Confronting Your Immunity to Change

Most of us make New Year’s Resolutions – to workout more, lose weight, improve finances, pursue a new career, enhance personal relationships, etc. And, most of us know too that the reality is—change is difficult, and sustaining it is even harder.

In my work, leaders like most people, often have a sense about what they want to change or wish they would or wouldn’t do – and yet they somehow seem “immune” to being able to make the needed changes.

In their book “Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization”, Harvard Graduate School of Education professors Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey suggest that it’s not a lack of willpower that’s making it difficult to make changes and meet our goals – it may be the result of an emotional immune system that helps protect us from the impacts of change. The results of failure specifically tend to be disappointment and shame.

Kegan and Lahey have developed an innovative teaching methodology and activity called Immunity to Change, a four-step framework for tracking goals, overcoming perceived barriers, and outlining productive actions.

The four crucial steps to overcome emotional pitfalls and arrive at true transformation start with needing more knowledge about the change process itself and having more understanding of the “immunity to change.”

When we think about what’s keeping us from our goals, it helps to first understand that what we perceive as obstacles could be competing commitments. So, instead of giving up on our goals due to a lack of time, money, or support, we could look at how we’re utilizing these limited resources.

Embracing change means challenging our core values and operating assumptions. If we can better understand the motivations that are driving our decisions and determine which forces (such as stature, perfectionism, or risk aversion) are still relevant, and if we are open to adjusting our guiding assumptions, we will find it easier to embrace change and accomplish our goals.

What’s hindering change is what Kegan and Lahey call competing commitments; in other words, there is a commitment/value/preference that we hold; however, it’s being cancelled out by a hidden commitment that we’re not able to change or perhaps even see. Our individual assumptions and beliefs, combined with the collective mind-sets in our organizations, create a natural but powerful immunity to change.

Desire and motivation are not enough.

People with heart disease know what they should and should not do, but that doesn’t automatically translate into doing/not doing. A recent study actually showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will literally die if they don’t change their habits, only one in seven will be able to successfully achieve necessary change. Even when it’s a matter of life or death, the ability to change seems to remain elusive. Similarly, if I want to lose 20 pounds and I know what to do/not do, and yet don’t make the needed changes, things stay the same.

So how can we change ourselves and our organizations? Kegan and Lahey suggest that by revealing how this mechanism holds us back, we’re given the keys to unlock our potential and finally move forward. And by pinpointing and overcoming the forces of inertia, and uprooting our own immunities to change, we can better bring our organizations forward with us.

Since most of us have built-in immunity to change, despite our best intentions, personal change and development do not easily and naturally occur. Confronting one’s immunity to change requires not only exploration and openness to understanding the competing commitments, but even more to face them with courage and perseverance and grace.

As a leadership and executive coach, I work with leaders to help bring to light those hidden barriers, and invite the insights essential to change old patterns and behaviors and achieve new personal and business growth and performance improvement.

Are you a leader ready to confront your immunity to change, and looking to experience leadership and personal growth?

I invite you to contact me today to explore how I can support you in setting goals, creating desired outcomes, and managing personal change with resonance, resilience and intentional action – through executive coaching, leadership development, and other forms of professional coaching in Lancaster, PA and nationwide.

On the journey with you,

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