Bill Torbert is a founding board member of Global Leadership Associates and Amara Collaborative, as well as Leadership Professor Emeritus at Boston College. Recent recognitions include: the 2010 Outstanding Scholar Award from the Western Academy of Management; the 2012 re-publication of his 2005 HBR article “Seven Transformations of Leadership” as one of the Harvard Business Review’s top ten leadership reads ever; the 2013 Center for Creative Leadership Walter F. Ulmer Jr. Award for Career Contributions to Applied Leadership Research; and the 2014 Chris Argyris Career Achievement Award from the Academy of Management. Between 1978-2008, Torbert served first as BC’s Carroll School Graduate Dean and later as Director of the PhD Program in Organizational Transformation – the MBA program rising from below the top 100 to 25th nationally during his deanship.
With regard to scholarship, Torbert’s 2004 Berrett-Koehler book, Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership (still in print and now translated into Japanese, Chinese, and Russian) presents his theories, cases, surveys, and lab and field experiments about developmental transformation at both the personal and organizational levels, as well as within science itself, undergirded by an action research process exercised in real-time, everyday life, called "Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry." Torbert’s eleven other books and more than 80 articles and chapters include the national Alpha Sigma Nu award-winning Managing the Corporate Dream (Dow Jones-Irwin, 1987), and the Terry Award Finalist book The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry (Sage, 1991). His latest book, co-authored with action inquiry colleague Hilary Bradbury, is entitled Eros/Power: Love in the Spirit of Inquiry (Integral Publishers, 2016).
Torbert received a BA, magna cum laude, in Political Science & Economics and a Ph.D. in Administrative Sciences, both from Yale University, holding a Danforth Graduate Fellowship during his graduate years. He founded the Yale Upward Bound (War on Poverty) program and the Theatre of Inquiry and taught at Yale, Southern Methodist University, and Harvard prior to joining the Boston College faculty in 1978. Most of all, though, Bill takes great pleasure and pride (not to mention occasional pain) in the ongoing development of his closest friends and colleagues, of his three sons, Michael, Patrick, and Benjamin, and of their children.
His latest book is Numbskull in the Theater of Inquiry.
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About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Bill Torbert is a founding board member of Global Leadership Associates and Amara Collaborative, as well as Leadership Professor Emeritus at Boston College. Recent recognitions include: the 2010 Outstanding Scholar Award from the Western Academy of Management; the 2012 re-publication of his 2005 HBR article “Seven Transformations of Leadership” as one of the Harvard Business Review’s top ten leadership reads ever; the 2013 Center for Creative Leadership Walter F. Ulmer Jr. Award for Career Contributions to Applied Leadership Research; and the 2014 Chris Argyris Career Achievement Award from the Academy of Management. Between 1978-2008, Torbert served first as BC’s Carroll School Graduate Dean and later as Director of the PhD Program in Organizational Transformation – the MBA program rising from below the top 100 to 25th nationally during his deanship.
With regard to scholarship, Torbert’s 2004 Berrett-Koehler book, Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership (still in print and now translated into Japanese, Chinese, and Russian) presents his theories, cases, surveys, and lab and field experiments about developmental transformation at both the personal and organizational levels, as well as within science itself, undergirded by an action research process exercised in real-time, everyday life, called "Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry." Torbert’s eleven other books and more than 80 articles and chapters include the national Alpha Sigma Nu award-winning Managing the Corporate Dream (Dow Jones-Irwin, 1987), and the Terry Award Finalist book The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry (Sage, 1991). His latest book, co-authored with action inquiry colleague Hilary Bradbury, is entitled Eros/Power: Love in the Spirit of Inquiry (Integral Publishers, 2016).
Torbert received a BA, magna cum laude, in Political Science & Economics and a Ph.D. in Administrative Sciences, both from Yale University, holding a Danforth Graduate Fellowship during his graduate years. He founded the Yale Upward Bound (War on Poverty) program and the Theatre of Inquiry and taught at Yale, Southern Methodist University, and Harvard prior to joining the Boston College faculty in 1978. Most of all, though, Bill takes great pleasure and pride (not to mention occasional pain) in the ongoing development of his closest friends and colleagues, of his three sons, Michael, Patrick, and Benjamin, and of their children.
His latest book is Numbskull in the Theater of Inquiry.
A Quote From This Episode
Resources
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate
Scott Allen 0:00
Good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening wherever you are in the world. Welcome to the most recent episode of Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders. Today I am honored to have Dr. Bill Torbert. He is currently a founding board member of the global leadership associates and Amara collaborative, as well as a leadership Professor Emeritus at Boston College, recent recognitions that he has received. He has been named the outstanding scholar from the Western Academy of Management, his republication of the 2005 HBr. Article Seven Transformations of Leadership is one of Harvard Business Review's top 10 leadership reads ever. He's been honored by the Center for Creative Leadership with the Walter F Omer Jr. Award for career contributions to Applied Leadership Research. And in 2014, he received the Chris arduous Career Achievement Award from the Academy of Management pretty incredible. Between 1978 and 2008, Torbert served first as BCS Carroll School graduate dean, and later as director of the Ph. D. program in organizational transformation. The MBA program rose from below the top 100 to the 25th. Nationally during his Deanship within the Academy of Management, he served as chair for the organization development and change division, and he served on the board of the organization behavior teaching society. I have also served on that board Sir, he has served on the editorial boards of countless journals. He's written books, you may know action inquiry, the secret of timely and transforming leadership, and his most recent book numbskull in the theater of inquiry. Bill is the author of the global leadership profile a measure of leaders' developmental action, logic, and relative capacity to exercise mutually transforming power in organizational settings. He is also the founder of an action research process exercised in real-time everyday life called collaborative developmental action inquiry. Torbert received a BA in Political Science and Economics and a Ph.D. in Administrative Sciences, both from Yale, holding a Danforth graduate fellowship during his graduate years, he's taught at Yale, SMU he has taught at Harvard, and Boston College, most of all, Bill has great pleasure and pride, not to mention occasional pain in the ongoing development of his closest friends and colleagues of his three sons, Michael, Patrick and Benjamin and of their children. So he's a grandfather, Bill, what have we left out? This is the story of you, sir.
Bill Torbert 2:36
Well, it's a skeletal story of me, it doesn't quite suggest all of the bumps and pains and bruises and setbacks that caused me to have to develop some theories about what was going on in the hope of helping myself be a little bit more competent bill.
Scott Allen 2:55
I'm very, very excited for this conversation today because it's timely, and I'm actually working on a paper right now. We are shooting big for some world-class management education journals. And this conversation could not have come at a better time, your work over the years, has focused squarely in many ways around the adult development work. And I had a guest, Bruce Avolio, on probably 15 episodes ago, and I've always respected his work and followed his work throughout the years. And he said something to this effect, he said, what I would consider maybe still the holy grail around leadership development is our perspective-taking capacity. And for me, this kind of aligns us square into this space of adult development theory. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. I'd love to hear your perspective. Am I aligned when I kind of make those connections between those two, between those that quote, and then the adult development literature?
Bill Torbert 3:54
Definitely, I would say I mean, in a sense, the notion of stages of development or developmental action logics are about the different kinds of perspectives we can take and highlight the degree to which the early action logics are perspectives that have us we are not aware that we are taking a perspective we think we're just seeing reality and the later action logics where we recognize that we and other people are taking perspectives. And of course, not everybody has the same perspective, and therefore, a key element of leadership is both helping people to develop to the point where they recognize that so they can deal better with people who are taking different perspectives and also helping people to transform and therefore be able to act in a more appropriate way in whatever context they are. Whatever culture the US culture is a perspective on reality, also organizational culture. So when suddenly realizes a lot more of the variables that are causing events to happen as they are. And when becomes more sensitive, and it's only through the development of later action logics that one realizes, hey, there is something about timely action. And just knowing things, theory or facts or the context, none of that gives you the key to what timely action right now would be. Yes, yes. And part of it is the capacity to be able to recognize yourself as taking up perspective right now at the moment, and therefore opening up the possibility of taking a different perspective or checking with other people's perspective, which will lead to more timely action.
Scott Allen 5:41
Yes. Well, in a blog post on your website, you really explore this notion between vertical and horizontal development. Would you talk a little bit about that? I think listeners will find that fascinating. Right?
Bill Torbert 5:55
Yeah, the idea is that most of our learning and teaching and action is conducted on a horizontal plane, your overall perspective is taken for granted. And you're just trying to learn more or less specific things and specific theories, without challenging your current perspective. And of course, each time we enter a new perspective, there's an enormous amount of horizontal learning to do about how the world looks, and how we can act through this new perspective. So horizontal learning is absolutely a key element of learning. But it isn't the most fundamental kind of learning, the most fundamental and the least often practiced in schools and organizations is vertical learning, vertical meaning that has a number of meanings. But one of the meanings is that each time you change perspective, you get to a kind of higher place, where you see what you did before in different ways, and have access to new possible actions. But again, when you start into that new action logic, you don't know all the practical details about how to be competent in it. So you need to become competent before you can really successfully transform into a later action logic, which we both transcends and includes all that you have gone through before. Now, one of the tricky things about this vertical idea is that people often initially think of it only in upward-going verticality. Yes, but just as important, is downward going vertical.
Scott Allen
Talk about it.
Meaning that in order to act in a timely way, you have to be aware of how you're acting that is you have to have an awareness of how your body is working. What is your tone of voice right now? Are you flapping your hands around in the air, and is that useful to the conversation. And so that requires a body-based awareness, which obviously has the quality of going down from the head into the body. And so if one is only going up, one becomes increasingly abstract, and probably more imprisoned in language and less likely to be one can be extremely incompetent, because when hasn't filled in the horizontal learning that was needed...
Scott Allen 8:23
Bill, you made me as you were speaking and listening, I was reflecting even on my own journey, horizontal or, or vertical. And I reflected on I did my Ph.D. in my mid-20s. And I would love to experience that for years again, in my late 40s, where I am now because it would probably be a fundamentally different learning experience. Right?
Bill Torbert 8:47
Right. I also took my Ph.D. in my early 20s. But I learned so much at that time that I certainly wouldn't want to give that up in exchange for a later one. But people have sort of added a later one.
Scott Allen 9:04
You know, on the same line of conversation, I love how you kind of communicate this. The vertical is not just up, it's both there was an article Kuhnert and Lewis in the late 80s, it was about it was connecting some of the work of Robert Kegan, to transformational leadership. And there was a suggestion that was made or maybe this was an article by Avolio and Gibbons but they suggested in there that, you know, someone who's working out of one of this quote-unquote, higher levels may struggle to connect with factions of people who are not working at that same level. So you know, as the Lord goes, you had an Abraham Lincoln who could really communicate at multiple levels and help multiple levels of individuals understand a complex concept, because he would equate it to what it's like on the farm, so to speak, and communicating in a way where we don't lose people. or sound overly ethereal, so to speak.
Bill Torbert 10:06
Right, we need to give concrete illustrations of what we're talking about as much as we need theoretical statements of what we're talking about. Uh, you know, I did a research project years ago over a period of a decade, in which we found that of 10, CEOs leading organizations of up to 1000 people, in other words, not huge fortune 500 organizations, that only the trance, the executives that we're at the transforming action logic successfully, in every case, help their organization transform, which included getting bigger market share and more profits sort of down to earth things, as well as more sophisticated ways of making decisions and being more inquiring. But you know, some people interpreted that to mean, okay, if I become if I move to the transforming action logic, I'll be successful as a CEO. But that's not what the research shows, what it shows is, if people had already chosen you, based on your practical knowledge of the narrow organization, and context to be CEO, then if you are at the transforming action logic, you're going to be able to help transform. So in other words, you need the horizontal knowledge of the context, as well as the vertical knowledge of what is the transforming action logic, like to be able to help people in organizations to transform?
Scott Allen 11:38
Well, that's where I was gonna go. Next, is, what is your thinking on this statement? And I know that this may not be an accurate statement that an individual at one of the higher levels, quote, unquote, their action logic, or developmental level will be a more successful leader. How do you respond to that hypothesis? Is that what you just said?
Bill Torbert 12:02
I mean, what I just said is relevant to it. Because if we took a sort of random sample of people at each of the different action logics, we would find plenty of people at the transforming action logic, who are not good leaders, because they focus their attention on some other part of the world as art, let's say, and they may have a transforming capacity in the realm that they have chosen to focus on, but not have a transformational capacity and others. Yes. And that's part of the challenge that each leader acts in logic, there's a much broader array of horizontal learning that's necessary before one can be considered competent in it. So if you haven't spent some years exercising organizational leadership, as well as developing to later action logics, then you're not going to be good at leadership necessarily.
Scott Allen 12:59
Well, and you've spent decades exploring this whole notion of action inquiry, would you give a quick synopsis of that? And then let's start kind of transitioning a little bit into some of that work.
Bill Torbert 13:11
Okay, well, let's see, you know, as the two words suggest, action inquiry puts together what we normally think of as opposites, we think of the inquiry occurring in Ivory Tower universities, and action occurring in the US Senate and House and being messy. Yes. And I'm saying that that's true. For the last 500 years, we've separated action from inquiry in order to get more objective results in our inquiry. But now we have to recognize that that is only one stage along the way. And in fact, action and inquiry need to be put together and are put together every time we're acting. Even if we don't think we're inquiring, even if we're sure that what we're doing is right, we're going to get feedback that may tell us the opposite. And so the idea is, well, it'd be more functional. If we recognized that we are both acting and inquiring at the same time.
Scott Allen 14:09
Well, if you would, for listeners, just distinguish the single-loop, double-loop, triple-loop if you would be wonderful.
Bill Torbert 14:16
That's funny because I would say, Oh, you interrupted me just before I got to talking about single, double, and triple-loop learning. So perfect timing. Here we go. We're on the same, we're on the same line. Yes, so in real life, you can receive different types of feedback. And it's hard for people to receive any of these types of feedback because we like to think that we know what we're doing and that therefore we're going to be right and we're going to be successful. So it's a little painful to receive any of these up until you get to the point where you recognize them. Well if I don't accept some feedback, I'm never going to know whether I reached my intended goal. which is what the achiever action logic gets good at, it gets good at getting single feedback and negative feedback, so to speak, feedback, corrective feedback, because it helps you get to your goal. But there's also double and triple loop feedback. And these are much harder to accept, especially at the early stages, because they asked you to reconsider the perspective that you're taking on the situation. And you're often very closely married to your perspective, you don't, it's not you feel like well, that would destroy me if I did that. If I admitted a mistake to my senior team, it would ruin my authority. And then when they're finally persuaded to take the chance and share something vulnerable turns out, it has exactly the opposite effect that people for the first time begin to trust them that they're willing to say, what's really going on, and see that they're vulnerable and would accept help and makes other people willing to be vulnerable on the team. So double-loop feedback becomes increasingly prized in the later action logics. And then, even later than that, comes the possibility of triple-loop feedback. And that's, that's the feedback that actually magnetizes you at the moment that you become aware that you're different from who you believed you were. And as being shown right now, I once had a friend, say, Bill, I, I don't think I can trust you. Sometimes you seem to be a kind of practical businessman. And other times, you seem to be a kind of religious monk. I thought, well, just a minute. I do want to be both of those things. What's wrong with that? Yeah. But then I realized, well, no, he's saying that sometimes you want and sometimes your other and you want to be both at once. So you've got a long way to go. I've never forgotten that piece of feedback. So that's, that's like a life influencing piece of feedback that reminds me which one? Are you right now, Bill? Or aren't you in fact, exercising? Both the kind of practical action outwards? And to kind of inquiry inwards at the same time? Yeah, so that triple of feedback is especially mysterious, rare, and hard to offer and hard to accept sometimes...
Scott Allen 17:25
Can you think of another example of the triple loop feedback that you've come across along the way? They're personally or someone else's shared with you? I find this fascinating. I've never heard of the concept.
Bill Torbert 17:35
Well, it's talked about a fair amount now in the literature, but I'm not sure that anybody understands it, in my way. Well, so another way of talking about triple loop feedback, is that when you're trying to figure out what to do, I have found that just trying to plan, say, a meeting, I've got a meeting in two days, and what am I going to make, what's the agenda going to be, and if I go in a thoughtful way, trying to plan it, I often feel I'm not very motivated. And I don't have good ideas. And if instead, I stop and meditate for a while, and I start to just allow thoughts to rain down through me not accepting any of them as the solution to my problem or to my agenda. But gradually, if I'm, if I don't bite too quickly, there comes some image that just hits the spot in terms of motivating me to do the meeting, making me realize really what the blood and guts purpose of the meeting is, and therefore helping me to structure the meeting in a way that will make that come true. And that will make that little dream I've had come true. So in that case, I'm opening myself first to double feedback by stopping just working with my brain, and inviting myself to listen to all the four what I call the four territories of experience, the outside world, my own action, my thinking, and then a post cognitive awareness that can take in all of the three others and allow this kind of free-thinking to occur and free feeling. So that's a whole nother way of trying to convey what triple loop feedback is.
Scott Allen 19:43
How long did it take you to come to the conclusion that that's what works for you? That's a lot of action in query over the decades, isn't it?
Bill Torbert 19:54
Definitely. And I was, you know, after graduating from college Giant not only the doctoral work, which played a role in helping me to come to these ideas, but I also joined a spiritual group called the Gurdjieff work, which I participated directly in for 25 years. So I was trying to learn how to meditate and how to and what it meant. And it was not until I was 50, I think about 50, that I actually developed the idea of first, second, and third-person research, I've been doing it for years. But to give it a name, to understand it to be able to see the relationship between those three types of research, which are usually viewed as incongruent with one another. And again, another way of talking about action inquiry is that it's, it's a way of uniting third person, so-called objective knowledge, first-person subjective awareness, and second person inquiry that gives you feedback in your particular time in place. So instead of regarding those three as opposites of one another, and as hostile, the whole idea is to bring them together. Yes, it took years. I mean, I took on some really challenging leadership roles very early on, at the Yale Upward Bound program while I was in my graduate school, and I was studying me and that for my dissertation, and then I had the bump where my faculty refused after two and a half years of work to allow me to write my dissertation about that, because they said, how can the guy who was running the program, do the research on it? I can't help but be biased. I was saying, but I'm just this is exactly what I'm trying to discover is whether this is possible and how it is possible. But they weren't listening to me. So I had to do an entirely different dissertation, which turned out to be wonderful. Because I learned a lot more from the other. I wrote a book about the program. And so I got two books out of my graduate work rather than one so "haha."
Scott Allen 22:23
That's wonderful. Well, let's, so we're kind of moving into in some ways, the most recent book which you say is you're going to be your last and in this book, numbskull in the theater of inquiry, you explore some of these adventures over the course of your life. And some of the section titles I absolutely loved. And I said this to you before we went on air. But titles like born again, and again, and again, and wondering and action communities of inquiry, stranger, and stranger. So you bring me in as a reader in a very, very nice way to want to learn a little bit more. So talk about some reflections on this work. What were some highlights for you? Hmm, tangling with Thompson's was another one that caught my eye. I loved it.
Bill Torbert 23:16
I mean, some and losing some, we mostly lost. One thing was that I felt I had a kind of obligation to write a relatively autobiographical book because I had asked my students for decades to write developmental autobiographies that only had to be 10 pages long. But some wrote as many as 200, astonishingly enough. And I would say write your story, once just kind of the way it happened the way you remember it. And then ask yourself whether developmental theory applies to it or reveals anything about it. This turned out to be a very, very eye-opening exercise for them, and help them to work with up because of course, we've all been through all the early action logics, that other people in the world are mostly in. So if we review our own life, we will become more compassionate for people who are currently working out of living out of those action logics. And I thought, well, I better try that myself. So I started by writing the autobiography, when actually when I started writing the autobiography, I didn't even have the idea of making it a developmental aid. autobiography, I just thought I had some obligation to try to trace my own learnings of these ideas. But gradually, as as I wrote the book, I realized, oh my gosh, my life, in fact, does follow these action logics that I only discovered later in life. So you know, I thought it was one good way of illustrating and bringing people in to look at their own development. So that's part of the purpose of the book occurs is to invite people to get to know something about developmental theory, by looking at a person's life rather than out a whole lot of theoretical talk of it. And then I put, you know, my friend said to me, yeah, but you've got to, you've got to put in something about the theory. And so there are 10 notes to each chapter, which were actually written with my closest friends. And one finds in those endnotes, occasions when they're giving me feedback, that they don't like what I did at that point, or they don't think that that thing worked. And I didn't quite admit it, and so forth. So I wanted to include other voices in the book of the second-person voices. And then I wanted to show how it all fits together systematically. And all of that is put into the appendices. My whole and the book, you know, can really be there's even a postscript which has three stories by a young Iranian woman, to show a young woman writing about her own life and development, not just an old white guy. So people can start in any of those places in the book. And as I say, treat the book as an action inquiry process, don't just follow the leader, and read page one, and then page two, but look at the table of contents, see what excites you, whether it be born again and again and again, which of course, is a reference to the developmental ideas of transforming from one perspective or action logic to another. My hope, in the end, is that it not only speaks to people in leadership fields and organization development, but that it finally speaks to social scientists, because over my whole career, and published a lot about this way of what I formally call collaborative developmental action inquiry, very few social scientists, in management or education or elsewhere, have really encountered my work. And so my hope is that this book introduces me to that part of the world, but I don't really have any way of getting them to read it. Other than perhaps, podcasts like this. So here I am, on a tour of my latest book.
Scott Allen 27:27
We'll talk a little bit about that, because it sounds like from the very beginning, the writing of your dissertation, and throughout your career, you've been pushing, pulling, scratching, working, to influence the academy to think about some of these things in different ways. Talk a little bit about that.
Bill Torbert 27:47
Yeah, well, yeah, it's interesting too as you bring it up. Now, this way, one of the things that is a kind of the highlight of the book, you might say, is my relationship with the very well known scholar-practitioner, Chris arduous, whom I met when I was an undergraduate, and then took as my advisor in graduate school, and then became a colleague of at Harvard later on. And then he became very close to Don Shern, at MIT. And I also got to know Don, very well, and as my work, I mean, I learned an enormous amount from both of them, and would never have been able to do anything I've done without their help. So I'm enormously grateful for that. But by the time I'd gotten to Harvard, I was beginning to express how my work was also different from theirs. And I didn't even realize at the time, how different it would seem to them. I didn't record since I knew them both personally, I knew that they did first person and second person research on themselves in groups and meetings, and classes. But what I didn't really sufficiently appreciate was the fact that both of their writings, their books, remained resolutely third person. So although Chris would talk a lot about his interventions in organizations, and he would have transcriptions of his behavior and other people's behavior, but it would be the researcher, Colin says this, he would never talk in the first person. When when I wrote my book, The Power of balance, transforming self, a society and social science inquiry. They were both shocked by it because it had a middle section that was autobiographical, trying to show how I myself was trying to approach these and apply these concepts. And I had asked Don to write a foreword. And he said, Yes, but he delayed and delayed and delayed. And he finally on the last day when it could have been submitted, or we would have published without his foreword He submitted it. And then he submitted it to the publisher not to me and the publisher, immediately faxed it to me. This was before the days of email. And I said you should not publish. This is an incredible attack on your work. And I read it. And it was very artful and very drawn it was it had praise, but it also was uniquely critical for a foreword. The second sentence was, this is a document of shocking grandiosity. Wow.
So he had other criticisms, and so forth. But I called him up and said, Don, I'd just like to ask if you would change two words in this review. And the first one is grandiosity. After all, I think I've shown in fact, in the book that I'm very vulnerable to feedback and very open about it, and so forth. And he said, well, they'll grandiose only means generous. And I said, that may have been true and you agree. But I have the dictionary open on my lap here. And the first three meanings of grandiosity are pretentious, and something and something and something they're all negative. So he, he finally wrote back and change the sentence a little bit, but not very much that, you know, I gradually began to learn that my attempt to, to integrate first person second person and third person inquiry and action was really different from what they were after it came from a different perspective than then they are, they had both recognize the importance of perspectives, but they hadn't fully engaged in my view, in the what I call the transforming action logic, which demands that the person be vulnerable to double loop feedback, if they're going to be successful if giving double feedback, because otherwise, the double feedback will simply see him attacking. And if they can demonstrate vulnerability, then that will help the other person to open up in that way. So that shows, you know, I sort of lost my primary senior advisors who did a great, great deal for me, they were no longer. In fact, Chris took, I started out by calling action inquiry, action science, then he wrote a book, which he named action science, and didn't recognize my initial development about that idea, nor the fact that what he meant by it was quite different from what I meant by it, which would have created an interesting conversation in the field. So uh, one of the things I realized was, it's better to this is great feedback. I'd rather call it action inquiry because action science sounds too much like the current social science. And I want to say something that that is relevant to a personal inquiry, as well as scientific inquiry.
Scott Allen 33:13
I have such great respect for your willingness to push those boundaries, to help us better understand. And I don't know that any, any of this has been done in the service, at least from my reading of your work, and from your tone in this conversation, that I have found "the truth," quote, unquote, it's let's explore other perspectives, let's explore other avenues. Let's explore other ways of thinking about some of these things to see if we can get further right, which is, which is inquiry. Right?
Bill Torbert 33:46
Right, it's probably more fundamental inquiry than most people are, have bargained for, shall we say. And it goes very deeply to the center of, or core or origin of the very ontology that is taken for granted in the Western world, namely, that reality consists of empirical things in the real world and consists of mental maps of those things. So and then some people say, "Well, only the real only the empirical reality is real. And when we get enough neuroscience will explain consciousness by describing the brain and other people who are idealists say only consciousness is real. And even the idea of materiality is a construct of our imagination. And I'm saying, well, that's just two out of the four fundamental parts of reality. There's also your own active Oh, awareness of your body, which is neither an empirical awareness nor an idea. And there's a kind of consciousness that rises above thought, and can enter can watch thought occurring within one. And so in order to, to know the world and act in the world, you need to recognize the flow up and down these four different steps in the ladder of reality. But you know, it's taken me years and years and years that I've only really, I don't even say it quite that way. In the book, I talk about the four territories have experienced, but I now have this additional way of trying to differentiate typical science and philosophy in the West and a fuller contact with reality that I think the four territories help us to recognize.
Scott Allen 35:54
I love that phrasing that you may have just named the title of the episode, "a fuller contact with reality," right, full fullness, the whole the system, the larger perspective that helps us better understand whatever the phenomenon is, and so fascinating, right? It just is. And I love that this work really integrates so many different dimensions of your work and a view of your modeling everything that you have put forth throughout your career. Would you agree with that statement?
Bill Torbert 36:29
Well, that's certainly my attempt. Yes. I don't write I don't just want to talk about it. I want to display it too, as we talked earlier, about giving concrete examples, not just theory, and yeah, and in a way that allows the reader to explore in follow their own path. You know, I don't know if you noticed at the beginning, I have an unusual five different, what do you call them? epigraphs. Little, little quotes from other writers, and one is from Lao Tzu, saying that the path you can follow is not the real path. Wonderful, ironic statement. But I mean that, yes, I've laid out a path in a certain sense. But you've got to climb the mountain yourself. And you can't just follow my path by reading the ideas and taking them into your head that you're not getting to where I'm going if that's how you treat it.
Scott Allen 37:33
But that curiosity just shines through in such a beautiful way. Because I think individuals that have that way of being that curious way of being well, why am I why is this triggering me? Why am I experiencing this way? Why are they experiencing me this way? Why are we not getting the traction that we would hope to achieve by this point, I mean, all of that is a way of being in that questioning. It's just in my mind, I find it incredibly energizing, because the world around us as a case study not only ourselves as actors in the world, but the world itself. As we watch all of this play out. In our families, we can go through the different levels, there's just a world of exploration embedded in our day-to-day lives, that keeps my mind keeps my mind cookin.
Bill Torbert 38:23
Right, when you more or less continually work at having a sort of present-centered awareness, you realize that most of the time, you could do the particular thing you're trying to do in different ways. And so even kind of mundane activities, you know, I find very often I sit at the computer. And I suddenly realized that while I started exciting about what I was doing, I'm now pushing it. I'm no longer happy with it. I'm just feeling like I gotta get I gotta finish something. And now I just let that go. I get up and walk away from it. Maybe just for 90 seconds, but it changes, you know, shake it out, and sit down again, and I can approach it new. But most of the time we live in a kind of cavern that doesn't include those perspectives on ourselves at the same time.
Scott Allen 39:19
Well, Bill as we wind down for today, I again, can't thank you enough for your time. Would you be willing to share some contemporary learning resources? Maybe it's something you've watched, maybe it's something you've you've streamed, it could be something you've read recently that you think listeners would be interested in knowing about?
Bill Torbert 39:39
It's a great, great question. One thing that comes to mind that relates very closely to what we've been talking about is this book called How to Change Your Mind. I'm Michael Pollan. And Michael Pollan is quite famous for books. He's written about vegetables and potatoes and mushrooms and things. And in this book, he writes about the history of psychedelic research. And toward the end of the book, he begins experimenting with psychedelic research himself in different modes, working with different shamans, and so forth. But it's a very balanced, Western, readable book, which goes into wild explorations. So that might be, it's a rather long book, but it's not hard to read this story of his own adventure. Now, is this the gentleman who's at Johns Hopkins by chance? Now he's not at a university.
Scott Allen 40:36
Okay. Is there now that you know, there, there are laboratories that have been approved to really start doing research, again, the benefits of, of some of these substances on depression or PTSD. So again...
Bill Torbert 40:53
He talks about that research at Johns Hopkins and other places. So yes, it has become legal and fascinating to people now, to try to go back to that which was cut off for 40 years by the war on drugs.
Scott Allen 41:08
Well, it's another great example of your point right there, cut off by no means am I promoting the use of hard narcotics. But it's interesting how certain policies or perspectives can cut off something that could be potentially beneficial or helpful to factions of people for sure. I will add that into the show notes, anything else comes to mind? That's caught your eye?
Bill Torbert 41:32
No, other than you yourself. And I want to thank you so much for your way of conducting the interview. That's made it a special pleasure.
Scott Allen 41:41
Well, Bill, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for your good work. For listeners, you can find the link directly to Amazon - Numbskull in the Theater of Inquiry. And I hope you pick that up. And I hope you engage in that learning. And as Bill beautifully said, chart that path for yourself. Thank you, sir.
Bill Torbert 42:04
You're welcome.
Scott Allen 42:05
I could listen to Dr. Torbert speak for hours and plan to in 2022 as I sign up for some of the workshops that he and some associates have available. And I will put some links to those in the show notes. You know, whether it's vertical or horizontal development, whether it's single, double, or triple loop learning, it might just be his concept of integrating first, second and third-person action inquiry. And these are ideas that will transform social science. And this is an individual who for decades, has been engaged in that work. Ultimately, the work of helping to better prepare individuals to be successful when assuming formal or informal roles of leadership. And, Bill, I can't thank you enough for being with me. And having that incredible conversation for the work that you do and the time that you have put in to help our field advance. Take care, everyone, if you've made it this far, you are in and I appreciate that very much. Have a wonderful day do good work out there and be well.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai