Testimonials
“I'd like first of all to say that the content of IDM courses - both your two volumes and the extra class materials - as well as your teaching, was of exceptional quality. Other academic courses I have taken in psychology cannot rival your course offering.
“In addition, I would emphasize how much I have gained from your work, your vision and your teachings. They have greatly deepened and broadened my overall understanding of stages and phases of development and will stand me in good stead for any future work I may do with constructive developmental psychology.
“Regarding Program One, I found module A to be extremely practical and making Kegan's work and stages very clear and workable. That alone, for someone wishing to do developmental coaching and assessment, is extremely valuable. And module B was fascinating, by far the most interesting for me, and that is clearly your major contribution - together with separating social-emotional stages from cognitive stages and then bringing them together with the horizontal dimension of personality in Module C. Perhaps it would be possible to make C less work-oriented and include the Enneagram?
“So, there is little to say on improving the modules as I think your whole CDF approach is a great improvement over what is “out there”. Thank you so much for your patient, clear, engaged and respectful guidance throughout the 3 modules as well as for the depth and breadth of your work.”
Paul Marshall
Well-Being Expert and Researcher, UK
“The most important influence I have felt from studying the CDF methodology occurred in my way of listening to clients. Having a model of developmental levels in mind during coaching sessions increases my attention and focus, as well as my capacity to stand in other people’s shoes, and enables me to do so with the least judgment possible. In addition, I am gaining a high level of awareness of the inter-subjectivity of coaching where both coach and client are in flow with each other and mentally grow together.”
Alexandra Lemos
Mind Coach,
Porto, Portugal
“The Gateway experience actually brings more than just new concepts to me — I feel you have aligned / gathered / sorted / expanded / languaged many of my thoughts and concepts and are catapulting me forward in my thinking! Delightful experience!
“I passed on one of your papers to a client (Business Leadership for an Evolving Planet: The Need for Transformational Thinking in Intercultural and International Environments). I am pursuing the opportunity to work with his organisation in a cross-international-culture coaching role and the first thing he said in our meeting yesterday was 'We know we have an issue, we don't know what it is. We think a lot of it is around the fact that they think differently, and we don't know where to start.' I was so incredibly excited to have the concepts you teach in my mind and your paper in my hand!
“Now I need to get up to speed faster. Listening to your mp3s is like coming home. I have a business and coaching background, and have pondered so many of the concepts I have come across so far. The concepts make so much sense to me. It is wonderful to see the research bringing my understanding to life — giving weight to what I sensed to be true and see the data proving the points. Even though I am only signed up yesterday, I have devoured the first slide presentation, have downloaded the audio so I can listen on my Ipod and am itching to continue!
“Overall, there seems to be an underlay of non-duality — I haven't got far enough to find more, but this is extremely exciting for me — to find a process that can be used in the corporate world using this is just what I was looking for!”
Diane Hewat
Management consultant and coach,
Australia
Learn about The IDM Difference — IDM Newsletter article by Brian Leclerc
“Laske’s writing and teaching provides rare insights into the patterns and rhythm of social-emotional and cognitive adult development. Laske’s grammar for dialectical thinking is like a scaffolding for cognitive development. The grammar consists of epistemic stances and is combined with an alphabet of 28 Thought Forms, which together allow for endless compositions of creative and transformational thinking.”
Karin Ulmer
Policy Advisor, Brussels
Graduate of Modules A to C
“In bringing together theories of cognitive and social-emotional adult development Otto Laske has developed a unique methodology for assessing human capability at work. The methodology is soundly based empirically and theoretically, practical to apply, and teachable. Organizations that need a means to understand the capability, and assess the development needs, of their managers now have a breakthrough method which goes well beyond the typical route of competency measurement and psychometric testing. Otto’s contribution to a decision science for Organizational Human Resources is immense and has far-reaching application. His programs have enriched and strengthened my practice, and in my view are essential learning for all practitioners in the field of management and organizational development.”
N. Shannon, management psychologist (UK)
“I have found Gateway, and Modules A & B to provide me with a remarkably robust methodology for assessing my coaching clients’ socio-emotional and cognitive lines of development. In particular, Otto’s ingenious work in bringing together a number of adult developmental and organizational theories to create an assessment approach in the cognitive line results in a sharp, evidence-based, reliable window into someone’s cognitive mapping. If we act based on how and what we think, this is a powerful way to gain insight into, and in turn support our clients’ development. For anyone using Ken Wilber’s lines of development in their coaching assessments and programs, this material can take you one step deeper into it.”
Jean Ogilvie, The Aeshna Project
“The impact of Gateway goes far beyond the introduction to developmental assessment or coaching. This has been my own experience. Now that I give courses in the Gateway materials I am told again and again that the course compels people to re-think their profession and challenges them to integrate its teachings into their daily work. The impact is not restricted to coaching or consulting as one may think. There is a large number of HR processes, from recruitment, outplacement, selection of trainers and contractors, conflict management to succession planning and talent management that take on a different meaning. If one begins to understand them in terms of adult development, those scattered HR practices start to make sense and unite in the goal of helping people to live at their requisite place in an organization — that is, to work in tune with the development they have achieved right now, and stretching them just to their next level.
“Through the Gateway course I have met a number of colleagues who have pursued their development in developmental consulting further. Some have become close partners in the Pro Action development programs and initiatives, working in different languages and places around Europe and the globe.”
R. v. L., Director, Pro-Action Europe pro-action.eu
“It's not enough merely to know *what* a client is thinking; especially since the client's thinking often underlies the creation or perpetuation of his challenges. Otto Laske's deep teachings illuminate that it is useful for a coach to understand *how* a client thinks. Recognizing the otherwise undetectable underlying structure of a client's expression can be as useful as paying attention to the content the client shares. As an executive coach whose value lies in being a "thinking partner" to my clients, I've had my perspective stretched, methods enhanced, and capacity to assist others by IDM's distinct and formidable content.”
D. B., Lead Well Coaching
“The key issue for my work and the success of the organizations I represent is the determination of the future. Otto Laske provides powerful tools to assist in this process. My synthesis of his world class resources enabled new strategic thinking. It helped in finding and developing unique opportunities in complex, community change projects that benefited leaders, their organizations and the wider community. The process involves applying integrative thinking to facilitate creative and provocative dialogues with people who can influence the direction of future policy. It involves challenging innate assumptions and practices restricted by conventional thinking in others.
“There are also many practical applications from the studying with the IDM: gaining personal insights into you own level development, considering how this may benefit others and gaining expertise in the use of tools that promote thinking.”
Eddy Jackson, Principal, Highfurlong School (UK)
“The elegant conceptual framework and language revealed in Gateway took me beyond both my clinical (counseling) and content driven (coaching) interactions to a more authentic relationship with my clients. I began to see some of the flaws in my approach to learning about my clients, the hit or miss fashion by which coach and client decide what the focus of the relationship will be. I began to use developmental language with my clients and myself, which we both found comprehensible and relevant, even illuminating at times. My clients began to ask questions and incorporate the language as their own. We became more effective together, and my clients stayed in coaching longer, due to a shift to a lifespan view of their own evolutionary development. Gateway was such a leap in knowledge that once again I was sure I must complete the package, by going through all of Program One.”
N.M., life and executive coach, Program One, Module B
“In the Gateway Program, I began to understand that adults move through some predictable stages or phases, and that these stages help to explain the source of their pain or obstacles and goals. Not only did I gain valuable insights about my own life, I also began to understand why some of those coaching interactions were not effective. I would never view coaching in the same way again. I began to ask questions and listen in a different way; I began to gain insights around how people make meaning out of their lives. My coaching took on a greater depth.
“While I have yet to perfect all the skills and techniques of developmental coaching, I now have an expanded sensitivity to my clients. I can make an informed hypothesis about my client that helps me put their coaching goals into a context that allows me to choose approaches and tools more suited to them. And I am now aware that delving more deeply into evidence based coaching through IDM courses would allow me to evaluate my hypothesis and to track the effectiveness of my coaching.”
L. F., life and executive coach, Gateway 2005
“Developmental coaching has helped me to better understand my clients and myself. I've learned that every individual is at a developmental level, and it's from this level that we function and make meaning of our experiences, our world, and ourselves. I've also learned that my clients' learning is influenced and impacted by their present capability/developmental level. With a much clearer and deeper understanding of my clients, I can be where each client is developmentally so that I can better help them to get to where they want to go. Understanding and using this information has helped me to better coach my clients, which gives them greater opportunities to create changes that are relevant to them and sustainable for the longer term.”
E. V-R, MCC, Gateway, 2005
“I have sought the 'next step' in my own development as a coach and I believe that this program is it. I am interested in expanding my coaching competencies to include learning how to listen, interview, and create a coaching plan based on the developmental model. I want to learn where I am developmentally and how to facilitate developmental shifts in others and myself.”
B.G., Gateway 2005
“I continue to believe that the path you are taking will make a major contribution to the profession of coaching, the practitioners of coaching, as well as those that are coached by good coaches. It is really an incredible situation (of coach education) you have created.”
M.S., Gateway Class 2004
“Otto, this is a short note to let you know how happy I was to see your article in the recent Coaching World. I think you are doing some of the most important work in our evolving profession, and I wish you the best of luck with it.”
S.M., MCC, International Coach Federation President-Elect, 2004
“Otto Laske is one of the brightest minds in the coaching profession. His CDREM allows coaches to assess their clients' level of development, and thus better target their coaching. The CDREM methodology is also the first tool for assessing and monitoring coaching effectiveness throughout an organization, based on objective, research-based criteria. This methodology creates more meaningful results for coach, client, and sponsor alike.”
S. M., Senior Coach
“As an OD consultant, I have found that the method taught by Dr. Laske is applicable outside of coaching. It can be used to assess teams as well as larger groups, in matters of hiring, outsourcing, team building, performance management, succession planning, and assessing the effectiveness of entire coaching programs. In short, it opens up new avenues of work for the consultant.”
S. S., Gateway and Program One Module A, 2003
“After participating in the Gloucester workshop of 2003, I knew I had to continue to pursue the framework you introduced. Your evidence based approach turns the subjective into objective, personal and measurable. I am particularly taken with your triangulated methods, and am eager to learn more about your approach.”
D.T., Manager
“I must say it is really a privilege for me to learn from you, especially since I believe that in a business the Human Capital value chain and related issues is really the last frontier for optimization of business performance.”
J.B., Gateway and Program One Module A, 2003
“A big value of learning from you is that it extends my range of powerful questions, provides new frameworks and tools with which to listen and understand my clients (in terms of adult development), and how they make meaning of their world. Gateway and Program One, Module A helps me be much more insightful with clients, and calibrate my coaching to capability and potential.”
D.S., Gateway and Program One Module A, 2003
“The teaching is really supportive of your own peculiar needs in understanding the developmental way of thinking; working in a buddy system with participants is another important support. Otto goes out of his way to give participants the help they need to 'get' the material, and is open to critical feedback to an astounding degree.”
K. T., Gateway and Program One Module A, 2002
“This course has truly enriched my coaching practice. Knowing the Constructive Developmental Framework has raised my awareness of who my clients are, in a way that is becoming more and more intuitive. I now have a developmental framework in which to locate my clients, and I am more aware of my own approach much more than before.”
D. M., Gateway and Program One Module A, 2002
“Otto has tremendous wisdom to offer to the coaching profession, and I am deeply grateful that he embodies and amplifies a more rigorous approach to coaching. A developmental model greatly serves to elevate the standards of the coaching profession.”
G. G., senior coach, 2002
“Otto is a mind changer, in many ways and languages. He teaches his methodology with passion and great insight so that you are forced to rethink your coach practice, and become eager to understand your own developmental position and, consequently, approach to coaching.”
A. C., Gateway and Program One Module A, 2002
“Otto's developmental framework is extremely well conceived and is a welcome addition to the field. Otto helps us understand why sometimes coaching does not work, and what we can do as coaches to develop ourselves, and deliver our services at the most appropriate level for our clients' needs. He is an engaging speaker with a compelling message.”
M. E., senior coach, 2001
“The Constructive Developmental Framework is a break-through in the coaching field. It allows coaches to design interventions that meet the clients where they are developmentally, and to determine the effectiveness of their interventions over time.”
C. S., Ed D, senior coach, 2001