Insight is fairly easy, but growth is slow, and change is hard. Big change is really, really hard. And some things, like many dispositions and personality traits, are virtually impossible to change. This isn’t an opinion based on personal experience, it’s a conclusion based on evidence from hundreds of longitudinal developmental studies conducted during the last 70 years. (Check out our articles page for some of this evidence.)
https://theo-dawson.medium.com/vertical-development-transformative-change-36151cb3a7be
🚩 Note: when i go to look at that articles page she mentioned ([[Lectica Articles|cached version]]) it's pretty hard to tell which articles she is talking about as there are a lot.
Prior context in that article:
One morning, while doing some research on leader development, I googled “vertical leadership” and “coaching.” The search returned 466,000 results. Wow. Looks like vertical development is hot in the coaching world!
Two hours later, after scanning dozens of web sites, I was left with the following impression:
Vertical development occurs through profound, disruptive, transformative insights that alter how people see themselves, instantly improve their relationships, increase happiness, and help them cope better with complex challenges. The task of the coach is to set people up for these experiences. Evidence of success is offered through personal stories of transformation.
But decades of developmental research contradicts this picture. This body of evidence shows that the kind of transformative experiences promised on these web sites is uncommon. And when it does occur it rarely produces a fairy tale ending. In fact, profound disruptive insights can easily have negative consequences, and most experiences that people refer to as transformational are really just momentary insights. They may feel profound in the moment, but don’t actually usher in any measurable change at all, much less transformative change.