PD SPOTLIGHT KRIS COOPER
Immunity to change: why, what and how? If we want to go beyond survival and thrive in a disrupted world, we need to be prepared to keep learning and doing things differently. To that end, we need to keep open to different tools and techniques. Kris Cooper introduces one such tool here and gives practical examples as to how we can apply it.
D
oes 'Sarah' work in your organisation?
Sarah is a manager who strives to improve her leadership. For the past three years, she has received the same feedback from her manager and direct reports that she needs to delegate more. Each year she has confirmed her commitment to doing better. She’s sought advice about delegating from her manager and her coach, she’s done the recommended reading, signed up to regular tips from a blog site she found and even attended courses. There is no doubt Sarah is committed, yet she continues to work longer and longer hours and her manager and direct reports still say she doesn’t delegate. Everyone, including Sarah, is at their wits’ end. Something needs to change.
Do you know a ‘Sarah’? If delegation is not the issue, I wonder if you substitute ‘delegation’ for something else whether this story is familiar?
A model to make sense of it
This is where the immunity to change (ITC) model comes in. Developed by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey and recorded in their book Immunity to Change,1 the ITC model recognises that some changes cannot just be ‘willed into action’. Following a ‘to-do list’ and trying to form a new habit just doesn’t work. And we’re talking about smart, disciplined people here, not someone flaky who doesn’t care. In fact, it’s the same as the New Year’s resolution commitment to change. If the posts online earlier this year are to be believed, by February we’ve stopped paying any attention to our heartfelt commitment to ‘exercise more’ or whatever goal we had, and by April we’ve even forgotten we set the goal. To our ‘gym bunny’ friends we are just not disciplined enough or committed enough, or we don’t really care. But that’s not the case. Instead, there is a bigger draw or draws for our attention. Those draws thwart our progress on our intended goal. The ITC model invites us to identify and consciously see these different
draws for our attention. It asks us to develop plans, which we hold lightly, through an experimental mindset, in order to make progress on the matters that are drawing our attention away from the intended goal. You might be thinking this doesn’t make sense: why would we work on something other than the main goal? It sounds counter-intuitive. So, let’s consider an example. When I was working with a group a while ago, one of the participants shared her story with me. She had been trying to lose weight for many years. When I met her, she said she had lost 20 kilograms and kept it off for two years. Her secret? She didn’t go on a diet. She was quick to point that out. Instead, she focused on the sort of life she wanted to have, and she worked on different aspects of that ‘ideal new’ life, one step at a time (and with help from her life coach). And she lost weight. The change in her mindset and her life created different food choices for her. She felt happier in her personal life, was more productive in her work life and generally more satisfied with where she was heading. In effect, this is the ITC model in action. When I shared it with her, she totally agreed that she had been putting it into action
1 Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey (2009) Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization. Boston, MA, Harvard Business Review Press.
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HUMAN RESOURCES
SPRING 2020
