Leaders today face complex, ever-changing conditions that easily can leave them feeling overwhelmed. While most organizations offer “horizontal” leadership development to build critical leadership skills and competencies needed to weather complexities and succeed, there is a missing link. Leaders also need “vertical” development that teaches them to think in more complex and adaptive ways, and to use their leadership skills more effectively.
In his new white paper, “The How-To of Vertical Leadership Development,” Nick Petrie, a senior faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), outlines 15 approaches for incorporating effective vertical development into organizations’ existing leadership development programs. He says the objective is to promote three key conditions that can help leaders learn to think and respond in new ways:
1.Heat experiences disrupt and disorient habitual ways of thinking, and cause a leader to search for new and better ways to make sense of the challenges faced.
2. Colliding perspectives expose a leader to individuals with different world views, opinions, backgrounds, and training.
3. Elevated sense-making opportunities help a leader reflect on various perspectives and experiences, and develop a more advanced view of the world.
Petrie’s paper is based on the insights of 30 experts he interviewed from China, Great Britain, Canada, the U.S., Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Australia. To read the full-length article, visit: http://www.trainingmag.com/how-guide-verticalleadership-development
