Tag: Thought Forms

Attached to this blog, the reader will find a set of slides presented in a workshop held in Vienna, Austria, in February of 2019, for a company called Four Dimensions Consulting. It was the purpose of the workshop to introduce a German-speaking audience to the cognitive-developmental dimension of organizational work, especially team work. The workshop introduced participants to methods of cognitive interviewing associated with DTF, Laske's Dialectical Thought Form Framework of 2008. The focus of the workshop was shedding light on the close interweaving of the social-emotional and cognitive strands of adult development over the life span. The immediate pragmatic focus was assistance in learning about the four moments of dialectic and their associated thought forms. The workshop's Table of Contents is the following: Einstimmung • Einleitung in das Entwicklungsdenken • Teil Eins : Die interne Struktur von Humankapital • Teil Zwei : Im dialektischen Denkformrahmen arbeiten • Teil Drei : Methodologische Grundlagen des kognitiven Interviews • Teil Vier : Einfuehrung in die Praxis des kognitiven Interviews • Anhang A: Die vier Manager • Anhang B: Dialektik in Bildern erkennen Kurze Bibliographie Komplexes Denken Wien def3 2019 Read More...

In the set of slides attached to this blog, the reader finds my presentation on cognitive coaching of January 2019, presented to a London consulting firm, MDV. The purpose of my workshop was to teach consultants a new form of developmental assessment and, based on it, of developmental thinking that is increasingly in demand in distributed-leadership organizations striving to become self-organizing. The workshop's distinct purpose was to contribute to augmenting the quality of team dialogue, as well as of critical facilitation of team dialogue, by scrutinizing the dialectical structure of human movements-in-thought, both in life and at work. The Table of Contents of the presentation is as follows: 1. The New Coaching Environment 2. Resources for Developmental Coaching 3. Essentials of Team Coaching 4. The Mental Space of Coaching in the Three Houses 5. Overview of Cognitive  Coaching Tools Provided by DTF 6. A Developmental Look at Organizations 7. Exercises: The Three Managers 8. The Art and Science of Cognitive Interviewing 9. Appendix: Thought Form Tables 10. Short Bibliography. Cognitive Coaching London def 2019   Read More...

In this article, Jan De Visch reviews experiences he has made as a Critical Facilitator when working with teams in organizations (see his work at www.connecttransform.be). Jan's gift of deep thinking makes him a very good listener who can intervene in team conversations because he "hears" and "understands" their thought form structure in the sense of DTF, Laske's Dialectical Thought Form Framework (2008). Based on his consulting experience combining both social-emotional and cognitive interventions, Jan is presently building an App in the domain of performance review centered on defining team roles realistically, in line with strategic objectives. He expands such reviews into deep thinking dialogues involving, first, a 'problem owner', and then an entire team, all of whom are changed in the process of reflection he triggers in them. Many managers conceive of thinking as a kind of 'information processing', believing that better thinking consists merely of deleting logical errors. Jan's blog shows that that view of thinking is very limited, and why. JDV - How do you teach managers to think V3   Read More...

In this blog, I draw conclusions from two previous blogs, found at and , both focused on teaching and learning dialectical thinking. I show that teaching dialectical thinking needs to address, and draw practical conclusions from, the distinction between 'thinking' and 'cognition', seen as counter-movements between the four moments of dialectic, CPRT, in the sense of Bhaskar's MELD. I trace DTF dialectical thinking back to Plato's Socrates, respectfully acknowledging Hannah Ahrendt's tremendous insight into 'the thinking ego' as remaining 'absent', which she owes to her  deep knowledge of Greek philosophy transferred to reading I. Kant's work. I tend to think that Roy Bhaskar would have been pleased to have his MELD epistemologically elucidated as happens in this blog. On Letting Thinking Appear   Read More...

My colleague and friend Jan De Visch has recently made enormous strides toward a 'dialogically savvy app', -- an app that triggers deep and critical thinking in order to foster dynamic collaboration. The app is accompanied by the Re-Thinking Game, an implementation of DTF, the Dialectical Thought Form Framework. DTF is an ideal framework for preparing yourself to become a Critical Facilitator because it enables a learner to acquire the skill of 'building complexity' with clients, a process by which clients become aware of the 'terrible simplification' they perform on the real world by way of logical thinking. Jan is an graduate of the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM) where he learned to think in terms of the moments of dialectic and their thought forms (see the many blogs on this computer to learn more). Below, have a look at what Jan has to say about the difference between conventional and critical facilitation (facilitation based on critical thinking). In Jan's and my definition, the difference between a conventional facilitator and a 'critical facilitator' is the following: A facilitator functions from a 'participant perspective.' He looks at an organizational system as an outsider and intervenes in it to achieve certain objectives. S(he) is... Read More...

The Frankfurt School is well known, liked or not liked, due to its pervasive influence in the domain of culture critique. As on account of increasing threats to democracy its legacy is once more coming to the fore, there is a strong tendency to focus on the products and results of the school's activity while totally bypassing quite another legacy of the school, namely, rigorous teaching of complex, 'dialectical' thinking. In this blog, a veteran attendant of Frankfurt School Hauptseminars, directed by Max Horkheimer and Th. W. Adorno, from 1958 to 1966, Otto Laske, speaks up to remind those interested in the school of its huge promise for helping (young and young remaining) minds achieve new depths of reflection and circumspection, not only about society, but also about the cosmos at large and about themselves in their societal and ecological predicament. Otto Laske reviews the teachings of the school's Hauptseminar which focused on Hegel's Logic of 1812-16 as a vehicle for achieving fluid and holistic systemic thinking, more than ever needed in the world we live in, which we created without much further thought about the consequences of our actions supported by fabulous technologies. Taking a measure of Hauptseminar teaching... Read More...