PD Spotlight: 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.

Does '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 hange, 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 without even realising it, and she committed to learning more to see how it might continue to help her.

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.

So, this is how it works. It’s a fourcolumn model in the identification, and I suggest a further five columns in the action. While I sometimes use different headings when working with people, here I will use the language from Kegan and Lahey’s book.

Column 3 is both the hardest to identify and the most critical to making progress. The answers in here are confronting for people. However, as is often the case when something is confronting, completing this column honestly and thoroughly is what makes breakthroughs possible. Column 4 invites us to make sense of the issue with a more remote, onlooker perspective. Only when we have done this can we helpfully identify one big assumption to work on in using our more traditional goal-setting methodologies.

An example will help. ‘Sarah’ above wants “to be better at delegation”. This is her column 1 goal. When honestly inquiring about what she is doing or not doing instead of delegating (column 2), in moments of honesty, Sarah identifies several things – and it’s most helpful if she can identify at least five actions, behaviours or mindsets she is adopting instead of delegating. Here’s Sarah’s list: I am not prioritising the work required of my team, nor am I distinguishing the urgent from the important, I don’t ask for help, I don’t say ‘no’ to anyone, I don’t plan my time, I spend a lot of time on emails (and then have little time left over).

At this point, there have not been many surprises for Sarah; she has been okay about identifying the things she has or has not been doing. In fact, she has discussed most of these with her manager and coach over the past three years. What she can’t seem to do, though, is hold herself to doing something differently. Column 3 is where Sarah will identify the thinking that is putting a brake on her ability to achieve her column 1 goal.

When having to identify what worry arises for Sarah if she does not do the things listed in column 2 (yes, tricky concept when there are double negatives involved), this is what Sarah realises for her ‘part one’ answers: I worry that I might not achieve like I’m used to, that I might be wrong, that I’ll lose control, that I will be dependent on others.

Then, further urged to consider what these factors mean she is really committed to, Sarah is shocked to identify: I am committed to not giving up the quick wins and experiencing myself as an achiever, to not finding out I’m wrong, to not failing, to not being dependent on others or putting my fate in others’ hands. The double negatives in these answers can be tricky to get your head around, but when you do, they are extremely powerful. In effect, the identification of these commitments shows that Sarah cannot get better at delegation without giving up part of the identity she has created for herself to date in her work role. About now, Sarah can feel pretty stuck. Her unconscious immunity has now been brought into consciousness; it doesn’t feel good. But there is light at the end of the tunnel: column 4.

Column 4 helps identify the assumptions that are holding Sarah captive and preventing her from making progress on her goal. These are her column 4 insights: I assume that: If I don’t get quick wins, I’ll be anxious and ineffective, that I need them to know I’m on track; If I find out I’m wrong, I don’t deserve this role; If I fail, I’ll let down everyone I care about; If I’m dependent on others, I’m screwed when they don’t deliver; Effective leaders get it right first time; We can’t make mistakes and survive; I can do it better than the others can; It takes longer to explain it to someone so they get it right than it does to do it myself.

When Sarah sees this list, she can identify some entries as assumptions she is holding lightly and others that are significant for her. The idea is to take courage and identify the assumptions that we believe are putting the biggest brake on progress, and then work to understand and test whether those assumptions are, in fact valid, or not.

Overturning the immunity

Kegan and Lahey provide helpful tips for action. For instance, we can consider the history of the big assumption: what has happened in our life that has caused us to build this assumption? And we can design experiments to yield disconfirming information. SMART criteria apply to each experiment. Experiments should be: Safe, Modest, Actionable within a few weeks (it’s important to make a quick start), Research-focused (datadriven), and Test the big assumption (rather than being some tricky way of proving it).

From here on in, the goal-setting is more like we are used to. The columns to complete are as follows: Big assumption test; Success looks like; Data collected; Examination of results; What now? (Refer to table on page 42.)

By using this process, Sarah will improve her understanding of her big assumptions and release the brake to progress on her delegation goal. Ideally, she will do this with an action partner beside her, to help her bring consciousness to what may be unconscious, and to help her see her progress objectively. The aim is for the work on the big assumption to help Sarah get to a situation where her conscious immunity transitions to conscious release and then unconscious release. While it can take about six months to see goal progress, this seems like a relatively small amount of time, given the three years she has already been working on it.

Because this is not an easy tool to get your head around, if you want to use it in your organisation, I recommend that, to make a start, you read Kegan and Lahey’s book, attend their Minds at Work training, or seek the support of someone who has.

Kristen Cooper is an experienced senior manager with several years’ experience running her bespoke consultancy. She offers solutions in business strategy and performance; people, leadership and culture; training, coaching and facilitation; and conflict resolution and mediation.

One of HRNZ’s past National Presidents, Kristen is proud of her association with our institute and welcomes contributing to supporting organisations, line managers, and people and capability professionals to be the best they can be. She facilitates HRNZ’s HR Manager programme, which helps with the transition from HR advisor to HR manager. Registrations are open for new and aspiring HR managers.