Michigan Model of Leadership Growth Cycle
Leadership is a set of skills that anyone can learn, and the learning never stops. Wherever we are in our leadership journey, from collaborating with peers to leading from the C-suite, there is always room to grow.
Overview
Growth begins with being open to learning and willing to experiment. By taking small, intentional steps to try new ways of thinking, acting, and working with others, we can continually strengthen our leadership skills. Over time, these small steps build the capabilities we need to become better leaders and create a better world around us.
Your leadership development happens one small micro-move at a time
The MMoL Growth Cycle is a three-step framework that helps you use your everyday work and interactions to gain feedback and insights about your current leadership skills by implementing research-backed micro-moves to achieve growth. Rather than hoping that experience will make you a better leader, the MMoL Growth Cycle helps you use the experiences you’re already having as opportunities to practice, learn, and grow intentionally. It also helps you reflect on what you learn along the way, allowing you to iterate between focused goal setting, real-world practice, and feedback.
Built on decades of research by Michigan Ross Professor Sue Ashford (author of The Power of Flexing), the MMoL Growth Cycle brings active, intentional learning to your experiences. It is a 3-step framework that empowers you to enhance your leadership skills.
The 3-Step Growth Cycle
Growth Cycle
Set the Intent
In leadership development, growth begins with choosing where to focus. Based on your leadership assessments, feedback from others, and your own reflections, you’ll identify one or two leadership skills as places where you want to grow now to lead better.
Rather than trying to improve everything at once, you’ll select a specific growth goal and identify one concrete behavior, one thing you might do differently to make progress on that goal to practice.
Practice Micro-moves
Learning happens through action.
You’ll design a small, realistic experiment (or micro-move) that allows you to practice your chosen behavior in an upcoming leadership situation. Depending on your learning focus, a micro-move might be asking more open-ended questions during a meeting, delegating rather than solving a problem yourself, inviting quieter voices into a discussion, or pausing before responding during conflict.
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s simply to try something new to see if you can lead a bit differently and observe what happens.
Assess & Reflect
Experience alone doesn’t create learning. Reflection does. After trying your micro-move, you’ll take a few minutes to think about what happened. What did you notice? What worked? What surprised you? What felt uncomfortable? What would you do differently next time?
Whenever possible, you’ll also gather feedback from the people around you. Their perspectives often reveal strengths and blind spots that are difficult to see on our own.
Then you’ll start this whole cycle over again. Set an intention, practice a micro-move, assess and reflect. Every cycle builds on the last, allowing your leadership skills to grow one intentional step at a time.
Leadership development isn’t linear. It’s iterative. Each learning cycle provides another opportunity to become a little more effective than you were yesterday.
Growth Hub
Michigan Model of Leadership Growth Hub
Turn assessment insights into real-world action with the MMoL Growth Hub. Input your assessment results to set focused goals, receive suggested micro-moves backed by research in top academic journals, and reflect on feedback to generate your own personalized growth plan.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should I complete the MMoL Growth Cycle?
Leadership is a set of personal and interpersonal skills that can help you achieve your goals and create more thriving relationships across all domains of your life. Improving leadership skills is something anyone can do, just like learning a new language or sport. However, learning leadership skills takes practice, feedback, and dedication. The MMoL Growth Cycle is a framework that helps you coach yourself on a daily basis to do the work needed to accelerate your leadership growth. Doing this work can aid your personal growth and open up doors for you across your life!
Who should complete the MMoL Growth Cycle?
Anyone who wants to develop skills and abilities should engage in the MMoL Growth Cycle framework.
Why is it called the MMoL Growth Cycle?
The term “growth cycle” is used to describe that the process is ongoing and that when we begin to learn a new skill, we are not experts; that the process of learning something new is an adventure, a cycle. We believe that each social interaction you have — be it a dinner with friends, a project team meeting at work, a volunteering event, or a class lecture — offers you the chance to experiment with new leadership behaviors and expand your leadership skills.
When do I use the MMoL Growth Cycle?
You can use the MMoL Growth Cycle whenever you’re motivated to grow—whether something in your current leadership approach isn’t working as well as you’d like or you have a vision for the kind of leader you want to become. Rather than something you need to practice continuously, the Growth Cycle is a flexible framework you can return to when you identify an opportunity to improve, experiment, and grow.
How long does a cycle take?
It is self-paced, but we recommend running one full growth cycle over 2–3 months, testing individual micro-moves for 1–2 weeks at a time.
How do I use this with my team?
Have team members document their micro-moves monthly, share goals during team meetings, and hold short reflection sessions at the end of each month to foster a shared culture of growth.
What research supports this framework?
The MMoL Growth Cycle is based on research on mindful engagement by Sue Ashford and others, the social sciences on behavioral change, coaching best practices, and leadership behavior management research. Example citations for this research are below:
- Ashford, S. J. (2021). The Power of Flexing: How to Use Small Daily Experiments to Create Big Life-Changing Growth. Harper Business.
- Ashford, S. J., & DeRue, D. S. (2012). Developing as a leader: The power of mindful engagement. Organizational Dynamics, 41(2), 146-154.
- Milkman, K. (2021). How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. Penguin/Random House.
- Morgeson, F. P., DeRue, D. S., & Karam, E. P. (2010). Leadership in teams: A functional approach to understanding leadership structures and processes. Journal of Management, 36(1), 5-39.
- Passmore, J., & Fillery-Travis, A. (2011). A critical review of executive coaching research: a decade of progress and what’s to come. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(2), 70-88.
Who can I ask for help?
The Sanger team is available to answer questions over email, Zoom, or meet with you in person. Reach us at [email protected] to let us know how we can be of help!