Last week in our series about how to be a more strategic leader, we looked at the difference between horizontal development and vertical development. We saw that horizontal development is about learning new skills that fit with the way we already see the world, and that vertical development is about changing the way we see the world itself. We noted that it is the latter that enables us to become more strategic.
We also looked at Rooke and Torbert's action logics, and saw that when we are struggling with the idea that we need to become more strategic, most of us are in the process of moving from Expert to Achiever, or from Achiever to Individualist.
This week, we'll look at how those moves happen and what we can do to help them along. To do that, I am going to bring in the work of Robert Kegan, whose ideas underpin a lot of the thinking on vertical development, and Jennifer Garvey Berger, who has done a great deal to make those ideas practical for leaders and coaches, including me.
Kegan's stages of adult development
Robert Kegan is a developmental psychologist at Harvard. His central idea is the difference between what we are "subject" to and what we can hold as "object" (Kegan, 1994).
The things we are subject to are the beliefs, assumptions and loyalties that automatically drive how we operate without us noticing. These are the lenses we look at the world through and, to us, they are simply the way the world is. Kegan's way of putting it is that these things 'have' us.
The things we hold as object are the things we can stand back from, look at, question and do something about.
Vertical development, in Kegan's terms, is the process of moving what we were subject to into object, so that something that used to control us becomes something we can control and think about.
Kegan describes a series of stages, or forms of mind, that adults can move through as this happens. They can be labelled as follows (Kegan & Lahey, 2009; Berger, 2012):
The self-sovereign mind. People at this stage are focused on their own needs and interests, and tend to see other people as a means to an end. It is uncommon among adults in professional roles.
The socialised mind. People at this stage have taken on the values and expectations of the people, groups and institutions that matter to them, such as their family, their profession or their organisation. They are loyal to those people and groups, and they are committed to something bigger than themselves. Berger and Fitzgerald describe it as having welcomed a board of directors into their decision-making (Berger & Fitzgerald, 2002). The difficulty comes when the important voices on the board disagree. Then people at this stage can feel torn in two, and look to others to tell them what the right answer is.
The self-authoring mind. People at this stage have developed their own internal compass. They still listen to the voices on their board, but they have become the chair of it, and they can weigh up different views and make their own decisions. They tend to own their work and be self-directed. The limitation is that they can become attached to their own way of seeing things and use other people's views mainly to strengthen it.
The self-transforming mind. People at this stage can see the limits of their own internal system, and of any single way of seeing the world. They use other people's perspectives to change and expand their own understanding, and they are more comfortable with paradox and shades of grey. It is rare, and rarely seen before midlife (Berger & Fitzgerald, 2002).
Kegan's research suggests that fewer than half of adults fully reach the self-authoring mind (Kegan, 1994). But Garvey Berger is clear that no form of mind makes somebody a better person than another, and neither is it about intelligence. What matters is the fit between the way we make sense of the world and what our role demands of us.
How the two maps line up
If you put Kegan's forms of mind alongside Rooke and Torbert's action logics, they line up quite closely. Cynthia McCauley and colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership compared the two frameworks and grouped the action logics into pairs, with each pair matching one of Kegan's adult forms of mind. The second action logic in each pair is a transitional stage on the way to the next form of mind (McCauley et al., 2006).
I've mapped this out in the graphic below (with the help of Claude AI). So, what you see is my representation, and any errors are mine. McCauley and colleagues describe the alignment as speculative, in any event, because the two frameworks measure slightly different things in different ways, but it is close enough to be useful.
The first thing to notice is that the Expert sits within the socialised mind, as the transitional stage on the way to the self-authoring mind. The Expert's certainty usually comes from the standards of their profession or craft. They have absorbed those standards so thoroughly that they experience them as simply the right way of doing things. To use Berger and Fitzgerald's image, the profession is the chair of their board, and the move from Expert to Achiever involves becoming the chair of your own board.
The second is that the Achiever sits squarely at the self-authoring mind, and the Individualist is the transitional stage on the way to the self-transforming mind. So, moving from Achiever to Individualist means starting to question the internal system you worked so hard to build.
Just to be clear, a proper assessment of where somebody is needs a specialist interview or questionnaire, so the map is best used as a way of recognising patterns in yourself, not as a diagnosis (Berger & Fitzgerald, 2002).
Shift 1: from Expert to Achiever
Rooke and Torbert call this transition "one of the most painful bottlenecks" in most organisations, and they single out engineers, lawyers and other professionals whose success as experts has led to them being given managerial responsibilities (Rooke & Torbert, 2005). This is the situation I found myself in when first promoted to a leadership position and it was disorienting to say the least.
In Kegan's terms, this is the move from being run by your professional or technical standards to becoming the author of your own approach. Here are some things that can help:
Get curious about other people's assumptions. Experts tend to be sure they are right. Rooke and Torbert suggest practising lines like "You may be right, but I'd like to understand what leads you to believe that."
Ask yourself what you think, not just what the right answer is. After a significant meeting or decision, ask yourself: What did I observe? What did I think and feel? What matters most to me here? What would I have preferred to happen? (Berger & Fitzgerald, 2002)
Notice where your view differs from other people's. Pay attention to even small differences between your view and your boss's, or between what your profession says and what the business needs. It is in these gaps that you can become more effective and where your own voice has to develop.
Take on work that makes you coordinate across teams. Rooke and Torbert describe an engineer at Hewlett-Packard who was promoted to lab manager, a role that required him to coordinate other people and cooperate across departments. Within a year he was profiling as an Achiever, and for the first time he understood the basis of the tensions between engineers trying to perfect the technology and managers trying to deliver on time and on budget.
Run small, private experiments. One of Rooke and Torbert's clients learned from a group of peers that her habit of always taking a critical position, which she thought of as being objective, isolated her and generated distrust. So she started asking questions instead of criticising, moving from a state of professed certainty to one of enquiry, and that was the start of her move from Expert to Achiever.
Shift 2: from Achiever to Individualist
According to Rooke and Torbert, organisations have been relatively good at developing leaders to the Achiever action logic, but most have a poor record beyond that point. In many organisations, the Achiever is seen as the finish line.
Achievers ask whether they are meeting their goals and how they could meet them more effectively. Developing Individualists start to question the goals themselves (Rooke & Torbert, 2005).
In Kegan's terms, this is the move from trusting your own internal system to seeing its limits. Berger and Fitzgerald suggest that, instead of chairing your board, you start to see yourself as one member of a council, listening to the way the other members shape the options available (Berger & Fitzgerald, 2002).
Here are some things that can help with this shift:
Question the goal, not just your progress towards it. Next time you review a piece of work, ask: Is this still the right goal? What assumptions is it based on? Who would define success differently, and why?
Make sure your own development conversations go beyond objectives. Rooke and Torbert found that development plans built through probing and trusting conversation, and supported by executive coaching, can help a lot at this stage.
Find peers who will challenge you. Leaders moving beyond the Achiever stage tend to look for peers who will challenge their assumptions, and those of their organisation and industry. They are less interested in mentors who will simply sharpen their existing skills (Rooke & Torbert, 2005).
Notice your own lens. Berger and Fitzgerald list signs that someone's thinking is becoming more complex. These include:
being able to see why a view you have always dismissed makes sense to others,
holding two apparent opposites together,
tolerating contradictions instead of trying to fix them, and
recognising how your own background shapes what you see. One of their examples is an executive who realised that "my training as a lawyer has accustomed me to see things in adversarial terms" (Berger & Fitzgerald, 2002). When you notice yourself doing this, write it down.
Loosen the beliefs that keep you stuck
Whichever shift you are making, it usually involves some belief that you are still subject to (for example, "my value to the organisation comes from my knowledge and technical expertise").
Kegan suggests five steps for moving a belief like this from subject to object (described in Berger & Fitzgerald, 2002):
1. Name the belief. You can't examine something until you know it is there.
2. Notice what it does. Look at how the belief shapes what you do, and what it makes possible or impossible for you.
3. Look for evidence that doesn't fit. Search for times when the belief turned out not to be true.
4. Trace where it came from. Work out when and where the belief first started to operate in your life.
5. Test it. Run small experiments to see what happens if you act as though the belief were not true.
In one of Berger and Fitzgerald's coaching examples, a very capable executive could not cut back her working hours, however much she wanted to. When she worked through these steps, she realised she was driven by a belief that if she was not constantly the fastest-rising star, she would lose everything she had worked for. Once she could see the belief, she could test it, and she found she could take time off without her career falling apart.
For a hands-on leader, the belief might be about what will happen if you are not the person with the answer. The same five steps apply. This approach also sits at the heart of Kegan and Lahey's work on immunity to change, which looks at the hidden commitments that keep us doing the things we want to stop doing (Kegan & Lahey, 2009).
Challenge and support
Berger and Fitzgerald make the point that development needs both challenge and support. A promotion or a new role can prompt development, but neither of them causes it on its own. Without support, people tend to slip back into more comfortable ways of thinking (Berger & Fitzgerald, 2002).
So, as we saw last week, it is important to find somebody, such as a coach or a mentor, who can help you make sense of what you are going through.
Why this matters
Becoming more strategic is not something you can bolt on to the way you already lead. As you make these shifts, you become less dependent on being the person who is right, and you are better able to take other people's views on board and see more of the system you are working in.
Later in the series, we'll look at Michael Cavanagh's four factor model of leadership, which builds on all of this.
So, this week, pick one belief about how you need to lead, and work through the five steps with it.
If you try this, hit reply and let me know which belief you picked and what you found. I'd be very interested to hear.
References
Berger, J. G. (2012). Changing on the job: Developing leaders for a complex world. Stanford Business Books.
Berger, J. G., & Fitzgerald, C. (2002). Leadership and complexity of mind: The role of executive coaching. In C. Fitzgerald & J. G. Berger (Eds.), Executive coaching: Practices and perspectives (pp. 27–57). Davies-Black.
Kegan, R. (1994). In over our heads: The mental demands of modern life. Harvard University Press.
Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2009). Immunity to change: How to overcome it and unlock the potential in yourself and your organization. Harvard Business Press.
McCauley, C. D., Drath, W. H., Palus, C. J., O'Connor, P. M. G., & Baker, B. A. (2006). The use of constructive-developmental theory to advance the understanding of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 17(6), 634–653.
Rooke, D., & Torbert, W. R. (2005). Seven transformations of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 83(4), 66–76.
More leadership inspiration
What Next?
All of my posts for new leaders are here.
How I can help you
Coaching. If you are finding the move from expert to leader harder than you expected, or you suspect that a belief about how you should lead is holding you back, I can help. Working through that kind of belief is exactly the sort of thing that is easier with somebody to talk it through with. There are more details here.