Category: Team Development

As the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM) enters a new era, it wants to communicate what it has learned and what, based on its learning over nearly 20 years, it can now deliver to CEOs and Boards. Find out how the Institute's main methodology, called Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF), addresses contemporary issues such as the digital transformation of businesses in all of its facets. Take note of the critical realism CDF tools embody (thanks to Roy Bhaskar's work on a dialectical ontology), and IDM's critical theory practice that now provides a new home for Frankfurt School insights just in time ... Sincere thanks to the international community of students who have made IDM widely known through their own work over many years! A New Beginning at IDM Read More...

Copyright 2016 by Graham Boyd & Otto Laske In this article, the authors put forth a new approach to distributed leadership based on research in adult development and the pedagogical thought of Vygotsky, originator of the notion of zones of proximal development. The article attempts to re-totalize the issues neglected, or fragmented, by theories of holacracy and other models of shared leadership, in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of contemporary attempts to redesign organizational work in the direction of “organizations without managerial hierarchies”. In so doing, the authors leave behind present notions of “individual coaching”, “team coaching”, “managerial hierarchy”, and “organizational behavior”, among others, focusing squarely on contributors’ frame of reference (FoR; world view) that determines how they put their capabilities to work collaboratively and what their needs for developmental support are. The article’s essential argument is summarized in Tables 2a and 2b, one for each dimension of adult development. The authors come to the conclusion that for holacracy and similar models to succeed, much more attention must be paid to the fact that unconventional organization designs challenge contributors’ self-identity and psychological well-being. They also show that a one-sided focus on tasks and competences (Task House) is counter-productive... Read More...

In this paper, the authors (Otto Laske, Alessandro Rossi) lay out a practical approach to integral counseling (part A) and consulting to teams (part B), based on the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF). The main topic is how to combine interventions for strengthening developmental level and cognitive fluidity, seen as intrinsically related as well as mingled in practice.  CDF tools are described as prompts that trigger evidence about the frame of reference based on which clients and teams think, feel, and make decisions. Theoretically, the proposed framework includes and transcends both Wilber’s quadrants and Bhaskar’s moments of dialectic, showing a path toward integral constellations work for which teachable and learnable pragmatic tools are presently hard to find. A Developmental Framework for Deep Listening and Thinking Read More...

This text by Otto Laske and Alessandro Rossi describes the use of the Constructive Developmental Framework as a culture transformation instrument. Pragmatic implementations of CDF are geared to strengthening dialectical thinking in groups, teams, committees, and coalitions, whether commercial, academic, political, or educational, with an eye on increasing collaborative intelligence. The focus of such work is placed intoplaying “dialectical thought games” in real time, targeting a real-world problem. The authors think that innovation has to become commensurate with the challenges now arising from the human ability to transform nature (anthropocene). Accordingly, their call to action is focused on dialectical cognition, not psychology or social-emotional development. The main topics are: The need for a new concept of human being and of work Handling complexity in the anthropocene is not “business as usual” Moving from systems thinking to transformational (dialectical) thinking has become a societal necessity Human development needs social support in the zone of proximal development Innovation requires collaborative intelligence and maturity in teams A Developmental Agenda EN Read More...

In the dialectic-starved West we tend to blindly follow formal logical thinking to the bitter end (e.g., global warming). However, there are alternatives, especially when one becomes informed by the work of Vygotsky, Piaget, Adorno, and Bhaskar, and the empirical work of Basseches and Laske. In the article here posted psychologist Veraksa et al. report on experimenting with teaching pre-school children dialectical thinking. Speaking of "leadership development", I suggest you start here ...Structural dialectical approach in psychology Read More...

In this short article I am pointing to some deficiencies of the present notion of DDO, "deliberately developmental organizations". In contrast, I present a short apercu on the benefits of CDF, the Constructive Developmental Framework which I see as a more comprehensive approach to understanding the nature of work and a set of tools for designing new work environments. Seeing WORK As A Medium of Adult Development Read More...