Dr. Susanne Cook-Greuter
About Me
A little manifesto: After 4 decades of research, training and teaching Ego Development Theory (EDT) and its application to leadership development and coaching tailored to a person's belief system, I am now focusing on writing about my discoveries and concerns.
Here, you will find my philosophy, what has informed my theory, the Leadership Maturity Framework, its measuring instrument -- the Integral Sentence Completion Test (SCTi) and the Maturity Assessment Profile (MAP), the Associates I have trained and worked with, dear enduring supportive global connections, the people I serve, you, and the world at large; my meaningful play modalities and galleries, and resources.
Media & Public Engagements
What’s problematic with Grand Integral Theories?
Can grand Western theories of human, social and cultural development such as AQAL and SD become ossified (frozen)? A view from the observation deck.
During this keynote presentation at the Integral European Conference (IEC) in May 2025, I shared both my observation and empirical data of my research to highlight that (1) this issue may have much to do with the early equating of stages of cultural, social and organizational development with stages of individual development, and that (2) this assumption resulted in a conflation of personal and cultural-social development and a set of strange, unscientific use of colors.
What’s problematic with Grand Integral Theories? Q&A
This was a follow-up session of my keynote presentation at the IEC 2025.
During this Q&A session, we created a dialogue space in a hybrid format so that both online and in-person participants can reflect on my challenging ideas.
Toward the end of the session, participants also asked me to share a little bit about my book project. Surprise yourself to my reading a piece of the fable guidebook.
Metamodern Spirituality | Ego Dev. Language & Spirituality
In this conversation with Brendan Graham Dempsey, we discussed my model of Ego Developmental Theory, and implications and contemporary criticisms.
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Are stage models inherently "colonialist"?
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Do the values of social scientific stage theories hold an implicit Western bias?
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How would we evaluate development without values?
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Are such evaluative models helpful or harmful for orienting our solutions to global problems?
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How "open" is the scoring methodology to scrutiny?