Vertical development

The concept of vertical development appears to be on an upward trajectory in leadership development circles, if you’ll pardon the pun. But what is it?

Well, to start with, it’s not horizontal development, which is the focus of most leadership and talent development programmes in the education sector, and all the programmes currently available to school and MAT leaders.

These aim to increase technical or domain-specific skills and build a selection of in-vogue leadership competencies. They also sometimes present trainees with a leadership model or two to follow or use as a framework for their practice. Horizontal development is about the straightforward accumulation of more knowledge, information or skills. This is all important, but it is only half of what a leader needs to be effective in the current dynamic context, and it’s not the most important half! You can’t lead better by knowing more.

In contrast, vertical development is about building the more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking, being and doing required by a leader to effectively develop and use their capacity to influence others to achieve their intended aims. It’s called vertical development because it’s based on levels or stages of thinking, and involves ‘levelling up’ by gaining new perspectives and mindsets needed to make leadership more effective. Rooke & Torbert’s classic HBR piece ‘The Seven Transformations of Leadership’ is a good way into the thinking behind this. From a systemic perspective, vertical programmes result in more interconnected, interdependent leadership cultures.

One likely reason for the increasing popularity of the idea of vertical development is the realisation that horizontal development alone is failing to prepare leaders for the complexity of the world they find themselves in. Another is the need to think and act more ‘systemically’, with an eye on one’s impact across a system in its entirety, as well as on other connected systems.

Based on several models from the field of developmental psychology - including ‘ego-development’ and ‘constructive-developmental theory’ - vertical development is the outcome of work by researchers like Bill Torbert, Susanne Cook Greuter and Robert Kegan to transpose these academic frameworks into more applicable forms.

At its heart is the proposition that people continue to develop or mature mentally and psychologically after our physical development is complete, and even after we start to experience physical decline in old age. It’s about how grown-ups grow up. This is not new of course. There are lots of theories that offer ways of thinking about the stages of human development. Erik Erikson’s eight stage model is well presented here, alongside other models including several which are likely to be familiar to educators, like Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and Kohlberg’s theory of moral development.

Critically though, what distinguishes the idea of vertical development from these is its focus on the process of change.

Vertical development involves a series of profound transformations in the way a person sees the world and their place in it, driving fundamental improvements in their capacity to tolerate internal complexity, make meaning and respond effectively to an increasingly complex world.

The way we think, act and behave in every context we find ourselves in is shaped by the meaning we are making in each moment. This process of making meaning is a core human faculty that influences how we piece our experiences together, make sense of them, and use them as the basis for decisions. This meaning making evolves with life experience, but the process can be more intentional. What vertical development programmes involve is the purposeful and curated exposure to the sort of life experiences that enable the shifts.

If you like analogies, some - like Anderson & Adams in their ‘universal model of leadership’ - have likened this to upgrading your operating system.

This is what Kegan calls being deliberately developmental, and it is envisioned in his work as being an organisation-wide effort. This approach is one of those at the core of my consultancy and organisation development services.

The Leadership Development Framework (LDF) is well established as a way of mapping the stages of adult development and understanding how it relates to one’s capacity for effective leadership in complexity.

The LDF proposes nine distinct forms of meaning-making on a continuous developmental spectrum. Each form is called an ‘action logic’ (it describes the logic behind one’s actions) and presents the individual with specific opportunities and limitations. The framework enables both the individual and their coach or manager to think about how to best enable the developmental shifts that enable a greater capacity for making meaning in complexity.

The increasingly complex, unpredictable and dynamic challenges that educational leaders (all leaders) find themselves facing means that making meaning is both increasingly difficult and increasingly important. My coaching and professional development services - including elev8 - are specifically designed to help with that.

More than 13,000 leaders from a variety of sectors have found that the LDF approach has enabled a positive and lasting effect on their practice, both guiding and supporting them as they work to deepen the impact of their current action logic and to lean more into their leading-edge action logics which will unlock even greater potential for managing complexity.

This page will be developing over time into a rich resource for those interested in the theory and practice of vertical development. I promise that I’ll find a way to make it look prettier too! Please bookmark it and keep coming back.

In the meantime, you’ll find a few more things I’ve written about vertical development here, if you’re interested.