The Work

With leaders and teams

I am the founder of the Vertical Development Institute, an organisation translating the science of vertical development into programs supporting leaders to integrate it into their teams and organisational DNA. My highest hope is to empower leaders to become true agents of transformation in their organisations and foster the developmental cultures of tomorrow, today.

As a practitioner, I balance group facilitation with executive coaching. In my work with leaders, I’m guided by a core underlying principle: the unconditional positive regard for the client’s resources and capacity to transform themselves. I believe a coach’s role is to provide both developmental challenge and safe holding spaces for clients to safely get out of their comfort zone and tap into their developmental edge. I seek to be clear, non-judgemental mirror that challenges with honesty and kindness. As one of my clients wonderfully summarised it: the best quality of a coach is to be “un-dissappointable”. It’s my highest hope to live up to that ideal every day.

The research

Going beyond knowledge, fostering wisdom

In the current disruptive, ever-changing business environment, complexity thinking and relating becomes paramount. Leaders are required to juggle producing results with building thriving teams and cultures. They are also charged with ensuring companies are serving not just some, but all stake-holders - clients, employees, suppliers, share-holders, industry and cross-industry partners and the community at large. Increasingly, companies face pressure to become more sustainable, ethical and responsible as corporate global citizens and this requires a different quality of leadership, one that is less self-centric and more world-centric. 

In this complex context, leadership development is lagging behind. Still too many leadership learning programs are focused solely on “horizontal development” - acquiring knowledge and skills in hope of fostering effectiveness. While ongoing horizontal development is valuable and much needed, it is not enough. I have met many brilliant, motivated leaders who have all the right information, yet struggle to do what they know to be right. Too often there seems to be a gap between knowledge and cognitive-emotional maturity, between what we know and how we act. Too often, intellectually bright leaders seem to be lacking the personal maturity - which comes with “vertical development” - to enact the knowledge they have acquired. 

We know that wise, conscious leaders thrive in complexity, challenge their own assumptions, simultaneously perceive multiple truths and can work with paradox. They master the art of not-knowing and no longer drive change - they co-create it. They no longer fear ambiguity, they dance and innovate within it. They have been shown to become more effective not just because of WHAT they know, but because of HOW they apply their knowledge. 

But how do we help more leaders grow into wisdom?

My research lies in the liminal space between developmental psychology and transformative learning and aims to un-pack how personal maturity comes about and what it takes to foster it in leaders. I study leadership development programs and track the transformations leaders undergo while participating. I explore the murky waters of “edge emotions” - a term coined by Finnish researcher Kaisu Mälkki - and how they play a role in leaders’ inner growth.

I have been fortunate to complete my Ph.D. studying the lived process of vertical development of a group of senior leaders undertaking one of Australia and New Zealand’s most prestigious executive leadership programs. I had privileged access to tens of stories, journals and personal experiences tens of leaders generously shared over six months. What I discovered was a messy, but breathtakingly beautiful process, where thought, emotion, peer support and personal choice converge to create genuine transformation.

If you are interested in research on adult development and leadership, please get in touch. I always love to share ideas and learn from equally enthusiastic researchers. I believe the biggest scientific breakthroughs rarely come from the work of lonely geniuses, but rather from the collective wisdom of passionate people sharing the same questions and inspiring each other in search for ever better answers.