Traditional approaches to leadership development often focus on what a leader thinks: their mindsets, beliefs, assumptions, and limiting patterns.
But what if the challenge is not only what a leader thinks, but how they make sense of the world in the first place?
This is where the Subject–Object Interview (SOI) offers a different kind of inquiry.
Grounded in adult developmental theory, the SOI is an interview that explores how people make meaning: what they are able to reflect on, and what they are still organised around without being fully aware of it.
Why does this distinction matter?
Consider a familiar organizational challenge: getting people to take more ownership.
Organizations introduce new structures, clarify responsibilities, remove approval layers, delegate decision-making and encourage people to take more initiative. Yet, despite these efforts, managers often find themselves repeatedly stepping in, people continue to seek permission, and decisions still travel upwards.
Creating the right environment, with the right structures does matter. However, perhaps we need to look beyond the structures and behaviours to really understand what is happening.
Consider two people approaching the same situation:
One person may understand ownership primarily through the expectations of others. They want to do a good job, meet expectations and maintain the trust of their manager. When faced with an unfamiliar situation or conflicting expectations, they may seek direction or reassurance before acting. For them, taking ownership can mean doing what they believe is expected of them.
Another person may approach ownership through their own internally established principles and priorities. They can assess the situation, form their own judgement and make a decision, even when there is no clear instruction or when others might disagree. They are able to take responsibility not only for their actions but also for the reasoning behind them.
Both may be equally committed, capable and motivated. Yet they are making sense of ownership differently.
In Robert Kegan's adult developmental framework, these examples broadly illustrate the difference between a Socialized Mind (Stage 3) and a Self-Authoring Mind (Stage 4).
The difference is not simply that one person knows what to do and the other doesn't. It is that they have different capacities for relating to expectations, authority, responsibility and their own judgement.
This has important implications for leadership development and organizational change.
We may redesign a system to give people more autonomy, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are able to experience themselves as the authors of their decisions. We may encourage managers to delegate, but they may still feel responsible for ensuring that everyone follows their expectations. We may ask people to challenge the status quo, while they remain organised around the need for approval or belonging.
In other words, changing the conditions in which people work does not automatically change how they make sense of those conditions.
This is why some organizational problems persist despite the best intentions and considerable investment in solutions. We address the visible behaviours and structures without necessarily understanding the meaning-making that sustains them.
The SOI offers a way to explore this deeper dimension of leadership. Rather than focusing only on what leaders think, it helps us understand how they think: what shapes their interpretations, what they can examine and question, and where their current way of making meaning may be limiting their capacity to respond to complexity.
Because developing leaders for greater complexity may require more than giving them new tools, better strategies or different behaviours.
It may require supporting a development in how they understand themselves, others and the world they lead.