Make sense of it with a guide, not alone
Set aside regular reflection time with a coach or mentor who understands developmental stages, so a disruption turns into a new way of seeing.
Why it works
Petrie’s third condition, elevated sensemaking, is where a person integrates a heat experience and new perspectives into a larger worldview that, with time, stabilizes. He names three ingredients: time for reflection, a map of the stages, and a guide who knows the terrain. A coach or mentor helps a person see the beliefs and mental maps they are subject to — the ones they cannot see from inside — which is difficult to do alone.
How to do it
- Book a recurring reflection slot, weekly or fortnightly, and protect it like a meeting.
- Bring one live challenge and one moment where your usual way of seeing failed.
- Ask your coach or mentor: "What am I assuming here that I am treating as simply true?"
- Try on the next-stage view deliberately, as Bill Joiner does in Petrie’s account: compare how someone at your current way of thinking and someone one step further would each approach the same challenge.
- End by writing what you can now see that you could not see before.
Evidence
Petrie (2015) calls elevated sensemaking the most neglected of the three conditions and recommends that a third of leadership development time go to structured reflection; he describes coaching with a vertical lens and late-stage mentors as tools for it. Garvey Berger (2012) devotes chapters to finding a person’s growth edge and to coaching at it. These are practitioner recommendations, not tested outcomes. (anecdotal)
The "one third of time" figure is Petrie’s recommendation, not a research finding. The quality of the guide matters, and there is no standard credential for coaching "with a vertical lens."
Sources
- Petrie, N. (2015). The How-To of Vertical Leadership Development–Part 2: 30 Experts, 3 Conditions, and 15 Approaches. Center for Creative Leadership white paper.
- Garvey Berger, J. (2012). Changing on the Job: Developing Leaders for a Complex World. Stanford Business Books.
Common mistake
Using reflection to tell the story of what happened rather than to examine the assumptions that shaped it. A tidy narrative of a hard month can leave the underlying frame exactly where it was.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Vertical Development Practices: How Adults Grow, Not Just Add Skills
- Seek a heat experience on purpose
Take on a first-time challenge where results matter and your current way of thinking is not enough.
- Put yourself where perspectives collide
Spend real time with people whose worldviews, training and stakes differ from yours, and listen past their content to their values.
- Map what keeps you from changing
Take one change you genuinely want, find the hidden commitment working against it, and test the assumption underneath.
- Audit your goals: skill gap or sense-making gap?
Sort your development goals into what more knowledge would fix and what a different way of seeing would fix.
- Work at your edge with support, then without it
Notice that you can think at a more complex level with help than alone, and use that gap as the place to grow.
- Use a developmental assessment for insight, never for ranking
If you take a stage assessment, choose a rigorous one, debrief it with a trained practitioner, and keep it away from decisions about people’s worth.
- Choose months of challenge with support over one-off events
Pick development that runs over months and combines real challenge with reflection, not a two-day event.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Self-Authorship: Moving From the Socialized to the Self-Authored Mind
Kegan’s stages, subject-object moves, and authoring your own life
- Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical
Distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical problems — and leading accordingly
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
- Zone of Proximal Development: Learning at Your Real Edge
Targeting the gap between what you can do alone and what you can do with guidance
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