Twenty Years IDM: Tribute to Otto Laske

On September 17, 2020, 110 professionals from 35 countries met to pay tribute to the power of developmental and dialectical thinking as taught at the Interdevelopmental Institute by Otto Laske. 15 practitioners of international provenance spoke about how the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF), established by Otto Laske in 1998-1999, has been instrumental in their professional work as consultants, managers, and coaches, and has in addition influenced their adult-developmental journey. Gathered through efforts by Jan De Visch, a Master Developmental Consultant and Coach who graduated from IDM in 2010, the speakers demonstrated that CDF has emerged as a powerful tool for aiding companies on their way to fully distributed leadership and to reaching a requisite level of agility and dynamic collaboration. The application of CDF to psychiatry and theological leadership education was also a topic. Otto Laske would like to acknowledge how inspirational it was for him to witness that and how CDF "lives" in its practitioners' daily work. He is honored by their tribute, which in his view is also a tribute to initiatives aiming to expand the narrow limits of present-day adult development research and consulting into the broader realm of real-time dialogue and dialectical thinking, on the path... Read More...

A Guide to Listening in Meetings Based on DTF

In this 2nd "inspiration session" regarding the book "Practices of Dynamic Collaboration", Jan De Visch and Otto Laske focus on what DTF, the Dialectical Thought Form Framework, can teach a person or group about enlarging and deepening their 'internal workplace' through thought-form based listening. Thought forms are shown to be more than simply conversation starters or analytical tools for understanding conversations. Their optimal use lies in real=time listening in a group or team environment. Thought forms are dynamic tools of dialogical thinking, in contrast to monological lists of patterns and text examples for grasping dialectic. The catch is: their use simultaneously teaches becoming aware of, and presupposes having become aware of, one's own dialectical movements-in-thought. In short: You have to like adventures. The set of slides below focus on team meetings (chapter 3 of the book) from the point of view of listening in real time; it teaches first steps in this direction made though text analysis of social-emotional and cognitive interviews. Inspiration Session 2 - August 19 2020 rev. OL   Read More...

Applying Bhaskar’s Four Moments of Dialectic to Reshaping Cognitive Development as a Social Practice using Laske’s Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF)

In this chapter for volume 2 of Meta-Theory dedicated to the memory of Bhaskar, delayed in its publication since 2014 and forthcoming at Routledge at the end of 2020,  I outline a dialectical epistemology and CDF teaching method for absorbing Bhaskar's legacy into integral thinking. I do so since both are presently absent from the integral community's work that has shown itself immune not only to dialectical thinking based on Baskar's MELD itself, but also to new developments in adult-developmental theory set forth at on this site. In nuce, in this text I outline the IDM 'Case Study Cohort Method' taught since 2005 and geared to educating professionals for the sake of becoming a 'master developmental coach or consultant'. In this chapter, I suggest that adopting this method or a suited variant of it would facilitate integral training and practical interventions in society and organizational work. See for yourself. Laske Chapter on Application of Bhaskar's Meld 2020   Read More...

Increasing the collaborative intelligence of teams by using deep dialogue practices

Team collaboration has become a pivot of organizational success. If people had an intuitive awareness of the structure of their thinking, team work would be a lot more effective since a greater mutual understanding and decision making would prevail. Such an awareness being absent, what meta-cognitive strategies can we use to heighten such an awareness? As the book 'Practices of Dynamic Collaboration' shows, a very effective strategy consists of  intentionally listening and speaking based on dialectical 'thought forms'. Discover how the collaborative intelligence paradigm derived from Laske's Dialectical Thought Form Framework works when applied in five crucial organizational practices seen as dialogue practices. Sign up for partaking of introductory sessions on team dialogue practices at: Also view literature links at , Section A, and pertinent teaching materials in Section B. For IDM Services, go to https://interdevelopmentals.org/services/ Read More...

On some crucial issues in adult-developmental theory

In this essay, i make the case that a new theory of adult development is needed that is no longer a one-sidedly 'left-hemisphere' enterprise. By this annotation I refer to the bi-hemispheric structure of the human mind. Specifically, in this essay I assert that a theory of adult development fails for 2 main reasons: (1) exclusion of sense making as dialectical thinking, (2) failure to honor the intrinsic relationship between meaning making (ED) and sense making (CD), the first of which is mainly grounded in right-hemisphere experience while the second is anchored in left-hemisphere re-presentation of experience. 2020 ILR submitted to ILR rev1 OL Read More...