Level 1:   Apprentice

At the first level, you are an apprentice or a student. You have not yet gathered sufficient competences to practice your profession. You may assist your more experienced colleagues or teachers in the execution of their jobs, the main goal of which is not that you realize concrete achievements, but that you learn from your tasks. You may perform some of your activities in simulated work circumstances instead of real ones. Whenever you do work in a real professional context, your primary obligation is not to produce a result but to show your effort and to learn.

Level 2:   Working under supervision

At the second level, you are able to perform your job fully or partially – under supervision. You are the “journeyman,” the beginner who is able to achieve solid results with the aid of experienced colleagues. A typical example in healthcare is the recent medical school graduate who is completing a residency and works under the supervision of a medical specialist.

Level 3:   Working self-directed

At the third level, you are able to bring into practice what you have learned as a self-directed professional. At a practical level, you perform tasks that are in line with the usual demands of your profession. Your vision, your opinions, and your activities are mainly related to your personal expertise, your immediate working environment, and the customary work methods. Creativity is not demanded and generally not even appreciated.

Level 4:   Integrating

At the fourth level, you are able to position your work within a wider context and benefit from that. In the performance of your job, you combine a complex range of topics, work styles, persons, and cultures. You may do this:

• beyond the limits of your own expertise;
• taking into consideration different cultures, value systems, traditions;
• beyond the usual expectations and work methods of your profession; and/or
• in flexibly changing roles, e.g. managing.

Level 5:   Improving

At the fifth level, you are able to design and implement concrete improvements in the work that you and others are doing. You oversee – both at a detailed level and at a systems level – your work and the system within which you perform your professional activities. You evaluate your own work and that of those with whom you cooperate critically, and you estimate the consequences in the widest sense. Based on that, you constantly aim at improving the work to which you contribute, and in doing so, you achieve noticeable results.

Level 6:   Innovating

At the sixth level, you are a source of innovation within your discipline. You introduce new insights into your work, concerning e.g.:

• the goals or targets that have been set;
• the means and methods that are applied;
• the effects of the work; · the scope of those effects in space and time;
• the underlying vision;
• the relations inside and outside of your working environment or your discipline, perhaps even society as a whole.

These innovations are demonstrably present in your professional activities and in their results.

Level 7:   Mastery

At the seventh level, you are prominent within and outside your discipline. Others look up at you and learn from you. You are their role model, their “archetype”. Your inspiring leadership is recognized and accepted by all. Perhaps you have won official awards. Persons such as you are easily recognized at conferences or meetings because when you start talking, everybody else becomes silent and listens.