Judith Parsons ∙ Professor of Practice and Management at Hult International Business School
Faculty Column ∙ June 11, 2025
If you want to create impact, start focusing on vertical development
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The changing world of leadership development
Much of the investment in leadership development reflects a recognition within organizations that the work of senior leadership is dominated by complexity whether it be societal, geo-political, organizational or systemic. The need to navigate turbulence and to be an effective decision maker in the face of uncertainty has become a given.
Further, the reality for many senior leaders is that the challenges they face are paradoxical and in tension with each other. For example, the imperative to transform the organization without compromising performance and, while cultivating a sustainable workplace that people actually want to work in.
We only need to look at our client work within the public sector and healthcare in particular to see this borne out in the tension between ‘performance now’ pressures such as financial viability and meeting service targets and the transformational goals toward a sustainable health system. The public sector is not unique – we see similar tensions playing out in much of our client work in sectors such as fashion retail, construction, life sciences and manufacturing.
The question that exercises the development community is how leadership development best enables leaders to acquire the critical capabilities to work with those challenges. What types of development experience are most likely to bring about the level of growth and change that are essential for success in a senior role?
Prominent thought leadership centers on the importance for aspiring senior leaders of developing advanced cognitive capabilities that are essential in dynamic and complex environments. Examples of these advanced cognitive capabilities include a capacity to handle plurality and contradiction, an orientation toward experimentation and learning and a growing reliance on a self-generated values, moral purpose. These capabilities involve a shift in mindset and ways of seeing the world that entails a mastery of self rather than simply a mastery of organizational skills or leadership competencies, though in reality leaders need to be able to call on both.
This view is popularly described as vertical development for the reason that growth as a leader involves progression through a series of cognitive developmental stages that reflect increasing levels of complexity that come with being a ‘grown-up’ in both organizational life – and life in general.
The capacity to self-author vs. being authored by the job
To illustrate, I refer to the work of Robert Kegan, who identified 5 stages of constructive development [1] . His taxonomy highlights the transition between Level 3 and 4 as particularly important in leadership. Level 4 is characterized by the individual leader’s capacity to be self-authoring: to be guided by a personal sense of purpose and values, and able to engage with contradiction and difference.
In contrast, at Level 3 individuals tend to be ‘authored by the job’: defined by the expectations and opinions of others and more likely to look to structure and external measures to define their focus and sense of success in the role. The significance of this transition for an aspiring senior leader is obvious.
Inevitably, this expanding and exciting research field has prompted interest in how leadership development can best enable people to cultivate those essential capabilities and successfully navigate the transition to Level 4.
Nick Petrie’s work consolidates much of the available theory and advances the view that effective leadership development privileges 3 key learning processes [2] :
Heat experiences – such as intensive experiential learning
Colliding perspectives – being faced with divergent views of the same challenge
‘Elevated sense making’ – the space to reflect and make sense, with others, of the implications and potential for action
The Hult Ashridge approach to leadership development has long reflected the tenets of vertical development. Our practice has traditionally been grounded in experiential learning which brings to life the complex and paradoxical realities of organizational life and engages participants in working with others to navigate high levels of complexity.
Crucially, we believe that good leadership development provokes a ‘shift in the room.’ What we mean by this is that the learning process is sufficiently impactful to start the process of change within the ‘classroom’ to then be followed through into the workplace, rather than an ‘…interesting, I’ll think about it’ response.
The shift may be profound or subtle but, as with all individual change and growth, it has the potential to be both engaging, enlightening and at times, uncomfortable. For example, in our work with leaders we know that an important but often difficult breakthrough for leaders is letting go of their assumption that they ‘have to know’ and to explore the alternative skills of drawing on collective intelligence and enabling a more emergent and agile way of working.
Numerous experiences can provoke this type of shift such as experiential or simulated learning, immersion, working with the full complexity of their own systems, dialogue or go-see experiences i.e. going to another organization to observe their everyday work – often an admired organization in another industry. This works best when the participants identify who they want to engage with and learn from.
Having held senior roles, our faculty balance real world experience with subject matter expertise and specialist skills in learning design and enabling advanced individual learning and growth.
This work is a long way beyond leadership training. It requires agility and a depth of skill on the part of facilitators to create these types of intervention, to make sense of the room, to draw on their own experience as senior leaders and to balance empathy and challenge that supports clients in truly learning about themselves and their potential.
What does this mean for clients and developers?
Both clients and developers need to ask searching questions – in partnership – about the value of the work they are commissioning and delivering.
2. Be curious and demanding about the theoretical underpinning of the learning process. What assumptions about adult learning are informing the approach to design? What experiences of leadership change are reflected in design and delivery?
3. Be curious about what value is being created throughout the design and delivery process rather than as an end point activity.
4. Recognize that assessing the impact and value of senior leader development is complex. Evaluation needs to balance quantitative and qualitative data to provide a rich narrative about the impact and value at the level of the individual, organization and system.
Sources
[1] Kegan, R. The Evolving Self. (1982) Harvard University Press
[2] Petrie, N. Vertical Development Part 1. (2014)
Meet the expert
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Judith Parsons
Professor of Practice and Management at Hult International Business School
Judith works with a wide variety of clients to design and deliver innovative and impactful leadership and change interventions.
Much of her work is focused on enabling accelerated transition to senior leadership roles. As a faculty member and researcher, she is working at the forefront of thinking about leadership growth and how leaders develop the mental models and skills that are essential for success at senior levels in organizations.
Within this field she also has a particular interest in women’s leadership and works as an advisor and developer with clients seeking to advance women’s career development and prominence within the organization.
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