Reaching Higher: Transformational Coaching, Creative Leadership & Vertical Development
- kawkapc
- Nov 10
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 24
There’s a moment many seasoned leaders quietly recognize:“I have all the tools. So why does this still feel so hard?”
You’ve read the books, attended dozens of training programs, survived the 360s. You know how to run a team, an organization, a transition, a strategy session. And still, some problems don’t respond to what you already know.
These are the moments when the challenge isn’t asking for another framework – it’s asking you to grow.
Not horizontally (more skills, more tips, more models), but vertically – into a different way of seeing, deciding, and leading.
You could sign up for yet another training program, but you almost cringe at the thought.
That reaction might be telling you something important. Most trainings are a grab bag of tools, techniques, and methodologies – useful, but can be scattered. They add more stuff without necessarily changing how you make sense of your world.
This is where transformational coaching, creative leadership, and vertical development meet.
They don’t just give you more tools; they change the place in you from which you use them.
When Tools Are No Longer Enough
If traditional leadership development is about adding new skills, new tools, new knowledge, vertical development is about evolving the inner system that uses those tools.
It asks questions like:
How do you discern what matters when demands conflict?
How do you move with respect for competing loyalties – to people, values, results, your own limits?
How do you stay loyal to the past and accountable for future?
How do you sharpen your inner compass when there is no clear “right” answer?
How do you work with your own inner saboteurs – the parts that over-control, over-please, avoid conflict, or shrink you?
How do you grant yourself your power back instead of outsourcing it to circumstance, hierarchy, or other people’s expectations?
You grow your inner architecture, and with that growth, you can hold more complexity with more clarity and less strain.
Beyond “Trying Harder”
Kim led a cross-functional, highly visible team. On paper, she was exactly what her organization wanted; in reality, the team felt stuck. Conflicts simmered. A few strong personalities dominated meetings.
Kim tried all the “right” things she’d picked up over the years – new meeting formats, clearer goals, different feedback approaches. Some of it helped… for a while.
By the time we started working together, Kim wasn’t looking for another toolkit.
She was asking a different question:
“I’ve tried so many things. What am I not seeing about how I show up in all of this?”
In vertical development terms (drawing on the Center for Creative Leadership’s work), Kim was already in the conditions that make deeper growth possible:
Heat Experiences Kim was in situations that were complex, emotionally loaded, and impossible to solve with her habitual ways of thinking. High-stakes clashing expectations, competing demands from different stakeholders were stressing her usual strategies and disorienting her sense of what should work.
Colliding Perspectives Her team brought very different worldviews: engineering, operations, DEI, finance. They disagreed on how to see the problem. These colliding perspectives challenged Kim’s mental models about being “a good leader”.
Elevated Sensemaking This is where coaching came in. Together, we slowed down her experience and used structured reflection to help her integrate all those perspectives and heat moments. Instead of treating them as random frustrations, Kim began to see patterns in how she made sense of conflict, responsibility, and care. A larger, more advanced way of making meaning started to emerge – one that could hold tension without rushing to smooth it over.
As we worked through specific situations, Kim started to see her inner blueprint:
How much she equated being a “good leader” with keeping everyone emotionally okay
How she quietly took on everyone’s emotional load and then felt drained and resentful
How her fear of being “too strong” kept her from setting and holding clear boundaries
Once she could see the blueprint, we could experiment.
Naming tensions more directly and calmly – without apology and without drama
Holding people accountable with respect, rather than over-explaining or avoiding
Staying present when others were upset, instead of rushing to fix, rescue, or soothe everyone
As those experiments repeated, something shifted. Her sensemaking expanded.
Her team felt the difference. Kim’s words for it:
“I feel more like myself and more free. I didn’t learn a trick. I examined my own thinking.”
That’s what vertical development looks like in real life: growing a leader from the inside out.
Is Vertical Development for Me?
Vertical development is simply growing up as a leader, not in the sense of becoming more serious (could be actually the opposite!), but in the sense of expanding your inner capacity:
To hold paradox instead of clinging to one side
To stay steady in uncertainty instead of forcing quick certainty
To notice your own patterns instead of being run by them
It's about the range and depth of how we can respond to reality.
Transformational, vertical-focused coaching asks:
What in you gets activated when stakes are high?
What story do you tell yourself about conflict, power, loyalty, worth?
What old protections are still steering your leadership today?
Creative leadership grows out of this. You become more able to design responses, not just manage crises.
Three Big Shifts This Work Supports
From my work with leaders, I see three recurring shifts when coaching is truly vertical and transformational:
1. From Control to Conscious Choice
You still care about outcomes. But you’re less driven by the need to control every variable or every emotion.
You:
Notice your biases and assumptions before they run the show
Make decisions from a wider lens, not just from urgency or fear
Ask for help or push back without feeling it threatens your identity
You’re no longer defending an image of “the strong leader.” You’re actually leading.
2. From Safety-At-All-Costs to Courage-With-Roots
Many leaders have built careers on being reliable, safe, not “too much.”Vertical development doesn’t throw safety away – it roots courage deeper.
You begin to:
Experiment more boldly, without being reckless
Bounce back from setbacks with less self-attack and more learning
Distinguish between real risk and old nervous-system alarms
Courage stops being a heroic moment and becomes a daily, quieter practice.
3. From Managing People to Deepening Connection & Purpose
As your inner frame expands, you can hold more of what makes humans… human.
You:
Communicate with more truth and tenderness at the same time
Create spaces where disagreement is safe and useful
Align your actions more cleanly with your values and purpose
You feel less split between “who I am” and “who I have to be at work.”
That congruence becomes visible and .. magnetic.
Invitation
Vertical development, creative leadership, transformational coaching – these may sound like big concepts. But in practice, they show up in very simple, human shifts: You pause before reacting. You say what is true with less apology. You hold your boundaries with more kindness. You feel more like yourself, even when things are hard.
That’s the work. Not becoming someone else but becoming more fully, consciously, bravely you in the places where it matters most.
If this way of working resonates, I’d be glad to talk.
You’re welcome to reach out for a free consultation to explore what you’re navigating, ask questions, and see whether there’s real chemistry between us.
Even if we decide not to work together, you’ll leave with more clarity about what kind of support or next step would serve you best.
Hi, I’m Monika, Strengths Coach and facilitator. I help individuals and groups cultivate resilience, emotional intelligence, and well-being through strengths-based coaching. Passionate about transformative and creative leadership, I empower leaders to drive meaningful change within themselves, their organizations, and beyond.
I hope you’ll visit often, and I look forward to connecting and working together!
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