Meeting Clients Where They Are – the Adult Development Coaching GPS
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”
Conventional | Post-Conventional | |||
Leadership Maturity Stage | Skill-Centric(Expert – 3/4) | Self-Determining(Achiever – 4) | Self-Questioning(Pluralist – 4/5) | Self-Actualizing(Strategist – 5) |
Outcomes & Focua | Focus on expertise, procedure & efficiency | Focus on delivery of results, goals, success & effectiveness | Focus on understanding capacity, system connections & self in relationship | Focus on higher principles, social construction of reality,complexity & interdependence |
Feedback & Response | Dismisses it from “non-experts; seen as a personal attack & defends position | Accepts it; seen as a means to improve effectiveness & achieve goals | Welcomes it; seen as needed for self-knowledge & uncovering blindspots | Invites it; understands different perspectives are inevitable |
Paradox & Thinking style | “Either/Or”;Logic rules norms | Beginning appreciation of “And” with “Either/Or”;Single system effectiveness rules expert logic | “And” within systematic thinking;Relativity rules single system logic | “And” with increasing system’s complexity and long-term trends; most valuable principle rules relativism |
Communication Styles* & Influence | IAdvocates own position | I & IILogical arguments & data | I, II & IIIDiscuss issues and air differences | I, II, & IIIFrames ways to support overall principles & strategies |
%: 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.
- Posted by Petra Platzer
- On March 21, 2018
- 1 Comment
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