Today, we bring the ideas of the AQ, TQ and CI's into therapy and coaching through the CAIR model.

The central question is simple enough to say aloud. How are you constructing the thinking that is producing this response, right now? And when you become aware of that construction, what else becomes available?

That is where this episode is going. We will look at the four pillars, follow a coaching conversation, and consider what this means when the experience involves anxiety, conflict or grief.

Detecting Thought in Real Time

In the last two episodes, we explored two different dimensions of Constructed Development Theory.

Today, we add a third dimension.

Cognitive Intentions.

Cognitive Intentions ask:

In which direction is attention being organised while the person constructs the situation?

What can we hear in the language through which they are constructing the moment?

This is CI Explorer Mode

Today, we move to another part of the CDT architecture.

The Thinking Quotient. This one is a bit longer than normal.

And this is where people often become confused.

Because AQ and TQ are related.

But they are not the same thing.

AQ asks:

What is available to awareness?

TQ asks:

How complex is the construction being used to understand and respond to this particular situation?

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Today, we begin a new season.

This season is about the practical architecture of Constructed Development Theory.

The tools.

The models.

The assessments.

The experiments.

The things we can actually use to examine how a person is constructing self, context, choice and response.

And the obvious place to begin is with the Awareness Quotient.

AQ.

The model people usually encounter first.

And also the model most likely to be misunderstood.

I want to close this Business Unusual season with communication.

But not presentation skills.

Not executive presence.

Not storytelling.

Not how to sound confident while saying very little in a meeting.

I want to talk about ethical communication.

The deeper question is not: “Did the communication work?”

The deeper question is: “What did the communication construct?”

That is where ethics begins.

If we want to understand the awareness available across an organisation, what exactly are we looking for?

Can an organisation be aware?

Strictly speaking, no.

An organisation does not have one mind.

It does not wake up in the morning.

It does not possess a single consciousness that can be given an AQ score.

When I use the phrase Organisational AQ, I am using shorthand.

I mean the demonstrated capacity of a system to make relevant awareness available, mobile, permissible and consequential — and then to learn from what follows.

In this episode, I want to introduce you to the concept of talking yourself out of a job.

A board cannot easily observe the frame through which it is observing.

So, who helps senior authority see its participation in the pattern?

Enter the consultant.

Consultancy has become one of the great rituals of organisational life.

The problem is, Something is not working.

The consultant arrives... and 6 months later, the organisation is using new language to reconstruct the old problem.

Let's change this!

In this episode, we move from the individual to the organisation.

Because even excellent coaching encounters a rather inconvenient fact.

A leader may expand their awareness in the coaching room, then return to an environment that rewards the old construction.

The culture contracts the choice that coaching helped make visible.

So today we are talking about culture, change, and the Cognitive Intentions that shape what an organisation repeatedly notices, permits and rewards.

From a Constructed Development Theory perspective, culture is construction repeated until it becomes normal.

Today, I want to move into coaching.

Because if leadership is constructed, the obvious question is:

How does a leader develop awareness of the person doing the constructing?

And here is the answer the coaching industry may not enjoy.

Most coaching is stagnant.

There are exceptional coaches doing careful, ethical, developmental work.

But much of what gets called coaching helps people move without helping them see the construction from which they are moving.

In other words, it's not developmental. Let's check out Next Level Coaching.

Today, we begin a new season.

Business Unusual.

And I want to start with Leadership.

Not leadership as inspiration.

Not leadership as style.

Not leadership as personality.

I want to talk about leadership as construction.