Richard Farson

Biography

Dr. Richard Farson, psychologist, author, educator and president of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI), an independent, nonprofit organization he helped found in 1958, devoted to research, education and advanced study in human affairs. Among his current responsibilities, he heads the development of WBSI’s pioneering International Leadership Forum (ILF), an Internet-based think tank composed entirely of highly influential leaders from business, government, academia, science, journalism, literature and the arts, addressing the great policy issues of our time.

Dr. Farson is the author of the critically-acclaimed bestseller, "Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership," now in eleven languages, and the newly published work on success and failure, with co-author Ralph Keyes, "Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation" (Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 2002). An article based on this book won the McKinsey award for the best Harvard Business Review article published in 2002, the one "most likely to have a major influence on managers worldwide."

Born in Chicago and raised in Southern California, Dr. Farson attended the University of Minnesota as a Naval Officer Trainee, Occidental College, from which he received both a bachelors and masters degree, UCLA for psychology graduate study, Harvard Business School as a Ford Foundation Training Fellow on the Human Relations Faculty, and the University of Chicago, from which he received a Ph.D. in psychology in 1955.

At Occidental College, in the summer of 1949, he met famed psychologist Carl Rogers, and began what was to be a lifelong association. Rogers invited Farson to study with him at the University of Chicago where he became Rogers’ research assistant and eventually an intern and counselor at the Counseling Center and a research associate at the Industrial Relations Center. Farson and Rogers collaborated over several decades on a number of research, education, publication and media projects, including their widely-reprinted article, "Active Listening," which introduced that term into the lexicon of human relations training, and the Academy Award winning documentary film, "Journey Into Self."

Following two years of postdoctoral active duty as a Research Officer (LTJG) studying motivation, morale, leadership and training at the U.S. Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego, Farson entered private practice in La Jolla as a consulting psychologist. At the same time he teamed with his former University of Chicago professor, Thomas Gordon, best known for his books and programs in parent and leadership effectiveness training, to form Gordon and Farson Associates, a management consulting firm.

In 1958 Farson, along with physicist Paul E. Lloyd and social psychologist Wayman Crow, formed the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI), an independent, nonprofit organization devoted to research, education and advanced study in human affairs. As president of WBSI during its first decade, Farson led a number of research projects in education, leadership, communication in large organizations, self-directed therapeutic groups and the use of mass media approaches to community mental health. In the latter effort, he conducted the first televised psychotherapy group in the series "Human Encounter," aired in 1966.

Upon being named Chairman of the Board of WBSI in 1968, Farson left the staff to become the founding dean of the School of Design at the California Institute of the Arts, where the emphasis was on social and environmental design. Farson’s continuing interest in these issues is also evidenced by his thirty-year membership on the board of directors of the International Design Conference in Aspen, the world’s leading forum for interdisciplinary discussions of the designed environment. He was twice elected its president, serving from 1976 to1980 and again from 1994 to 1997. In 1999 he was elected the Public Director (non-architect) on the national Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects, and in 2001 named Senior Fellow on the Design Futures Council.

From 1973-1975 Farson was president of Esalen Institute, an innovative educational organization located in Big Sur and San Francisco, California. In 1975 he joined the faculty of the Saybrook Graduate School and Research Institute in San Francisco, formed by the Association for Humanistic Psychology, where he supervised the doctoral research of advanced graduate students.

Returning to the presidency of WBSI in 1979, Farson guided the institute’s development of educational, scholarly and therapeutic communities formed through the use of advanced computer communication technologies. The centerpiece of this effort was the highly regarded School of Management and Strategic Studies, a network of senior executives from twenty-six countries who joined a distinguished faculty to deliberate together, via computer conferencing, on the new requirements of leadership. This project, begun in 1981, launched the now burgeoning field of online distance learning.

A student of social movements, Farson has had a long-time involvement with civil rights issues, notably his pioneering efforts on behalf of women’s and children’s rights, marked by his 1969 Look Magazine article, "The Rage of Women," and his 1974 book, "Birthrights: A Bill of Rights for Children," each of which was the first to bring to a national audience the need for legislative and policy reform.

Throughout his professional career Farson has consulted on management and human relations problems with a wide variety of organizations including IBM; Westinghouse; General Dynamics; TRW; Digital Equipment Corporation; Herman Miller Company; Kaypro Corporation; City of San Diego; U.S. Forest Service; Department of Mental Hygiene, Los Angeles County; Planned Parenthood; Kresge College, University of California, Santa Cruz; U.S. Army; and the World Economic Forum.

In addition to "Management of the Absurd," "Birthrights," and "Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins," Farson has published two other books, "Science and Human Affairs," (1967) which he edited, and "The Future of the Family," (1969) which he co-authored. A theme in his writing for many years has been exposing the paradoxes in human behavior, and to that end he is at work on a book dealing with paradoxes in family life, in particular the counter-productive ways in which marriage and parenthood are regarded in America, and the backfiring effects of the misapplication of technique and skill training in the effort to improve relationships.

The International Leadership Forum (ILF), which he serves as Executive Director, is the centerpiece program of the current incarnation of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. The overall objective of the institute is to increase the humanitarian use of the Internet. The ILF, therefore, is conducted mainly online, augmented by an annual residential meeting in La Jolla. Its dialogues address the policy and leadership implications of pressing global issues. They range from the failed connection of top management to the growth of information technology to the dangers of corporate concentration of media power to the growing acceptance of deception in public life to the misdirected security measures in the war on terrorism to the erosion of community in America to the problems of providing medical care to those without access to the changing nature of leadership in global organizations.