Managing Personal Change - Why We Can Be Taught Yet We Still Won't Change

The whole subject of managing personal change has largely been the provenance of the worlds of personal development and self improvement.

From a change management perspective, and in my own view Professors Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey in their latest book: "Immunity to Change - How To Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization" have addressed one of the cornerstones of successfully leading, managing and surviving change, namely:

Organisations change when people change

This puts the whole business of managing personal change on the map and thus on the agenda for the business world.

The inherently flawed assumption that is present in most training and work-related attempts at managing personal change - in support of organisational change - is that it is skills based, in other words we can be taught to change.

Whilst it is perfectly true that we can be taught, generally we won't change. In fact, we can't change because of our unconscious resistance to change. What is needed is an adaptive response to change - or as Kegan and Lahey put it we need to develop an "adaptive mind".

The adaptive mind

Kegan and Lahey have a developmental stage model that outlines their view of how adults develop mental complexity and this is based around 3 plateaux of adult mental developmental complexity.

(1) The socialised mind - shaped by social environment and group loyalties.

(2) The self-authoring mind - shaped by a focus on the advancement of a clear personal agenda.

(3) The self-transforming mind - shaped by a capacity to see beyond the personal agenda and to take on wider perspectives including those conflict with the personal agenda.

The self-transforming mind is an adaptive mind capable of providing adaptive solutions to complex problems.

In very simple terms, the "level of mind" of an individual is reflected by the level of self awareness of the individual and their capacity for holistic thinking - that is to say, their capacity to assimilate and reflect on, and act upon, the widest perspective - everyone else's perspectives as well as their own.