Vertical development, also known as adult stage development, has become a fundamental grounding for coaches working with leaders at all levels. Once considered a hierarchical framework for assessing leadership capacity, increase in scale and accessibility of the framework and associated tools has led to applying vertical development more as a map for clarifying development edges and moving beyond the "higher is better' mindset to explore what it takes to flex, adapt, while also growing one's mindset capacity.

Perhaps significant for coaches is the value of understanding their own mindset tendencies and how they inform as well as limit their coaching and what that means for their own growth edges.