Moving Forward Means Going Vertical
What’s Coming
Research indicates there will be more investment in organizational transformation in the next 10 years than in the last 40 years. In addition, all this incoming digital transformation is going to be dependent upon human transformation. So where does that leave us?
New Expectations
Leadership, design, execution, and performance of transformation work will require speed, agility and multiple forms of implicitly human capacity. This human capacity will be needed to see, understand, empathize, and respond in a greater variety of ways and in response to a wider range of situations. In other words, all members of any organization will need to be proficient in having capacity for ambiguity and complexity, a keen awareness of self and others, and a practitioner of resilience. This is a lot to consider, and most organizations are not anticipating or moving towards being prepared for intercepting this fast-approaching future.
Moving Up
Above and beyond the knowledge or skill stacking from classes and webinars delivered by horizontal development, vertical development is focused on extending capacities that come from expanding emotional, intellectual, and even physical awareness and capabilities. Beyond that, vertical development provides a scaffolding for understanding and working with the process of capacity building. It targets building capacities to see, understand, empathize, and respond in a greater variety of ways in response to a range of situations.
Outcomes
The outcomes of Vertical Development are three fold:
It enable leaders to expand their range of response.
It grows organizational culture to allow for experimentation, psychological safety, and mindful action and interaction.
It provides leaders that coach with a map for going deep to address the mindsets that define, limit, and shape experiences and growth.
Primary Targets For Beginning
There are several key areas needing investment for evolving and growing into meaningful vertical development impact. It is becoming increasingly important to create awareness of Vertical Leadership Development (VLD) and its distinction from horizontal development and how they work together. Here are some primary targets to consider for the vertical leadership development journey.
Develop knowledge of Vertical Development frameworks and core principles.
Learn how to use VLD as a map for distilling and supporting growth.
Become skilled in VLD development stages and transitions related to leading and coaching.
Utilize VLD coaching and assessment tools and techniques that will impact mindset, coaching experience, approach, and developmental movement.
It’s highly likely there will be additional conversation on this topic in the future. This is just the warm up to really getting started. The opportunities are expansive for human engagement and contribution as organizations face a tsunami of transformation in their near horizon timelines.