List what you do instead, without trying to fix it
Write down, specifically and honestly, what you do and do not do that works against your goal — and resist resolving to stop.
Why it works
The second column asks what you are doing, or not doing, that keeps your commitment from being realized. Kegan and Lahey ask for concrete, specific behaviors so that later you can see why they make sense. Their 2001 book names the usual response to this list — a "New Year’s resolution" to stop — as the language to move away from, because a resolution attacks the behavior while leaving the reason for it untouched.
How to do it
- Under your goal, list every behavior you can think of that works against it — things you do and things you fail to do.
- Make each one observable: "I say yes to new requests before checking my calendar," not "I am bad with time."
- Ask someone who knows you to add one you missed.
- Do not write plans to stop any of them. Leave the list as a record for now.
Evidence
The second-column question appears in Kegan and Lahey’s 2001 HBR article ("What are you doing, or not doing, that is keeping your commitment from being more fully realized?"), and the move away from the "language of New Year’s resolutions" is one of the seven languages in their 2001 book. Reams (2009), using the column with students and a leadership team, reports that people’s first impulse was to write fixes and that holding them back took deliberate effort. (anecdotal)
Evidence is the authors’ and practitioners’ experience; the step has not been isolated in a study.
Sources
- Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2001). The Real Reason People Won’t Change. Harvard Business Review, 79(10), 84–92.
- Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2001). How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Reams, J. (2009). Immunity to Change: A Report from the Field. Integral Review, 5(1).
Common mistake
Turning the list into a set of resolutions. Resolving to stop the behaviors is exactly the response the method is designed to replace.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for The Immunity to Change Process, Step by Step
- Turn a complaint into the commitment underneath it
Use what you keep complaining about to find what you actually care about changing.
- Choose your "one big thing" with input from others
Pick a single improvement goal that matters to you, involves you, and that people who know you agree would make a real difference.
- Fill the worry box: imagine doing the opposite
Picture yourself doing the opposite of what you listed and write down the discomfort, worry or fear that comes up.
- Rewrite the worry as what you are committed to preventing
Turn each worry into a commitment — "I am committed to not…" — so you can see what your behavior is protecting.
- Watch your big assumption at work before you test it
For a week or two, only notice when the assumption steers you and look for evidence that it is not always true.
- Write the biography of your big assumption
Trace when and how the assumption first took hold, and ask whether it still fits the person you are now.
- Read what your test actually showed
After a test of your big assumption, separate what happened from what you made of it, then decide what it tells you and what to test next.
- Map a team’s collective immunity to change
When a group sincerely wants a change and still does not make it, map the shared commitment and assumption holding it in place.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Self-Authorship: Moving From the Socialized to the Self-Authored Mind
Kegan’s stages, subject-object moves, and authoring your own life
- Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical
Distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical problems — and leading accordingly
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: cite or embed this practice · more practices graded Practitioner experience