How does development progress? To picture the process we can look at individuals rather than a population, using a longitudinal rather than cross-sectional approach.

Profile Individual Agile Consultants

For the sentence completion “test” (psychometric profile), an individual completes some number of sentence stems:

• 36 for the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (18 for the short form),¹
• 32 for the Leadership Development Profile,²
• 36 for the Mature Adult Profile,³ and
• 30 for the Global Leadership Profile (GLP).⁴

These sentence stems are on topics like emotions, feedback, gender, leadership, power, relationships, space, time, work, etc.⁵ The scorer assigns each response (sentence completion) a stage, and then the entire profile a rating. The responses always span at least three stages, often four or five.⁶ For example, in 2018 one Agile consultant team member, “Team Member 1,” gave 6 Conformer responses, 11 Expert responses, 11 Achiever responses, 1 Catalyst response, and 1 Co-Creator response–spanning five stages.⁷

This span of responses illustrates some aspects of human development:

• the perspective of earlier stages remains available as one shifts to later stages,
• different topics may elicit responses from different stages, and
• the responses are signs pointing to development, signs that might be interpreted differently after further questioning.

Consequently the question for the overall rating becomes this: What is the latest stage for which there are enough responses to suggest that particular stage is the individual’s center of gravity? The rating compares the results of various estimation methods:¹

• the scorer’s impression,
• a total weighted score, and
• a total protocol rating.

The total protocol rating uses a set of scoring rules (derived from Bayes’ theorem) for a cumulative frequency distribution, or ogive.⁸ Team Member 1, for example, profiled at early Achiever.

Another Agile consultant team member, “Team Member 14,” gave 2 Achiever responses, 12 Catalyst responses, 12 Co-Creator responses, and 4 Synergist responses–spannig four stages. Team Member 14 profiled at late Co-Creator.⁷

The ogives for all team members show ratings of Achiever, Catalyst, and Co-Creator, with responses spanning three to five stages.

Profile Longitudinally

In 2020, one team member took the GLP again, providing an opportunity to see growth over time (two years). Apart from the default Conformer stage of a repeated sentence (perhaps a copy-paste error), the responses, and overall rating, have shifted one stage later. Anecdotally, this was the result of deliberate development, both as part of the team, and individually.

Deliberately Develop

The Agile consulting team experimented with deliberately developmental practices in several categories:⁹

• growing edge,
• profiles,
• follow-up feedback, and
• shared leadership.

Photo by Constantin Stanciu on Scopio

Growing Edge

In addition to providing feedback during the interview and noting whether or not the interviewee integrated feedback, the interview included questions intended to identify a “growing edge” for the consultant that could add to the client work the team was doing: “What is most important for you to get better at, for this [client] engagement to be successful?”¹⁰

This provided an idea of what each team member would bring to the team and what each member would need from the team. Each team member extended this observation with a list of items that the team can rely on them for, and a list of items the team can watch out for–the beginning of a “baseball card.”⁹ For example, one team member might have a strength in analysis and a corresponding weakness in decision-making.

In what areas can we rely on you?	In what areas can we watch out for you?
Intelligent detailed analysis and problem-solving Relevant theory and models Completing with quality Congruence of action and statements Prioritization based upon both strategic and tactical comprehension Direct observations in difficult conversations	“Analysis paralysis,” hesitation, second-guessing Defensible, measured concepts without metaphor, personal emotion or illustration, or practical next step Difficulty redirecting requests for help Invisible handoffs Slow to assert Time spent on easy routine tasks rather than hard, creative, priority tasks Unwillingness to sell

Profiles

Profile tools like Global Leadership Profile and the Leadership Circle Profile provided strategic feedback for each team member. Other tools, like CliftonStrengths, enhanced appreciation of team member difference–and “tolerant of individual difference” is a characteristic of the Catalyst stage.¹¹

These profiles provided a shared vocabulary for Agile consulting, in addition to shared training and coaching frameworks:

• Training from the Back of the Room, and
• Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC).

Follow-Up Feedback

The baseball cards provided an opportunity for each team member to request their team members to “rely on” them for as well as to “watch out for” them. Part of the discussion with the team of each new team member’s baseball card was asking for permission to provide feedback in those areas. This set the context for in-the-moment feedback.

Other opportunities for follow-up included discussions career counselor conversations, and experimentation with “talking partners.” Talking Partners is a co-mentorship framework to “Meet, Vent, Work,” using two questions with an assigned partner. Talking partners agree on all other aspects themselves (e.g., what else to talk about, when to meet, how often to meet, how long to meet, where to meet). The two questions are these:⁹

• What is going on inside that will affect what will happen outside?
• What opportunities will there be to practice overcoming my difficulty?

Shared Leadership

Rotating leadership roles and shared leadership are characteristics of mature teams.⁴ Consequently we used the following practices:

• rotating roles on the engagement,
• rotating facilitation at events, and
• clear levels of delegation for decisions.

My intended outcome was this:¹²

a mutually-vulnerable, mutually-empowering, and mutually-transforming dynamic in conversations, meetings, and other social occasions (which both feeds and requires inquiry together about shared purposes, useful roles, rules, and norms, as well as one another’s relative efficacy, and the relative justice of outcomes).

Notes