Is the point of hiring to judge or to serve?
That’s the question Graham Duncan begins with in a remarkable essay on hiring. I return to it often, not just because it’s well written (it is), but because it opens up a much deeper conversation.
On the surface, it’s a post about assessing candidates. But it reads more like a meditation on how we come to know people and how much of that depends on whether we’ve come to know ourselves.
Duncan approaches hiring not as a performance review in disguise, but as a relational process. He doesn’t pretend that it’s easy or neat and starts from a different place: that everyone is capable of excellence in the right context, and that our work, as managers, leaders, or peers, is to help them find that context. That might be in our team. It might be somewhere else entirely. But it’s an act of care either way.
That framing resonated deeply with me. Especially his use of Robert Kegan’s adult development theory because it is something that shaped my own coaching training and continues to influence how I see leadership and systems change. Duncan draws attention to the “self-transforming mind,” that stage where one begins to question not just the conclusions we reach, but the frameworks we use to get there. It’s a stance that’s curious, reflexive, and aware of its own limits.
It’s also a reminder that clarity doesn’t come from standing above complexity, but from moving within it: with care, humility, and attention.
And while Duncan is writing about hiring, I found myself reading it as a much broader pattern that applies just as much to how we build teams, hold performance conversations, structure collaborations, or try to work across systems.
It’s the same thread that runs through my own work and writing:
That connection, not abstraction, is what creates the conditions for insight and movement.
That we are always in relationship: with people, with context, with our own assumptions.
That leadership, especially in complex systems, is less about certainty and more about discernment. And that discernment starts by noticing what water we’re swimming in—our own and each other’s.
Duncan’s post doesn’t offer a method so much as a stance. And for me, that’s the most useful kind of guidance.
If you’re someone thinking about hiring, or building teams, or simply trying to navigate complexity in more human ways, I think you’ll find this piece meaningful. Possibly even centering.
You can read it: https://grahamduncan.blog/whats-going-on-here/
Originally published on Substack on 7 August 2025. Read on Substack →
Gautam John 
Leave a comment