Introduction to Developmental Thinking and
Listening for Coaches
A New Coaching Course by Otto Laske
Nature of the Course
This coaching course is designed for coaches without knowledge of adult-developmental theory and assessment. Its purpose is to inspire coaches to enrich their behavioral orientation by embracing new ways of understanding their clients.
Coaches will be able to move into a niche not found in the ICF world. The perspectives on coaching taught in this course can be deepened by acquiring knowledge about the Constructive Developmental Framework.
Emphasis on Practice
Through a series of thought provoking sessions, participants will be introduced to two different ways of thinking developmentally: social-emotional and cognitive. By discussing their coaching cases with an instructor steeped in developmental thinking (Otto Laske), coaches will practice making interventions that bring to light their clients’ meaning making and thinking.
Since to do so this takes knowledge of developmental theory, the instructor conveys crucial elements of developmental theory by commenting on participants’ views of specific clients and those responses of their clients as they can reproduce. He will guide participants in asking questions that lead further than a merely behavioral perspective permits.
Emphasis is put on engaging with practical coaching cases and reflecting about them in light of developmental theory. In so doing, participants rehearse perspectives that heretofore have been a closed book for them. They gain tools and practice techniques that make them better coaches, extending and enriching what they already know about, and practice in, their coaching.
Change the way you think about your challenges
Challenges in coaching often hinge on a deeper understanding of how clients construct their own identity in life and at work; they also arise on account of limited ways of thinking clients are attached to. In both cases, a developmental perspective on what is said and brought forward by clients in coaching sessions is highly helpful and empowering. To adopt such a perspective requires putting in brackets one’s own well-rehearsed habits and adopting new ways of thinking and listening to clients. To do so is the challenge this course proposes.
Co-creation with participants
This course starts where coaches presently are in their thinking about their clients. It is based on developmental commentary on coaching cases brought to class by participants, and on the participation of every cohort member in discussing the cases brought forward. Each participant is asked to report at least two coaching cases including the interventions used in the case by him or her. The class provides reflections on what could have been handled differently had developmental insight into the client been available to the coach. The cohort then reconstructs the case reported on and makes recommendations for client interventions that apply to the case.
What is developmental coaching?
Developmental coaching as taught in the course is nothing but the application of research findings to concrete coaching situations, filtered through the instructor’s knowledge of CDF, the Constructive Developmental Framework. In this course, developmental coaching is not so much defined as actually practiced by all cohort members, using a summary of developmental theory provided as background by the instructor. Through the on-going modeling of the instructor, coaches learn to invent new perspectives on clients, and new ways of speaking with and listening to them. In this way, “developmental coaching” loses its academic status and becomes a living reality for coaches.
Issues we will address in the program
- How to think of clients as being on a life-long developmental journey
- How to think of clients as meaning makers
- How to think of clients as thinkers
- How to use social-emotional prompts to shed light on how clients make meaning of their experiences
- How to use dialectical thought forms to expand clients’ thinking
- How to better distinguish between meaning making and thinking
- How to better distinguish between psychological and developmental issues
- How to ask clients powerful questions that elicit and shed light on their meaning-making
- How to challenge clients’ thinking by using dialectical thought forms
- How to recognize places of developmental stuckness in clients
- How to fathom client’s developmental potential by “testing the limits”
Who should attend?
This program is designed for experienced coaches and coach trainers who:
- are looking for new ways of supporting clients in small, middle-sized and large corporations
- have seen the limits of behavioral coaching in the sense of ICF and want to push beyond those limits
Program content and exercises are relevant for coaches of all educational backgrounds and personal persuasions. The overall objective of the course is to produce thinkers who, when faced with a tough problem, see it as their job to generate an unconventional solution.
Facilitator
Otto Laske, Founder of the Interdevelopmental Institute (www.interdevelopmentals.org). Otto has deep and broad knowledge of developmental coaching and is the author of the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) taught at IDM, and described in two books available at the IDM Press:
- "Measuring Hidden Dimensions: The Art and Science of Fully Engaging Adults" (MHD Volume 1)
- "Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems: Foundations of Requisite Organization" (MHD Volume 2)
If you have further questions about this offering, please contact us.
Course Certificate
Participants earn 16 CEUs in the form of the IDM Certificate of Developmental Thinking and Listening.
Register for “Introduction to Developmental Thinking and Listening for Coaches”
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