Vertical Development Research
Here you will find a curated list of existing and emerging research, measurement tools and organisational applications of adult development theories, spanning multiple schools of thought.
VDI research:
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A new theory of vertical development, with emotions at the core. Read more
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Five principles for vertical program design. Read more
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The ingredients of developmentally effective peer learning groups. Read More
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Study in preparation: We are currently exploring the links between leaders primal world beliefs and team impact, as well as potential links between primals and vertical development stage.
Research on Vertical Development and its Applications from across schools of thought
Explore different theories and measurements of vertical development, existing studies on the relevance of developmental theory to effective leadership and organisational learning and critiques of Vertical Development. New resources are being added constantly to this page. If you are a researcher doing work relevant to vertical development and leadership learning, seeking to collaborate or have your work featured here, we would love to hear from you.
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Below are the main approaches to measuring vertical development. Most of them are sentence completion tests and two of them are interviews. All but one are owned by private companies started by the researchers who developed the tool and most require a certification process in order to use the tool and debrief results with clients.
The exception is WUSCT (Jane Loevinger’s original adult development psychometric, which formed the foundation for several others, as will be outlined below). The WUSCT scoring manual can be purchased online and used as a self-training tool and is still being used by researchers to assess the stage of vertical development. WUSCT is to date one of the most validated measures of vertical development, alongside SOI.
• Global Leadership Profile (GLP) - A tool rooted in Loevinger’s original work and updated by Prof William Torbert for specific use in leadership contexts. It is widely used in organisations to measure leaders’ developmental progress, as well as in executive coaching. Certification required for debriefing coaches.
Recently, an AI-scored, interactive, self-led version of the GLP has been released. It is called My World View and it too requires certification.
• Maturity Profile (MAP) - Another tool rooted in Loevinger’s original WUSCT - updated by Dr. Susanne Cook-Greuter with a lot of work focused on the later stages. It is also used in organisational and personal development contexts. Certification required for debriefing coaches.
• The Vertical Mindset Indicator (VMI) - A simplified, AI-only powered assessment based on the MAP co-created by Nick Petrie and Jan Rybeck. Not as thoroughly validated as other tools on this list, it provides nevertheless a useful (and more affordable) indication of development for coaching processes. Certification required for debriefing coaches.
• STAGES - A newer SCT developed by Dr. Terry O’Fallon especially for her 12 stage developmental model. Certification required for debriefing coaches.
• Lectica Assessments - Developed by Dr. Theo L. Dawson, building on Kurt Fischer’s Dynamic Skill Theory. Focuses on development through the lens of trainable skills and is particularly useful in educational contexts, but increasingly used in organisational settings as well. Administered in essay format. Certification required for debriefing coaches.
• Shifting Horizons - An new self-assessment tool co-created by a group of veteran researchers in vertical development and designed specifically for coaching. It is in the process of being validated and its playful, easy to use, cleverly crafted self-reflective tool backed by research. Certification required for debriefing coaches (and special fast-track accreditation available for coaches previously certified in one of the other leading developmental tools -like the GLP/MAP).
• Subject-object Interview (SOI) - The original interview-type tool for assessing development, co-developed by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey. Certification required for debriefing coaches.
• Growth-Edge Interview - An adaptation of SOI specifically for coaching, created by Dr. Jennifer Garvey Berger. Certification required for debriefing coaches.
• WUSCT - Here you can find a valuable repository of knowledge on WUSCT and its equivalent sentence completion test for youth, developed by P. Michiel Westenberg, PhD, as well as forms to take the test - all hosted at Leiden University. WUSCT scoring manual can be purchased as a stand-alone book and it doubles as a training manual for new scorers)
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There are several schools of thought in this space - some of which have common roots.
• One major school has been derived from the work of Jane Loevinger and notably continued by William Torbert and Susanne Cook Greuter, who each went on to develop their own versions of it. The ego-development theory originally created by Loevinger was popularised by Torbert in the leadership space and is best summarised in this classic HBR article. Further work on leaders at later stages and their challenges in organisations was published by Elaine Herdman Barker.
• Another major school of thought is originated by Robert Kegan, building on the work of famous psychologist Jean Piaget who focused on child development. Kegan is the creator of the ‘subject-object’ theory - to date one of the most comprehensive and widely used models of vertical development. Kegan also created the Immunity to Change process - a practical intervention to foster vertical development - and written a popular book by the same name.
• Terry O’Fallon takes an integral approach to vertical development, discussing the role of states, stages and shadow in human growth. She builds on both the work of philosopher Ken Wilber, the founder of the integral approach.
• A more recent angle on vertical development inquires into why and how adults can unintentionally regress back into earlier stages - either as a result of stress or other life pressures. Valerie Livesay’s work on fallback informs our understanding of how to grow from the worst moments of our lives, as well as from the best.
• Within these major theories, other researchers have focused on specific aspects of vertical development, such as the special characteristics of the later stages, also called ‘post-conventional’ stages - which are of utmost interest in the space of leadership due to their high complexity and evolving capabilities to thrive in disruption.
For those willing to dive much deeper into the history of adult development and its evolution, we recommend Lectica’s course “FOLA” and its lectures covering the whole history of the field, from origins to the present day. The syllabus itself is a treasure-trove of resources for those interested in academic references.
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Increasingly, researchers from other fields have a valuable contribution to bring to our understanding of vertical development.
Kaisu Mälkki’s work on Edge Emotions, helps illuminate the role of difficult emotions in transformative learning and particularly the importance of embracing such emotions instead of avoiding them.
Jeremy Clifton’s work on Primal World Beliefs brings into focus the fundamental lens through which human beings view the world and questions how his lens impacts our lives and how it might be changed. This work has potentially massive implications for vertical development, as it informs the understanding of the worldviews that shift as adults grow towards later stages of development.
Slowly, neuroscientists are starting to become interested in adult development. Steps are being taken towards a Neuroscience of Adult Development and early studies have identified specific brain structures that differ in later stage contemplative practitioners versus their earlier-stage peers. Such work is in its infancy, and yet it holds immense promise for offering a neuroscientific grounding for adult developmental theories - further proving their validity and utility.
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Many researchers have explored, theoretically and empirically, why and how vertical development impacts leaders’ effectiveness, particularly when leading in complexity. New research continues to be published and the case for the link is very strong.
Below are some of the most notable studies on this topic.
Organizational transformation as a function of CEO’s developmental stage. (Rooke & Torbert, 1998)
Leadership agility: Five levels for anticipating and initiating change (Joiner & Josephs, 2006)
Looking through the lens of leadership: A constructive-developmental approach. (Harris & Kuhnert, 2008)
Personality and Leadership Developmental Levels as predictors of leaders’ performance (Strang & Kuhnert, 2009)
Leading complex change with post‐conventional consciousness. (Brown, 2012)
Understanding Leadership from the Inside Out: Assessing Leadership Potential Using Constructive-Developmental Theory. (Helsing & Howell, 2014)
Environmental Leadership and Consciousness Development: A Case Study Among Canadian SMEs (Boiral et al., 2014)
Promoting post-conventional consciousness in leaders: Australian community leadership programs. (Vincent, Ward, et al., 2015)
Managers’ Citizenship Behaviours for the Environment: A Developmental Perspective. (Boiral et al., 2018)
Transformational Change by a Post-conventional Leader (Brandt et al., 2019)
Assessing the Impact of Post-conventional leaders (Cardillo, 2024) - an overview of existing research supporting evidence on the effectiveness of late-stage leaders.
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Vertical has been criticised for its seemingly hierarchical, linear nature. Developmental researchers are, on the other hand, making the point that ‘vertical’ should be seen as a label to help distinguish the unique nature of this type of development, but not by any means be seen as a rigid hierarchy. Here is a recent article by Bill Torbert addressing some of the main points of criticism.
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This article from 2020 by researchers Hannah Jones, Julie Chesley and Terri Egan brings strong arguments for the importance of implementing vertical development practices in organisational learning.
The topic of vertical development and its applications to organisational learning is of very recent interest to researchers. Robert Kegan has tackled the topic in his latest book - “An Everyone Culture”.
Another author inquiring into this topic is Frederic Laloux. In his very popular book, “Reinventing Organisations”, he brings together a remarkable selection of case studies of organisations seemingly operating from later stages of development.
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There is as yet relatively little research exploring creating more developmentally effective leadership development programs. Some notable contributions have been brought by Manners & Durkin, who discovered four key ingredients of life experiences and learning programs that generate vertical development. These are structurally disequilibrating, personally salient, emotionally engaging, and interpersonal.
Another notable study of vertical development in the context of leadership programs was done by Nikki Vincent. She discovered moderate links between personality and how leaders grow during a leadership program. Importantly, she pointed out that the needs of late-stage (post-conventional) leaders are not yet very well understood and there is a risk that traditional learning programs don’t serve this mature group of leaders very well. Her study opened the path for further research on this topic, some of which is soon to be published by Alis Anagnostakis and outlined in the ‘newest research’ section on top of this page.
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There are still relatively few practitioners of vertical development who sit with one foot in the research and have developed science-based tools to apply in learning contexts. Among them, a few key names have made significant contributions to our vertical development toolkit.
• William (Bill) Torbert has developed the Action-Inquiry approach - a set of practices meant to support leaders in mastering the art of reflection in action.
• Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey are the creators of the Immunity to Change Process - which is widely used in organisations to support leaders and teams in making their assumptions visible and experimenting with shifts in worldview.
• Jennifer Garvey Berger is one of the voices of reference in applying vertical development in the space of coaching. She built on Bob Kegan’s work and created the Growth Edge Interview - a coaching approach supporting clients to identify their ‘developmental edge’ step into developmental discomfort.
• Otto Laske has also contributed to advancing models of developmental coaching.
• Beena Sharma and Susanne Cook Greuter (the latter a foremost theorist in the space of vertical development) created developmental coaching approaches that employ polarity work. Beena Sharma suggests at the core of each stage transition lies a series of personal polarities - if recognised and explored, leveraging them accelerates development.
• Beyond these major bodies of work, other researchers have inquired into the effectiveness of tools such as mindfulness or dialogue for vertical development. Results are encouraging, but more research is needed.
• Notably, while most researchers focused on individual development, Nicholas Petrie has done a lot of work in defining principles of vertical development as they apply to organisational learning. He suggests approaches such as ‘heat experiences’ or ‘colliding perspectives’ and ‘elevated sensemaking’ can contribute to the effectiveness of developmental programs.
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Many thinkers in the space of vertical development are considering its implications for coaching. Even without the developmental lens, coaching has long been considered a highly effective leadership development intervention. With the added depth of the developmental framework, its impact can potentially be enhanced. Here are some of the voices who are currently shaping the conversation on developmental coaching.
Kegan & Lahey frame their Immunity to Change tool as a coaching tool and it is widely used in the space of coaching. They offer coach training centred on ITC through their company, Minds at Work.
Jennifer Garvey Berger also offers training in using her Growth Edge Interview technique in coaching.
Another prominent voice in the space of developmental coaching is Dr. Tatiana Bachkirova - who perhaps did more than anybody else to lay out a roadmap for developmental coaching by writing extensively on the topic. Her Developmental Coaching manual is lays a golden standard for integrating developmental theories into coaching.