Horizontal & Vertical Development: A different approach to Talent Development

It just hasn’t been working for me. I have development conversations with employees from recent college hires to seasoned, high level executives. We have a solid offering of training and development opportunities for “hard skills” and functional competencies as well as “soft skills” and leadership competencies. But planning for these two kinds of development are just not the same, even though corporate learning and development professionals almost universally approach “learning” and “development” in a singular approach. Good L&D departments offer multiple resources and encourage learning from experience and learning through others as part of the development plan. Most of us in this field learned all the fundamentals of adult learning theory, instructional design (on the learning side) as well as coaching, getting certified in 360 feedback and a variety of personality/leadership style assessments (on the development side). Instinctively, we know they are different, but we continue to approach both in terms of what I’ll call “push” development: send them to a class, have them observe and learn through others, practice applying knowledge and building skills with experience. This integrated framework of formal training, learning through others and learning by doing actually works really well for most functional and technical skills (unless there is something internally or externally preventing the employee from performing).

But when an executive tells me that they need to work on a “soft skill” – building relationships, keeping composure, delegating, managing conflict—the standard “Learning & Development” formula for development planning sort of feels awkward or flat out wrong. The most a traditional training program can do (even if it is designed well) is introduce new concepts that might help them rethink current perspectives, but it won’t help them internalize and act on those new perspectives. In these cases, transformational learning is needed. And there has been plenty written on that subject as well. What hasn’t really been done in our field is looking at them together: differentiating and then integrating them. By differentiating, we can look at the unique challenges of each and consider which development approach makes the most sense. Applying transformational learning to building functional or technical competencies makes even less sense than applying traditional training to building leadership competencies. Having an executive “practice” keeping composure or building relationships through better listening only addresses behavior and not the underlying worldview, values and beliefs that drive automatic behavior.

Robert Kegan (2001, 2009) and Susanne Cook-Greuter (2013) both outline a framework describing adult developmental frameworks and their research supports that cognitive and mental development in adults does not end at a certain age. Cook-Greuter offers a description of horizontal and vertical development which aligns neatly with my description above of functional/technical competencies and behavioral or leadership competencies. (In fairness—her work is far more encompassing and I admit to borrowing the analogy because it works here).

Horizontal Development: What you do

Horizontal proficiency looks at knowledge, skills and functional or technical competencies. Think of these in terms of what an employee needs to know and what they need to do to deliver the work expected in their current role.  It is the manager’s job to make sure the employee is very clear on what technical or functional competencies are needed and expected (and the knowledge needed to demonstrate them), which are the manager’s priorities, and what level of quality is expected in the work performed. In most organizations, these expectations are much deeper than the bullet list of general skills and knowledge listed on a job description or job posting.

The first step in any development planning should be to assess the level of horizontal proficiency in their current role. Proficiency might be assessed (or even self-assessed) as:

• Novice: You need direction and supervision in order to perform or complete work. This is normal and expected when you are new in your role or profession. Depending on the skill or competency, proficiency can take months or years to achieve.
• Proficient: You do not need direction or supervision to perform your work. You receive feedback that your work is good.
• Expert: Others come to you for your advice and expertise. You can coach and develop novices to become proficient.

If development is needed in any horizontal competency area, and if the employee is intrinsically motivated and committed to develop, then planning the development should involve multiple approaches, methods and tools (primarily “push” approaches):

• Formal Learning: online and/or classroom courses (self-directed, independent or with others), reading.
• Peer coaching, demonstration, job shadowing and/or observation of others. Knowledge sharing, communities of practice (learning from others).
• Feedback and practice (learning and increasing proficiency from doing).

While knowledge can be gained from training or reading alone, skills and functional competencies require the utilization of all approaches. Some classroom learning will involve more than one or all three approaches. Traditional adult learning approaches work well for horizontal development.

Vertical Development: How you do what you do

Think of vertical proficiency in terms of how you deliver your work in the context of solving problems and working with other people. Behavioral competency expectations for many large companies are sometimes defined as a Leadership Competency Framework or a Competency Model. 

Vertical proficiency looks at behaviors, mindset, professional maturity and emotional intelligence. It also looks at cognitive framework. The Center for Creative Leadership (2014) asserts that to be effective, a leader’s thinking “must be equal or superior to the complexity of the environment.” (p. 7). It’s important to remember that vertical proficiency is not equivalent to your current role, title or position. It is common for people to be promoted into higher levels before they have achieved the vertical proficiency to be effective and successful at that level.

While I’m not sold on the value of using complex developmental assessments or models on my leaders, I do believe a simplified stratus is easy to apply more specifically to the area of leadership development. The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) (2014) actually integrated the research of Cook-Greuter, Kegan and Bill Torbert  to do something similar, but I found their proposed “levels” still to be uncomfortably value-and-judgement-laden. Instead, looking at the primary levels of leadership in a typical organization and the developmental levels described by these researchers, I drafted out 3 levels of vertical proficiency that I believe make the most sense (I suspect I will further adjust or develop these over time). If a company has a level-specific leadership competency framework, it can be used here in considering these levels:

• Contributor: You demonstrate the problem solving and interpersonal/relationship skills needed to perform well as an individual contributor.
• Manager: You are a contributing manager who demonstrates problem solving and interpersonal skills needed to lead and drive performance of a single or a few interconnected teams with or without authority. You can motivate and develop individuals’ horizontal competencies, solve problems and build relationships across direct boundaries. You can coach a contributor to manager proficiency.
• Executive: You are a collaborative manager and leader who demonstrates interpersonal skills and problem solving to address complex problems by seeing the whole picture in both a current and future state across multiple and extended boundaries. You understand interdependent variables and impacts, seek out alternative perspectives and can hold multiple perspectives at the same time. You build collaborative cultures and healthy relationships. You can coach a manager to executive proficiency.

Use the following approaches, methods and tools to improve vertical competencies. These are primarily “pull” approaches and facilitate the employee’s ability to transform internally (changing perspectives and beliefs about themselves so that default behavior patterns and habits change, too):

• Formal Learning (for introduction to new concepts and perspectives only—the smallest component of vertical development. Often reading)
• Experiential/interactive leadership development programs (provides new perspectives, time and space to dialogue and reflect, and often opportunities to receive feedback)
• Professional Coaching or structured and focused informal peer coaching/mentoring.
• Use an “Immunity Map” to uncover competing objectives and hidden assumptions when old behaviors don’t change (best with a coach or mentor with whom to reflect and discuss). A brief overview and a link to a downloadable Immunity Map worksheet can be found at: http://www.extension.harvard.edu/inside-extension/why-we-struggle-change-how-overcome-it
• 360 Feedback to uncover blind spots and identify areas for further development
• Personality/Leadership assessments: at Contributor or Manager level to gain understanding and awareness of the styles, perspectives and traits of others in order to appreciate and integrate differences
• Learning or reflection journal (this can be an “old school” spiral notebook or a structured online tool).
• Key experiences for vertical development identified by CCL:
  • Intense Stretch Experiences. CCL identifies these as “heat experiences” and describes them as “a time when you are confronted with a task or assignment that has the following conditions: 1) it is a first time experience. 2) Results matter. 3) There is a chance of success and failure. 4). Important people are watching and 5) It is extremely uncomfortable” (2015, p 9). The best of these include: Increase in scope, turnaround, horizontal move, new initiative.
  • New Ways of Thinking. Experiences here include having to deeply experience alternative perspectives, learning to manage polarities, develop systems thinking
  • Strong Developmental Networks: Experiences here focus on learning from others with higher-level thinking and interpersonal skills. (2014, 2015).

Keep in mind the adage that you can’t learn from experience unless you experience the learning. I believe one of the Next Practices of Learning & Development organizations will be to add rigor to non-formal learning experiences and create tools and processes to track their results. In the meantime, simply keeping a learning journal, utilizing personal and shared reflection opportunities will help developing leaders extract the most growth from their observations and experiences.

Differentiation and Integration

I believe that many L&D professionals intuitively help employees develop in the way that makes most sense for the kind of skill or competency they want to improve. But I also see managers rely heavily on “push” approaches when they are trying to coach for development. (“Go ask HR what training is available”). By differentiating the types of development, and clarifying which tools, approaches and methods work best to develop in each, we can create simple, easy to use resources and models for managers to support and facilitate development conversations.

Billington, D. (2000) “Seven Characteristics of Highly Effective Adult Learning Programs,” The Adult Learner in Higher Education and the Workplace. Seattle, WA: New Horizons for Learning, 1-3.

Cook-Greuter, S (2004) Making the case for a developmental perspective. Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 36 No. 7. Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Cook-Greuter, S (2013) Nine Levels Of Increasing Embrace In Ego Development:

A Full-Spectrum Theory Of Vertical Growth And Meaning Making. Retreived online: http://cook-greuter.com/

Kegan, R. and Laskow Lahey, L. (2001) How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco

Kegan R. and Laskow Lahey, L. (2009) Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization Harvard Business School Publishing: Boston

Petrie, N. (2014) Vertical Leadership Development–Part 1: Developing Leaders for a Complex World. Center for Creative Leadership (CCL): Colorado Springs

Petrie, N. (2015) The How-To of Vertical Leadership Development–Part 2: 30 Experts, 3 Conditions, and 15 Approaches. CCL: Colorado Springs

Rooke, D. and Torbert, W.R. (2005) Seven Transformations of Leadership. Harvard Business Review (April 2005)

Torbert, William R. further research can be found at: (http://www.williamrtorbert.com/global-leadership-profile/)