Managers and HR professionals concerned with developing leaders are inundated with leadership development theories, models, concepts and courses – Situational Leadership, Servant Leadership, and the Leadership Lessons of everyone from Attila the Hun to Jack Welch, to name but a few.

One of the better leadership models to emerge in the last few years is “Integral Leadership” based on the work of Ken Wilber.

Integral leadership emphasizes working with both the objective, exterior, subjective, and interior aspects of individuals and organizations. Most leadership development programs focus primarily on the objective, exterior factors involved in the situation, for example: behaviors, skills, strategies, structures, and processes. An integral approach combines a focus on the external, observable factors with an equal focus on interior factors such as thinking, feeling, and values – at both the individual and organizational levels.

Integral Leadership considers four dimensions: Interior, Exterior, Individual, and Organizational. These four dimensions give us one of the best known tools known to management training – a four quadrant model. Here is how it plays out with the Integral Leadership:

It seems pretty obvious to say it, but effective leadership development must take account of all four quadrants. Most traditional leadership models, however, tend to focus either internally (e.g. emotional intelligence) or externally (e.g. situational leadership) and fail to integrate the two perspectives.

By not taking an integral approach to leadership development you risk misalignment between the four quadrants. If the internal and external landscapes are not aligned at the individual level, for example, you risk developing leaders who have learned some of the skills and behaviors of leadership but may not have the maturity and self awareness that leaders need to be effective in the long term. Similarly, if you have leaders who are not aligned with the organizational culture, systems, or strategies, how effective can they be?

At Aspen OD we use the Integral Leadership model as one of our key analytical and design tools when helping organizations to develop their leadership programs. We have found that a well designed leadership development curriculum must take account of all four quadrants to be successful.