and are pulling us back into a smaller, more self-protective self. If we think about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, our basic safety and security needs aren’t being met. So, we’re shrinking or becoming smaller. Our contexts are shrinking and become smaller, and they’re pulling us and our developmental capacities into those smaller contexts.

Hilary:
May I ask for advice as we come to close. In our work at AR+, in our coLABs and so on, we’re truly inviting people more into their developmental edge, for example around how to up our response to eco-social crisis. And you’re reminding me, or this is how I am making sense of what you’re saying, “Be care-full, you’re doing that psychologically demanding work at a time of systemic lockdown. It’s really difficult for people.” This is true. And yet I say, if not now then when, given our interlocking crises. So what advice would you give about closing what is essentially a creative gap between our tendency to fall back and our need to move towards developmental edge?

Dr. Val:
I really think that noticing is such a big part of recovery and growth from fallback and noticing the gap, minding the gap. So to be really aware of our intentions — our intentions around meeting our center of gravity, meeting our developmental edge, and then noticing actually, how are we showing up in our lives? And what that gap is about is really important.

And, fallback doesn’t feel good. It is icky. It is uncomfortable. It is not our best self that we want to shout from the rooftop. So, we often dismiss it. We push it away. We blame others. We say, “This is not me,” or “This is just this moment.” But, I think the first step that you can take is to decide that you are going to notice, that you are going to pay attention to this gap. And to do that, I think your focus, your emphasis on developmental edge, knowing what that is, articulating it, keeping it top of mind, is really important for us. Knowing when we’re not actually meeting that, that being our intention, and beginning to get a little space and nuance between those – our intentions and how we’re actually showing up in the world.

Hilary:
Wonderful, wonderful, thank you, dr. Val, as you’re about to transition into being Mom- Val, I thank you very much for your you’re offering this this time and insights. Thank you.

And let’s leave readers with a link to your recent paper with also includes some tools etc. Plus a little video clip (above) of our conversation.