Human development is about making sense of our experience in ever more complex and adequate ways. As we name, interpret, ascribe value and meaning to our experience, we expand our worldview and our ability to respond effectively to the challenges we face.
A continuing capacity to renew the way we see and value, to question our assumptions, to re-evaluate our interpretations, and to re-frame reality in more comprehensive ways lies at the heart of the developmental process. We are beginning to appreciate that the capacities that have so successfully brought us to our current developmental stage are not sufficient for the future and that new capacities for adaptive and collaborative leadership are necessary.
In the early 1960s while working at University of California, Berkley Dr Jane Loevinger, started to explore the idea of ego-development, theorizing that the ego had a potential to mature across the lifespan as a result of the dynamic interaction between the inner self and the outer environment.
She developed the first Washington University Sentence Completion Test and was able to establish nine stages of “maturity” or action logics that the ego had the potential to move through.
After scoring many thousands of sentence completion tests, Dr Cook-Greuter was able to further refine the SCTi and differentiate more clearly the later post-conventional stages.
The adult development lens gives us an opportunity to see how we might support each other expand our consciousness to onboard and embody these new capacities as well as optimise the capacity already in our system to create more life-affirming approaches.
The LMF offers a rich and unique lens for understanding and differentiating human development from the perspective of the ego. It described nine stages of meaning-making, each of which broadens the individual and system capacity to see and describe the self and to take an increasingly expanded perspective
From a primarily research-oriented process the LMF began to be seen as a valuable contributor to leadership and organisational development through Suzanne’s early partnership with William Torbert.
The theory of ego-development and the LMF continues to be evolved through a live and organic process.
At the Institute for Developmental Coaching we continue to draw lessons from contemporary approaches to therapy, organisational psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and ontology as well as traditional wisdoms to deepen and broaden our own appreciation of and contribution to this rich, dynamic and evolving field.
About the
LEADERSHIP MATURITY PROFILE
The Leadership Maturity Profile (LMP) is a powerful tool in the assessment and development of leadership capacity, as described in the nine stages of the Leadership Maturity Framework. It is currently the most rigorously validated and reliable assessment tool in developmental psychology.
Part of its effectiveness lies in its high levels of face validity; it makes sense to clients and helps them recognise their patterns of thinking and behaviour, better understand their own strengths and how to more effectively meet their personal and professional challenges.
The LMP measures multiple dimensions including: the level of self-awareness, orientation to power, ability to see and understand complexity, capacity for collaboration, ability to give and receive feedback, and perspective relating to time, space and stakeholder understanding. It is easy to administer and cost-effective in terms of the rich qualitative and quantitative information it produces.
The Institute for Developmental Coaching is the authorized representative in Asia-Pacific for administering and coaching the LMP.