Contents
Sound familiar? An employee with sky-high talent and a winning personality is promoted to leader – and shortly afterwards things go wrong. It is not about age, and it is not about lack of ability. It is about leadership maturity.
Stepping into leadership means stepping straight into a crossfire of conflicts and expectations. When uncertainty hits, the classic defence mechanisms kick in: fight, flight or play dead. The result? The team suddenly experiences the leader as dominant, weak or absent, and the dynamic locks up.
As a senior executive or HR manager, you can work proactively on maturing the company’s leaders. The Maturation Circle® is your tool for opening up the dynamic and making sure your leaders and teams thrive at a whole new level, with more job satisfaction, less stress and a calm overview.
What is the Maturation Circle®?
The Maturation Circle® shows 6 typical stages in the development of adult consciousness. The model is divided into red, yellow and green fields.
The green stages represent the more or less normal developmental journey of adult life. The further up the figure you get, the more mental complexity you can handle. In the yellow fields, you are under pressure from critical experiences or contexts that have thrown you off course. People with a red mindset have spent a long time in the yellow and do not have much energy left. The model shows that everyone can move vertically, horizontally and around the circle.
Everyone takes a circular trip around the model at some point, whether through losing a job, serious illness or something similar. Fortunately, many come back again, with renewed strength, through the restorative transformation.
The Maturation Circle® provides an overview, a way of thinking and a language that can help develop employees, teams – and leaders. The Maturation Circle® describes development journeys for both individuals and teams. A leader’s own bumps in the road are, of course, an important “university” for their own development. When leaders manage to see, develop and acknowledge the mental benefits employees gain from bumps in the road, collaboration will develop – and the leader’s own capacity and influence will grow rapidly.
The Maturation Circle® shows 6 typical stages of development in adults, based on recognised psychological theory by Robert Kegan (adult development) and Knud Illeris (transformative learning), among others. The higher up in the model you are, the more mental complexity you can handle.
The model is divided into three colour zones, and what makes it unique is that development is circular: life’s bumps can push us back, but through a restorative transformation we can come back stronger.
🟢 The Green Stages: Progressive development
The green fields represent the healthy journey of maturity in adult and working life.
- The social dog (Stage 1): This is where most adults are. We see the world through other people’s needs and are strong team players when the environment feels safe. But under pressure the dog becomes conflict-shy and vulnerable to other people’s judgements. In today’s complex working life this stage is rarely enough for effective leadership – and in fact not enough for self-managing employees either.
- The self-assured lion (Stage 2): The lion rests in its own values, sets natural boundaries and keeps calm. As a leader, the lion takes the head of the table with clear authority. The challenge? The lion can become too stuck in its own point of view and come across as stubborn or as a “dinosaur” when the world around it changes quickly.
- The meta-reflective owl (Stage 3): The ultimate goal for the complex organisation. The owl combines the lion’s strength and integrity with the dog’s ability to listen. The owl moves effortlessly through constant change and can hold many stakeholders at once. Note: You cannot skip the lion – the owl’s wisdom requires the lion’s strong foundation.
🟡 The Yellow Stages: When the pressure hits (regressive state)
When well-functioning people are pushed beyond what they can handle, they react with defence mechanisms:
- Frightened rabbit / Angry chihuahua: Appears when the social dog breaks. The rabbit becomes timid and stressed, while the chihuahua (often the newly appointed, insecure leader) reacts with pseudo-decisiveness and anger.
- The stubborn donkey: Appears when the self-assured lion is left without recognition for too long. The person withdraws in defiance, becomes extremely hard to work with and blocks collaboration.
🔴 The Red Stage: The danger zone
- The resigned jellyfish: The end stage of prolonged poor well-being, stress and adversity. The employee or leader is completely drained, uncooperative and close to sick leave or dismissal.
How can you use the Maturation Circle® in practice?
The Maturation Circle® is not a box you put people in – it is a dynamic development tool and a shared language for the whole organisation.
For the leader (a tool for one-to-one conversations):
- Do you have a social dog on your team? Ask questions such as: “What do you think matters most here?” to strengthen their independence.
- Do you have a self-assured lion on your team? Challenge them with: “How do you think the production manager sees the situation?” to train the holistic view.
For HR (strategic maturing of talent and life stages):
- Young talent: Spot where they are in the circle, and mature them deliberately towards the green stages before they break.
- Senior employees: Assess whether experienced people are starting to “stall” in a yellow zone and need fresh vitamins for a restorative transformation.
Let’s lift your organisation together
When we – Pernille and Anders – go out to companies, our mission is clear: We coach progressive leaders and teams towards the top green levels, where relationships, psychological safety and self-adjusting coordination create extraordinary results.
If things have gone off the rails for a leader or a team, we use the Maturation Circle® to quickly create an overview, restore hope and start the transformation that brings back job satisfaction and results.
Would you like to hear how the Maturation Circle® can make a difference for your leaders?
Contact Anders Amstrup at [email protected]
