IDM Module A

"Understanding the Social-Emotional Self: Introduction to Social-Emotional Meaning Making"

Coming from Gateway Live or Self Study (a precondition for entering this module), this is your first step into an IDM certification program, whether the assessment or coaching certification program(s). Central to this module is the learning of two skills: developmental interviewing and listening, on one hand, and structured interview evaluation for the purpose of assessing a client’s level of meaning making (in the sense of Kegan), on the other.

In this module, you learn to “listen between the lines” as to what is the level of meaning making a client is presently speaking from, both to him- or herself and to you. You want to understand “what the client really means” social-emotionally when s(he) says what she says, the meaning making generator that feeds the person’s speech. In order to do so this you need to absorb the social-emotional branch of adult-developmental theory, pioneered by Loevinger and Kegan, and refined by Cook-Greuter for the first, and Otto Laske for the second.

Module A is taught at IDM in a slightly different way depending on whether you study it for being certified for assessment or coaching. When you study Module A for assessment purposes, the emphasis is on your assessment skills; otherwise it is on your skills in making use of your understanding of social-emotional stages in your coaching work. Thus, in the second case, the emphasis is on practice, while in the first, it is on conceptual understanding of stages. These two kinds of emphasis are not as far removed from each other as you may think: you cannot practically use what you don’t conceptually understand.

When Module A is learned by self study (as in the Dialectics in Coaching Program), only the most general insights can be expected. These insights receive their practical rehearsal in live coaching classes.

Outcomes

Having studied Module A, in whatever form, you should have acquired:

• An understanding of Kegan stages 2 to 5 (refined by Otto Laske, 1999, 2005)
• The intermediate steps between these stages
• The art of structured interviewing needed to gather evidence about clients’ meaning making
• An incipient ability to gather evidence about a client’s thinking through a structured social-emotional interview
• A more or less deep understanding of how to score recorded and transcribed interviews with clients based on stage theory.

As a huge side benefit, by learning developmental interviewing, you also learn to listen and communicate with people in a much more “objective” and “deep” way than you used to do. This is because when you learn to interview, you acquire a new way of listening to what people say, focusing attention outside of content, at a social-emotional microlevel.

Course Materials

The following materials are used in Module A:

• Volume 1 of Measuring Hidden Dimensions by Otto Laske, IDM Press 2005
• A set of slides specific to adult meaning making and social-emotional interviewing
• Handouts with exercises

When Module A is learned by self study (as in the Dialectics in Coaching Program), you also have access to class recordings.

Registration

Tuition payments are accepted in form of check, money order or major credit card using our secure online system.

Register for IDM Module A