Vertical Development is a transformative approach to leadership growth that focuses on enhancing a leader’s capacity to make sense of and respond to complex situations. Unlike traditional horizontal development, which emphasizes acquiring knowledge and skills, Vertical Development works on expanding a leader’s internal ‘meaning-making’ abilities, enabling them to think and act in more complex, systemic, and interdependent ways – horizontal development focuses on what you know, Vertical Development concerns how you think.

In a complex world, where information and knowledge is everywhere, it will be individuals and teams who develop their capacity to think in the most expansive ways who will be at the forefront of leadership and business growth. This post dives into:

Vertical Development, Adult Development Theory & Leadership

The theory of vertical development has emerged from Jean Piaget’s work in the 1950s studying children’s cognitive development, which he said was based not on accumulated knowledge and experience, but on the mindful act of constructing knowledge from that experience.

In the 1980s, Harvard Professor Robert Kegan extended Piaget’s model to adults. Our growth and development doesn’t just stop once we become adults, he said. Rather we all, to varying extents, continue to observe, interpret, and make meaning of our perceived reality, according to the sophistication of our underlying mental models. He identified five orders of mind: impulsive, sovereign, socialized, self-authoring and self-transforming. The implicit proposition is that a person constructs their perception of their world from their inner mental model i.e., the world is not an objective reality, but a subjective perception.

What gradually happens is not just a linear accretion of more and more that one can look at or think about, but a qualitative shift in the very shape of the window or lens through which one looks at the world. 

Kegan R (1982) The evolving self: problem and process in human development

Through the 80s and 90s, other developmental theorists like Lawrence Kohlberg, Loevinger, Susanne Cook-Greuter and Terri O’Fallon advanced further models of adult development.

Adult Developmental Stages and ‘Forms of Mind’

Let’s pick up on Kegan’s stages of development. Jennifer Garvey Berger (a student of Kegan at Harvard) summarises the stages, or Forms of Mind, that adults can travel through in her book Changing on the Job: Developing Leaders for a Complex World:

Self-Sovereign

• A combination of a self-centredness and focus on what I want.
• Only perspective a person can automatically take is their own.
• Authority lies outside them and is marked by formal authority of a title. Rules are appreciated because of the direct consequences of them. A rule yesterday is probably a rule today but orientation is to figure out how to get past a rule if it is in their way.
• Aware others have feelings and desires but true empathy is not possible because the distance between their minds and others is great. The thinking and feeling of those around them is mysterious. Unlikely to be motivated by abstract factors like loyalty or commitment.

Socialized

• Image of self as being at the centre of the world left behind and opinions and perspectives of others taken on.
• Authority is an internalized value / principle / role which comes from outside oneself.
• Rules of society seen as being the right way to be in the world, individual will become devoted to something larger than themselves, loyal to and embedded in a larger system, theory and relationship.
• The larger system though is not for them to make decisions about and when there is a conflict between important others within the system decision making becomes difficult.

Self-Authored

• What adults are supposed to look like.
• Can understand the views and opinions of others while maintaining their own, they own their own work, make their own decisions and can mediate among different perspectives. Increasingly question the infallibility of external guides but may use others views or opinions to strengthen their own arguments or set of opinions.
• Authority is found in the self. Individual’s rules and regulations determined for oneself. When others disagree, it can be inconvenient or unpleasant but is not internally wrenching (when one internal value disagrees with another, however, that can cause internal tearing).

Self-Transformed

• The individual can see multiple layers of every issue and can hold even very different perspectives simultaneously.
• Greatest strength is ability to see connections everywhere.
• More likely to believe that we often think of as being black and white are just various shades of grey.
• Less easy to pin down about a particular opinion or idea, and are more orientated to the process of leadership than to any single product or outcome.

As we gain complexity through development, our mind actually transforms. When we gain new information or skills, our knowledge increases and we fill the container of our mind, but the container that holds the knowledge doesn’t necessarily change it’s form. Whereas, when we change our understanding of something, for example, by taking on a new perspective (being able to see more grey area vs. black and white), or being able to handle more uncertainty or manage multiple decisions, the form of the container that holds our knowledge (our Form of Mind) transforms.

Nick Petrie, formerly of the Centre Creative Leadership explains Vertical Development’s foundations in Adult Development Theory and how its different stages play out from a leadership perspective at work:

As children grow, the way they think advances through predictable stages. Piaget [a Swiss psychologist] noticed that at each higher stage, children could think in more complex and sophisticated ways, meaning they were able to deal with increasingly difficult problems. Where Piaget left off in childhood, researchers like Robert Kegan and Bill Torbert picked up in adulthood. For a long time it was assumed that once you reach adulthood, these stages of development would stop – after all you are a grown-up, right? But Kegan and others discovered that developmental stages do in fact continue into adulthood, though something about the way adults develop through them changes. Whereas children move rapidly through the stages, an adult’s pace of development slows dramatically, almost to the point of plateauing. In addition, while a child’s development appears to happen automatically, adults cannot simply sit back and wait; now they need to work to keep growing.

Dependent-Conformers are uncommon in leadership positions across all businesses because they have not yet developed basic leadership skills and characteristics. That said, given the early focus in startups and high growth businesses on technical skills, such individuals can find themselves in leadership roles. Feeling completely out their depth as their responsibilities intensify this can strongly negatively impact the individual’s personal wellbeing, their team’s and the business overall.

The characteristics of Independent-Achievers are the most common attributes that I see in leaders in startup and high growth technology businesses. But what got you here, won’t get you there – helping a leader transform from an Independent-Achiever to an Interdependent-Collaborator is the fundamental role of a development coach.

How can Vertical Development help you become a better leader?

As your leadership seniority grows, so too must your mind. Like a computer, horizontal development increases the size of your mental hard drive, and Vertical Development boosts your processor’s speed and power. Vertical development complements horizontal development rather than replacing it – leaders still require the knowledge, skills, competencies and personal qualities to be able to perform effectively at whatever development stage they may be operating.

If you’d like to become a more vertically developed leader, head to 4 Vertical leadership skills to help you thrive in a VUCA world and check out my series on Accelerating Executive Mastery >>, which goes beyond technical proficiency to help you master the types of adaptive, vertical leadership skills required to navigate a complex world, take your team on a journey with you, and speed up the rate at which you can do it.

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