My coaching job is to help you develop leadership capacity on two planes: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal development is where tools and processes live. Change management, strategy, culture change, and scenario planning are developed on a horizontal plane. These tools are necessary to lead and I can help you access these resources to do more effective work.
Vertical development is focused on the advancement in a person’s leadership thinking capacity. The outcome of vertical development is the ability to think in more complex, systemic and interdependent ways. Vertical development emphasizes building capacity over digesting more information. Most of us already know what we need to know. It is doing it well that is the challenge.
Vertical development mixes three learning experiences to leverage development of self-awareness, action and insight.
Edge Experiences: We use your current work and projects as the development field. Edge experiences disrupt and disorient a leader’s capacity to think and have impact. They also provide the most effective development practice field if used effectively. The criteria for a heat experience needs one or more of the following conditions:
- It’s a first-time experience.
- Results matter.
- There is a chance of success and failure.
- Important people are watching.
- It is extremely uncomfortable.
Colliding Perspectives: Here you will be exposed to people with different worldviews, opinions, leadership backgrounds and training. The point of this work is to challenge your existing mental models and increase the number of perspectives through which you see the world.
Elevated Sensemaking: We use the coaching sessions to integrate and make sense of experiences and perspectives from more elevated stages of leadership development. A larger, more advanced worldview emerges in this work. Elevating sensemaking is built on three elements:
- Time: the practice of mastery takes time, repetition and feedback
- Map Making: we will use development stage maps to track progress over time
- Coaching: coaching, feedback and access to tools and processes speed the navigation over the development terrain. This is our job and it is how we help you.