Dr. Sharon Spano, Executive Coach, Business Strategist, and author of The Pursuit of Time and Money, is driven by a mission to help leaders realize their fullest potential and elevate their impact across business, family, and community.

We learn about Sharon’s journey helping high-performing leaders navigate stress, growth, and transformation through The Awareness Elevation Framework. By guiding them to witness themselves, build awareness, observe patterns, and shift behaviors, Sharon empowers deeper personal and professional growth. In this episode, Sharon unpacks the 12 stages of adult development and reveals why many leaders plateau early—despite external success. We explore how awareness creates lasting change, and how the “emptiness of success” often mirrors one’s inner relationship with time, money, and life.

Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And I have today Dr. Sharon Spano, Executive Coach and Business Strategist, and the author of The Pursuit of Time and Money. As my guest, Sharon, thanks for joining me on the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Steve. I am looking forward to this.

Yeah, I am very curious about what you’re bringing to the table. You have some original ideas on executive coaching and business strategy. But let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice?

Well, that’s a very big question. The “Why” is all about helping people realize their fullest potential. And the reason that it’s so important to me is because I have seen just so much damage across the country and across the world from individuals who have been under poor leadership. And I really believe that leadership is just a very important part of our economy and how businesses are run. And so anything that I can do, the primary focus is to help leaders as I’ve moved into this other stage of my career, really help them discover and uncover some of the things that are holding them back, even though they may be successful. I find there’s always something more that they’re looking for so that they can be better leaders for themselves, their families and their businesses.

Yeah, I think it’s such an overlooked idea that leaders are multipliers. And when you coach a leader and you make them better, then you improve the quality of not just the family, but their employees and the employees, and they are happier then they’re going to help the customers and their family. So it’s a real force multiplier that you do when you coach your leaders the right way. So this podcast is a podcast of frameworks, and I’m always after frameworks, as you know. So I’m wondering about your framework that you could share with us. We talked about a three-stage transition framework for entrepreneurs. I don’t know if that’s the right title for it. Can you talk a little bit about this framework?

I operate, as most of us do, I think, from many frameworks. The primary framework that I use is grounded in human development because I believe that’s a very important part of how we become more effective leaders. Many people don’t understand that the stages of human development are exactly that opportunity. But if we wanted to boil it down to some of the things that you and I talked about, we talked about being able to witness oneself, have that awareness of awareness, and then to look at how to leverage opportunities for growth so that if something is going on in your life, for instance, it might feel like it’s very, very challenging, it is actually an opportunity to move into another stage of development. And then to look at what is the best option to get there, because sometimes, we’re not able to do that on our own.

We need other people to walk alongside of us. And that’s why I believe the coaching profession has grown in the way that it has is that as people are experiencing more and more stress and not understanding what that means in their lives or how to move through it, they often need a professional and sometimes it’s therapy, sometimes it’s just an executive level coach to help walk alongside them as they move through whatever’s going on in their life.

Okay, so is there a framework that you could talk about to help people actually visualize what they need to do exactly? So are there like a three or four step approach that would help people think about, okay, I need to become a better leader. How do I do this? How do I put one foot in front of the other? And how do I start in this process to getting there?

Yeah. I think the first thing is to look at the patterns in your organizational system and also the patterns that you’re seeing within yourself, because those are the flags that tell us there’s something more that needs to be done here. And then to me, the second one is what I alluded to earlier is that to understand there are 12 stages of human development as we know of them today based on research.

The average person in the workforce is at stage four or five so that tells you there’s a great opportunity for growth there. You don’t necessarily have to know about the stages but to know that there is an opportunity for growth. We’re not just stuck at where we are based on our age or even our career choices or outcomes. So to know there are stages, there’s opportunity for growth. Look at the patterns first. And then where is it that I need to grow? Once I look at the patterns, that should give me some clues that, okay, maybe it’s in my interpersonal skills, maybe it’s in my moral capacity, maybe I’m feeling that emptiness of success that I often talk about, So I need some spiritual development. We look at six lines of spiritual development in my work as well. And then to develop the awareness.

And that in my work is teaching people how to witness themselves in the moment, which takes some practice and why you need someone to walk alongside you through that process, so that I can really see myself in the moment and the kinds of things that I’m doing. Most of that is at a subconscious level. So when I develop the awareness of awareness, then the final piece is I am able to make different or healthier choices once I have that deeper understanding of what it is that I’m about and what it is that I’m doing that is working for me versus what’s not working for me.

Okay, that’s really interesting. So let’s unpack this for a moment. So one of the things that you talk about is witnessing yourself. So how does a person witness themselves?

We don’t do that. So, let me tell you how it looks for most of us, and then I’ll tell you how you learn to do it. Most of us have an awareness, let’s say, after the fact. Let’s say we get impatient in a meeting with one of our employees or a superior even. And then after the fact, we recollect, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I did that again. And we feel bad. We go into regret or remorse or shame or whatever. The process of learning to witness yourself is a very high level skill. And it’s about really expanding consciousness. So what I do with clients is we develop obviously a full program, but then within that context I have practices that are customized that I write for each one, each client specific to whatever’s going on with them and the topic and objectives that we’ve agreed upon.

So I might, for instance, if I have a client, here’s a good example. If I have a client who’s very intense, as I did some years ago, that she was in marketing and the boss said, I’m going to fire her because she’s got her nose in every department’s business and she’s too aggressive and she was just a big personality. So we got to the root of what that was about for her. And then like her very first practice as an example was I asked her to just observe herself throughout the course of the day, one or two moments where she kind of felt herself getting intense. But I didn’t have her do that in the heat of the day in meetings, that would have been too much. I had her notice, how does she get her kids up for school in the morning? How does she load the dishwasher? How does she talk to her husband?

And what she started to see, it came back to me that even the very first week was, oh my God, I’m so intense all day long. I’m so high strung everywhere I go. And then we built upon those observations, eventually moving into the meeting space where she started to see how domineering and aggressive she was at every meeting. And then typically once someone starts to witness themselves in the moment, they’re able to make those changes in the moment. Eventually, they stop those behaviors altogether once they realize that it no longer serves them or the people around them.

Okay, that’s really interesting. So just go through the day and if you have identified something or someone helped you identify something that is maybe holding you back, then you just stop yourself and say, okay, what am I doing here? Am I exhibiting this? And why I might be doing it? That’s fascinating. And then basically, you create the awareness and self-awareness and then you can do something about it.

And that’s an oversimplification even as I’m stating it because again most people do not have awareness of their behavior as problematic. I find at least with most of my clients that we tend to think it’s the other guy’s fault because basically the way we are wired as human beings is what we call a first-person perspective. I’m only able to see my point of view. So, it takes a lot of work to expand consciousness to where I can have a second, third, fourth, even fifth-person perspective and see beyond my own point of view. But that is part of the developmental trajectory and why this work is so important and so different because we’re not just coaching for goals. We’re coaching for developmental growth, which is a completely different approach.

Yeah, I love that. So people witness themselves, then you help create the awareness, and then how do they actually get going from there? What is the process? Let’s say I realize I’m intense, I’m packing the dishwasher, I’m slamming some plates in, and I’m kind of very curt with my wife. I realize, oh, wow, I should not be doing this. How do I get out of this habit?

Well, a lot of times, once you have awareness, I always say awareness is the first opportunity for change. So with my clients, I’m not even suggesting or dictating the change. I’m just helping them. I’m creating the container for them to witness. And then we work through it. They report the patterns back to me. And in reporting the patterns, they start to change automatically. If there’s areas where there’s trauma, and often there is trauma in the background, then we have to do another layer of work to deal with that trauma. And there’s many different ways that I do that because all of my work is trauma-informed. But if they’re on their own and trying, they’re only going to probably get so far.

Because again, if you don’t have a trained professional that can see what you’re not able to see and hear what you’re not able to hear, you’re only going to go so far. So I like to think of the developmental stages, the 12 of them, like a mountain, even though it’s not a hierarchy in the traditional sense. If you imagine stage one is a baby in a crib and all that baby can see is their fist and they don’t even know it’s their own fist for a long time. But as you expand consciousness, you have, let’s say now you’re at the top of that mountain, and imagine on a clear day you can see seven states from there. You have a much broader awareness and a much broader understanding.  We know that people do not move into the later stages of development unless they do a significant amount of work, and it can take probably anywhere from a year to two years to move to a later stage. The idea, Steve, is not necessarily to move to a later stage, but to live the most robust experience of life at whatever stage you’re at.

I find most often if people, for instance, entrepreneurs often fall at what we call the achiever stage, where they’re chasing time and money and all the accolades and all the things that all of us as entrepreneurs even look for, then as they move on, sometimes that’s where that emptiness of success comes in is now I have all that, but what does it really mean? And I’m working extra hard to keep the machine running and I’m feeling very sad or anxious or depressed. Often that means they’re leaning into another stage and they’re wanting something different or more. And that’s where I think they’re wise to seek out a developmental coach or if they have severe trauma in the background, which many do, then even more extreme measures depending on the nature of the trauma.

Okay. So that’s very interesting. So basically there are 12 stages of development and to expand consciousness.

Yes.

And then you are on a certain stage, you’re not aware where you are, but with coaching you can figure that out. And then your solution may just be to have a more robust life in whatever stage you are. You become aware of what you’re missing at later stages. So you want to get to the next stage and then you want to work on this. But it’s kind of optional whether some people want to go there, some people don’t want to go there.

Yeah, and the other thing that we say about stage development that I think is important to understand is that we say everything transcends and includes, means it goes with us. So even that shadow side of us, that dark side of us, if we’re not doing the work, we might advance to another stage, but we’re bringing all that dark side with us. So, we want to do that work around those elements that are not serving us so that as we advance, we’re healthier. And I like to compare it to an infant because we’ve all been infants or been around infants. And so when we talk about development, I always say, easiest way to think about it is a baby does not forget to crawl when they learn to walk, when he or she learns to walk. They just crawl less and less often. So we bring everything along with us as we advance, good, bad, and ugly. The point is to perhaps do something that allows us to bring more of the healthier side along.

So why would someone not want to advance to the next stage or to higher stages? What would be the good reason for that?

Well, there is no real reason not to want to advance. I think that the thing is that most people don’t even know about the stages. So they hit a wall in their career or their life. Maybe they go through a divorce or something happens and this is when I get them, they think, oh my God, my life is over. Something terrible is going on and I’m a failure. And it’s like, no, no, this moment, sometimes we grow the most through our suffering or through the negative events ‘cause we learn if we’re looking, we grow when we look to make meaning out of what has happened to us. And that’s, again, sometimes where we need a professional because all we can see is, oh my gosh, this terrible thing has happened to me.

I’ve lost a bunch of money or my wife left me or my kids are on drugs or whatever. The stages are just a way that we talk about the expansion of awareness and consciousness, meaning I understand things differently. And there’s a great amount of peace that comes into being in the later stages because you have more wisdom, you have more patience, you have more compassion, more love, if you’ve done the work to get rid of that shadow side of yourself.

Yeah, no, no, I get it. And I’m just reading a book and it talks about the friction that you need to have in order to be able to work on yourself. If you have a very easy life, then you have no raw material to work with. It’s a fascinating topic. But what I’m curious about is that they’ve worked with you, they realize that they’re at a certain stage, they have the awareness, you help them find the awareness of it, and now they are aware that there are other stages. Why would someone not want to get there? That’s kind of what I’m wondering.

Yeah. I’ve not met anyone that once they know about the stages, don’t want to get there, and even if they don’t know about the stages, they want something more in their lives. They’re trying to figure out what that more is or how to get that more even if they know it. I don’t think it’s a question of not wanting to. I think it’s a question of not knowing that human development is available to us. I mean, here’s how I think about it, Steve. It wasn’t that long ago that we used to think people didn’t develop or mature beyond the age of 21. And we were basing that on the frontal cortex of the brain, because that is about that.

It’s a little different for men than women, but that’s when that frontal cortex fully develops in the human brain. But if you think about it, that’s really kind of ridiculous. Because we continue to have all these life experiences after 21. So we’re going to either grow or we’re going to regress. And people that get stuck in the earlier stages, I mean like the adolescent stages, what we refer to as the pre-conventional or conventional stages, they are often so traumatized, or there might be a drug addiction, for instance, that keeps them kind of stuck developmentally. Our prisons are full, unfortunately, of human beings. When I wrote the book on the pursuit of time and money, I did it looking through the lens of the stages. And we know that people in the earlier stages, they don’t have the ability, literally do not have the ability to see the ramifications of their actions in terms of time and money.

It’s instant gratification kind of thing. And so that alone, if you’re having trouble with time and money, that’s something to look at, to tell you there’s an opportunity for growth there. Because as you mature, you should be able to see further out in terms of time. I should be able to see, well, if I do this, this is going to impact me the next five, ten years. And also with respect to my use and appreciation and responsibility around money.

Okay, so we’re going to talk in 30 seconds about your book, The Pursuit of Time and Money, but I’d like to just ask a final question on what you mentioned about the emptiness of success. So why do people get to feel the emptiness of success and how does that connect to the pursuit of time and money? And then also please share with us why you decided to write this book.

I decided to write it because what I saw with my clients was people either had a lot of time and no money or a lot of money and no time because they were working so much. So I was curious about that. So the emptiness of success comes to what I mentioned earlier is you acquire a lot, particularly the achiever stage. That’s what that stage is all about. As I said, your entrepreneurs land. Expert stages before that, it’s not necessarily directly correlated, but we see a lot of people like your financial advisors, engineers, people of that nature in that stage before the achiever. But often they just get to a point where they have all the degrees, the clients, the money, the house, the cars, all of that.

And then again, something is missing. And so I wanted to explore that through the lens of developmental stages in time and money. And we saw very interesting things in that early research. And one of the most interesting was that moderate scarcity and moderate abundance looked the same in terms of the things people were saying and doing. The difference was that the moderate scarcity, they were making fear-based decisions rather than sensible decisions for the future or whatever. So it’s very complicated and hard to talk about in a few seconds, but I hope I answered your question there.

Yeah. So basically, they feel like they achieved the success they set out to achieve, but it doesn’t feel as good as they thought it would feel because it’s just not enough to have the money, but you also have to have meaning and there are lots of layers there. So tell me a little bit about the book, The Pursuit of Time and Money. How does it help people? So, let’s say I reach this, I feel this emptiness, I’m financially abundant, but I don’t have friends, or I don’t have good relationships or I don’t know why I’m doing this in the first place. Whatever it is, what does it do for me if I read this book? How is it going to change me?

Well, what I did in the book was I made the correlation between the abstract and concrete nature of time and money. We don’t talk about the two of them and how really intertwined they are often. But what I found was that people have issues with time, they often have issues with money. So we did some work around that, and then I break it down into the stages and how each stage, there were categories that came out of the initial research, and we kind of help helping people see, for instance, generosity is one but each of the stages look at generosity differently. What is responsibility look like? And then I have reflective practices at the end of each chapter so you can really start to look at, well, how is this showing up for me? Another aspect that was very important in the book was giving people a chance to understand that how you use your time and money in relation to the people in your life really tells them how you value them. Am I giving my children my time? Am I hoarding my money?

For instance, we had a gentleman that came, he was moderate scarcity, which was a great example in that he was doing the right things, saving for retirement for him and his wife, but he was so worried about retirement, which was like 30, 40 years out, I can’t remember exactly that he wouldn’t even take his kids on vacation or to Disneyland. And they lived in the Disneyland LA, Southern California area, which to me is missing the point. If you’re making those kinds of fear-based decisions and you’re not even enjoying your life, you’re saving for something. That’s a good thing, but maybe for many of the wrong reasons. So those were some of the things that we looked at in the book.

The other thing, Steve, I want to say for your listeners is that we have developed a moderate quiz because the way we look at where people are in terms of their stages is very complicated. The assessment is complicated and it’s quite expensive. So I developed a quiz that looks at the six major stages that most people in the workforce are in. And it also has input in the report around your propensity for time and money use and experiences. They can go to that or we’ll have also your podcast and everything on a specific page on my website. And that is sharonspano.com/managementblueprint. And if they go there, they can take that quiz and also the podcast that you and I are doing today will be there as well.

Okay, fantastic. So we’ve got it already in place. We’re going to put it on the show notes as well, so people can just click on it and find it, but definitely through your website as well. So, let me ask you kind of more of a general question, which is not connected to your work directly, but you’ve worked with a lot of entrepreneurs and you see how they operate and what are the good decisions, the bad decisions they make. What do you consider the most important question for any entrepreneur to ask themselves?

Well, that’s a great question. I think, because again, everything I do is so customized and dependent on what’s going on with the individual. But maybe it’s about asking, am I being the most effective leader/human being that I could be? Meaning not just in my business or my work, but for my family, because I see that disconnect every day. And it’s a great concern to me that we are losing families for the sake of our businesses. And I would like to see high impact leaders be well-rounded and that their life is integrated in such a way. I’m not one that believes in work-life balance, but integrated in such a way that they’re fulfilled in every area of their life is integrated in such a way.

I’m not one that believes in work-life balance, but integrated in such a way that they’re fulfilled in every area of their life. So if you’re not feeling that, like I run into a lot of people who are, they don’t know how to connect with their kids now. And we literally, like, I don’t have a relationship with my children. Well, then that’s an area that we might focus on in our work together if that’s something the client wants. So I don’t think you have to sacrifice your family for your business, I guess is what I’m saying. And if it feels that way, then maybe some things need to be recalibrated.

Yeah. I always felt like it’s the easy thing to just focus on a single thing and neglect everything else. That’s kind of a cop-out. Because of course we can be better than others if you’re just simply focused on one thing. But life is more of a marathon than a sprint and you have to keep more plates in the air to have long-term success, which is very difficult. So before we wrap this up, Sharon, I’d like you to just run through the 12 stages of development. So what are the 12 stages?

The names of them? Okay, well.

Yeah, whatever short way you can.

I mean, that’s a very big question because there are many. The first one is like Conformis, there’s Expert, Achiever, then we go into Pluralist, there’s Construct Aware, that’s not all of them. And then there’s Illumined. I mean, I don’t remember them all, but the ones I’m focusing on most of the time are Expert, Achiever, Pluralist, and Construct Aware. The earlier stages are babies. That’s the very, very early stages from like infancy to adolescence, the first four. And then from there on, it’s kind of anyone could be anywhere as adults. But the final two, we don’t really have people in the workforce that we know of that’s like 1%. Think of like the Dalai Lama or someone like that, way up there. Jesus might be way up there.

Construct Aware is about 5% of the population as we know now based on the research. And I did have a client years ago that was a pluralist. She was an attorney, which surprised me. So each one has different perspectives and things that matter to them, which is what I go on in the book. So for instance, with money, again, I mentioned the Achiever is chasing money. But when someone gets into the later stages, like Construct Aware, where the 5% of the population are, it’s more about they think of money at that stage as in service to humanity. So they want less, want less toys, jewelry, they’re going to be more of a minimalist and thinking more about the greater good. One is not wrong or better than the other, it’s just different.

Yeah. So it feels like it’s all about the consciousness of the person growing over time. And first, you’re just a conformist. I mean, I can see in companies, people join in the company and they don’t experience and they just want to follow blueprints. They want to be told what to do and be accepted that they are doing what they need to do. And then as they develop their expertise, then they develop more autonomy. And over time, they start to manage people and then they start to lead people and then they have to think about the bigger context of the organization as the ranks and the CEO is thinking about the annual plan. And then maybe an entrepreneur that has multiple businesses, they are thinking about the industry and the impact and then you become a statesman, then you can think about the generations and stuff like that.

But you can still be at those levels thinking of all those things and still be at an early stage. That’s the interesting piece is that often the earlier stages are more concrete in their thinking. Like I’ve seen this in the United States right now. I believe our leadership for the country is very concrete, achiever stage, and not necessarily thinking about the rippling effect of actions on the global. They’re not able to think globally, where people in the later stages are much more likely to be abstract thinkers and have consciousness and understand the rippling effect of one action on many, many others versus just what I want. So it’s very interesting because I think it’s happening around the world. It’s almost a backlash.

We’re moving into more autocratic leadership, which is seemingly more egocentric and concrete in nature than what you might see of someone who years ago we used to talk about teal organizations and they were organizations that were the opposite of autocratic. They would be more flat, less hierarchical, more input from the masses kind of thing. So who knows where all this is going to land, but my job is one person at a time because I feel like if I can help one leader be more effective in his role as a leader, but also in his personal life, then the rippling effect of that is generations because we know now from the field of epigenetics that trauma is generational. So if I can help be an interruption to that, I feel like it’s worth the effort.

Yeah, we have to make the difference that we are positioned to make and make the most of what we have. So I totally agree with you. And it’s just a fascinating topic and we could take this to different directions and make it much bigger. So I love the frameworks that you shared about witnessing yourself and creating the awareness and observing the patterns and working through some trauma potentially and make some changes in our lives and try to get to the higher level of consciousness and development. So if you would like to learn more about Dr. Sharon Spano, then check out her website and her LinkedIn page. So Sharon, can you share your website?

Yeah, it’s easy. It’s just my name, sharonspano.com. And then for the assessment that I mentioned, it would be /managementblueprint specific to this. I’m going back to your first question, just quickly would say that quiz, we’re looking at the center of gravity, meaning the higher percentage of which stage you’re in. But we also give you a report that shows you all of them of the six, not all 12. And it tells you specific things that you could do for the other two that you are also, ‘cause you’re never just in one, but you are, you do have a center of gravity. So, it gives an opportunity to take that first part of the framework and develop some awareness.

That’s awesome. So, definitely check it out. sharonspano.com/managementblueprint. That’s that’s easy. And check out the six stages where you are, what you can do. And if you want to do further work, then reach out to Sharon on LinkedIn or through our website. Well, thank you very much, Sharon, for coming and sharing your wisdom on the development stages and witnessing ourselves and creating more awareness of becoming a better leader. And if you enjoyed the show, then stay tuned because every week we have a great entrepreneur or subject matter expert sharing the knowledge that can help you as a business owner. So thanks for coming and thank you for listening.