Otto Laske

The Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) is a psychometric tool for coaching research, coaching practice, and more broadly for managing human capital. CDF assesses clients’ present frame of reference (world view) from the double perspective of two strands of adult development: cognitive and socialemotional development. It scrutinizes, in addition, clients’ psychological balance at work from within a Freudian framework. By bringing together developmental and behavioural findings, the CDF user obtains empirical evidence needed for defining effective and realistic coaching plans.

CDF is also a solid foundation for educating evidence-based coaches and establishing entire organizational coaching programs. The extension of CDF to corporate uses is straightforward. When aggregated over a larger number of individuals, CDF data can be used to define strategies for developing human resources, in particular recruitment, placement, leadership development coaching, executive development, succession planning, and other purposes.

CDF is based on the constructivist paradigm followed by research in adult development over the life span since Piaget. The paradigm says that coaches and their clients alike construct reality according to their present developmental level. As a consequence, human behaviour appears as an epi-phenomenon of the presently held developmental level. Doing follows being.

Historically considered, CDF synthesizes five different strands of developmental research since the 1950s: (1) research into social-emotional development (Kegan, 1982; 1994; Lahey, 1988; Laske, 1999a,

2006a; Loevinger, 1976), (2) the structure of dialectical thinking (Laske, 1966; Adorno, 1999; Bhaskar, 1993), (3) the development of dialectical thinking and reflective judgment over the lifespan (Basseches, 1984, 1989a-b; King and Kitchener, 1994; Laske 1999a), (4) psychodynamic foundations of work behaviour (Murray, 1938, 1948; Aderman, 1967, 1969), and (5) the cognitive-developmental structure of organizational roles (Jaques, 1994, 1998).

This article details CDF as a system comprising three dimensions referred to as CD (cognitive development), ED (social-emotional development), and NP (Need/Press or psychological balance), respectively. The latter dimension is interpreted based on the two former ones, meaning that the same behaviour has different meanings at different developmental levels.

The article comprises four sections, a summary, and references. Section I describes the theoretical model CDF is based on. Section II details the three dimensions of CDF: cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioural. Sections III discusses evidence-based mentoring, while Section IV focuses on the unity of behavioural and developmental perspectives in coaching research and practice.

Keywords: adult development, developmental coaching, dialectical thinking, frame of reference, process consultation, psychometrics.

Full article: Volume 3, Issue 2 pages 125 - 147