We are wired to want to know more about ourselves. We are drawn to different typologies, and we are happy to use yet another classification.
We often see a similar attempt by our clients to try on for themselves this or that action logic as soon as they encounter the concept of Vertical Leadership Development. Such attempts happen on the basis of a description of the action logics alone—for example, after reading Bill Torbert’s article.
Yet when you try on an action logic after reading a description of how it shows up, it is easy to fall into a trap. Even two.
The first is the trap of your personality type. The second is the trap of your perspective.
The personality type trap
We fall into it when we start “recognizing” in ourselves signs of either desired qualities or deficient ones—depending on the personality typology. For example, with a narcissistic accentuation we will likely decide that we embody the latest action logics (Strategist or even Alchemist). With a depressive accentuation, on the contrary, we may shrug it off—as if the desired level of vertical development is as far away as the Moon.
The perspective trap
Falling into the second trap—the perspective trap—depends on our ability to witness what is actually happening to us. Perspective shows what enters our field of view, what we see and what we miss simply because it seems absent from our picture of the world.
At earlier action logics we may hold one or two perspectives: what enters our field of view is more often other people than ourselves. Later, as we develop, we gain the ability to observe ourselves as well. Then—ourselves, the other, and what happens between us.
Further still, the surrounding world, fine details, and so on are added to the objects of our observation—until we gain “access” to the ability to witness several processes and factors at once. That endlessly expands our world and fills it with ever new content—this is the main effect of vertical development.
The perspective trap is that from our own action logic we can see only what is available to see right now—from that logic. And we may not even notice what limits us.
Examples
Here is an example from consulting practice. A client who by all signs is at the late Achiever stage reads descriptions of the logics and notes with sadness: “I realized I am a Diplomat! And I really don’t like that…” Yet he himself, as an Achiever, can see his limitations—which a Diplomat simply would not notice.
Another example—a senior executive with several advanced degrees, responsible for hundreds of people. At the start of the debrief (a meeting with an LDP coach following the individual Leadership Development Profile—LDP) he was confident his action logic resembled that of a Strategist. But the LDP assessment showed he is a late Expert. It is characteristic of the Expert logic to focus on “what one ought to be like”…
In society we live in a binary code of evaluation: good—bad, right—wrong. In the corporate world that culture holds us in a vise.
We live inside “our frame” and often fail to notice that we have already mastered a new action logic. We cannot tell whether we are imitating someone at a later logic or truly embody it. We can see this richness only in the “mirror” of another—in other words, an LDP coach.
Trying to figure it out on our own, we often act under the influence of our own limitations and thus notice only what today’s perception allows. That means we see nothing new—none of our “blind” spots.
For example, the dominant Expert logic creates the frame “what one ought to be like.” A person captured by the wish to “be like a Strategist” loses sight of what they can already do. At the same time they devalue everything that makes up their wealth and could support the path to the next level.
LDP assessment
An LDP assessment is aimed not at finding where you stand relative to some bar, but at what you already have: your “baseline set,” your “size of world,” and how you show up in it. If you have “owned” and valued your abilities, skills, and competencies, they allow you to move forward. As a counterexample, recall two or three degrees that are useless in your work today. They seem to rest under a granite slab inscribed “In vain!”
How many Achievers and Individualists reject the past and must remember what capital of knowledge and skill they possess in order to fully inhabit their level and move further vertically. In truth, behind every training lies an experience of victory and expansion: “All of that was with me; I did it.” With each such step we grow richer. It is important to see and acknowledge that…
As a metaphor for the Leadership Development Framework (LDF), imagine a large house. You spend time in some rooms often; you never enter others. Some rooms you have yet to open for yourself. Right now you simply lack the time to use them—your way of life means they are not a priority. Still, it is your house.
Then the action logics presented in the LDF Model cease to be a ladder. And the debrief helps you see that your house is far larger than the part you use.
Contributors: Svetlana Kokareva, Tatyana Barausova, Lyudmila Kupchina, Galina Zhilina—certified LDP coaches, authorized debriefers of Harthill Consulting Ltd (UK).
