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What’s your track record in fulfilling your new year’s resolutions? Do you sometimes find yourself inexplicably resisting change? Notice how some change come easy and others just won’t stick? If you're like many of us, you have fallen short on clear and simple goals without truly understanding why.
Don’t beat yourself up. You may be dealing with hidden competing commitments[1]: deep-seated, often unconscious beliefs and mindsets operating under the surface that contradict with and prevent you from implementing the change you seek.
A highly competent business owner genuinely supports the new product launch plan, yet does nothing. A project leader unwittingly drags his heels at work, learns he is avoiding being assigned a tougher project if he succeeds in the current project.
In their book “Immunity to Change” Kegan and Lahey (2001) help explain the gap between what you intend to do and what you are able to put into place. Left unattended, hidden competing commitments can undermine your good intentions and leave you puzzled, if not frustrated.
To kick start the ‘work’ on your hidden competing commitments, answer these excavating questions[2]:
1. What would you like to see changed so that life/work would be more satisfying? (The answer often sounds like a complaint or a wish)
2. What commitments does this complaint or wish imply? (This turns the wish or complaint into your primary commitment)
3. Describe the undermining behaviors that prevent you from achieving this, in other words, what are you doing or not doing that is keeping your commitments from being more fully realized?
4. If you imagine doing the opposite of the undermining behavior, what do you detect in yourself - any discomfort, worry or vague fear?
5. By engaging in this undermining behavior, what worrisome outcomes are you committed to preventing? (This is the competing commitment.)
6. What big assumptions might be supporting this competing commitment?
Big assumptions are deeply rooted beliefs about you and the world around you which drive behaviors to support the competing commitment, albeit unwittingly.
Only by bringing big assumptions to light can people start to challenge these assumptions and recognize why they are engaging in seemingly contradictory behavior (Kegan & Lahey, 2001). Once we are aware of our big assumptions, we can begin to test them and design experiments to mitigate their impact.
Whilst hidden competing commitments and big assumptions tend to be deeply personal, this process can be a powerful tool to help understand change-resistance in teams. It starts at the individual level, and takes a heavy dose of self-awareness, empathy and courage to acknowledge what may be lurking under the surface.
An experienced management consultant, Miss C, was ready to leave her 10-year long career in consulting to become a social entrepreneur. She was passionate and highly committed to making this change and dedicated many hours and dollars in re-training to accelerate the transition. She traveled from Frankfurt to London to complete her studies at Central Saint Martins and began networking in this new area.
A year on, she shares that she has systematically taken up more consulting projects with a big firm. While her resolve was to find new opportunities to launch her career as a social entrepreneur (her primary commitment), she continued to gravitate to consulting, leaving her entrepreneurial plans to the side. Miss C was feeling torn, inexplicably resisting the change she was genuinely committed to implement.
When Miss C applied the tool, she discovered that underneath the fantasies of becoming a social entrepreneur, she highly valued the (perception of) prestige that working for large organizations afforded her, and that this belief was unconsciously working against her primary commitment.
Uncover your hidden competing commitments to kick start 2019. If you’re in Hong Kong on January 16th 2019 (630pm, Central), join us for an after-work, small group and hands-on workshop on the first steps in addressing your immunity to change.
The session will be facilitated by change consultants and coaches Aurora Aritao Littke (Hong Kong) and @Caroline-Lucie Ulbrich (Berlin). Aurora and Caroline work extensively with multinationals, senior leaders and entrepreneurs. Both have been trained in psychodynamic approach at INSEAD Business School (EMCCC), focusing on leadership development, individual and organizational change and transformation.
Ticket sales go to FOCUS HK who support children with learning differences. Light refreshments will be provided.
[1] A psychological dynamic popularised by Harvard’s Lisa Laskow Lahey and Robert Kegan.
[2] The Real Reason People Won’t Change, Kegan & Lahey, (2001), Harvard Business Review.
