New article, “Warren Buffett’s and Your Own Seven Transformations of Leadership”, by GLA Co-Founder and Director Emeritus, Professor Bill Torbert 2020
Lifetime of Development
Being able to make meaning from life events is part of what makes us human.
How does your way of making sense impact your leadership action?
It is well known and accepted that children transition through a series of developmental stages. What is less well known is that adults do so too.
There are at least seven transformations in action-logic possible anytime from middle childhood through one’s adulthood – from Opportunist to Diplomat to Expert to Achiever to Redefining to Transforming to Alchemical to Ironic. For more than fifty years, research has consistently demonstrated that leaders who grow through multiple action-logics evolve greater capacity to influence personal, familial, team, organisational, and even societal transformation.
Very few leadership measures other than the Global Leadership Profile measure vertical, capacity development (not just horizontal competence improvement within one’s existing capacity). And very few leadership development programs or consulting interventions other than Action Inquiry based processes support vertical, capacity development for leaders and whole organizations.
Join us on one of our exciting Action Inquiry and GLP Certification Workshops taking place throughout the year. Please contact Sarah for further details – we look forward to welcoming you!
Please explore our website for more on our unique approach.




Discover ways to use the power of developmental theory to transform
your leadership, teams and organisational systems.
Developing the Leaders Your Organization Needs
Each of us gets stuck from time to time in our development. The good news is that it is possible to identify some reasons for this stuckness, surface our blockages, and re-align our perspectives so that we can keep developing both as individuals and as leaders.
Our Approach
Our Approach supports the development and impact of leaders in the increasingly complex contexts in which they are operating. It does so by applying Developmental Theory and Action Inquiry to enhance leaders’ individual and group capacity to cope with unpredictable and multiplex scenarios.
The Global Leadership Profile
To surface limitations in our reasoning and help liberate our potential for development we offer a tool, the Global Leadership Profile (GLP), that enables leaders to understand how they currently perceive the world, what new pathways may be open to them, and what impact these insights might have on their decision-making.
The GLP workshop has the feeling of jumping into a shimmering pool of intellectual and spiritual engagement and welcome. In our case the participants too were extraordinary people, engaged in many kinds of research, practice and meaning making. I strongly recommend this workshop for executive coach/consultants who wish to use the GLP in their coaching.
Attending the Action Inquiry workshop in Boston with Bill & Elaine was truly one of the most substantive learning experiences of my 30-year career. Deepening my understanding of the theory and practice of Developmental action Inquiry has greatly informed my work as a teach, consultant, researcher and human being!
Torbert’s work is unique. The demand action inquiry makes upon you grows your capacity for leadership. No one else combines such erudition with such evidence and with such immediate applicability.
Action Inquiry works! … Fundamental concepts and practices of management and governance that can lead to sustainable companies, families and communities.