'Advancing leader’s thinking capabilities to thrive in a complex world' with Becky Andree.

We’ve heard it stated so many times - your leaders are facing complex problems and they don't have the capability to handle them. In 2014, McKinsey published an article “Why leadership-development programs fail”, which listed 4 common mistakes:

1. Overlooking context –which is ironic given that their approach to consulting often ignores context and doesn’t look to build contextual awareness for leaders. Developing contextual thinking is a part of complexity of thinking.
2. Decoupling reflection from real work – again ironic given that their approaches often don’t include reflection. Turns out reflection is KEY to creating conditions for a shift in complexity of thinking.
3. Understanding mind-sets – I won’t even point out the irony anymore… this is really about adult development, a shift from I am in control to I am activating through others to I am embedded within a system. Or what I might say becoming aware of perspectival action and how we view the system (collective or individual). This is also a part of complexity of thinking.

Failing to measure results – well this one I disagree with what they wrote, BUT I will say we are using the wrong measures for leadership effectiveness. There are too many problems to list. Jacques Elliott was onto a good idea – understand the “measure of level of work” or in other words what is the cognitive demand. If we just knew that, we would be a lot better off!

[You can google “why leadership development programs fail” and you will get a wide view of perspectives, some are merely opinions.]

Join me on a journey of discovery…

• What is complexity of thinking and how do we currently attempt to make sense of it
• What elements are part of creating conditions in our organizations for development of complexity of thinking
• How can dynamic skills and continuous learning accelerate developmentA deeper understanding of life and work purpose, what it is, and why it matters

Becky is based in Michigan (U.S.) and known as the “Leadership Thinking Guru”. Over the past 25 years I have designed, facilitated, and coached leadership development of thousands of leaders throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, and South America.  During that time, I noticed a gap. 

There was too much focus on content and not enough focus on context.  I founded Vertical Leadership Consulting to accelerate leaders’ capabilities in contextual/complex thinking and shorten the time required for succession readiness.