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Featured Article: How Dialectical Thinking Works in Coaching Practice, by Joseph O’Connor International Pilot Program in Leadership Development Graduate Certificate of Developmental Interviewing and Supervision IDM Winter/Spring Courses US Courses European Courses

FEATURED ARTICLE: “How Dialectical Thinking Works in Coaching Practice”

By Joseph O’Connor
Lamentdobrasil, Buenos Aires

Introduction

In IDM Module B, students become familiar with three dimensions of human thought development: epistemic, logic, and dialectic. The first has to do with an individual’s present notion of the certainty of truth and of limitations of one’s own knowing. The second concerns introducing consistency into thinking by respecting rules regarding contradiction and falsehood.

The third is a dimension entered into only in adulthood, just before the development of logical thinking peaks around 25 years of age. This dimension can be conceptualized as a set of thought forms, patterns of thought from which challenging questions may be derived. Dialectical thinking makes it possible to discover implications, missing ideas and contexts, as well as distortions that logical thinking per se cannot unearth.

All three dimensions of thought development need to come together and cohere in order to make dialectical thinking in the fullest sense possible. According to research, their coalescing occurs in four phases. A sufficiently high epistemic position is a precondition of going beyond ‘A is always A’ (the excluded middle). A sure command of logic is required to distinguish and separate out what otherwise would be pure holistic mush.

Dialectical Thinking in Practice

At first, I found it difficult to work from this threefold perspective — that is, applying it in practice. By practice I mean in my work as an executive coach and a trainer of coaching. However, I found some substantial answers in the last months, which have prompted this article.

I give many coaching trainings and supervise many coaches, throughout Europe and Latin America and have been noticing patterns of how coaches understand clients and how they work with them. Their work, I assume, is patterned on their model of the client and their model of the client is patterned by how he or she (the coach) thinks. I believe I can relate coaches’ work, and how helpful it is, to how the coaches think, coded in terms of dialectical thinking and epistemic position. I can also help the coaches with their work. Let me explain by answering two questions.

Significance of Epistemic Position

The first question is: What is the significance of epistemic position in coaching practice? I have been struck in many sessions that I have supervised by how different coaches use the idea of ‘resources’. A resource can be anything that helps the client achieve the goal, and a standard coaching question is to ask about client resources, but how the coach thinks about them is significant. ‘Leadership skills’ are often quoted as a resource to deal with many problems such as difficult meetings and motivating people, as well as dealing with standard management problems. I have listened to sessions where the coach seemed to treat leadership skills as real, concrete things that exist in themselves. These skills were pushed around the mental chessboard like pawns. These abstractions remained wooden and unchanging, yet the coach talked about them as if they were real. They never got explored, contextualised or mapped over into the problem space.

Implications of Dialectical Thinking in Coaching Practice

Second question, What are the implications of dialectical thinking in coaching practice? In other words, how does dialectical thinking become alive and practical in coaching? To answer these questions I would like to give another example.

In one public session I supervised, the client talked about an E-mail she had received from a work colleague that was highly critical of her work. The client felt hurt, but at the same time wanted to learn from the sender how to improve. She wanted to have a face to face meeting with the sender in the next week. However, she also expressed a fear that she might lose her temper in this meeting, as she had done so in similar situations in the past. The coach asked a number of questions, but the session did not progress very far, either with helping the client make the most of the feedback, or allaying her fear of losing her temper.

It seemed to me that this was because the coach did not see what was missing in the client’s account. And that is where an answer lies – in the vast darkness that surrounds the client’s thinking. When I train coaches, I talk about questions as searchlights, illuminating mental spaces the client has not looked into.

I usually tell the joke of the man searching under a street light at night. A helpful passer by wanders over.

‘What are you looking for?’ he asks.
‘My house keys,’ replies the man.
‘Let me help you.’ Says the helpful stranger, and together they thoroughly search the area under the light, but in vain.
‘I can’t see them,’ says the passer by. ‘Where exactly did you lose them?’
‘Over there,’ says the man, pointing to an area fifty metres away.
‘Then why don’t we look over there?’ says the passer by, completely puzzled.
‘Because it’s dark over there, I can’t see. Here it’s light, so I am searching where I can see.’

And this is what clients do. They search in the light, among the things they know. That is why their problem persists. A coach is a passer by with a torch.

Dialectical thinking illuminates concepts to see what is missing, therefore dialectical thinking is essential for the coach to formulate questions that can help the client, otherwise coach and client will continue to search under the street light and never find the keys. Dialectical thinking is the power source for the torch.

In my feedback after the above session, I made some suggestions about what the coach might have asked that could have been more helpful.

To begin with, the coach had focused on the E-mail as a given ‘fact’. But an E- mail is only one example of a means of communication. If we take the base concept as ‘means of communication’ rather than ‘E-mail’, then we can ask some interesting questions like:

‘What is the significance of the fact that this person sent you an E-mail when she could have talked to you?’
‘Was the E mail only to you or was it copied to others?’
‘What could it mean that she sends you an E mail, but you want to meet her face to face?’

The second base concept that the coach had taken without illuminating was ‘criticism’. There are a lot of things hidden in the concept ‘criticism’, a feeling, an intention and possible useful learning. And all three can be taken from the perspective of the person who makes the criticism or the person criticized. The client had already said she wanted to learn from the criticism, but the criticism was not well expressed and not easy to learn from. Given that one of the other person’s intentions was to educate the client, the client could have used the meeting to educate the person into how to express the criticism in a useful way, thus helping both of them.

These sorts of questions and ideas turned out to be very helpful for the client. So how could the coach have generated them? What enabled me to generate them?

As a coach I want to be able to generate good questions. I find it helpful to apply various dialectical thought forms to the client’s expressions to illuminate what is missing — I look in the dark, not in the light. Then, as a coach trainer I want to be able to give the coaches a process of being able to generate good questions, rather than falling back on either ‘lists of powerful questions’ (with no context) or excuses like ‘intuition’ (how can you teach intuition?), or ‘learning from experience’ (but how to generate useful experience?). Dialectical thinking gives me the key. So I need to be able to explain the principle of dialectic and some of the thought forms so they can model what I do.

Then we face another question. Given that many thought forms might illuminate the client’s ideas and generate a range of possible questions about what is hidden, how do we know which ones to ask? How do we know in which direction to shine the light?

The answer is in clues and context that the client offers. It is rather like assembling a photo fit picture, you keep asking questions and by a series of approximations get to a best answer, provided you pay attention to the client.

So I have a way of coding what I do (applying dialectical questions to the client’s material) in a way that allows me to train others, so they can do the same. And because I have coded it clearly myself, I am in no danger of confusing trainee coaches. I have a method I can explain and pass on to other coaches, so they do not have to reinvent the wheel. Of course this method presupposes some ability with dialectic thinking, therefore anyone at epistemic position four is not going to be able to do it.

I know there is much more to be said about this, but this must suffice in the confines of a short article. People talk a lot about how to solve problems. With dialectical thinking you can dissolve problems, which to me, seems a better solution.

© 2007 Joseph O’Connor

Joseph O’Connor is a coach trainer, author and executive coach. He is co founder of the International Coaching Community. His latest book, written with Andrea Lages is ‘How Coaching Works’, a title that sums up the book very well. It is published on 26th October by AC Black (London).

Contact Joseph at joseph@lambentdobrasil.com.

International Pilot Program in Leadership Development

By Otto Laske
Interdevelopmental Institute

In collaboration with the Department of Public Administration, Roger Williams University, Providence, R. I., the Interdevelopmental Institute, Boston, MA, is developing an international certificate program for educating future leaders and leadership consultants. The program will be delivered using the latest version of Blackboard along with tele-classes. This certificate program is unique because it is based on research in adult development, a specialty of psychology dealing with the way in which adults develop over the life span, as well as research and practice in action learning. Leadership is a function of both the development of thinking and social self-definition of adults. For this reason, the Leadership Development Certificate teaches interview and assessment techniques to determine leadership capability, and provides students with the methodology and tools needed to consult to leaders effectively in recognition of their present developmental level.

The Leadership Development Program is taught in English and modeled after the Interdevelopmental Institute course of studies called Program One [TM] which has been in existence since 2000, and has been taught to an international student body. Program One teaches developmental thinking based on techniques of interview-based assessment. It leads to three alternative graduate certificates: of developmental interviewing, developmental assessment, and developmental consulting/coaching.

Developers of the Program are Prof. Steve Esons of the Department of Public Administration, Roger Williams University, and Dr. Otto Laske of the Interdevelopmental Institute. Professor Esons is an expert in action learning. He will take on the pedagogical logistics of student attendance and communication via the Blackboard. Dr. Laske will be responsible for course content. After successful completion of the program, students will receive a Graduate Certificate co-issued by the Interdevelopmental Institute and Roger Williams University. Students may also receive academic credit toward the completion of the MPA program offered by the University.

Dr. Laske and Professor Esons hope to have the Certificate Program up and running by the Spring of 2008. For further information please contact either Dr. Laske (otto@interdevelopmentals.org) or Professor Esons (sesons @rwu.edu).

Graduate Certificate of Developmental Interviewing and Supervision

Developmental interviewing is an art as well as a science. It combines knowledge of developmental theory with the ability to stand in the client’s shoes in a pragmatic, hands-on sense. When combing social-emotional and cognitive methods of interviewing, coach mentoring and supervision become an additional field of application.

Upon request by well-established coaches and coach supervisors, IDM is introducing a new graduate Certificate in developmental interviewing and supervision. The certificate enriches the Institute’s graduate offerings by focusing on the many benefits of semi-structured interviewing even when no formal assessment is made, especially in coaching and mentoring. Especially the study of module B, on dialectical thought forms, is a solid foundation for assisting supervisees by asking challenging questions.

The new Certificate is obtained based on the following requirements:

1. Gateway
2. Module A
3. Module B
4. Module E

...together requiring a minimum of 52 hours of tele-class instruction.

Module E is a master class taught in conjunction with Module D where students assist each other in preparing an individual case study under the supervision of the instructor. In practical terms, this entails administering four social-emotional and four cognitive interviews and evaluating them in terms of developmental theory, both social-emotional and cognitive.

The two-sided, social-emotional and cognitive, requirement makes good sense. While insight into a client’s way of making meaning is most helpful in situating the client’s concerns with regard to his/her present goals, insight into the client’s present phase of dialectical thinking is a potent tool for the coach who decides to challenge the ways in which clients make sense of their work and the world at large.

Where the clients are coaches, an assessment of their meaning and sense making enables an evaluation of their effectiveness as a coach. The holder of the certificate can assist them with improving their professional self image and can support how they go about their work (see Joseph O’Connor’s article, above).

IDM 2007/2008 Winter/Spring Courses

Courses Taught by Otto Laske

All classes are recorded for subsequent listening.

German Module A Class

Als Konsequenz der im vorigen Sommer in Konstanz und Berlin gehaltenen Seminare bietet IDM im Januar 2008 einen deutschsprachigen Kurs in Erwachsenenentwicklung an (Modul A). Die Klasse zielt auf Vertiefung persönlicher Fertigkeiten und Kenntnisse von Methoden des Hörens auf Stufen der Erwachsenenentwicklung. Die Methode is „hands-on“ und betrifft die Arbeit mit Interviewfragmenten und Übungen zum Interviewing.

Ein Seminar über Dialektisches Denken für Berater und Coaches ist für Anfang Juni 2008 in Berlin vorgesehen.

Based on German seminars held in Konstanz and Berlin, Germany, in the summer of 2007, a Module A class in German will be held starting in January 2008. The class aims to extend knowledge of social-emotional theory into assessment and coaching practice. It will focus on hands-on evaluation of interview fragments and entire interviews, as well as the art of social-emotional interviewing.

For further information, contact Otto at otto@interdevelopmentals.org

IDMA US Gateway Course

Taught by Sunil Ahuja

This fall and winter, Sunil Ahuja continues teaching Gateway through Integral Transformation Systems.

For further information about content and dates, contact Sunil at sunil@integral-transformation.com. Phone: (480) 314-1983.

European Fall/Winter Courses 2007 (Gateway, Module A)

Taught by Rainer v. Leoprechting

This fall and winter, Rainer v. Leoprechting continues teaching IDM Gateway and Module A courses through ECOC asbl, “Europe’s Children — Our Concern”.

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

Course Descriptions

For IDM Certification Program overview and course descriptions see
http://interdevelopmentals.org/registration.php

To register see http://interdevelopmentals.org/registration.php

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

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