What Is a Growth Edge?
In leadership and adult development, your growth edge represents the place where your current ways of thinking and meaning-making meet challenges that stretch or exceed them — the boundary between what you can currently understand and what’s possible for you next. This concept comes from adult development theory, particularly the work of Dr. Jennifer Garvey Berger and colleagues, building on Dr. Robert Kegan’s constructive-developmental model of how adults make sense of the world.
At your growth edge, familiar patterns bump up against complexity and ambiguity — the places where old habits no longer serve you, and where meaningful change becomes possible.
Growth Edge Interview (GEI)
A Growth Edge Interview is a powerful, evidence-based developmental assessment designed not just to collect stories, but to illuminate how you make sense of your world — your underlying assumptions, meaning-making systems, and cognitive/emotional patterns.
How It Works
- Discovery Call: A brief conversation to explore your current challenges and determine whether a GEI is right for you.
- Recorded Interview (60–90 minutes): You engage in a free-flowing conversation about your experiences, led by a coach trained in the GEI process. The focus isn’t on what happened, but how you’re interpreting and responding to what’s happening.
- Transcription & Analysis: The interview is transcribed and reviewed to reveal key patterns of meaning-making and potential blind spots.
- Debrief Session (60 minutes): Together, you and your coach explore insights from the interview, uncover your current developmental terrain, and identify strategic pathways for growth.
What You Get
- A deepening of self-knowledge and awareness of your cognitive and emotional habits.
- Clarity on why certain leadership challenges persist and which ones hold the greatest potential for developmental return.
- Insight into your current ‘operating system’ — the patterns shaping how you think, lead, and interact — and a roadmap for moving toward greater capacity.
Growth Edge Coaching
Once you’ve identified your developmental starting point through the Growth Edge Interview, Growth Edge Coaching supports you in moving beyond it.
This isn’t traditional coaching focused only on goals, behaviors, or outcomes. Instead, it’s developmental coaching — designed to expand your meaning-making capacities and elevate your leadership in a complex world.
What Sets It Apart
- Focus on Vertical Development: Rather than simply adding skills or knowledge (horizontal learning), this approach helps you develop more complex and integrated ways of thinking and acting — a kind of qualitative growth that expands your capacity to lead.
- Mindful Awareness + Developmental Inquiry: Coaching invites you to observe how your internal patterns shape your responses, work through habitual reactions, and open up to new ways of perceiving and responding.
- Strategic Support for Complexity: Leaders operating in volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous environments benefit from this kind of deep, reflective coaching that fosters agility, emotional intelligence, and adaptive thinking.
Typical Engagement Includes
- Regular coaching sessions tailored to your goals and growth edge.
- Continued reflection on meaning-making patterns and developmental leverage points.
- Tools and practices to strengthen self-awareness, resilience, and leadership presence.
Whether you’re looking to work through specific leadership dilemmas, expand your capacity for strategic influence, or cultivate greater confidence and presence, Growth Edge Coaching helps you work on the person doing the job — not just the job itself.
Why This Matters for Leaders
In today’s world — marked by complexity and rapid change — traditional learning and skill accumulation are no longer enough. Leaders must develop vertical capacities: the ability to perceive complexity, manage emotional and cognitive patterns, and respond effectively in ambiguous contexts.
By engaging in Growth Edge Interviews and Coaching, you:
- Surface the unseen narratives and beliefs that drive your behavior.
- Build the capacity to notice and shift habitual patterns of thought and reaction.
- Translate insight into actionable development and leadership impact.
This combination of deep insight and transformational support positions you to lead with greater clarity, authenticity, and effectiveness — not just for yourself, but for the people and systems you serve.
Ready to Explore Your Growth Edge?
Let’s start with a conversation. Schedule a discovery call to explore what support would be most useful right now.