We’ve crafted a table that serves as our adult development GPS. This table shows the 4 developmental stages spanning the majority of organizational leaders and looks at the leadership competencies we encounter as most discerning in this framework’s application. These also specifically address the 4 key question model – O.A.R.S. – we previously shared with physicians for their own self-coaching.⁶

Table 1. Adult Development “GPS”

%: distributions across adult populations (n = 4,510)⁴

*: Conversational Intelligence framework: Levels I (Transactional), II (Positional), III (Transformational) ⁷

Remember the initial example we shared? We actually did have that experience where a healthcare organization requested their leader have a 360-survey done as part of their coaching engagement. Looking back on their defensive reaction, we would have a first clue that particular physician was centered at a Skill-Centric stage. Had we known that then and leveraged this table, we could have approached the feedback process in a different way – perhaps a self-assessment as a means to work through a feedback experience and their meaning-making before getting external feedback, as well as setting different expectations with the sponsors, to maintain overall forward developmental progress with the client. That is precisely the type of thinking and co-creating we do now, with this GPS table as a resource.