Barriers to Using CDF

Given that CDF, the Constructive Developmental Framework, is more than a set of tools and therefore requires for its use a particular mindset, have you wondered what one might say are the main barriers to using it optimally? The short blog below is meant to give some answers to this question. Barriers to Using CDF   Read More...

A New Era Begins at the Interdevelopmental Institute, Gloucester, MA, USA (IDM)

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...

Merging Behavioral and Developmental Practices: An Integral Framework for Deep Listening and Thinking

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...

An Integrated Model of Developmental Coaching

This article, originally published in 1999 but still very timely today, introduces a way of deepening cognitive-behavioral, psycho-dynamic, and other behavioral approaches to coaching and HR resources management. It proposes an epistemological model that focuses on adults' frame of reference (world view), the true determinant of human behavior, which has been practiced and taught internationally at the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM) since 2000. The approach focuses on adults speech behavior as a dimension revealing their developmental profile both social-emotionally (with regard to meaning making) and cognitively (with regard to sense making or *thinking*). The paradigm and the model are developmental in a twofold sense, that of “ontic” development occurring in human organisms as the mature over their lifetime (“nature”), and of “agentic” development brought about by humans (“nurture”). An introduction to the model is presented, followed by the topology of the mental space of coaching, a summary, and suggested topics for future research. Source: Consulting Psychology Journal 51.3, pp. 139-159 CPJ #1, 1999 Read More...

Coaching Goes Developmental

For a long time, there was only coaching focused on client's behavior, not mnd-set, but this is changing. The International Coaching Community (ICC), in collaboration with the Interdevelopmental Institutee (IDM) is starting an introductory course on evidence based coaching based on research in adult development. This gives experienced coaches the opportunity to build a niche for themselves as developmental coaches in the professional sense of the term. To get a feel for this kind of coaching work, go to the course information found at: A link to the September 16 free webinar for this course is found at: To register for the course on developmental coaching for individuals go to: http://www.internationalcoachingcommunity.com/academy/academy-calendar?category_id=1&lang=enregister   Read More...