A Measure of Your BEING Side: Your Relationship with Feedback

We have two sides to ourselves: Our DOING Side: Our knowledge, skills, talents and abilities Our BEING Side: Our character, mindsets, and psyche For most people and leaders: We are more advanced on our DOING Side than our BEING Side Almost all development efforts (across education, athletics, and organizational development) focus on the DOING Side […]
Elevating Your Center of Gravity – How to Widen Your Window of Tolerance and Re-Center Yourself

Vertical development is a form of development that is focused on improving our internal operating such that we make meaning of our world in more cognitively and emotionally sophisticated ways.
What Does the Distribution of Vertical Development Look Like? And What Does that Mean for You?

I am going to show you three different distribution charts: Which chart do you think is the best representation of: Height in the population? Weight (in pounds) in the population? Wealth in the population? Chart C is a good representation of height in the population. Height carries a fairly normal distribution. Chart B is a […]
A Central Characteristic of Those Who Are Vertically Developed: Ability to Create Space

(This blog post was inspired by a conversation with my good friend, Lisa Anna Palmer, who is a fantastic consultant and author who is on a mission to bring greater heart into the workplace. Her book is called “Light a Fire in Their Hearts: The Truth About Leadership”). To understand this article, you need to […]
Vertical Development Example #4: Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek is a leadership guru that is almost a household name in the business world. This is largely because he has the third most viewed TED talk of all time and he is the author of five different business books (my favorite is The Infinite Game). What has allowed him to be so influential? […]
Vertical Development Example #2: Two Leaders of Musicians

Have you ever wondered what sets apart great people from not-so-great people? What developmental psychologists have found is that the difference between great people (people we admire) and no-so-great people (people we don’t necessarily admire) is how vertically developed they are. This is another way of assessing how cognitively and emotionally sophisticated they are. Unfortunately, […]
Vertical Development Example #1: Lioness vs Lion

Have you ever wondered what sets apart great people from not-so-great people? What developmental psychologists have found is that the difference between great people (people we admire) and no-so-great people (people we don’t necessarily admire) is how cognitively and emotionally sophisticated they are. Unfortunately, most people do not yet understand the concept of “cognitive and […]