Thinking Deliberately - because we don't!

Today, I'm comparing Constructed Development Theory with Susanne Cook-Greuter's work on ego development, with particular attention to construct awareness.

This is a close comparison because Cook-Greuter already addresses the constructed nature of meaning. CDT has to engage with that directly. Saying that we construct our experience is shared ground, and shared ground gives us a useful place to begin.

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Welcome back.

This episode compares Constructed Development Theory with Dr Otto Laske's Constructive Developmental Framework, usually shortened to CDF.

Laske is especially interesting because his work gets directly into the structure of thinking. It examines how people make sense of complexity, including the thinking that becomes visible in conversation. Enjoy!

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In this new series, I'm putting Constructed Development Theory into conversation with other accounts of adult development. Today, we're starting with Robert Kegan.

If you know Kegan's work, you'll recognise an immediate connection. What we can examine about our experience is different from what we are caught inside. CDT takes that connection seriously and asks how we might investigate the construction of a particular response in greater detail.

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Welcome back to Thinking Deliberately. This is the final episode of our season on tools, models and experiments. Over the previous four episodes, we've explored ways of understanding how people construct their experience and what might help them respond more deliberately. Today I want to bring that work into the environments where development is supposed to happen, and examine what those environments make possible.

We will look at AQ8, which is constructing the map, and AQ9 which is constructing the territory, and how the environment allows the complexity to emerge. Remember to subscribe.

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.