Introduction
In this second installment of this series of articles on Vertical Development and Leadership, we will discuss the Stages of Vertical Development. From this installment we will gradually see in depth the theoretical body on which this area of Developmental Psychology is based, and the relevance it has for Leadership roles. At the end of your reading you can leave your questions or comments and from them we can establish a conversation to help you complete your understanding.
Purpose of the article
If in the first article of the series we defined “development” as the upgrade of the mental operating system, we now land on what that development looks like in real leaders. We will use the stage map derived from Loevinger and expanded by Cook-Greuter (with common names in the business world) and show visible behaviors, strengths, risks and practices for moving forward, with a special focus on the most frequent leap in senior management: from Achiever (achievement) to Redefining (redefinition/emergent strategist).
A useful map (and its limits)
Vertical Development is not the same as personality or IQ assessments, or other psychometric assessments. All of these tests assess fixed aspects of personality: typologies such as the Big Five, or Mayer-Briggs, or IQ assessments, uncover and provide information about the static structures of people.
Personality is a set of characteristics that remain stable over time, and IQ likewise has very little variation throughout life, and can only deteriorate for various reasons, but will hardly progress beyond the genetically mandated limit. In contrast, Vertical Development (VD), being an expansion of the mind’s ability to interpret and make sense of reality, is a process that continues throughout life.
DV is not personality typology: it describes amplified or expanded capacities of meaning in the face of complexity, and says nothing about “who you are”. It is not a way of being, but a way of interacting with the environment and others, and of making sense of perceived reality. Because of this, there are two things we can say about the stages of vertical development, without reservation:
- There is no “best person” stage: each level brings strengths and blinders. Development is contextual, and adapts to its interaction with the environment in which it occurs. It progresses at a set pace and in predictable and recognizable stages. Some people go through many of the known stages, others reach the early stages and park there for years, sometimes for the rest of their lives.
- Overlap: we usually operate with a predominant “peak” but we can “move” if in the context we perceive pressure, support or threat. And this movement may be to earlier stages (exceptionally later), for as long as it is necessary to process the perceived reality of the moment. We usually return to the stage where we usually operate, and which we call the “center of gravity”.
What does each stage of vertical development look like in senior management?
Next, I will describe each of the stages of vertical development, describing their most relevant characteristics. It is estimated that a person advancing along this path can move from one stage to the next in periods of between 3 and 5 years, and always according to the environmental events that stimulate these transitions. It is important to note that the first stage of this model is not covered in this article, because it is extremely rare to find people in leadership roles who are in this phase of vertical development; this first stage of the model is called Opportunist, but we will not review it here.
Now, let’s look at the ones we are interested in reviewing:
1) Diplomat (Conformity/Harmony)
Leadership signature: seeks belonging, avoids conflict, values norms.
Strengths: cohesive, cares for the climate, respects rules and roles.
Risks: superficial consensus, avoids difficult conversations, and at all costs, avoids conflicts that may threaten harmony; subordinates to authority even if the context has changed.
Typical decisions: prioritizes “don’t break anything” and “everyone agrees”.
Example in healthcare: clinic manager who keeps protocols as they are for fear of “upsetting” senior physicians, even with evidence of improvements available.
Breakthrough practice: training in courageous conversations and person/role separation: “I can question a process without disconfirming you”.
2) Expert (Expertise/Technical Control)
Leadership signature: love for accuracy; “the right answer” exists if you analyze well. Everything is a problem to be solved.
Strengths: technical depth, quality standards, error detection. Highly efficient.
Risks: micromanagement, impatience with ambiguity, disqualifies non-technical perspectives. Feedback is welcome but only if it comes from an expert. May sacrifice efficiency to achieve effectiveness.
Typical decisions: the best technically supported argument wins.
Example in health care: centralizing clinical and administrative decisions, demanding “A++ evidence” to change minimum flows.
Breakthrough practice: orchestrate perspectives (clinical, nursing, operations, patient) before deciding; ask “what partial, nontechnical truth am I missing?”
3) Achiever (Results/System)
Leadership firm: align areas, execute strategy, optimize cross KPIs. “Making things happen”.
Strengths: focus on goals, cross-functional coordination, continuous improvement, accountability. Consolidates teams and achieves coordinated work to reach relevant objectives. Seeks efficiency at the highest level.
Risks: blindness to paradoxes (believes that everything can be solved with better plans), little reflection on assumptions, confuses speed with progress. Always busy and time is an extremely scarce resource because there is always something to do. Can achieve efficiencies but at the cost of personal and team attrition.
Typical decisions: clear objectives, governance, roadmaps, PMO.
Example in healthcare: hospital director who reduces waiting times with dashboards and bed management, but exhausts equipment and does not improve complex patient experience.
Breakthrough practice: introducing layers of learning in execution (not just “sticking to the plan”, but “learning from the mechanism by which we decide and measure”).
4) Redefining (Emerging Individualist/Strategist)
Leadership firm: challenges system assumptions, sustains tensions, integrates multiple frameworks (business, ethics, patient experience, human capital). Always looking (literally) at ways to “get out of the box.”
Strengths: adaptive design, organizational learning, management of polarities (quality and y costs, speed and y security), greater self-awareness. Able to integrate seemingly contradictory resources, explore the potential of polarities and paradox, and use ambiguity as a learning opportunity.
Risks: excessive complexity (paralysis by analysis), “change agenda” that alienates those who still operate in Achiever. May become isolated because they perceive that others “don’t get it”, and stop acting out of frustration.
Typical decisions: portfolio of experiments and evolution of metrics (e.g., from productivity to health value).
Example in healthcare: redesigns access by risk and value, clinical-administrative co-governance, listens to patients and the regulator, and reconfigures roles.
Breakthrough practice: theory of polarities and reflective rituals; designing ecosystems, not just plans.
5) Transforming (Strategist/Alchemist early)
Leadership signature: systemic sense of purpose, transforms cultures and external alliances, navigates crises by integrating short and long term. “Game changer.”
Strengths: inter-institutional vision, weaves unlikely coalitions, high symbolic and structural impact.
Risks: disconnection from day-to-day business, organizational change fatigue.
Example in health: leader that aligns public-private network with regulator and academia for an integrated care model with population results.
Sustaining practice: balancing internal legitimacy (visible victories) with systemic transformation (3-5 year roadmaps).
6) Later stages.
There are at least 2 known stages of vertical development that are later than Transforming: the next is Alchemist, and the later of the known stages is Ironist. These two are extremely rare in organizational leadership environments, because their frameworks usually focus on issues that transcend organizations, and are no longer interested in the organizational world.
On the other hand, there may be other even later stages, but the assessment tools currently in use are not adequate for their recording, because the tools rely on the use of verbal language to explore the mental frame that assigns meaning, and beyond Ironist, the later mental frames are probably not constructed with verbal language, and therefore it is not possible to “measure” them with these tools.
The critical bridge: from Achiever to Redefining
This is the most common transition for senior management. It’s not “stop executing,” it’s executing while questioning the rules of the game and redesigning the system.
Signs that you are on the threshold
- You feel persistent dilemmas that don’t subside with more KPIs or more resources.
- Notes fatigue: the system “delivers” but does not improve what matters (patient experience, safety, sustainable innovation).
- Previously “annoying” voices appear (patients, nursing, unions, finance) that you now see as data in the system, and no longer as interference or threats.
- Change your question from “how do I achieve faster?” to “what assumptions underpin this problem and how do we make them subject?”.
Typical Derailers (and antidotes)
- Pendulum: from hard control to permissiveness. If you perceive yourself as swinging between two such attitudes, you are probably on the edge of development.
- Antidote: clear contracts for experimentation: limits, metrics and timing.
- Jargonitis: talk of complexity without design change. You see the possibilities, but you are still holding on to what has always happened, and you are “holding back” what you perceive as inexorable momentum.
- Antidote: visible experiments with dual metrics (outcome + learning).
- Isolation: seeing yourself as “the only one who understands”. You feel that others look at you, nod, but don’t seem to fully understand what you are saying. You are perceived as “unnecessarily complicated”, that “you think too much”.
- Antidote: create a core group (clinic, operations, finance, patients) that practices subject-object and polarities.
Conclusions
We have quickly reviewed the stages of vertical development that we often see in organizations. With particular attention, we looked at the transition from Achiever to Redefining, the key transition that brings the leader to a perspective that allows him or her to rethink the system and begin to see it as an object of study and improvement, rather than being subject to it as just another part of it.
This change of perspective, or mental framework, will allow you to lead from a different, more encompassing position, from which you will be able to bring about profound and lasting changes that will improve the organization’s ability to adapt much better to the rapidly changing and demanding context they are currently facing.
Write me your question or comment, and if what you have read about the stages of vertical development has impacted you and you want to know more, write to us to arrange an exploratory session.
See you in the next installment!
