Immunity to change…

The gap between our intentions and action.

“If 14 frogs are sitting on a log and 3 decide to jump off, how many frogs are left” – the answer is 14 as it is all very well to think about jumping but the actual jump might not happen!! The gap between our intentions and action.

This comes from the research and the book by Robert Kegan & Lisa Laskow Lahey, Immunity to Change.

Possibly one of their most shocking pieces of research was patients with heart conditions. Only 1 in 7 made changes to their life, and it was not that they didn’t have a great desire to live it was about exploring what was their immunity to change.

Kegan in a talk explains how when quizzing a heart patient on why they were not taking their medication regularly the reply was “I don’t know”. He asked the question what is the biggest worry if you take the medication? The reply was the answer you would give if you didn’t take the medication so his brain created a neurological pathway that was so hard wired he could not hear the question. We default to the answer we know based on the most obvious question. Kegan persisted and asked again “What is the biggest worry if you take the medication?” Eventually the guy erupted in outburst of his fear of taking on the identity of an old person like his father who was sick. What Kegan had uncovered there was a big assumption around the commitment he was being asked to make and that was preventing him from making the change.

The book outlines four columns to work through to uncover what is really going on:-

Bréne Brown had Lisa Laskow Lahey as a guest on the Dare to Lead podcast and Brown walked through the steps to uncover her immunity to change. She was not attending team meetings and picking up with individuals outside of the team meetings which was leading to confusion of some team members knowing more or less than others. When quizzed by using the four column technique, it was uncovered that Brown thought by attending the team meetings she would lose some creativity time. Her assumption was that she could not be creative in a team meeting.

The final story comes from Kegan and also uncovers the self deception we create around why we are not changing. A guy visits a bar every night at the same time once a week and orders 3 shots. The bar tender asks why does he not just order a triple and have them in one glass. The guy explains that he has two brothers in different parts of the world and at the same time once a week they each have 3 shots to remember each other. This goes on for years, until he asks the bar tender to only pour 2 shots. The bar tender is really keen to know why but does not want to intrude. Eventually he asks tentatively why only 2, and the guy says “Oh, I quit drinking”. This is the self deception of doing one thing and not looking at both things at the same time.

We can be actively resistant to change as we may have an unconscious goal behind the change. The frogs who had the goal to jump and the desire but did not want to be cold. The heart patient who wanted to take the medication but did not want the identity of a sick old person. Bréne Brown who wants to attend her team meetings but does not want to lose time being creative. The last guy with the shot glasses does not link not drinking with the ritual he has set up with his brothers.

Please do get in touch for a 90 minute workshop around Change or one to one coaching bev@nuggetsoflearning.co.uk