Leadership development often focuses on learning more.
We develop new skills, learn new frameworks, improve our communication, strengthen our decision-making, and add new approaches to the way we lead. This kind of learning matters. But there can come a point when simply adding more knowledge or skills doesn’t create the growth we need.
This is where the distinction between horizontal and vertical development is important.
Horizontal development expands what you know and what you can do. Vertical development expands how you see, think, make meaning, and respond to the complexity around you.
Both are valuable. The question isn’t which one is better.
The more useful question is: What kind of development do you need next?
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What Is Horizontal Development?
Horizontal development is probably the form of professional development most of us know best.
It involves expanding our existing knowledge, skills, competencies, and capabilities.
A leader might learn how to facilitate a difficult conversation, give better feedback, develop strategy, manage conflict, or lead a more effective meeting. A coach might learn a new coaching model, develop a new competency, or become trained in working with teams.
The person develops a broader toolkit.
This kind of development is essential. We need knowledge and skills to become more capable in our roles, particularly when we’re learning something new or stepping into greater responsibility.
But sometimes the challenge in front of us isn’t that we don’t know enough.
We may already understand the frameworks. We may have years of experience. We may even know exactly what we’re supposed to do.
And yet the situation still feels difficult to navigate.
That’s where another kind of development becomes important.
What Is Vertical Development?
Vertical development is the development of our capacity to think, make meaning, hold different perspectives, and respond to increasing complexity.
Rather than simply adding more knowledge to our existing way of seeing the world, vertical development can change the way we understand ourselves, others, and the systems around us.
This becomes particularly important as our responsibilities become more complex.
A leader may need to hold competing perspectives without immediately deciding that one is right and another is wrong. A coach may need to notice dynamics within an entire system rather than focusing only on the individual in front of them. A supervisor may need to support another practitioner’s development without simply providing the answer.
These challenges aren’t necessarily solved by another technique.
They require us to expand our capacity for reflection, perspective-taking, ambiguity, relationships, and complexity.
Vertical development therefore isn’t simply about knowing more.
It’s about developing our capacity to see more and hold more.
For leaders navigating this kind of complexity, Novalda’s Leadership Development pathways are designed to develop greater presence, systemic awareness, and the capacity to lead through complexity and change.
Vertical vs Horizontal Development
The simplest way to understand the difference is this:
Horizontal development expands what you know and can do. Vertical development expands the way you see and make sense of what you’re experiencing.
Think of one of those beautiful old libraries where the bookshelves stretch from floor to ceiling and a rolling ladder moves along the shelves.
Horizontal development is like moving along the bookshelf. You read more books, explore new subjects, and add more knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques. Your range expands. You know more and can do more.
Vertical development is like climbing the ladder. You aren’t simply accessing more books. From a higher rung, you can see more of the library itself. You notice connections between shelves that weren’t visible from where you were standing before. Your perspective expands, changing how you understand and make sense of what you already know.
And the two continue to work together. From a new rung on the ladder, you can still move horizontally, exploring more books and building new skills.
Development isn’t about choosing one direction over the other. It’s about recognizing when you need to add to your toolkit and when you need to expand the perspective from which you use it.
Imagine a leader who struggles with conflict.
Horizontal development might give them a framework for difficult conversations, teach active listening techniques, or provide a process for resolving disagreement.
All of those skills could be useful.
Vertical development asks different questions.
What happens within the leader when someone strongly disagrees with them? Can they remain curious when their own assumptions are challenged? Can they hold competing perspectives? Can they recognize how their own beliefs and behaviours may be contributing to the situation? Can they see the conflict as part of a larger relational or organizational system?
The skill still matters.
But so does the person using it.
This is why horizontal and vertical development shouldn’t be viewed as competing approaches to professional growth. They develop different dimensions of our capacity, and meaningful development often requires both.
Why Vertical Development Matters for Leaders
Leadership becomes increasingly complex as responsibility grows.
Early in a leadership journey, development may understandably focus on capability: communication, delegation, decision-making, strategy, feedback, and managing performance.
As leaders move into more complex environments, however, the nature of the challenge changes.
There may no longer be one obvious answer.
Leaders may need to balance competing priorities, work across organizational boundaries, navigate uncertainty, influence without authority, respond to conflicting stakeholder needs, and make decisions when the information available is incomplete.
At this level, simply adding another leadership tool may not be enough.
The leader themselves may need to develop.
Vertical leadership development can help expand the capacity to work with ambiguity, question assumptions, recognize interconnected systems, consider multiple perspectives, and remain grounded when the path forward isn’t immediately clear.
This doesn’t make horizontal leadership development less important.
It means that as the complexity of leadership increases, our capacity to meet that complexity needs to grow with it.
Vertical Development for Coaches and Practitioners
The same distinction applies to coaching development.
Early professional development often needs to be horizontal. Coaches need competencies, models, practice, feedback, mentoring, and experience. Novalda’s Coaching Education pathways support coaches at different stages of this development, from strengthening coaching competency to developing greater reflective and systemic capacity.
But experience can eventually create a different developmental question.
You may know how to coach, yet find yourself working with increasingly complex clients, teams, relationships, and organizational systems.
You may notice that the work asks more of your presence and judgement than it once did.
You may begin questioning not just what intervention should I use? but what am I noticing, what am I not seeing, and how am I participating in what is happening?
At this stage, development often becomes more reflective.
Coaching supervision, systemic practice, team coaching, mentoring, and other forms of advanced development can create opportunities to examine not only what we do as practitioners, but who we are becoming through the work.
For those working specifically with teams and organizational systems, team coaching supervision creates space to explore the additional complexity of relationships, roles, power, conflict, organizational pressures, and the coach’s own position within the wider system.
This is one reason professional development doesn’t end with certification.
As the work becomes more complex, our capacity to hold that work must continue developing too.
How Do You Know Which Kind of Development You Need?
Sometimes the answer is straightforward.
If you’re stepping into a new role and don’t yet have the necessary knowledge or skills, horizontal development may be exactly what you need.
Learn the skill. Understand the framework. Practice it. Get feedback. Build competence.
But if you’ve reached a point where you already know many of the “right” things to do and still find yourself challenged by complexity, uncertainty, competing perspectives, relationships, or your own habitual responses, the developmental need may be different.
You might notice yourself asking questions such as:
I know what to do, so why is it still difficult?
Knowing and being able to respond effectively aren’t always the same thing. Sometimes our development needs to move beyond acquiring knowledge and toward examining how we interpret and respond to what is happening.
Why do the same challenges keep appearing?
Recurring challenges can sometimes point toward assumptions, patterns, or ways of seeing that aren’t easily changed by adding another technique.
Why does my work feel more complex than it used to?
It may genuinely be more complex. As our roles evolve, we often become responsible for more people, perspectives, relationships, and systems. The development that got us here may not be the same development that helps us move forward.
Do I need another skill, or do I need space to think differently?
This can be one of the most useful questions to ask.
Sometimes the next step is training.
Sometimes it’s coaching, supervision, reflective practice, systemic development, or an experience that challenges us to see ourselves and our work differently.
Growth Isn’t Either Horizontal or Vertical
There is a temptation to position vertical development as somehow more advanced or valuable than horizontal development.
That misses the point.
We continue to need both throughout our professional lives.
A highly experienced leader may need to learn a new technical skill. An experienced coach moving into team coaching may need substantial new knowledge and competencies. Someone developing vertically will still need opportunities to practise and translate new perspectives into action.
To return to the library, climbing the ladder doesn’t mean we stop moving along the shelves.
A new perspective can reveal entirely new areas for learning. New knowledge can challenge the way we see. Horizontal and vertical development continually inform one another.
Development is rarely a straight line.
What we need changes as our roles, responsibilities, relationships, and lives change.
The important thing is becoming more intentional about the kind of growth we’re seeking.
Instead of automatically asking:
What should I learn next?
It may be more useful to ask:
What kind of development would best serve me now?
For more reflections on leadership, coaching, systemic change, and professional development, explore the Novalda Reflections Blog.
Discover Your Development Path
The right next step isn’t the same for everyone.
You may be strengthening your leadership capacity, deepening your coaching practice, moving into team coaching or supervision, navigating greater complexity, or finding yourself at a transition point where the next step isn’t yet clear.
The Discover Your Development Path Assessment was created to help you reflect on where you are today and identify the type of development that may best support what comes next.
Through 12 thoughtful questions, you’ll explore your current context, responsibilities, challenges, and aspirations and receive a personalized development pathway with recommended next steps.
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