Library

An Integral Approach to Executive Leadership Development 
- By Alain Gauthier

This document is to advocate and illustrate an integral approach to executive leadership development. It offers a context for joint inquiry, suggests a specific definition of development, reviews relevant research findings, and explores some individual and team growth opportunities.


Context for Inquiry
Organizations are in the midst of a post-industrial transformation, characterized by paradox, increasing complexity and uncertainty. Executive leaders in all sectors find that most of their education and prior experience has not prepared them adequately to face the corresponding challenges and responsibilities.

Changes in global economics with the resulting social consequences, the decreasing meaningfulness of work, threats to our living environment, and diminishing prospects for future generations – all point to the urgent need for a new discipline which Bernard Lietaer calls ecosophy: how to live wisely on our planet by searching for a new balance between traditional or Yang forms of capital (financial and physical) and Yin forms of capital (social and natural).

My conviction is that executives should be the first to practice and embody this discipline if the organizations they lead are to become life enhancing. Yet how open and aware will they need to be in order to acknowledge that outer changes are preceded by inner changes? And what is required of them to be able to tap intelligence in its many forms, individually and collectively, so that creative and audacious experiments light the way toward an organic transformation of their organization, in the context of social and planetary evolution?

In that context, the following questions about executive development could be considered for a joint inquiry within a leadership team:

1.     Over the last few years, have we experienced complex adaptive challenges that required substantial cognitive and behavioral change at the executive level? How have we dealt with them, and what have we learned from them?

2.     What are the key factors that differentiate our organization’s most successful change efforts from the less successful ones? Are executives’ mindset and behavior one of them?

3.     Given the current economic and social climate, is this a propitious time to consciously invest in accelerating the development of our executive leaders? Do we sense that it could have a significant impact on the value creation and evolution of our organization?


Integral Approach and Development Defined
An integral approach connects the subjective and objective aspects of both individual and collective experience. To achieve profound and sustainable change, it integrates modifications in the corresponding four domains: personal intentions, worldviews and values; individual observable behaviors and emotions; culture, collective worldviews and shared visions; structures, strategies and physical/technical systems.

Personal and organizational development consists in a series of stages or transformations. When moving to a later stage, the worldview one has been identified with is transcended and included in a wider worldview. Development unfolds in a certain order and is irreversible, although it can stop at any stage. A person or organization may occasionally regress to a previous stage, but they will be conscious of it. It is possible at a later stage to understand the action logic of previous stages, but a person at an earlier stage will tend to interpret what they perceive of the next stages through the filter of their own worldview. This has been a source of confusion and misunderstandings in a number of change initiatives.

As development unfolds, there is an increasing level of autonomy, freedom, inclusivity, ability to reflect, and skillful interaction with the environment. The experience of emergence in the now and co-evolution with the surrounding systems gradually replaces the worldview of prediction and control. Facing new external challenges and becoming aware of one’s own developmental stage both stimulate development. Individual growth influences organizational growth and vice versa. Development “wants” to happen but it can be encouraged and facilitated.

There are several tools now available to assess individual and organizational stages of development. We will refer here primarily to the ones designed by William Torbert and Susan Cook-Greuter, based mainly on the work of Robert Kegan, Lawrence Kohlberg and Jane Loevinger. Characteristics of some of these stages and the transformations involved in shifting from one to the other are summarized in Exhibits 1 and 2.


Key Research Findings
Four recent research programs point to the importance of leaders’ ability to shift their ways of thinking and behaving for the success of profound/lasting organizational change and performance improvement.

1.     A study of more than 100 companies engaged in major change efforts reveals that only 15% yielded tangible and durable results; personal and cultural change were often ignored or underestimated, particularly in mergers and acquisitions. A higher success rate can only be achieved if change efforts are managed in an integral way that addresses both inner/invisible dimensions (i.e. intentional and cultural) and outer/visible ones (i.e. behavioral and structural), at the individual and organizational levels.

2.     A five-year survey of over 1400 companies among the Fortune 500 has led author James Collins to identify 11 corporations which have transformed from “good” to “great” performance over the last 25 years. At the time of their transformation, these enterprises were led by “Level 5” CEOs who all shared common characteristics: they built enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will; they apportioned credit to factors outside themselves when things went well, and took personal responsibility for unsatisfactory results; they set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation.

3.     Longitudinal research, conducted for ten years by William Torbert and his colleagues in ten small to medium-size organizations, shows that seven of them became industry leaders under the leadership of a CEO (or some of his key team members in two cases) who had achieved a higher level of personal development than their three other counterparts:

4.     The first phase of a SoL (Society for Organizational Learning) Research Project on Leadership, based on 23 dialogue-interviews by Otto Scharmer with thought leaders, has led to the following propositions:

5.     Recent scientific data shows that, in addition to rational intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ), there is a third type of intelligence which Dana Zohar calls spiritual intelligence (SQ), that can be developed.

Executive Development Opportunities
Keeping in mind the proposed questions and research findings, two complementary types of executive development opportunities could be explored: individual development and collective development.

1. Individual Development
The purpose of an individual development program, entered on a voluntary basis, would be to increase each participating executive’s core effectiveness by creating the conditions for accelerating a shift to the next stage of personal development.

For example, shifting from an Achiever to a Strategist stage (see Exhibits 1 and 2) would mean that an executive would:

An individual development program would combine – over a period of one to two years – a series of group meetings and individual coaching sessions. Some of the individual practices that would be encouraged in such a program are mentioned in Exhibit 3.

2. Collective Development
The purpose of a collective development effort would be to enhance the organization’s capacity to design and implement significant changes, as well as to open the field for individual development work. It could start at an executive team level, and then extend organically to the rest of the organization through other teams and networks.

For example, when a team develops beyond a Systematic Productivity stage to a Collaborative Inquiry stage, it recognizes that the organization’s vision requires continual re-searching and re-formulating, if members’ actions are to become truly vision-oriented. At the same time, team members may begin to appreciate that there are inevitably gaps between the espoused vision, values and strategies, on the one hand, and their actual behavior and effects, on the other hand.

The Collaborative Inquiry culture and structures that could be built over time among executives would be characterized by:

A team offsite that would get this effort underway could include a strategic dialogue about the significant changes needed to bridge the gap between vision and prevalent current reality, as well as a joint inquiry into corresponding individual development needs.

Individual, team and organizational development work would complement and reinforce each other over time. For instance, it will take a critical mass of Strategists to build a self-sustaining Collaborative Inquiry culture within the organization or one of its parts. The nature and quality of interactions with an evolving environment would also have a key influence on the actual transformation of the organization and its members. Exhibit 3 illustrates some of the collective practices that would enable members of a leadership team to move in that direction, and thus plant the seeds for a new culture to emerge.

Potential Value to Individual Executives and their Organization
Capitalizing on executives’ development opportunities would benefit both the individual executives and their organization.


Potential value to individual executives

Potential value to the organization

Exhibit 1

Adapted by Alain Gauthier from William Torbert

Exhibit 2

Examples of Transformations from One Stage to the Next

Alchemist: Reframes and transforms any situation in the moment, without any preconception, by jousting with internal and external polarizations

Strategist: Identifies with principles and concepts which allow him/her to see any framing as relative and to address conflicts and dilemmas creatively

Individualist/Egalitarian: Identifies with a relativistic view and focuses on living out his/her values, free of obligations and imposed objectives, while respecting others’ choices and avoiding conflicts

Achiever: Identifies with system efficiency objectives, and submits functional or craft logics to instrumental rationality

Expert: Identifies with a rigorous craft logic to solve problems most efficiently, without being influenced by the norms, opinions or feelings of people outside his craft
Adapted by Alain Gauthier from William Torbert

Exhibit 3

Examples of Practices Enabling a Shift from Achiever to Strategist and Beyond and from Systemic Productivity to Collaborative Inquiry

Exhibit 4

Bibliography