6
Maturity:
An essential factor for leadership
Hello! Our daily discussions about the scarcity of qualified professionals and the challenge of developing young professionals for leadership — a scenario currently being faced by all organizations — have led us to further investigations. In this process we have identified an essential factor that impacts the performance of professionals: maturity. Technical competence, intelligence and focus are no longer enough. Being a good leader also requires maturity. So how can we stimulate behaviors related to this factor so that professionals are able to handle more complex situations? In this sixth volume of the pocket, you will learn an overview of these issues and the process of development acceleration that presents maturity as an especially valuable trait for the job of leader.
Enjoy!
Maturity What is maturity? According to the most common interpretation, psychological maturity is equivalent to the degree of an individual’s adaptation to his or her own surroundings. For example, when a student arrives at a university, he isn’t very seasoned and can display attitudes that are inappropriate to the environment. But after experiencing a series of situations, he becomes more responsible, begins to reflect before making decisions and better understands the environment and the people around him. Maturity conveys the idea of developing from a starting point to a more advanced stage, which is acquired through active learning and meaningful experiences that lead to a more developed state of competency and ability.
But what qualities reflect maturity? Which are perceived as most important? Can these traits be learned? And, more to the point, what indicators of maturity reflect the qualities that are essential for effective leadership? Maturity involves being conscious of the right time and moment to act, and how to act appropriately according to the situation. To be mature means to be responsible, flexible, resilient and consistent — attitudes that we manifest socially. It’s the way a person responds to circumstances that indicates maturity. This response is generally learned rather than being determined by one’s life stage. Although there is a natural
maturity curve throughout life, this is not a rule. Regardless of age, maturity is related to selfawareness, interpersonal style, conscious concerns, adaptability, and so on. This is why younger people may also express maturity, for example in being inspiring, communicative and empathetic, in exercising a natural authority and even in showing an ability to lead more experienced colleagues, whom they should supposedly consult about their decisions. In short, maturity is closely associated with the capacity to adapt and to change one’s own attitudes when necessary and appropriate.
Gough Mead
Freud
Roberts, Caspi & Moffitt
Hogan & Roberts
Gitlow
Jung Maslow Rogers
Allport
Loevinger Clausen
Hyatt & Hyatt
What the
scholars say 1923 S. Freud
Maturity is based on performance and the characteristics that define it are observable by others. Freud defines maturity as the ability to love and work.
1934 G. H. Mead
Mature people have high levels of role-taking ability: to think about themselves from the point of view of others. Mead suggests that our preoccupation with the way others assess us shapes our internal psychological dynamics. It focuses on public consequences and not private experiences.
Jung, Maslow, Rogers
They define maturity en terms of selfrealization — the full realization of the latent potentials within us (internal).
1961 G. Allport
Maturity involves tolerance, the capacity to develop and maintain close relationships and have self-perception. Allport describes a mature person as resilient, unselfish and able to laugh at himself.
1966
H.G. Gough
Social Maturity Index self-assessment scale derived from the California Psychological Inventory (CPI), which measures effective social functioning.
1976 J. Loevinger
Ego development refers to the various stages of development characterized by degree of complexity of thought, regulatory control and the perspective with which the individual identifies himself in relation to the world.
1992 A. Gitlow
Psychological maturity as a critical necessity for effective leadership.
1993 J. Clausen
The hypothesis of maturity proposes that the traits of systematic competence indicate higher levels of a consistent personality in adulthood.
2001 B. W. Roberts, A. Caspi & T. Moffitt
Maturity as a combination of three factors of the Big Five *: friendliness, conscientiousness and emotional stability. *A model that identifies five key personality traits.
2004 R. Hogan & B. W. Roberts
Maturity is defined from two perspectives: how people feel about themselves and how others feel about them. Maturity is related to performance capabilities: to form lasting relationships and achieve career goals.
2007 L. Hyatt & C. Hyatt
Emotional Maturity (EM) is the desire and ability to use and apply knowledge and understanding in an appropriate and productive way. That is, to take responsibility and direct one’s own behavior, which involves skill and commitment.
Organizational maturity Based on concepts developed by Watts Humphrey, considered the leading expert in improving the quality and productivity of software in organizations, the organizational maturity model, initially focused on technology, has been extended to management and leadership practices. Most of the maturity models define five levels of evolution that organizations go through as they gain skills on each level. The degree of organizational maturity shows the companies’ capacity for execution, how they utilize people, processes, tools and products and what their management and leadership is like, in order to create opportunities for improvement. According to these principles, in a mature organization repeated practices become the norm, and there is a diminishing trend of “individual acts of heroism.� The higher the maturity level of an organization, the more competitive it will be.
Maturity Leadership Fundamentally, because there is no recipe, leadership is a complex issue that consists of internalizing and practicing certain specific management skills. In general, there is an inherent progression for mastering these skills through a series of personal and professional experiences. Two basic factors contribute to the ability to exercise the role of a leader: self-awareness and managing relationships with others. Both are related to adaptability, a quality that allows us to respond appropriately to the demands of the moment. Without these attributes, the leader’s ability is impaired.
In this sense, leadership is directly related to emotional balance, to having control over one’s emotions and being able to channel them in useful ways — this is having maturity. That is, an essential skill for leaders to work constructively with people, while at the same time dealing with the pressure of the problems they face. Therefore it is essential that they continually assess their personal skills within the social context and learn to correct weaknesses. Furthermore, it is important to make themselves available to expand their own parameters based on new information, and to accept and acknowledge other people’s differences as something to be valued.
However, in leadership the path to maturity is rarely straightforward and clear. The competencies in leadership models do not follow a sequence or have a natural progression. Often the steps to developing a competency are irregular and spaced far apart. In any case, to develop these skills it is essential to have opportunities to be exposed to experiences consistent with the role of leader. It is this exposure that allows the learning process to settle and new behaviors to be assimilated. Briefly, a good leader has certain abilities — such as reflecting on oneself, being tolerant to frustration and stress, being observant and receptive to change and learning — that are related to maturity in leadership performance.
Emotional maturity While many companies recognize a lack of life experience in their young talents and future leaders, it should be taken into consideration that some people indicate an emotional maturity when displaying certain behaviors, such as: • A predisposition to be always alert to the complexity of actual problems. • Being open to other people’s points of view. • Being aware of one’s personal inclinations as well as other people’s styles.
Categories of
developing maturity The degree of maturity can be identified from behavioral characteristics observable in individuals. They are traits that can be learned or refined. According to psychologist B.W. Roberts, these characteristics should be analyzed from the standpoint of the individual (self) with the perspective of the speakers, those with whom they interact (heteroperception). This means that maturity must be perceived based not only on internal characteristics, but on how others see the person. Thus, how individuals see themselves is no more legitimate than the way others see them. Somehow, the level of maturity ends up being associated with
perception and the reputation that someone reaches socially. Maturity also has to do with how the person deals with difficult and stressful situations, because in these moments the person’s
The indicators of maturity are divided into three categories:
actual ability to respond may be observed. Another way to tell if a person is mature to consider is his capacity for solving problems rationally and logically, discussing them with common sense.
Self-
Awareness
Awareness of
Others
Awareness of the
Organization
Selfawareness Emotional stability the ability to regulate one’s own actions in the social context, with balance and emotional intelligence, and maintain harmony among opposing emotional forces.
Self-awareness The ability to reflect on oneself and recognize personal limitations and characteristics.
Self-confidence The ability to trust oneself and act with self-assurance.
Stress Tolerance The ability to stay calm and not fall apart in stressful situations.
Awareness of Others Empathy The ability to put oneself in another’s place, to be influenced, and to accept other people’s points of view when thinking about oneself or one’s own behavior.
Social skills The ability to interact with people, to mix and participate in group life and take the codes of familiarity into consideration.
Use of power and authority The ability to have control or exercise a top position with balance, respecting the conditions of such a right.
Flexibility The ability to compromise and be flexible in adverse situations.
Awareness of the Organization Diplomacy and tact The ability to negotiate with skill and sensitivity in order to maintain good relationships with others.
Responsibility The ability to accept the demands of one’s role and to commit, taking responsibility to do what must be done.
Openness to change The ability to adapt and respond positively to changes in plans or unexpected turnabouts in situations.
Political wisdom The ability to proceed rightly and build good human relationships in order to achieve desired results.
k
y rit tu
ma
desired
ins ac tigat fas tive e exp t t learn erien rac ing ces
y Maturitto r a ic d in
actual
e rv cutored) e ur ni
o na(tnot m
time
Source: LAB SSJ
Is it possible to
accelerate maturity? To advance levels of maturity means to stimulate the growth and effectiveness of practices and principles that support the achievement of organizational objectives. In other words, it means to accelerate development - which presupposes intense, guided learning situations. Therefore, the acceleration of maturity should ideally be done through a monitored development process. Initially, a 360-degree assessment of indicators of maturity is made to help the person broaden his vision of himself and his context. From the results, it is possible to select which indicators need to be
worked on. On this basis, actions for development are defined in a joint project among the participants, managers and those responsible for the process (sponsors). It is a strategy that facilitates the transformation of potential talents into more mature professionals and encourages them to develop poise and skills congruent with the organization’s guidelines. At the end of the maturity acceleration process, one expects to determine whether the professional, according to his development, will be able to meet the challenges of leadership.
In summary, the purpose of maturity acceleration is to activate development by means of three parallel processes:
Self-knowledge
| Knowing oneself.
A realistic understanding of oneself is a basic condition for identifying and reflecting on how individual attitudes and behaviors interfere with professional and personal results. This process facilitates building skills that enhance interactions with others. Essentially, the awareness of individual traits enables the fast track for oneself.
Experience | Going through experiences that enable learning through practice. To acquire maturity, experience plays an important role. Many of the attributes of maturity are developed through experience: creating projects, observing others, reading, etc. This is why professionals should be exposed to practical activities that stimulate the skills they want.
Guidance
| Having the guidance of more experienced.
Specific competencies based on emotional balance do not necessarily arise from life experience. Professionals motivated to improve their maturity can do it if given the right information, guidance and support.
Identify Challenges
Final Assessment Maturity
Development Process
FTM360o
Fast Track Maturity 速
FTM 360o , an assessment originally developed by LAB SSJ, is a tool that provides clarity to stimulate the development of professionals through a detailed analysis of behavioral trends that indicate strong points and opportunities for development.
Benefits of maturity acceleration:
It is measurable It accelerates development It promotes two- way development (manager/employee) It clarifies the employee’s objectives about the company’s function and goals It creates a culture of development It encourages team performance
Creating the Company’s Future Accelerating learning in a fast track development is one way to produce change, by using guided and flexible practices linked to ongoing learning. This learning should be based on considerations of what has been achieved and what the process was for overcoming challenges. The goal is to equip people to take on more complex roles and create opportunities that make it possible to exercise the skills acquired, since in a sense, personal development is related to organizational development.
“
The measure of our intellectual maturity is the ability to feel increasingly dissatisfied with our response to major problems.
Gordon Allport
�
Bibliography COOK-GREUTER, S. R. Ego Development: Nine Levels of Increasing Embrace. Psychology Center, 2005. GOUGH, H. G. Testing for leadership with the California Psychological Inventory. In: Measures of Leadership, 355-379. Leadership Library of America, 1990. HOGAN, R. & ROBERTS, B. W. A Socioanalytic Model of Maturity. Journal of Career Assessment, vol. XX, 10, 1-11, 2004. McALLISTER, L. A Practical Guide to CPI Interpretation. CPP - Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., 1996. MARCUM, D. & SMITH, S. O Fator Ego. Sextante, 2009.
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