The Heroic and Post-Heroic Stages of Leadership Development

Given that we are in the start of a new year, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how a better understanding of how leaders grow can help organizations and coaches approach leadership training with an expanded perspective.

The theory of developmental stages for leadership, which I have previously discussed on this blog, indicates that if we try to grow leaders’ inner game, rather than outer competencies, leaders increase their capacity to handle more complexity and thus lead more effectively.

In previous posts, I described the five levels of leadership, summarizing the leading experts’ classifications. If you aren’t already familiar with these developmental levels, you may want to pause here to read the previous posts first.

Great leadership and business performance emerge at what are known as the “post-heroic” stages. In the top 10% of the highest-performing businesses (out of a half million surveyed), the average leadership effectiveness score falls into the 80th percentile, research shows. These leaders score better than 80% of their peers.

Surging Past the Norm

Most adults fail to progress beyond what’s normative: the Socialized or Reactive mind. Only 10% of adults progress beyond the Achiever level, according to the Leadership Agility authors, William B. Joiner and Stephen A. Josephs:

Viewed from The Leadership Circle research, only 20% progress beyond the Reactive stage, which points to the urgent need for leadership-development programs to address far more than skills and outer competencies.

Why All of This Matters

At higher levels of development, leaders can detect nuances, deal with paradoxes and respond with agility in lieu of being reactive. Today’s volatile business environment demands higher levels of consciousness.

Developmental-stage theories are more than descriptive tools. The stages chart a path that can help leaders develop more complex forms of mind. The framework also helps match a leader’s mindset at any given time with that required by a particular task.

As a leader, your ability to make sense of greater levels of complexity continues throughout the lifespan and has a significant impact on both leadership and development. You acquire special competencies and skills with experience, as well as a mind that sharpens over time. Only when leadership development programs take developmental stages into account will you grow into a better leader.

What do you think about these ideas? Do they resonate for you and what you’ve observed as the leaders in your organization have matured? I’d love to hear from you. I can be reached via my website, on LinkedIn, and on Twitter.