Six faces
Choices, Principles, Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual—each a developable domain of leadership practice.
The Super-Cube® Leadership Model
A multidimensional framework for developable leadership.
Six human-centric constructs form the faces of a cube. The individual—you—stands at the centre. Leadership capacity radiates outward from personal practice to organisational and network impact.
Definition & purpose
Built for complex environments—starting with the person.
The Super-Cube® Leadership Model is a multidimensional, human-centric leadership skills development framework. Its purpose is to build leadership capacity at individual, organisational, and network levels—enabling leaders to navigate distinctive business environments marked by growth, talent abundance alongside skills shortages, and institutional complexity.
Developed in 2020 by Craig Ross Muller as the core output of his Doctor of Business Administration thesis at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the model was empirically shaped within an African FMCG business-network and is among the first frameworks of its kind validated in that context.
Choices
- Decision-making intelligence
- Moral values
- Judgement
- Risk-taking
Principles
- Ethical foundations
- Contextual awareness
- Situational judgement
- Governance
Mental
- Cognitive intelligence
- Strategic thinking
- Problem-solving
- Vision
- Knowledge application
Spiritual
- Purpose
- Meaning
- Faith
- Transcendence
- Spiritual intelligence
Emotional
- Emotional intelligence
- Empathy
- Social relationships
- Motivation
- Inspiration
Physical
- Physical health
- Energy management
- Fitness
- Nutrition
- Bodily resilience
Drag to rotateDrag to rotate · Shift+drag for spin · Choices top · Principles bottom
Cubic structure
Geometry that teaches balance.
The cube is not decoration—it is a teaching tool. Six faces, one centre, continuous interdependence. Leadership begins with you, then expands through the people and systems you touch.
You at the centre
Personal agency is non-negotiable. Meaningful capacity cannot emerge without deliberate investment in the individual first.
Outward radiation
Growth begins personally, then extends to family, friends, colleagues, community, and wider society—and, in organisations, from one person to industry scale.
ChoicesPrinciplesMentalEmotionalPhysicalSpiritual
Expanding leadership circles
From you at the centre, outward.
The geometry of Super-Cube® is personal first: you develop the six faces. That capacity does not stay private—it radiates into the circles of life where leadership is actually lived.
1You
2Family
3Friends
4Colleagues
5Society
How leadership radiates
- 1
You
Centre
You stand at the centre of the cube. Personal leadership—agency, character, and deliberate practice—is the non-negotiable starting point.
- 2
Family
Closest circle
Leadership first shows up at home: trust, care, boundaries, and example. Those who know you best feel your six faces daily.
- 3
Friends
Chosen bonds
Peers and friends are where influence, loyalty, and courage are practised—without a job title. Your leadership circle expands through relationship.
- 4
Colleagues
Work & teams
Teams, organisations, and professional networks: decisions, principles, energy, and purpose scale into shared performance.
- 5
Society
Wider world
Community, industry, and the common good. Leadership that began with you becomes culture—networks, institutions, and impact beyond the self.
Philosophy
I–Thou, Ubuntu, and the whole person.
Super-Cube® is philosophically grounded in Martin Buber’s I–Thou philosophy—mutual respect and encounters between equals who recognise each other’s psychological, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual attributes—and in the African philosophy of Ubuntu: personhood-in-relation (I am because we are), human dignity, and shared becoming.
Leadership is framed as a process that values people as multidimensional “Thous” rather than objects—capable of leading and following in different contexts. Ken Wilber’s AQAL (All Quadrant All Level) integral approach further holds interior and exterior, individual and collective dimensions together. This human-centric stance underpins every construct and every level of application.
Learning theory
How development actually happens.
Content
Knowledge, skills, understanding, values, and feelings—primarily cognitive foundations for each construct.
Incentive
Intrinsic motivation, interest, and emotional engagement that make growth stick.
Interaction
Social engagement across situational, institutional, and broader contextual layers—where practice becomes real.
Guided by Knud Illeris’s three-dimensional learning theory.
Theoretical foundations · Theory level
Literature map that underpins Super-Cube®.
The Super-Cube® literature map moves from classical trait, behavioural, and contingency theories, through relational, shared, biological/evolutionary, and neuroscientific perspectives, into contemporary topics (identity, culture, globalisation, entrepreneurial leadership), skills-development debates, and higher-order integral and philosophical frames (AQAL and I–Thou). It is also grounded in the African philosophical perspective of Ubuntu. Together these strands underpin the six-dimensional Super-Cube® model.
Classic and evolving major schools of leadership
Historical and major schools
The established and evolving “major schools” of leadership research and practice—trait through neuroscience—often read as leadership past, present, and future.
Trait approach
Traits and attitudes associated with effective leadership
Behavioural approach
What leaders do—styles and observable behaviours
Contingency / situational approaches
Contingencies, context, and situation as conditions for effectiveness
Charisma and new leadership
Inspirational, visionary, and transformational “new leadership” traditions
Follower-centric approaches
Followers as active co-constructors of leadership
Relational approaches
Leader–follower dynamics, mutual influence, and relatedness
Shared leadership
Distributed influence across teams and networks
Biological and evolutionary schools
Leadership as adaptive to environmental and evolutionary pressures
Neuroscience perspectives
Brain-based and neuroscientific accounts of leading and following
Additional framing in the conceptual table
Leadership: past, present and future
Complementary labels that sit alongside the major schools—context, relation, critique, cognition, and emerging agendas.
Contextual leadership
How place, institution, and moment shape leadership
Relational leadership
Leadership as process between people, not only a person
Sceptics
Critical and sceptical readings of leadership claims and fads
Information-processing approaches
How leaders and followers process information and make sense
Emerging issues
Open and evolving questions at the frontier of the field
Live agendas in leadership research and practice
Contemporary / current topics
Current topics that sit on top of the classical schools and shape how Super-Cube® is applied in complex, global, and entrepreneurial settings.
Socio-cognition and social perception
How people perceive, categorise, and make sense of leaders and followers
Gender
Gendered expectations, equity, and leadership opportunity
Power
Power, influence, and the ethics of its use
Identity
Leader and follower identity work and self-concept
Culture
Cultural values, meaning systems, and organisational culture
Globalisation
Cross-border, multi-stakeholder, and planetary-scale leadership
Entrepreneurial leadership
Innovation, opportunity recognition, and calculated risk
How capacity is built over time
Leadership skills development literature
The development literature that justifies deliberate practice, measurement, and progressive pathways in Super-Cube® Learn.
Nature versus nurture debate
How much leadership capacity is fixed versus developable
Longitudinal perspectives
Growth tracked over time—not one-off training events
Knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs)
What can be taught, practised, and assessed as leadership capability
Theory, research and practice of leadership development
Integrating explanation, evidence, and lived developmental practice
Higher-order frames for the whole person
Broader theoretical / philosophical perspectives
Integral and dialogical philosophies that hold the Super-Cube® as a human-centric system—with African Ubuntu as a foundational stance alongside Western integral and dialogical thought.
All Quadrant All Level (AQAL)
Ken Wilber’s integral approach—interior/exterior, individual/collective
I–Thou theory (Martin Buber)
Mutual respect; people as full subjects, never mere objects of control
Ubuntu
African philosophy of personhood-in-relation: I am because we are—humanity, dignity, and shared becoming
Progressive application
Five levels of leadership capacity building.
The same six constructs scale—from a personal development plan to sector-wide programmes.
01
Individual
Personal development plans
Leaders engage in structured self-improvement with pre- and post-assessments across all six constructs. Deliberate practice begins with you at the centre of the cube.
02
Single Business
Leadership pipelines
Systematic talent development within one organisation—building consistent leadership capacity through construct-aligned interventions.
03
Business Group
Coordinated organisational scale
Coordinated leadership enhancement across a multi-entity group, aligning language, standards, and development pathways.
04
Supply Network
Alliance & value-chain capacity
Leadership development across interconnected entities—strengthening network-wide capacity and interdependencies in the value chain.
05
Industry
Sector-wide impact
A framework for broader adoption—addressing growth, skills gaps, and institutional complexity at industry scale.
Next step
Measure growth in your first 10 minutes.
Free baseline on this device—or book a school/company pilot with facilitator calendar, consented roster, and verify certificates.