Torbert, William R William R Torbert is Professor of Management at Boston College in the US. He is both an academic and a practitioner having founded two organisations and been consultant to many others. His primary interests centre around the effective use of power by leaders in organisations, and how this might be developed. He is the originator of Developmental Frames for Leading and Managing. His work is founded on the long established developmental theory of Piaget, Loevinger and Kegan, and others. Torbert advocates an integration of action and inquiry (see Action Inquiry) through the deployment of cycles of inductive learning using both the first and second person forms of research, as well as the more conventional third person form. Torbert's nine developmental frames are (1) Impulsive, (2) Opportunist, (3) Diplomat, (4) Technician, (5) Achiever, (6) Strategist, (7) Magician / Witch / Clown, (8) Ironist, and (9) Sage / Crone. I

My fundamental concern, since before I entered the PhD program in Individual & organisational Behavior at Yale in 1966, has been about how to practice social science in everyday life – i.e. about how I (or you) can engage, in the midst of daily practice, in first-person research (e.g. observing what I really want, what I am thinking, and what I am doing), in second- person research (e.g. encouraging public testing of attributions and assessments, along with re-visioning, re- strategizing, re-acting, and re-assesing) and in third-person research (e.g. publicly testing propositions with persons not present through measures).

One of the things I have learned is that this is a hard idea/action-commitment to convey. Let me try several slightly different versions, in order to see whether any of these abstractions mean much to you and to your search.

I can rephrase my question this way: “How can I and anyone else engage in a ’living inquiry’ as an active participant in relationships and organisations that heightens my own and others’ awareness and effectiveness, testing its quality and validity with others in real time and that invites personal and organisational transformation toward an increasingly just community of inquiry?“

I have come to name this process action inquiry. Practicing action inquiry is what my teaching is about, what my research is about, what my consulting and Board memberships are about, what my spiritual search is about, and what my friendships are about. (Of course, anyone who is so monomaniacal must have a significant shadow side …so that gradually glimpsing and coming to terms with the uninquiring/habitual aspects of myself/yourself becomes, paradoxically, an ever- more-prominent aspect of the ever-less-confident inquiry.)

Let me try several more, brief alternative formulations of this concern to offer more of you some handle on what’s at stake for me (and, I believe, you) here:

Action inquiry is about discovering actions in real-time personal and professional settings that alert, attune, and sometimes even align self, immediate others, organisational strategies, and global vision, and that encourage non-violent personal, organisational, and societal transformations.

Action inquiry is about discovering, not just knowledge, but wisdom – the integrity of being, knowing, doing, and effectuating.

Action inquiry is about discovering, not just objectivity, but the conscious, spontaneous interplay between subjectivity and objectivity