Deepening Our Understanding of Developmental Assessments Use in Developing Leaders’ Capacity for Complexity

Abstract

In the 25 years or so that I’ve been engaged in the field of developmental psychology, and more specifically as it is applied to leadership, I have observed both my own maturation of understanding the field as well as how the discourse in the field itself is maturing. Part of this process is noticing and participating in how the general practitioner discourse evolves. While this is useful to see and generally healthy, (less mature, overly simplistic applications of these models has never been helpful), at times more empirical work is needed to help clarify distinctions and claims being made in the field. It is in this context that I was eager to read through Aiden M. A. Thornton’s doctoral dissertation.