Dr. Susanne Cook-Greuter
About Me
The title: Learning to say “yes” to life, no matter what! says it all. I now need to heed this lesson for myself as well as to encourage this attitude of openness to others. In July 2025 I had fallen down the stairs which resulted in a traumatic head injury. This accident has changed my life from one moment the next. It requires me do adapt and create a new identity as an elderly elder.
For 45 years, I researched and taught Ego Development Theory (EDT) as an independent scholar. I trained others worldwide to apply EDT in coaching and leadership development contexts. The theory offers an orientation map on how people mature. It allows trained professionals to tailor their coaching and consulting to the unique meaning making capacity of both individuals and groups.
I am retired now from active teaching and traveling. Instead, I intend to play and relax more, enjoy my family and five grandchildren, and practice my artistic side. In addition, I am focusing on writing about my discoveries and insights in book format and share my perspectives in public conversations.
On my website, you can track my own learning experience and see my changing view of adult development as a field.
I will share what has brought me to create the Leadership Maturity Framework (LMF), and its measuring instrument, the MAP. The MAP is a sentence completion test inspired by Jane Loevinger. MAP stands for Maturity Assessment Profile or Maturity Assessment for Professionals. It was formerly known as SCTi (Integral Sentence Completion Test).
The many Associates I had the privilege to train and work with, will continue to offer global support and expertise in EDT and MAP scoring. I trust that they will further refine and adapt the theory and its use to support themselves and other human beings in growing more discerning, wiser, and more compassionate.
I hope to continue to serve those around me as well as the world at large as long as I can. You can find links on this website to my own writings, lectures, podcasts and many other resources.
Pay attention to the moment-to-moment joys in your environment and nature. Engage in what makes you happy and expresses your unique talents and self-expression to find solace and affirmation in the midst of our current global stress and chaos.
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?