Facilitating Vertical Development – A Conversation with Beena Sharma

Beena Sharma is one of the leading practitioners in the field of adult integral human development, specifically in mapping and assessing the levels of adult maturity.

Beena has founded The Center for Leadership Maturity, in collaboration with Susanne Cook-Greuter, internationally known authority on adult development. Beena and Susanne have been working together since 2004. They work with individuals, teams, and organizations to facilitate vertical adult development. She is also a dear friend, who I have known and worked with for over 10 years. Beena brings to her work the rigor of a practitioner-scientist focused on good theory, concrete evidence, robust research and lived experience. She combines that with the reverence of a true spiritual practitioner who is herself in awe of the dynamics and the miracle of human growth.

In this podcast, Beena and I discuss what she and her team are learning about how adults grow through the predictable stages of adult development while still remaining true to their own journey. We examine how we can consciously participate in our own evolution and growth in a way that creates a more fulfilling, healthy, conscious and fruitful life. I particularly appreciate Beena’s focus on mapping the later, Integral stages of development and how they show up in herself and people she works with. She offers some insights on how we can actually grow to those later reaches of maturity while also appreciating the triumph of where we have already arrived. Beena and I also touch on one of the essential tools of the developmental journey, that of working with polarities – the interdependent and seemingly opposite qualities we continually encounter on our path – and how we can begin to meaningfully navigate those qualities and paradoxes in an increasing profound way.

Beena, as you will hear, is actively engaged with advancing both the theory and practice of vertical development in practical, profound and creative ways. For those of us who fancy ourselves as Integral practitioners, Beena provides illuminating insight into the territory that we aspire to explore and ultimately inhabit. If you are interested in engaging with Vertical Development, you can contact Beena Sharma at beena@verticaldevelopment.com.