What Is 6th Gear Leadership? The Upgrade That Creates Speed with Less Friction
Let’s do a quick check-in. As a leader, are you being asked to do more with less? Are you being asked to go faster, even though you already feel maxed out? Does it feel like your world is getting increasingly complex? If so, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re normal. But let’s face it—normal isn’t […]
The Key to Navigating Complexity
Most leaders respond to rising demands in the same way: They drive harder. More urgency. More control. More speed. More pressure. More meetings. More follow-ups. More “we need this by end of day.” And to be fair—it often works in the short term. You can get results by pushing. You can create momentum by accelerating. […]
What Leaders Need Now: Capacity for Complexity
For decades, leadership development has largely focused on abilities—skills, competencies, and best practices. And those still matter. But the landscape of leadership has changed. Today, abilities are table stakes. What separates effective leaders from overwhelmed leaders isn’t what they know or can do—it’s their capacity. Specifically, the capacity to step into complexity and navigate it […]
Why Hasn’t Vertical Development Been Widely Adopted?
If you hang around the leadership-development space long enough, you’ll eventually run into the idea of vertical development—the process of upgrading a leader’s internal operating system so they can think, feel, and relate at higher levels of complexity. This isn’t a new idea. For decades, developmental psychologists and leadership scholars have been mapping how adults […]
How to Know You are Elevating Yourself (i.e., Along Your Being Side)
When we invest in our personal or professional growth, we typically develop along one of two dimensions of ourselves: our Doing Side or our Being Side. Our Doing Side encompasses our knowledge, skills, capabilities, and behaviors — essentially, what we do and how effectively we do it. It’s the part of us that can be […]
Three Frameworks that Can Reveal Your Biggest Vertical Development Need
What is Vertical Development? If you are not familiar with vertical development, it is important to understand that we have two sides of ourselves: Our Doing Side – The level of our talent, knowledge, skills, & abilities Our Being Side – The sophistication of our internal operating system (to what degree is it wired for […]
Moving Your Leaders Beyond Mediocrity: How to Elevate Your Leaders to Mind 3.0
In today’s rapidly changing and increasingly complex world, effective leadership is more critical than ever. Yet, startling data from PWC reveals that 85% of leaders operate at a moderate level of sophistication in their leadership—what we can classify as Mind 2.0. While these leaders are valuable and competent in many ways, most organizations are unknowingly […]
Elevating Your Complexity
If there is one message that you take away from this article, it is this: More complex people and leaders have a greater ability to effectively navigate complexity. What is Complexity? The reality is that some people are more simple-minded and others are more complex-minded. Someone who is simple-minded tends to: See things in black […]
Are Your Leaders Operating at a Leadership Deficit?
As a part of all of our human experience, we have all operated at this deficit at different times of our life.
Want to Elevate or Transform Your Life? It Will Require You to Become More Mentally Mature
The ideas in this blog post are me trying to flesh out my thinking and learning associated with a new book that I am reading: “Immunity to Change” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. Let me start with what I have come to believe as truth: While we may be limited in the degree […]
