Author: Otto Laske

In this interview published in the Integral Leadership Review (May 2018), Otto Laske answers questions posed by Robin Wood regarding his social-science work. Special emphasis lies on Otto's book recently co-authored with Jan De Visch entitled "Dynamic Collaboration" (2018). The wide-ranging interview touches upon many issues of present day culture fostered by logical control schemes that pervade contemporary thinking. Among these issues is the lack of complex thinking in the integral movement whose constituency continues to ride what Laske calls the social-emotional triumphalism train anchored in Kegan's work (a term that has some of the original Roman connotations, such as annihilation of what does not fit in.). Universal lack of attention to cognitive development beyond binary logic, exacerbated by apps that suppress internal dialog, is seen as significantly contributing to the global crisis societies are presently experiencing. The interview advocates replacing a logical and monological mindset, now rampant in both research and practice, with a dialogical mindset in terms of which 'Mind' stops being bottled up in single individuals but is, instead, seen as intrinsically dialogical, thus as a distributed system linking body, self, and social reality. ILR Interview of Otto Laske by R. Wood May 2018 Read More...

In this article forthcoming in the Integral Leadership Review in May, 2018, Jan De Visch and Otto Laske give examples of the benefits of focusing on complex dialogical thinking in leading and coaching teams, regardless of the specific topic a team is addressing. Their developmentally informed strategy of team intervention is based on insights deriving from working with DTF, Laske's Dialectical Thought Form Framework (2008). DTF sheds light on, as well as delivers cutting-edge tools for, turning around team collaboration in the direction of an upward spiral. The article is a review of the authors' book entitled "Dynamic Collaboration: Strengthening Self-Organization and Collaborative Intelligence in Teams". The book is the first to fully incorporate findings about adult development over the life span into the literature on teams, and in this sense pioneering. Review of "Dynamic Collaboration: Strengthening Self-Organization and Collaborative Intelligence in Teams" (De Visch & Laske 2018) For an introduction to the book click on Introduction-to-Dynamic-Collaboration. The book can be ordered at https://connecttransform.be/dynamic-collaboration/   For a summary of the most important topics and insights of the book see below:  Perspex Scenes Template (copy) on Biteable. Read More...

This blog makes accessible, and comments on, a 2010 publication of the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM) on the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) that is still largely unknown in Europe and the US. The publication is in the form of an issue of Wirtschaftspsychologie, a Swiss-German magazine focused on the psychology of work delivery, and referred to as Themenheft. The publication was assembled upon the invitation of Prof. emeritus Theo Wehner, Institut fuer Arbeitswissenschaft, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The Themenheft articles introduce a new conception of human resources and, related to that, new ways of supporting organizational work by way of consulting, coaching, team and leadership development. The articles anticipate what later would be called by Kegan & Lahey the "deliberately developmental organization." As in Jaques's conception of "requisite organization", the assumption is made that there is ultimately no conflict between work force development and client and stakeholder satisfaction. Viewed from a broader, methodological, perspective, CDF represents a novel approach to carrying out  qualitative and quantitative research in the social sciences. It promotes empirical research of a kind that overcomes the positivistic tendencies of purely logical thinking, and thereby avoids reifying social and psychological processes rather than making them transparent in their unfolding... Read More...

For the longest time, teams have been managed, as well as researched, based exclusively on behaviorist tenets: the notion that by focusing on how team members "behave", their collaboration can be made more effective, even 'self authoring', or whatever the latest fad dictated. For the same long time, managers have spoken rather than listened, and if they listened, they only listened to the content of what team members were saying, -- rather than to the structure of team members' thinking, as well as their own, on which speaking is based. What is more, teams have been addressed only by way of purely logical thinking that turns whatever it encounters into an inert object (rather than acknowledging it as a living entity). As a result, the meaning of team work has been driven out of it, and only what team work descriptively "is" has remained standing, yielding predictably shallow team interventions. To change this counter-productive state of affairs is the purpose of Jan and Otto's book, entitled Dynamic Collaboration: Strengthening Self-Organization and Collaborative Intelligence in Teams (ConnectTransform & IDM Press 2018). They succeed at this by demonstrating in detail that behavior is only one dimension out of three that are relevant... Read More...

Otto Laske's contributions to social-science, process consultation, and the teaching of & mentoring in developmental thinking and listening extend from 1999 to the present day. Many of his articles, keynotes, and teaching materials in English and German, as well as translations into Spanish and Italian, have recently been posted on this website under individual BLOGS as downloadable pdfs. They are organized in the form of thematic collections. These writings are 10 or more years ahead of our time. Licensing of his work is available; so far, it has been adopted in Malaysia. The prominent topics in Laske's writings are: 1. Complex, dialectical, thinking as the peak of adult cognitive development, and its relevance in society today. 2. Pedagogy of dialectical thinking (methodology of learning complex dialog), exercised, taught and certified at the Interdevelopmental Institute, IDM, since 2000. 3. Theory and practice of evidence-based developmental coaching; its missed chances caused by neglecting adult cognitive development in individuals and teams by all those who boarded the social-emotional triumphalism train in the 1990s. 4. Team Coaching framed by Laske's social-emotional team typology (2005) and based on dialectical thought form tools, for unlocking team members' internal dialog (the basis of external team dialog as... Read More...

The first workshop on CDF, the Constructive Developmental Framework, was held in Rome in 2011, carried out in collaboration with the Italian Society for Coaching Psychology (Ida Sirolli organizer). In the texts below, Italian readers find teaching materials and commentary for learning CDF. Translations are by Marco Di Monte and Dr. Alessandro Rossi, both students of the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM). So far, attempts to bring knowledge of CDF into Italian organizations have failed despite a good understanding of humanistic approaches in Italy (manifest, e.g., in Marco Minghetti's work).   Forme di Pensiero Dialettico (Sirolli 2011) Sirolli's translation of CDF slides for the Rome seminar is too large for upload.   Italian Wikipedia Articel on CDF (Di Monte 2012)   L'Interdevelopmental Institute (Di Monte 2012)   Introduzzione a CDF (Di Monte 2014)   Nuove Strutture di Pensiero (Rossi 2016)   Como Sviluppare Nuove Strutture di Pensiero (Rossi 2016)   A Methodology for Creating a Developmentally Aware Society (Laske 2016) This text was written by Otto Laske as part of preparations for the seminar 'sviluppare nuove strutture di pensiero' (2016).   Read More...