Action Inquiry

Action Inquiry is a methodology that promotes personal and organizational transformation with measurable results, developing leadership skills, increasing personal efficiency and integrity, reciprocity in relationships, corporative profit and organizational and environmental sustainability in the long term.

It is the transformation of someone giving sense to the world (the inside world and the world around you), and its personal way of perceiving, feeling and thinking. It includes specifically both mental complexity development and emotional intelligence that help a cognitive and psychological transformation. In fact, Action Inquiry occurs in a natural way, but also it can be stimulated, strengthened and accelerated under appropriated circumstances being today the most powerful differential approach to achieve extraordinary development of leaders who already have extraordinary capacities acquired through horizontal learning processes carried out by prominent companies and also at first level academic centers. It also constitutes the main missing point to achieve organizations positive transformation, beyond results and benefits.

This approach has been developed in the last 50 years by Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and other first level institutions, and it is being used with military and intelligence elites as well as high level athletes and leaders of the most prestigious and successful companies. These companies already use a combination of the best of both learning processes; horizontal and vertical, in order to create state-of-the-art development programs for their executives.

Studies show that leaders who carry out rigorous processes focusing on Action Inquiry are more luckily to generate organizational transformations that obtain extraordinary results. Such people are the ones able to achieve the positive transformation of our civilization in different social fields.

The 3 main goals of Action Inquiry are:

  • Personal level : generating efficacy and internal integrity.

  • Relational level: generating constructive reciprocity and increasing the ability to think in order to generate dynamics where fair power is shown to reinforce every part, generate vision and share strategies.

  • Organizational/social level: the explicit value is sustainability

Action Inquiry is the only program combining comprehensively what, why and how to develop the leadership transformation. In order to do so, it is supported by the GLOBAL LEADERSHIP PROFILE (GLP), a test consisting on filling out 30 sentences in a short period of time to obtain an analysis of the personal approach concerning problem resolution and meaning that is given to daily life. Different types of leadership considered are: Opportunist, Diplomat, Expert, Achiever, Redefining, Transforming, Alchemical and Ironic.

Analyzing this leadership profile, the center of gravity, different action logics or the most common logic and action thinking are also obtained. Emergent logic and fallback are developed when feeling attacked, in danger or in a very accurate situation. Identifying and exploring these 3 predominant logics will help the leader to establish transforming actions that last in time in both personal and organizational level.

Moreover, Vertical learning understood as a continuous process beginning in oneself, is also developed constituting a supra-vision to apprehend the current situation and carry out the appropriate actions. At the same time, the leader is able to evaluate the tasks and his own performance. When it is realized that there is a gap between vision, strategy, performance and results among ourselves and others, a competitive collaborative and sustainable advantage is generated that transcends the “unilateral power” in favor of “transformational power.” Leaders aim to play a key role in social or organizational transformation through his own personal development.

Through Action Inquiry you can learn to:

  • Evaluate current action logics concerning leadership, centers of gravity and emergent perspectives and alternatives that guide the action and influence results.
  • Become aware of mental and emotional action habits and how to change those restricting your efficacy.
  • Exercise your personal power with more flexibility and reciprocity to generate personal and organizational transformation.
  • Develop collaborative practices that increase conscious, relational and cultural intelligence with the organization.
  • Build the capacity to be a self-confident leader from the inside to the outside, answering the most profound natural calls of the human being.

As an expert in development and leadership transformation, Verónica holds a certificate in Developmental Approach with both Bill Torbert and Robert Kegan. In fact, she works closely with Bill Torbert being the Spanish representative of the Action Inquity Associates LLC and the GLP for and being in charge of the workshop “Action Inquiry and the Global Leadership Profile” in Spain.

Please contact us for further information and specific references about Verónica’s work with Action Inquiry and Vertical Learning.