Practices of Dynamic Collaboration A Dialogical Approach to Strengthening Collaborative Intelligence in Teams

This book provides senior managers, project- and program managers, team coaches and team leaders with thought and management tools for potentiating self-organization and creating collaborative intelligence in teams. Adapted and expanded from the 2018 Dynamic Collaboration: Strengthening Self-Organization and Collaborative Intelligence in Teams, the book aids readers in establishing team structures optimal for shared leadership, based on the longitudinal adult development of contributors, especially as team members. Drawing from theoretical and empirical research on social-emotional and cognitive development since 1975, the authors create a provocative paradigm of forming, managing, evaluating and linking teams into networks. They introduce an empirically validated team typology and workspace analysis of dialogue spaces called ‘We-Spaces’.

Featuring real world examples and cases of teams that have become self-organizing, this book is a valuable resource for upper and middle level managers, CEOs, Board of Directors as well as consultants, researchers and academics in human resource management, adult development, team building, leadership and organizational management. 

Chapter One: Understanding developmentally sourced diversity as a key to high-quality dialogue and collaborative intelligence.- Chapter Two: The adult-developmental stratification of organizational work.- Chapter Three: The Meeting Dialogue: How to Improve the Balance of Asking and Telling.- Chapter Four: The ‘Common Ground’ Dialogue: Working with Upwardly and Downwardly Divided Dynamics.- Chapter Five: The Commitment Dialogue: How we agree on what needs to be done.- Chapter Six:  Coherent action: Linking role and work contributions to each other through real-time dialogue.- Chapter Seven: The Development Dialogue: How to strengthen employees’ capability to take on real-world complexity.- Chapter Eight: Viewing Human-Machine Interaction from a developmental perspective: Stepping up to the humane organization.

Jan De Visch is an experienced senior executive, both on a strategic and an operational level, with a strong track record in managing human capital, developing driving-change management, and supporting turn-around projects. As Managing Director of Connect & Transform, he co-creates systems of work and change, with primary attention to making complexity manageable. His current focus is on critical facilitation and creating collaborative intelligence. As Executive Professor Human Capital Management at Flanders Business School he works on the design of trust, coherent action and sustainable growth. Jan has international experience as a member of the board of directors of a global organized construction company and a media company. His long consulting experience covers a broad range of industries from Financial Services, Construction, Government, Consumer Lifestyle, Chemical, Healthcare, Utilities, Energy, to Telecom, with in Europe and the US.

Otto Laske is a multidisciplinary consultant, coach, teacher, and scholar in the social sciences. He works to unfold his clients’ emotional and cognitive potential for creative and imaginative work inside and outside of organizations. Otto is Founder and Director of the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM) where he established the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF), a methodology that helps boost human capabilities beyond conventional notions of excellence in HR. Since 2000, he has educated a generation of international students – consultants, coaches, and managers – in using new tools for achieving culture transformations in organizations based on his Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF), a toolkit for critical facilitation and boosting individual cognitive development.