Vertical or Horizontal?

The dance of personal growth

You can listen to an audio version of this article on the substack blog where it was originally published.

In the last series of articles, I shared my experience and understanding of the transition points between leadership styles from the Action Logics model of leadership development. These transition points are huge life changing events that may occur over a significant period of time. They are a rewiring of the brain and a shift in consciousness that allows the whole world to be seen in a different light.

However, not all growth is vertical.

Most people, for most of the time, are looking to grow horizontally. They want to know how to be a better Expert, or a better Achiever, etc. It is very important to find out what type of growth is being looked for, because assuming one or the other, will lead to more of the same and no growth.

Horizontal growth

For the Expert, horizontal growth is knowing more things. This will most likely be combined with practical experience in doing the new things, so that they gain confidence that they can use the new knowledge when they need it, and in different contexts.

For the Achiever, horizontal growth is becoming better at working with people, to engage them to work better to deliver results. Often, this is learning project management, lean optimisation, agile ways of working, or one of the many other approaches in getting work delivered with lots of people.

For the Redefiner, horizontal growth is learning about systems, people, how they interact, and how to make workplaces and products better. This might be understanding lead times, value stream mapping, or team structures.

For the Transformation Leader, horizontal growth might be learning about large scale facilitation techniques for emerging new ideas, new connections, and new relationships. At this stage of development, the leader is learning how to make meaning from work and create an environment where the primary purpose is to develop staff in both horizontal and vertical development.

Combining the two

When considering horizontal development, it is often necessary to do some vertical development in order to make the horizontal learning work better.

Personal Expert example

A classic example is learning how to write test driven code. I remember learning how to write tests and then realising I had to change my whole style of coding. I needed to learn SOLID principles otherwise the tests wouldn’t be meaningful.

The amount of rework that I needed to do, in my learning of how to code properly, meant I had to address part of myself that thought I already knew how to code and was top of my game. It was quite a blow to realise that even though I knew pretty much all of .NET framework and could code mostly anything, I was actually not a good clean coder.

I spent 6 months relearning how to code from the ground up. At the end, my expertise was significantly better than ever before, and I was once again in high demand with a higher day rate.

If I had not been able to accept that I wasn’t as good as I thought, I would not have learnt more. I allowed myself to partition off that part that needed to have all the answers and allowed myself to become the student once more.

For coaches and change agents

The first assessment for a coachee who is looking to grow in their leadership, should be whether the change they are looking for is horizontal, vertical, or both.

It is a different approach to coaching and navigating change depending on whether their needs will be met by staying and deepening their existing leadership style or whether they need a change in approach completely.

It is worth remembering most people for most of the time, are looking for deeper horizontal growth to achieve their business goals. However, this simply won’t work if what they need is a deep vertical shift in mindset and approach.

What tool to use?

If the person is looking for horizontal growth primarily, then use stardard professional coaching.

If the person is looking for vertical growth, then you can use coaching plus the Personal Strategy Debugging Tool.

Want to learn more?

This article was first published on my substack blog on Deeper Change. You can subscribe for more updates and to be first on the list for events, workshops, and retreats in the coming year.