Ken's Tribal Leadership interview with Dave Logan

I'm finding the book well worth reading. It helps me understand yet another way that human beings misunderstand each other. Also, the color schemes of Spiral Dynamics have gotten a bit tiresome—like outdated wallpaper—so the Stage 1-5 language is a refreshing change. If you want to see Stage 5 in action, go to an integral course.

So now when I'm feeling helpless about something, I can tell myself, "You need to break out of this Stage 2 stuff and remember what you're capable of" (Stage 3, as in getting through med school and practicing medicine 30 years.)  Or if my spouse is treating me like a mere spoke in her glittering wheel-of-a-thousand-spokes, I can say "No wonder she feels overwhelmed. It's her management style. She's at Stage 3."  So instead of starting to feel like Dilbert, getting sullen, and xeroxing my ass on the copier, I can speak freedom language from a place of love (Stage 5) or at least explore that potential and hopefully grow into my hub-ship.

In short, many of the insights in the book extend beyond the business world.

"Triads" are touted as a valuable networking tool, but I think this is only true if a requisite cognitive level has developed first. As every one knows, triads of the romantic sort are a perennial source of anguish and suffering when occurring at Stage 2.

In my five-physician practice group of 1990-2001, I can see now in hindsight that we had a pretty good Stage 4 thing going until we hired a Stage 3 consultant to "help us." He really fucked things up. One warning sign? Putting down people in meetings. If only I'd known then what I know now.