The Emergence Indicator™
If your C-suite is made of brilliant leaders—but still not operating as one—this reveals why.
In every C-suite, subtle patterns shape how trust, ownership, and momentum rise—or quietly stall. This diagnostic surfaces these patterns—calmly, clearly, without judgment.
Especially powerful for CEOs who sense their team’s potential—but can’t quite unlock it.
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Why It Matters.
The most frustrating issues at the C-suite level aren’t obvious.
They’re subtle.
The room is full of talent—yet strategy drags.
Conversations stay polite—while real risks surface too late.
Accountability fades at the edges—and no one can quite name why.
It’s not dysfunction.
It’s drift.
The slow erosion of alignment, ownership, and enterprise momentum.
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What It Unlocks.
The Emergence Indicator™ surfaces the pattern behind that drift—so hidden tensions can surface—and natural strengths can take their place.
This diagnostic is grounded in the philosophy behind Soaring Beyond Midlife: The Surprisingly Natural Emergence of Leadership Superpowers in Life’s Second Half—that leadership in life’s second half isn’t built. It emerges.
At midlife, leaders begin to access deeper capacities: humility, courage, patience, perspective. But these qualities don’t always show up at the team level—especially when unseen dynamics are in the way.
The Emergence Indicator™ brings those dynamics to light—so the shift already underway in each leader can begin to take shape collectively.
Not through intervention. But through insight.
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When to Use It.
Right before a strategic offsite.
Ahead of a major shift.
Or when something just feels off—and you can’t quite put your finger on it.
The Emergence Indicator™ meets that moment with calm precision—so you can see what’s shifting beneath the surface, before it starts to show above it.
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How It Works.
Each executive completes a short, confidential reflection (5–10 minutes). Responses are synthesized into a clear, visual Emergence Indicator™ report, followed by a one-hour debrief with the CEO.
Responses surface patterns across five core conditions of enterprise-level leadership.
Collective Leadership – Do we lead as one when it matters most?
Enterprise Ownership – Do we put the whole ahead of our part?
Unfiltered Conversations – Do we speak the hard truths, early and often?
Decisive Execution – Do we move together—clearly and with resolve?
Adaptive Capacity – Do we reshape ourselves fast enough to meet what's next?
The result? A shared map of what’s working, what’s missing, and what’s quietly holding the team back.
Want to see what this looks like in practice?
Download a full, anonymized Emergence Indicator™ report—based on real data from a C-suite team navigating trust, alignment, and enterprise ownership.
Overview: The Five Conditions of Enterprise Leadership.
A snapshot of how one C-suite team experiences trust, ownership, and momentum across five essential domains.
Excerpt from an actual Emergence Indicator™ report — anonymized.
Each box shows the average (1 = Never, 3 = Sometimes, 5 = Always); lines show the full range across the team. Colors signal strength: red for areas holding the team back, orange for uneven habits, green for consistent strengths.
In this team, Adaptive Capacity scores lowest (1.7), signaling hesitations in stopping projects or shifting priorities quickly enough to stay competitive. Unfiltered Conversations is also low (2.0), suggesting discomfort with offering or receiving feedback.
No domain emerges as a clear strength.
With all scores clustering below 3.0, the deeper risk is drift—a slow erosion of alignment, adaptability, and decision velocity that rarely triggers crisis, but quietly undermines execution.
This is the kind of data CEOs often feel, but rarely get to see.
Zooming In: One of Five Domains — Enterprise Ownership.
Most executive teams say they prioritize the enterprise—but the data often tells a more complex story.
Visual excerpt from the same Emergence Indicator™ report.
Each dot is one leader’s voice—revealing how ownership is (or isn’t) held across the team.
This sample shows how unspoken tensions can fragment ownership and quietly stall enterprise momentum. The spread of responses—ranging from 1 to 4, clustered in red and orange—highlights inconsistent ownership of enterprise trade-offs across the team. Functional interests may be competing with collective accountability, sending a quiet message that defending the enterprise is optional when pressure mounts.
Over time, this pattern risks escalation, hesitation, and weakened confidence in strategic cohesion—raising a deeper question: When the pressure hits, who defends the whole—and who defends their lane?
Every C-suite runs on dynamics few ever name.
The Emergence Indicator™ brings them clearly into view—through real data and simple, powerful visuals—so your team can move forward as one.
