GREETINGS AND WELCOME
Bill Torbert’s latest book (and, he says, his last) — is now available at Amazon.
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1951805410
Ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Y9BDZ63
Numbskull is a memoir of Torbert’s life of discovering and enacting a theory and practice of leadership development, organization development, and scientific development. This highly readable book illustrates a new kind of social action and social science where the researchers include themselves in the study and explore to what degree all the different participants are, or are not, exercising timely and mutually-transforming action. Integrating leadership, teaching, and research, Torbert has won numerous awards for his work, which he now shows us from the inside out.
Buy it here now and please forward this information to colleagues who may be interested. If you wish, we would very much appreciate your writing a short (or long!) comment/review on Amazon.
What people are saying:
This bubbling memoir is a guide to assumption-busting practices at work, at play, and in science that lead to mutually-transforming inquiry, power, and love.
Chuck Palus, Center for Creative Leadership
We live in a moment of profound disruption, a crisis of our economies and of our underlying models of economic and social science thought. Bill Torbert’s pioneering work on Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry addresses this root issue head on. His concept of integrating first-, second-, and third-person action inquiry are foundational for transforming social science to better illuminate our collective agency in bringing forth a new world. Highly recommended!
Otto Scharmer, Author of Theory U; Co-Founder, Presencing Institute; MIT
In his usual fashion, Bill Torbert has written a provocative, engaging, and timely book that illustrates how his groundbreaking ideas of Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry emerged over his career. This book neatly weaves the personal with the scholarly (be sure to read the endnotes!) to provide a kind of roadmap we can compare to our own lives and organizational experiences. For fans of Torbert’s work and new readers, it will be hard to put this one down!
Sandra Waddock, Galligan Chair of Strategy, Boston College
Torbert — a senior member of the fields of adult and organizational development — introduces a transforming paradigm of transdisciplinary social science, where timely action is the fruition of successful inquiry.
This book is a memoir of Bill’s own development and, importantly, includes three stories by a Millennial woman of color. Through their humor, humility, candor, and discipline, these and all Bill’s stories invite us readers to reflect on our own lifetime development.
Hilary Bradbury, Editor Action Research Journal and the Handbook of Action Research
In the five decades since 1967-68, when I was a young teacher at Bill’s first venture in leading a community of inquiry — the Yale Upward Bound Program — I have had the privilege to witness and share in his work of thinking/friendship.
Numbskull is his own critical uncovering of this life-journey, in which he has explored and demonstrated, intellectually and interpersonally, the deep connection between illuminating social theory and liberating social action. It tells a remarkable story, of a remarkable life.
W. Thomas Schmid, Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
‘Numbskull’ is as delightful and charming as I experienced Bill Torbert when we met. Both vulnerable and witty, both memoir and scholarship, this book not only shares Bill’s profound contributions, but his remarkable journey that brought them to life.
Frederic Laloux, Author of Reinventing Organizations
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