Harthill Leadership Development Framework

Leadership Development Framework

Nick Petrie

Vertical Development Specialist

"There is nothing inherently 'better' about being at a higher level of development, just as an adolescent is not 'better' than a toddler.

However, the fact remains that an adolescent is able to do more, because he or she can think in more sophisticated ways than a toddler. Any level of development is okay; the question is whether that level of development is a good fit for the task at hand."

Using the LDF in Organisational Transformation

The Leadership Development Framework (LDF) maps Adult Development in a completely different way from most psychometric tools. Inspired originally by the research of Dr Jane Loevinger, Prof. Jean Piaget and others, who discovered how meaning making evolves with life experience, the LDF is well established as a primary conceptual map for understanding adult vertical development - and its vital role in leadership. The key discovery that the brain continues to develop in complexity through adulthood and that we can deliberately accelerate that development in order to expand our minds and transform our experience, is core to this framework and informs all of the work Harthill does with leaders.

Meaning Making

Everything we do, in every context in which we interact, is shaped by the meaning we are making in each moment. Meaning making is a core human faculty that influences how we make sense of our experiences, how we make decisions about the world and therefore almost everything we do. This is vertical development, distinct from horizontal development, which expands knowledge and skills but at the same level of thinking and logic.

Like adding more apps without upgrading to a more sophisticated and powerful operating system.

The LDF proposes nine distinct forms of meaning making on a continuous developmental spectrum. Each form is called an ‘Action Logic’ and has specific opportunities and limitations. Action Logics form a framework for understanding and working with the shifts in this meaning making, as we develop more complex ways of understanding the world.

Transforming Leadership

So, expanding the complexity and flexibility of this core faculty by working with our Action Logics, is transformative for our work, our relationships and for life. Leading in today's complex environments, with rapidly and unpredictably changing elements, makes meaning making even more difficult, yet also more important. Many leaders therefore find the LDF approach has a lasting transformational impact, as they can work with their current Action Logics and develop later Action Logics, which enable different and more useful ways of leading and managing complex systems.

For much richer detail on the LDF model, read the classic 2005 HBR article T he Seven Transformations of Leadership

Richard Buckminster Fuller

Author and Systems Theorist

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

The LDP - a Profile for Individual Development

The Leadership Development Profile

For leaders who aren’t development experts, the LDF offers an accessible and creative way to engage with meaning making and its development. The Leadership Development Profile reveals each individual's unique shape of current meaning making, using the spectrum of Action Logics. Although we make meaning at various parts across the spectrum, we have one current Primary Action Logic, where we benefit most from investing more attention, energy and well-informed developmental activity, as we begin the developmental process.

Gain deeper insight and make lasting intentional shifts

By focusing conscious attention onto your own Action Logics in action, you will understand how they influence your decisions and actions. You will develop much deeper insight into your own patterns and create rich opportunities for you to make lasting shifts both personally and professionally. As you become more aware of how Action Logics influence your behaviour, you will also discover your unconscious patterns - such as the characteristic ‘fallback’ Action Logics you use when under pressure or triggered. You will be able to work on developing of new ways of making meaning and choosing more deliberately how to respond.

Understand influences in context

Exploring the links between your Action Logics and your everyday experiences, will give greater understanding of the influence of different contexts. You will notice not only how your Action Logics shifts across contexts, but how those contexts are also influencing you - they are inter-relating. This constant cycle of influence happening within you and around you is powerful yet largely invisible, until you learn to notice and explore it. Working intentionally in this complex territory builds muscles that help you to handle complexities with greater agility, which is key to success in organisational life.

Further developing your meaning making

Development itself is of course dynamic and complex. Simple knowledge and skill development has worked well to this point - but developing in your ability to navigate more complex thinking is a higher order of change. Development is complex, ambiguous, dynamic and unpredictable, as is the current world in which we live and the challenges that poses for us. Real vertical development presents new and different challenges and dilemmas, as you evolve capabilities, capacities and perspectives you didn’t notice before. There is no ‘one size fits all’ route to lasting vertical development.

Margaret Wheatley & Myron Kellner-Rogers

Journal for Strategic Performance Measurement

"Life wants to happen. Life is unstoppable. Anytime we try to contain life or interfere with its fundamental need for expression, we get into trouble ...

Partnering with life, working with its cohering motions, requires that we take life's direction seriously. Life moves towards wholeness. This direction cannot be ignored or taken lightly.."

ENGAGING WITH THE LDP PROCESS

Using the Leadership Development Profile process

The LDP is the original meaning making psychometric process for leaders and organisations. Unlike most psychometrics, which try to define fixed personality characteristics or behaviours, the LDP is primarily a developmental process. It harnesses the power of your meaning making faculty to develop as a leader, both personally and professionally. It has been used by more than 10,000 leaders worldwide, across diverse cultures and languages for more than twenty years.

The LDP involves a deliberately developmental process -

complete sentences in your unique style to generate an individual LDP Report

receive a highly skilled Coaching Debrief from your qualified LDF Coach on what your sentences reveal of your current Action Logics and meaning making along with possible reasons why they are active – usually both internal and contextual influences co-create a development path with many recommended activities to develop specific aspects of your individual meaning making work with Developmental Inquiry, which is a powerful way to intentionally develop your meaning making in ways that support your work and life.