Kegan's stages of development

Kegan's stages of development hold that an adult's capacity for making meaning passes through successive levels. The core of this framework, developed by Robert Kegan of Harvard, is the shift from subject to object: something that governs us and that we are embedded in at one stage becomes, at the next, an object we can look at and manage. As long as we are inside it, we cannot see it; when we step outside it, we notice it. Coaching often accompanies precisely this shift. A pattern that can be seen can no longer govern the person blindly.