in this issue

Featured Article: Can You Hear Me Now?, by Antoinette Dawson Review #1 of Measuring Hidden Dimensions vol. 1, by Joseph O'Connor Review #2 of Measuring Hidden Dimensions vol. 1, by Matthew Kalman IDM introduces 'just in time' Process Consultation Services Measuring Hidden Dimensions, volume 2 (2007), on Cognitive Development IDM International News Brussels Gateway Classes in English and French, Spring/Summer German Workshop #1 on Developmental Coaching, Konstanz, Germany German Workshop #2 on Developmental Coaching, Berlin, Germany IDM Course Timetable & Descriptions

"Can You Hear Me Now?"

If You Practice Developmental Listening, the Answer is Yes!

By Antoinette Dawson M.A.
OD Strategist and Developmental Coach

Today, when coaching corporate clients, I no longer listen (just) to the words that they speak. Yes, I hear their stories, explanations, fears, frustrations, successes and self-talk...but I hear it differently.

Something has happened to me that affects my process of listening.

Long before I became a Developmental Coach, I had already learned endless models of listening during my 20+ years of management & leadership training. As I conducted interviews, organizational surveys, behavioral assessments and performance appraisals, I heard many reasons for 'why people do what they do'. But I knew that that there was more to the developmental story...and continued to seek expertise and education to support that premise.

Professionally, this was perplexing and burdensome, and yet intriguing at the same time. So, as I shifted gears from mainly focusing on leadership development, I began to center on adult development. I decided to invest time and effort into a coach certification process to support my consultative practice and ongoing development interests. Of the litany of coaching programs around the country, I graduated from two distinctly different programs and still felt that something was missing from my developmental toolkit. As I researched every post-graduate coaching program, I found what I was searching for at IDM. After speaking intensively with Dr. Laske and reviewing the evidence-based coursework, I was convinced that this research was exactly the missing piece to my client interactions and organizational interventions.

I still hear all that clients have to say, but I no longer stop there. I have noticed that I am listening beyond the words. I am listening beyond the emotion, critical self-talk, disappointment, fear, failure, decisions, experiences, relationships and belief systems. In short, I am listening beyond the content!

I realize that without using a structural developmental approach as a coach/interviewer, I could hear what clients are telling me but would be unable to understand their meaning making. They are, in some sense, unable to make meaning from their own lives..., and that is why they have decided to hire a professional coach.

I realize that in this process of questions and responses and deeper dialogue, without the right set of developmental skills I am of no greater help to the client than a good self-help book. In my work with clients, even if they read long enough and search through the literature pages of the best sellers on the market, journal through the morning to express their feelings on paper, take every online self directed assessment available...all they have is data. They have more information. They have a collection of descriptions and definitions and illustrations and models and metrics and scorecards. But they are still without an interpretive tool for understanding how they make meaning of their lives, or why they make meaning of it the way they presently do. And in the process of trying to self-diagnose, they have become even more confused and weighted down with the thinking of 'experts' they have consulted. And worst for some...is that they have invested in conventional coaching and found few additional answers.

Because I have a Developmental Coach and Mentor in Dr. Laske, and through the process of studying developmental processes, I have had a transformative experience. What I hear now isn't just a summary of what I want to hear or think I can digest, but it is authentically my own voice. I can finally hear myself think and listen to my own voice. It is evident in my approach to coaching clients, and more importantly, it is evident in my own meaning making.

What I could not have known or done 10 years ago is effortlessly done today. Thinking that seemed to escape me is now readily accessible. Decisions that kept me shackled and seemingly indecisive are made with certainty and swiftness. Communication that was unstated or bridled then is fluidly spoken across all areas of my personal and professional relationships. Confidence that often positioned me 'head and shoulders' above others but still felt halted by an invisible ceiling, is now boundless. Emotional maturity that at one time felt out of reach is now flexibly balanced between self-awareness and interpersonal perspective. Personal and professional transitions that at one time seemed to have restrictive pathways and were frought with internal wrestling today are greeted with respect and possiblity for the next stage.

A developmental shift has taken place that yields greater mental space to 'process' what once could be defined as developmental conflict. Thus, I can better listen to what my clients are saying and help them build a broader context for making meaning in their personal, professional and organizational lives.

Yes, I can hear you now!

About the writer:

Antoinette is a Corporate Leadership Coach and OD Strategist working with executive leaders, senior managers and internal HR professionals. She is focused on catalyzing systemic change throughout the organization and within the individual leader. Since 2005, Antoinette has been on board at IDM as a student and Director of the IDM Ambassador Group (Community Forum). She co-presented with O. Laske at the 2005 ICF Conference in San Jose, CA. She can be reached at artdcoach@aol.com.

Review #1 of Measuring Hidden Dimensions (2006)
A Tale of Two Books

By Joseph O'Connor

I would like start this review article of 'Hidden Dimensions' by saying how I came to the book and the impact it had on me. Books affect the reader in many ways, depending on why they are reading it and the point the book comes into their life. I read 'Hidden Dimensions' at exactly the right time and it had a big impact. I will give a little of the history and also explain why this review article has the title it has.

About a year ago I and my wife, Andrea, were commissioned to write a book that we rather ambitiously titled 'How Coaching Works'. The idea was simple, the book would model some of the most influential coaching methodologies at the moment, (we selected the GROW model, Ontological coaching, NLP coaching, Behavioral Coaching, Co-active coaching, Integral coaching and Positive Psychology), to see what they had in common. Rather than trying to see their differences, which everyone else was highlighting, we wanted to see what they shared, and we framed our book as a quest for the heart of coaching. The book would also contain short history of coaching and the context in which it grew because again, you need history as well as introspection to understand something fully. If coaching was a methodology for change, then what methodology and what change?

After much research, thinking and writing, it became clear to us that there was a black hole in the middle of coaching as it was being practiced. All the methodologies stressed coaching skills and the importance of the coaching relationship, but there was nothing about the level of the coach vis-à-vis the level of the client. Coach and client existed in an a-historical vacuum. It was tacitly assumed that they were speaking the same language from the same vantage point. However, after reading many authors and researchers, particularly Ken Wilber, Susanne Cook-Greuter and Robert Kegan, it became clear that the level of development of coach and client was crucial, perhaps the most important aspect in determining the results and success of the coaching. We knew that the coach needed to be a model for the sorts of changes they were asking of the client, but suppose they could not be that?

We do a lot of air travel so we had a ready metaphor for the situation. When you sit in an airplane waiting for take off, you always have to listen to the safety announcements: "In the unlikely event of a fall in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will fall from above your seats. Please put on your own mask before attempting to help others.'' You see, unless you are wearing your own mask you risk passing out and being no help to others or to yourself. What was the coach's equivalent of the metaphorical oxygen mask? We thought a lot about this issue, and that was when I came to read 'Hidden Dimensions'.

Many of my questions were answered very elegantly. 'Hidden Dimensions' does many things. First it is one of the clearest expositions of Robert Kegan's social emotional levels available, giving clear examples of levels two (instrumental), three (other dependent) through four (self authoring) to five (self aware) with explanations and summaries. The whole book is well written and puts complex concepts in a simple, clear way that makes them easy to understand. In the introduction the writer says that one of his goals is to demystify adult education and he succeeds very well.

Secondly the book explains developmental listening. This is a step beyond normal listening in that it listens for structure and not content, so that what the client talks about has secondary importance. Instead the listener focuses on how the client talks about the content. Developmental listening is very much like listening to music. Content is the tune, you may or may not like it. The music may be original, derivative, Classical or Hip-hop. Structure is how it is organized, sonata form, rondo, fugue, verse and refrain.

The client constructs the meaning of the experience they describe from a sort of internal template that is strongly influenced by his developmental level. In turn, how the coach understands what she hears will derive from her construction, based to a great extent on her own developmental level. The developmental level moulds the interaction in each direction. As someone who is interested in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which is the study of the structure of subjective experience, I also wondered if people give information about how they construct their world internally with body language or voice inflections, and whether information about how they think could also be helpful.

Active listening is defined as listening with a conscious hypothesis, and evidence is a confirmed hypothesis. So the research is qualitative, the coach uses him or her self as the measuring instrument. That means that coaches have the great responsibility to make sure they are the most effective and accurate measuring instrument. They need to be always calibrating finer. So the focus is not on developing more tools for the coach to help the client, but developing the coach as a fine measuring instrument so that s(he) can build a client model that does justice to the client.

However it seems that most coach training sees developmental level as a mere skills problem. Skills have a meaning and a use depending on the social emotional level. Many tools of coaching presume a level of understanding of at least level four; they presume an understanding for the tools to work that is implicit and not stated in the literature. Learning skills is not going to move anybody up a level. Standards, ethics and core competencies also look different depending on the level they are viewed from.

One point made strongly in 'Hidden Dimensions' is the need of coaches to know their own level. To follow an ethical imperative and do no harm, the coach needs to know his/her own level. This is the oxygen mask the coach needs. In fact it applies to all process consultants, and especially therapists it seems, as their clients will normally be in distress, and emotionally and cognitively more vulnerable.

It is probably true that clients will gravitate towards the level of coach that they find helpful for them. Many executives are likely to be at level four and it seems unlikely that they would tolerate a level three coach. A level four client with a level three coach will probably give up and so would a level five client, although level five clients do not usually want traditional coaching anyway. A level four coach for a level three client is probably ideal, however even if the coach and client level are a little mismatched, there can still be some useful 'horizontal' development, learning and behavioral change for the client.

'Hidden Dimensions' also poses some interesting questions about coaching at level five. A person at or around level five could still coach, but they would have to take responsibility for acting at a lower level than they would naturally act. They will not be engaging with the other person as a transparent equal. If they were, they would not be coaching, but they might want to professionally engage a client as a coach anyway.

The author develops some hypotheses at the end of the book on page 245.

One hypothesis is that most coaches are working from social emotional level three. I think this is probably correct, and also that the percentage depends on the country. I suspect that there is a higher percentage of coaches at level three in South America for example than in North America, for many reasons. It seems to me that culture and language affect the difficulty of moving from level three to four. In other words, some cultures have a center of gravity nearer to three than four. If culture is a series of shared expectations, then these expectations may pressure people to act more like level three than four. North American culture with its strong ethic of individualism and self help seems friendlier to a move from level three to level four. It seems to me, too, that some languages are constructed in such a way that the level of systemic thinking necessary is more difficult to achieve, but these are my hypotheses.

On page 250 one finds the statement, 'The crux of coaching and mentoring, in my view lies in the ability of the practitioners to formulate a model of the client that is free from what Kegan calls 'identification with the cultural (and social) surround.' (Italics as in the book). I think that the cultural surround is at a higher level than the social surround. Even at level four (and perhaps five) it is hard to extricate oneself from it. Culture is taken as the way, rather than one way to see the world, and as long as this is true, the coach's model of the client will be culturally conditioned if the coach has not broken free of her own cultural expectations. However in practice, this may not matter if coach and client share the same (national or regional) culture. In cross cultural coaching, however, this is an extra element to add to the already heady mixture.

The book also puts forward the proposal that coach education should enable coaches to move from level three to four, and this is an important idea. I do not think many coach trainings are focused on this goal. Another proposal is that you cannot be a true professional unless you are at, or close to, level four. This is true from a level four and above viewpoint, but not necessarily from a level three viewpoint, in my view.

Finally, I think that double loop learning can happen at any level. Double loop learning occurs when the client's own thought process is seen to be part of the problem. Double loop coaching not only solves the problem, but gets at the thinking that gave rise to the problem in the first place. The assumptions and habitual ideas that are accessed in double loop learning will be of a different order at each stage. Coaches need to engage in their own double loop learning if they are to help the client do so, the loops will be different, but the process is the same.

This book is one of the most important written about coaching, although it does not position itself as a coaching book. My only reservations are structural. This is an important book, and it seems to be addressed to coaches, but there is nothing in the title that gives a clue. It is not clear who is the intended reader, and this makes the book less accessible than it deserves. Adult development is a huge subject that can be tackled from many angles. It would be good to know from the title what the book is about and its focus. It feels in many ways like a text book, following a course of study, and again this makes it more difficult to read, understand and appreciate as a book in itself. I don't think the last two appendices on team dynamics and capability management are necessary. More information does not always make things more clear, but risks detracting from the message.

'Hidden Dimensions' helped our thinking in our own book. We saw that one thing all these coaching models had in common was a lack of a developmental awareness. Integral coaching has some developmental models, but they are not used in the coaching itself. Add the developmental model and coaching gets another dimension — which was hidden up until then.

Ken Wilber sums up gathering knowledge as consisting of three strands. First there is an injunction, in the form, 'If you want to know this, do this, or as the cyberneticists put it, 'If you want to understand, act.' This then leads to an experience that gives knowledge about the subject of the experiment. Finally there is a communal confirmation or rejection by others who have completed these first two strands. Developmental listening is the first step, it is qualitative research, and the coach is her own research tool. It illuminates the subject. I would strongly recommend reading this book as a first action step before considering where next to go with your coaching, therapy of consulting practice. These dimensions need to come into the open.

References:

Kegan, Robert (1994) In over our Heads Harvard University Press
Wilber, Ken (1995) Sex Ecology Spirituality Shambhala
Cook-Greuter, Susanne (1999) Post Autonomous Ego Development. Dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Wilber, Ken (2006) Integral Spirituality Integral Books

About the writer:

Joseph O'Connor is a writer of several books on coaching and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. He is an executive coach and consultant and works internationally. He is co-founder of the International Coaching Community (ICC), and can be reached at joseph@lambentdobrasil.com.

Review #2 of Measuring Hidden Dimensions (2006)

Matthew Kalman
Integral Leadership Review
Volume VII, No. 2 - March 2007

This feels like a book of considerable power, focus, honesty and splendour - and it’s also not for the faint-hearted.

It’s tempting to say, simply, that you will want to buy this book if you have any wish to learn to administer and interpret the 'Subject-Object Interview’ (SOI) developed by Integral Institute founder member Prof. Robert Kegan and his colleagues. The SOI can discern which of 5 levels of consciousness (meaning-making) is one’s centre of gravity. Laske focuses on stage 2, or S-2, (instrumental) and upwards to S-3 (other-dependent), S-4 (self-authoring) and S-5 (self-aware).

This Kegan-based levels assessment handbook is at the heart of this volume—but it offers rather more than that alone in its attempt to "demystify adult development" and link it "directly to your professional and private life". In other words, it’s far beyond merely a derivative of Lahey, Kegan et al’s 1988 A Guide to the Subject-Object Interview: its administration and interpretation. What you also get with Measuring Hidden Dimensions is a discussion of the need for evidence-based coaching, as it is "a field that presently has no theoretical foundations"— plus a call to calculate "Coaching ROI" based on developmental change. Laske warns that coaching a client at a higher developmental level may be unethical. Also discussed are different 'theories of helping’ and the likely problems between clients and practitioners depending on their relative levels ("level of self development of the helper is the singularly most important key to success in assisting others").

Laske is quick to point out the prevalence of 'espousal’—using language from a higher level that one does not truly inhabit. "[W]hen somebody lets you know about what a great leader s(he) is, you know you are listening to an espousal of S-5, not the real thing!" he warns. While providing one example of his work with a client, Laske is particularly keen on "cutting down on espousals of spirituality".

Other developmental researchers who make appearances through the book include Wilber, Graves, Loevinger, Cook-Greuter and Jaques (along with Harvard Business School management guru Chris Argyris). Laske previews the three further volumes set to accompany this one: volume 2 (due in August) deals with the cognitive perspective, volume 3 the behavioural perspective (via the Henry Murray/Morris Aderman Need/Press Analysis questionnaire) and volume 4 is a synthesis of the three perspectives in the form of case studies. (Laske certainly has his work cut out!)

The heart of the book, then, is the Subject-Objective Interview—an hour-long conversation with a client around a number of prompts, for example "Success", "Changed", "Control", "Taking Risks", and "Strong Stand/Conviction". The interviewer will be listening for signs of the likely possible stages of the client and using questions ("probes") to gradually narrow down their centre of gravity (though an overall profile may span across three, even sometimes five, levels). In other words, it is a form of hypothesis-testing, of experimenting— "provoking people to reveal their Center of Gravity is the core of what is called developmental interviewing."

Interviews are recorded, transcribed and the sections that show evidence of the person’s stage structure (rather than just mere content) are used on a coding sheet as evidence to determine centre of gravity. This hand scoring is "the royal road of understanding and giving feedback to adult clients", though internet-based scoring is "a project that is in the works".

Laske points out that "the art of developmental listening, interviewing and scoring" needs more than a book; it needs learning in a group from an instructor (he mentions his own Interdevelopmental Institute’s courses). Indeed this book is in something of a course handbook style, with chapter reflections/exercises at the end of each chapter. As recently came up on the London Integral Circle discussion list—won’t any late/complex stage individual have the capacity within them anyway to discern the stage of a client from merely everyday conversation? Laske believes not: "In everyday, 'open’ conversation it is very difficult, if not impossible, to carry out developmental hypothesis testing".

It depicting the results of an SOI assessment, Laske suggests creating a Risk-Clarity-Potential Index, which depicts an individual’s likely centre of gravity—along with the next stage they may reach ("Potential") and the stage they may fall back to ("Risk"). Overall, Laske aims to offer us a theory of professional helping in the sense of a "process consultation", a "consultation to the client’s mental process" (drawing from Edgar Schein’s work)—though in fact it is a "developmentally deepened" application of this.

Throughout the book, the author describes the ins and outs of working with clients at different levels, or of working as practitioners (coaches, consultants etc) at particular levels. When the professional help offered comes from the other-dependent Stage 3 "the practitioner is at constant risk of collusion with the goals and ideology of the client, under the guise of being helpful." This S-3 practitioner assumes shared values and disregards "the developmental uniqueness of the client". This pracitioner defines him or herself by physical and internalised Others.

The shift from other-dependent Stage 3 to self-authoring Stage 4 is difficult—"No wonder, then, that the individuals at S-4 quite naturally become wholly identified with their own cherished set of values and principles that have sustained them through the difficult and lonely journey that lies behind them." Self-authoring individuals have a hard time viewing the self critically, as they are dependent on their self-generated value system for the integrity of their self—they are "unable to stand away from that integrity" —and thus find it difficult to move beyond single-loop learning. Elaborating his depiction of self-authoring practitioners, Laske writes: "as a change agent I act according to norms excluding multiple perspectives, intent on shaping my group and organisation in harmony with my own principles". He or she will seek to change an organisation "in directions approximating their own personal 'institution’, rather than one more universally self-sustaining".

In the shift from self-authoring to self-aware, "The issue at stake really is how far I am prepared to experience a loss of self that will occur if I give up my splendour and splendid isolation....This entails exposure of my limitations to others, especially intimates". Laske offers a lot of rich material relating the Kegan levels to coaching, which will carry over to many other forms of helping. Some higher level coaches may have to work below their usual stage, he warns, and must avoid the temptation to impose a level of meaning-making the client is not capable of. This may overextend the client—as the coach could have forgotten about the painfulness of the loss of internal others at stage 3 and of self beyond stage 4.

Laske offers a (developmentally-informed) typology of coach-client relationships, showing, for instance, which of them are likely to be developmentally counter-productive. He believes that "developmental assessment needs to become mandatory in the process of coaching certification" because of the harm that can be done to clients with a higher centre of gravity. "[C]oaches have an ethical responsibility to know their developmental stage", he concludes. "Coaching a client residing at a higher developmental level (than the consultant) may be unethical, since it may developmentally constrain and retard the client".

It’s great to hear some candid reflections from Laske’s own work as a coach: "I know I prefer clients who have made it beyond S-4, simply because that is the point where they have themselves begun to 'deconstruct’ their splendid success story". He also discusses whether Socrates was the first developmental coach!

The appendices briefly show the use of the other two tools that Laske recommends to be used to give the full, actionable picture of a client, i.e. cognitive and behavioural views (even though the behavioural are very much secondary, he believes). A chapter on "Developmental issues of team dynamics" describes the differences between unified teams, "upwardly divided" teams and "downwardly divided" teams.

Some minor queries I have about Laske’s approach include his depiction of subtle oscillations between those stages where people lean towards wanting to be independent and those where they want to be included. This helix-like pattern running up between stages in adult development was included in Kegan’s first book, The Evolving Self (and is also seen in Spiral Dynamics)—but Kegan discusses why he dropped the helix image in his later book In Over Our Heads. He now believes he was confused when he used it in the earlier book. Each level of consciousness can in fact favour either of the two fundamental longings (as Ken Wilber would himself later state in his solution to this agency/communion and levels conundrum ('Sidebar C: Orange and Green: Levels or Cousins?’), with its description of John Wayne, the "agentic Blue" value-meme cowboy.

Though Laske states, "Stage 5 is the limit social science research has so far reached", he does also mention that "there is ongoing research that leads beyond it (e.g., Cook-Greuter, 1999)"—but "in this book, we will stay with Kegan’s theory". I notice a number of instances where Laske begins to use the language from Cook-Greuter’s Construct/Ego-aware and Unitive stages. The whole issue of how Kegan’s SOI relates to its close-ish cousin, Jane Loevinger’s and Susanne Cook-Greuter’s sentence completion test is not broached (nor is Elliot Jaques’ complexity of mental processing interview). Kegan and Lahey themselves write that their SOI is "far more cumbersome than the efficient SCT" [pg 41, Personality Development].

The SOI is "expensive and time-consuming" concluded one paper on leadership development in the US military. "Unless and until more efficient assessment strategies are devised, research studies on the Kegan developmental framework are likely to be few and include a small number of subjects". The paper briefly discusses self-report tools, such as the "Defining Issues Test" (for moral development) as possible examples of ways to solve this problem. Certainly the various post-Maslowian levels assessment tools created by Dr. Brian Hall, Richard Barrett http://integralleadershipreview.com/archives/2006_10/2006_10_kalman.html or Pat Dade can be far quicker than either SCT or SOI but of course will have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Interestingly, OECD research on key competencies for the 21st century drew strongly on a contribution from Prof. Kegan, where he stressed the gap between existing current capacity and the self-authoring (stage 4) requirements of 21st century competencies. As part of this project the Director of Social and Institutional Statistics, Statistics Canada, T. Scott Murray talked about the need for future assessments in the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey to include reliable measures of level of mental complexity for use in a household survey context (I don’t know if progress has been made on this).

Kegan’s conclusions to this OECD project I find pretty memorable: "More than half of even advantaged adults may not yet possess the level of mental complexity that would equip them to enact successfully the competencies we suggest are necessary for adults in the 21st century."

The gap I suggest — between the mental demands implicit in our suggested competencies and the mental capacities of the "student" — actually provides a heretofore missing intellectual foundation for the purposes of adult or lifelong education that is as strong as the foundation which exists for the education of the young — namely, education not merely for the acquisition of skills or an increase in one's fund of knowledge, but education for development, education for transformation.

Some people feel that the SOI offers far more depth, nuance and richness than the SCT (once you take into account the 5 gradations between each level, for instance). I’ve heard it suggested that SCT scores perhaps come out higher, one person even thought artificially high for certain stages (and there is surely an issue of espousal in the integral milieu, which complicates matters). Fitzgerald and Berger’s Executive Coaching: Practices & Perspectives includes a number of contributors successfully using Kegan in their coaching (including a co-author of the 1988 SOI manual).

One nit-picking point to add is that Laske’s term "Social-Emotional Development" might not really be inclusive enough to describe Kegan’s model of increasing complexity of mind/meaning-making (and Kegan’s model does itself include a cognitive line of development; these particular distinctions will likely be clarified by Laske’s upcoming volumes).

A (favourable) review of this book by Prof David Clutterbuck (in International Journal of Coaching and Mentoring) notes that it is "the densest, most difficult book on coaching I have ever worked through" — which isn’t surprising as it’s drawing particularly on a 433-page SOI interview guide and Kegan’s dense but rewarding books. Let that be a second warning that you’re going to have to really pay attention, if you read this book.

I’m also personally intrigued by the implications of Laske’s comment that "less than 10 per cent become self-aware (level 5) and can lead". If only it were just the self-aware who became our leaders — but what happens in organisations when the leadership positions are filled by individuals with centres of gravity below self-aware level 5?

References:

Bartone, P., Forsythe, G., Snook, S., Bullis, R. and Lewis, P.(2001), "Leader development at the US Military Academy, West Point: New directions in programs, theory and research," Leader Development in Military Officers: International Perspectives on Policy, Practice and Research. Baltimore, MA: Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, October.

Cook-Greuter, S. (1999). Postautonomous Ego Development: A Study of its Nature and Measurement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Fitzgerald, C and Berger, J. (2002). Executive Coaching — Practices & Perspectives. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publishing. Kegan, R ,(2001). Competencies as Working Epistemologies: Ways We Want Adults to Know in D. Rychen & L. Salganik (eds.), Defining and Selecting Key Competencies Gottingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber, pp.192-204.

Kegan, R, Lahey, L, and Souvaine, E, 'From Taxonomy to Ontogeny: Thoughts on Loevinger’s Theory in Relation to Subject-Object Psychology’ in Westernberg, P., Blasi, A., and Cohn, L. (1988). Personality Development - Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Investigations of Loevinger’s Conception of Ego Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Lahey, L, Souvaine, E, Kegan, R, Goodman, R and Felix, S, (1988). A Guide to the Subject-Object Interview: Its Administration and Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Westernberg, P., Blasi, A., and Cohn, L. (1988). Personality Development — Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Investigations of Loevinger’s Conception of Ego Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

About the writer:

Matthew Kalman MA (matthewkalman@yahoo.com) is a founder member of the Integral Institute (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Londonintegralcircle/), and launched the London Integral Circle in 2000. He has worked with Henley Management College to develop the first model of Integral Knowledge Management. Matthew works as a media professional and lives with his family in London, England.

IDM Process Consultation Services

Otto Laske announces the introduction of "just in time" consultation services for individuals in need of a neutral, third-party input to an issue or problem they are deliberating. This could be a life or business issue whose developmental grounding has become apparent.

No booking of more than a single session is required (781.391.2361), although payment for 1-2 sessions in advance is appreciated (Paypal, or cheque to Laske and Associates, 51 Mystic St., Medford, MA, USA).

The cost per hour (or less) is $175, reduced to $150 for present and former students and members of the IDM Ambassador Group.

My Approach:

I work selectively, with people who feel they are ready to gain more insight into their own way of making meaning and sense of their life and work. Such people realize that how they work with others depends on their own developmental profile.

Commitment:

I make a commitment to talking with clients based on developmental inquiry, whether informal or formal based on explicit assessment. Where no prior assessment exists, I do my best to make an informal assessment during the conversation with the client. My clients equally make a commitment, essentially to being honest with themselves and me.

Measuring Hidden Dimensions, volume 2

The second volume of MHD is progressing. It should appear at the end of 2007. The volume is a text book for Program One, Module B. The book establishes cognitive-developmental coaching as a new discipline for evidence based work in process consultation, simultaneously critiquing and deepening cognitive-behavioral coaching. In broader terms, the book is a rehabilitation of THINKING in coaching, which presently is centered on volition and emotion and "feeling positive" about life and work.

The book comprises five sections:

1. A theory of adult cognitive development (Bhaskar, Basseches, Jaques, King & Kitchener, Piaget)
2. On Dialectical Thought Forms
3. Where, cognitively speaking is your client?
4. Application to Human Capital and Teams
5. Exercises, case studies, scoring tables, etc.

Sections 2 to 5 are "hands-on" and mere reading will teach you little.

IDM International News

1. French and English Gateway Classes, Brussels, Belgium

Rainer v. Leoprechting is continuing to hold Gateway and Module A classes in Brussels, Belgium. In addition to the English speaking group, a first French group has recently started, whose work will feed into the French translation of MHD volume 1 by Marie Garance Leroy, Basle, Switzerland.

The classes are held at 40 Washington St., 1050 Ixelles, Belgium, under the sponsorship of “Europe’s Children – Our Concern” (ECOC asbl), an association of teachers and consultants focused on educational and management issues.

For further information, contact Rainer at rainer@gmail.com.

2. Two Day Workshop on Entwicklungscoaching in Cooperation with Trigon Entwicklungsberatung, St. Poelten, Austria, Konstanz, June 28-29, 2007

This workshop combines the phasic and constructive-developmental approaches to adult development. The former derives from H. Levinson and F. Hudson, the latter from Jean Piaget, the Kohlberg School at Harvard, and Elliott Jaques’s work. These are complementary approaches.

The phasic approach is psychosocial rather than psychological, in that it focuses on age cohorts and their different needs and pressures in the work world. Meaning making is not central, or is seen as a communal rather than an individual act. By contrast, the constructive-developmental approach is epistemological. It focuses on stages and phases of developing the human potential.

If interested, write to werner.vogelauer@trigon.at.

Entwicklungs-Coaching

Trainer: Werner Vogelauer, St. Poelten, Oesterreich, und Otto Laske, Boston, USA

Drei Modelle der Entwicklungsarbeit

• Ubersicht über Entwicklungsphasen des Menschen und der lebensphasenorientierten Coaching-Arbeit (Werner Vogelauer)
• Theorie und Praxis der lebenslangen sozial-emotionalen Entwicklung von Individuen
• Entwicklungsstufen Erwachsener und stufenbewusstes Coaching
• Einsichten in die parallele kognitive Entwicklung Erwachsener
• Coaching-Dynamik und Entwicklungsstufen des Coaching (Otto Laske)

Laske’s Arbeitsschwerpunkte:

1. Coaching von Fuehrungskraeften und Teams des Constructive Developmental Framework, das auf Erstellung von kundenzentrierten Coachingplaenen sowie die objektive Festellung der durch Coaching erzielten Entwicklungslage des Kunden zielt.
2. Abhaengigkeit von Coachingresultaten vom persoenlichen Entwicklungsstand des Coaches.
3. Coaching-Ethik.
4. Beratung zur human capital strategy in Unternehmen, sowie Einsatz entwicklungsbestimmter Methoden der Nachfolgeplanung auf hoeherem Managementniveau.

Kurzbiographie: Otto Laske ist Direktor des von ihm 2000 gegründeten Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM), Boston, MA, USA. Dort fuhrt er internationale Studenten englisch, deutsch, und franzosisch in auf Entwicklungsforschung beruhende Organisationsberatung einschlieblich Coaching ein. Er ist Schüler von Th. W. Adorno und Max Horkheimer, Frankfurt am Main (1956-1966), und hat daruber hinaus mit Herbert Simon, Carnegie-Mellon University, Robert Kegan und M. Basseches, Harvard University, sowie als Komponist mit Gottfried M. Koenig, Utrecht, Holland, studiert.

Two Day Workshop on Developmental Coaching in Cooperation with Systemics Beratungsfirma, Berlin, July 2nd – 3rd, 2007

Entwicklungsstufen von Menschen entschlüsseln lernen

Seminar 02. – 03. 07. 2007, Berlin Dr. Otto Laske, Boston/USA

Inhalt
Das Seminar führt in die kognitive Entwicklungspsychologie und deren vielfältige praktischen Implikationen (bzgl. Coaching, Beratung, Führung etc.) ein. Dies ist ein äußerst relevanter, aber bisher im Beratungs- wie Managementbereich kaum berücksichtigter Aspekt. Grundlage dessen ist das Modell von Robert Kegan (Harvard).

Im Gegensatz zu statischen Persönlichkeitsmodellen (z.B. MBTI) erklärt dies, wie Menschen sich über qualitativ unterschiedliche Stufen entwickeln (psychische Reife). Diese Entwicklungsstufen zeigen auf, wie man auf jeder Stufe, sich selbst, andere Personen und die jeweilige Umwelt wahrnimmt und interpretiert. Jede Stufe ist dabei komplexer und integrierter als die vorherigen Entwicklungsstufen. Dies hat enorme Auswirkungen darauf, welche Handlungsmöglichkeiten einem Menschen offen stehen und welche Art von Arbeit man kompetent auszuführen imstande ist.

Methodik
Erstmals in Deutschland ist es möglich, einen praktischen Einblick in diesen fundamentalen Aspekt menschlichen Denkens und Handelns zu erhalten. Das Seminar bietet vielfältige Möglichkeiten, zu erleben, wie sich Entwicklungsstufen im Leben zeigen. Durch gezielte kurze theoretische Inputs, Live-Demonstrationen, Auswertungen von Gesprächs-ausschnitten, Peer-Group-Arbeit und Plenumsdiskussion wird dieses komplexe Thema erlebbar.

Zielgruppe
Berater, Coaches, Supervisoren, Personal- und Organisationsentwickler, Mitarbeiter von Personalabteilungen, Trainer sowie Führungskräfte.

Literatur

1. R. Kegan (1982). The evolving self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
2. O. Laske (2006). Measuring Hidden Dimensions. IDM Press.

Seminarleiter
Dr. Laske ist Schüler von Adorno, Horkheimer, Herbert Simon und Robert Kegan. Seit 1997 Leiter des Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM), Boston/USA. Dieses widmet sich der Umsetzung entwicklungspsychologischer Forschung für Coaching, Beratung und Führungskräfteentwicklung.

Kosten
650,- Euro plus 19% MwSt. (123,50 Euro) = 773,50 Euro
Inclusive Verpflegung (Getränke, Pausensnacks und Mittagessen).

If interested, write to Thomas Binder, binder@systemics.net.

 

IDM 2007 Spring/Summer Offerings

Click course link to see detailed description and registration information.

Course Time Table

[With class consensus, course times can be changed]

Course	Start Date (2007)	Time ET** (2-hr sessions)	Tuition (US$)
Gateway	Wed. May 23 Wed. July 11	1 pm	525
European Gateway Wrap-up	Wed. April 25	11 am	200
Module A*	Thurs. May 24 Thurs. July 19	1 pm	525
Module B	Mon. May 7	1 pm	525
Module C	Tues. April 24 Tues. July 17	9 am	525
Module Prep-D	Tues. June 19	9 am	650
Module D [case study]	To be announced		1,425
Program Two [case study master class]	Tues. May 22 / 07	10:45 am	1,675

* Discount for Modules A to C = $1,475 (a $100 savings) — Please enquire
** US ET time is 6 hrs. behind Central European Time, 5 hrs. behind UK time, and 14 hrs. behind Australian time.

 

Course Descriptions

For course descriptions, see
www.interdevelopmentals.org/course-descriptions.html
www.interdevelopmentals.org/certificationcourses.html

or:
write to info@interdevelopmentals.org
call 781.391.2361, Otto Laske.

For keeping up to date on courses, subscribe to the IDM newsletter on the home page or go to www.interdevelopmentals.org/e-zine.html

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