Rewire the core of how you lead
What does it take to create lasting transformation?
Change is hard. Even when seriously at-risk heart patients were told they would die if they didn’t change their diet and exercise habits, fewer than 15% succeeded.¹ If the threat of death isn’t enough motivation, what is? The same pattern shows up in leadership. Studies show that less than 20% of corporate training leads to sustained behavioral change.² Time and again, leaders return from training programs equipped with new models and techniques, clear on what they should be doing. Yet when they return to the pressures and patterns of their daily job, they quickly slip back into old habits. Clearly, knowing more isn’t the answer either.
True leadership transformation requires what adult development theorists call vertical development. Unlike horizontal development—which adds more skills, knowledge, and competencies to your mental toolkit—vertical development goes deeper, transforming how you use those tools altogether. It’s a shift in mindset that rewires how you make sense of the world and expands your capacity to think in more complex, systemic, strategic, and interdependent ways.
MINDSHIFT is our unique approach to vertical development. Grounded in rigorous academic research and field-tested with leaders at all levels, it’s designed to do what traditional training cannot: help leaders break through the inner barriers that keep them stuck and unlock their next level of impact.
We stood on the shoulders of giants to build this model, integrating the insights of pioneering thinkers whose work has reshaped the fields of leadership, psychology, and neuroscience:
Harvard Professors Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey and their groundbreaking Immunity to Change model.
Bob Anderson and Bill Adams, creators of the Universal Model of Leadership™ (The Leadership Circle).
Robert Fritz, who distinguished between Creative and Reactive Orientations and developed methods for working with structural patterns in people’s lives.
David Rock and the NeuroLeadership Institute, who made accessible the latest discoveries in how our brains work.
Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp of the Conscious Leadership Group, whose work brought practical, engaging methods for exploring the “inner world” of leaders.
David D. Burns, Stanford psychiatrist and pioneer in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), author of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.
Leveraging these foundations, we rigorously tested and refined MINDSHIFT with hundreds of leaders across industries. The result is a practical, proven pathway for vertical growth: one that equips leaders not only with tools, but with the upgraded mindset to use them instinctively—driving lasting transformation, greater clarity, and next-level performance.
Alan Deutschman, Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life (HarperBusiness, 2007).
Harvard Business Review, “Why Leadership Training Fails” (Beer, Finnstrom & Schrader, 2016).
Horizontal Development
Vertical Development
What you know
How you know it
More tools in the box
A whole new way to use the tools
Gain more knowledge, skills and competencies
Able to think in more complex, systemic, and strategic ways
Get better at what you already do
Able to take on challenges you couldn’t before
MINDSHIFT: Our Approach to Vertical Development
Change your habits
Change the mindset motivating those habits
Ready to Unlock Your Next Level?
Book a 30-minute complimentary session with a MINDSHIFT coach to assess which path is right for you.