IDM Assessment Certification
Why Assessment?
While talk about adult development is widespread, actual assessment of levels of adult development, and research into how moving from one to another level is actually experienced by individuals is hard to find, as are course offerings of teaching developmental assessment.
At the Interdevelopmental Institute we have taught adult developmental assessment since 2000, in two complementary forms:
- Social-emotional assessment
- Cognitive assessment.
To these assessments we have, from the start, added work with a psychoanalytically grounded psychological questionnaire (called the Need/Press Questionnaire) that is rooted in the work of Henry Murray on psychogenic needs.
Together, these three assessments make up what we call the Constructive Developmental Framework, or CDF.
Empirical assessment of adult development is central in most demanding coaching and many consulting and leadership development situations.
Learning developmental assessment is mind-changing
As testimonials at /testimonials.php show, IDM students have experienced learning assessments as much more than learning a set of handy skills. In the process of learning how to assess individuals developmentally, students acquire invaluable communication and thinking skills not easily acquired otherwise. Why should this be so?
Here are some hypotheses:
- The way social-emotional and cognitive assessments are taught at IDM leads to the acquisition of competences called “developmental listening” and “dialectical thinking”.
- Developmental listening is the precious capability of being able to deeply embody what it feels like to live at a particular social-emotional stage.
- Dialectical listening is the equally precious capability to be fluid in the use of a wide range of thought forms by which to construct and re-construct one’s inner and outer world with great depth and precision.
Both of these capabilities tend to transform entirely one’s ways of communicating with others, in that they lead to deep empathy, compassion, and lucid questioning.
It is for these reasons that students of adult-developmental assessment have spoken of our certification program as transformative and mind-changing.
Structure of the Assessment Certification Program
Participants in this program learn all three Modules of the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) once they taken the introductory overview course called Gateway. Gateway helps students assess whether they are up to the demanding study of Modules A (social-emotional), B (cognitive), and C (psychological) or not, and shows them what is to be gained from studying developmental assessment in full. Students take a year to acquire the listening, interview, and thinking skills needed to write a case study about a single client in Program One, and also learn how to give feedback to the client based on a feedback report they write as part of their submission of the case study to the IDM Director of Education.
Given that CDF is not easily mastered by writing a single case study, even after 10 months, students are invited to enter Program Two, in which they write 3 further case studies. Having written 4 case studies altogether, most students’ practical knowledge of CDF is solid, and they can begin work as “evidence based developmental” consultants or coaches. Students acquire the “Certificate of Developmental Assessment” at the end of Program One (10-11 months), and are certified as “Master Developmental Coach/Consultant at the end of Program Two (3 additional months).
Purpose and Content of Programs Two and Three
Program Two is a higher-level program that is not only pertinent to the Assessment Certification Program, but to the Evidence Based Coaching Program as well
(/pp-evidence-based-coaching-program.php). The program comprises only master classes. The program is open to students whose initial case study has been accept, whether it has focused on all three CDF dimensions as in the Assessment Certification Program, or on a single CDF dimension as in the Evidence Based Coaching Program.
The essential purpose of Program Two is solidifying students’ expertise in using CDF professionally. The program offers three specializations:
- E: in focus is developmental interviewing and supervision
- F: in focus is the integration of the three CDF Modules issuing in social-emotional, cognitive, and psychological sets of data about a client
- G: in focus is the practical application of insights from a comprehensive assessment in the context of leadership development, team development, talent management, and the resolution of organizational problems rooted in human resources inequities and gaps between “size of person” and “size of role” (which is also the focus of the IDM leadership course).
The demands in the three branches of Program Two are somewhat different.
In E, the psychological dimension (“Need/Press”) is not part of the case study. In F, it is. In G, an additional piece of work to be done is a Case Report. It is a report about the organizational environment the interviewees participating in the 3 case studies are part of. The report is a short research project in which the student draws conclusions from three or more case studies regarding a specific organizational problem. The report is mandatory for students who wish to intervene with organizational clients on the basis of their study of these clients’ developmental profile, in order to solve systemic problems surpassing the three individuals involved.
Modules E, F, and G support different study goals. In Module E, the goal is to acquire a Certificate of Developmental Interviewing and Supervision which is of great value in training and supervising coaches. Students deciding for Module F acquire the Master Developmental Coach/Consultant Certificate which includes psychological know-how about clients and makes them stand high above the crowd in a crowded coaching market. Module G is specialized in Integrative Thinking in Management, documented by students through the analysis of a specific management problem based on developmental insight.
Working on a Ph.D. Degree in Program Three
In Program Three, students write a Ph.D. thesis using Laske’s Constructive Developmental Framework within an academic department of their choice. For this purpose, they affiliate with an accredited college or university. In this case, Program Two is entered “in passing”, meaning that the student writes as many case studies as his/her dissertation requires, not just 3. The IDM Director of Education serves as liaison between the academic institution and IDM. Practically, he becomes a member of the doctoral committee or serves as an outside reader of the dissertation, whatever academic dissertation guidelines allow for.
Benefits of the Developmental Assessment Program
The IDM Assessment Certification Program is the most comprehensive study program for becoming an evidence-based consultant or coach in the world. It is not for the best and brightest working with adults in organizations. Three central benefits of the program stand out:
- Learning structured, social-emotional and cognitive interviewing that transfers to all professional communications based on “developmental listening”.
- Learning dialectical thinking as an extension of logical thinking.
- Learning to integrate developmental — social-emotional and cognitive — with behavioral data about clients, in order to arrive at comprehensive, holistic, and systemic insight into clients’ work issues.
In short, the programs strongly support KNOWING WHO ONE’S CLIENT IS.
Benefit of Obtaining a Developmental Assessment
The simplest way of understanding adult-developmental assessment is that of asking to be assessed as to one’s developmental profile in the framework of the Constructive Developmental Framework (see /services-assessment.php). Many students avail themselves of such an assessment.
The benefit of obtaining a developmental assessment is at least twofold:
- One learns about one’s present social-emotional meaning making and cognitive sense making and is alerted to one’s developmental potential; this is helpful in developmental crises, at turning points in one’s work or life, and for the purpose of charting a path for the future.
- One can henceforth better “stand in the shoes” of an individual one is assessing, whether it be a volunteer during a case study or a client after certification.
Registration
Tuition for this program comprises course fees for Gateway and Modules A, B, C, Prep-D, and D the regular price of which is US$ 4,000. Students registering upfront for the entire Assessment Certification Program receive a 5% discount.
Students registering upfront for the entire Assessment Certification Program receive a 5% discount.
Register for the IDM Assessment Certification Program
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