AIRED: August 22, 2022
SPECIAL GUEST: Dr. William R. Torbert
www.williamrtorbert.com/numbskull
In this very deliberately crafted memoir, Dr. Bill Torbert goes directly into his teaching roots. Even as he speaks of his own experiences, he peppers in the issues of the day, and how society can indeed awaken to the deeper meaning of itself, one individual at a time. Within the pages of Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, Organizations, and Social Science the audience will find exactly that.
An anti-heroic work of monumental magnitude, Numbskull recounts Dr. Tobert’s dramatic early life in Europe and the US, He recounts for us how he gradually learned, from the experiences of his own leadership efforts, a theory of learning from experience. From his experiences, he also learned a theory of organizational transformation, culminating in ‘liberating disciplines’ that help others learn to transform from their own experiences.
Dr. Tolbert formulated a developmental theory of social science that culminates in the paradigm of Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry (CDAI) that interweaves first-, second-, and third-person research and practice to offer more depth and perspective.
DR. WILLIAM R. TORBERT
Bill Torbert is Leadership Professor Emeritus at Boston College and serves on the Boards of the Amara Collaboration and of Global Leadership Associates (home of the Global Leadership Profile). Torbert received his BA and PhD from Yale. He consulted and served as a board member at dozens of companies, and is the author of a dozen books including the award-winning Managing the Corporate Dream, award-finalist The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry, and Action Inquiry:
He currently serves as a founding board member of both Global Leadership Associates and Amara Collaboration and is a leadership professor emeritus at Boston College. In recent years, he has received a number of recognitions for his life work, including the Ulmer Applied Research Award from the Center for Creative Leadership in 2013 and the Argyris Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management in 2014.
