How to Get Rid of Unconscious Assumptions
Use this interactive worksheet to examine your irrational ideas.
Even when we know it is for the best reasons, change can be challenging. Some people blatantly oppose it, while others accept it. And some people absolutely commit to the change, yet for some reason they do nothing.
Change leaders are frequently left perplexed and asking “what went wrong” when this occurs. Why didn’t those who seemed dedicated make the necessary changes?
It may be due to a “immunity to change” when this occurs. This is more complex than opposing or hating a change, and it can frequently be more challenging to comprehend and get through.
This post will define immunity to change and explain ways to help your people get over it.
What Is Change Immunity?
People bring their personal histories, feelings, and individualised worldviews to the workplace. Some of these presumptions are so fundamental that it might be difficult for individuals to distinguish them from reality.
These presumptions, in the words of Harvard professor Lisa Laskow Lahey and psychologist Robert Kegan, “underlie a set of competing commitments” that may conflict with a sincere resolve to change [1].
This indicates that even while someone may cognitively wish to change and may even agree to it on the outside, they may secretly have a strong internal desire to stay the same.
Being resistant to change or immune to it are not the same thing. Instead, it’s the internal struggle between the need for change and your unconscious impulses and thoughts.
What Does Change Immunity Look Like?
Before it’s too late, it can be impossible to tell if someone is immune to change. This is because the affected individual or persons publicly accept the change. However, in practice, they might put up little to no effort to alter their behaviour and carry on as usual.
Let’s examine an illustration: Jill, who oversees a marketing division, has been given the responsibility of putting a new information-sharing system in place for her team.
She provides only a few useful details in her directions to her workers regarding the system. This isn’t because she disagrees with the shift; rather, Jill feels inside that if she needs to seek for or share knowledge, people will view her as weak or uneducated. She therefore doesn’t impose the new system’s use and carries on as usual.
The benefits of a new information-sharing system appeal to Jill’s team, but without the right direction and strong leadership, they gradually forget about it and conclude that it wasn’t really that significant. Despite Jill’s assurances that the transition would occur, senior management at the company are left wondering why it didn’t.
Five Steps to Breaking a Change Immunity
The Immunity to Alter method consists of five parts and is intended to address the issue of why people don’t change things when they are fully aware of the necessity to do so. [2]
Step 1: Commit to a Change Goal.
First, be specific in defining your change aim. What would you like to change? What needs to alter? What would occur if you didn’t alter?
The transformation objective should be not only desirable but also necessary. You are more likely to succeed if you have a higher urge to change.
For instance, if you consistently accept more work even though you don’t have the time, you may realise that your job is too heavy. You’ve begun to experience stress, which has a negative impact on your relationships and physical and mental health. In this situation, your commitment can be to take on less work, give more work to others, or be more open and honest with your coworkers about your abilities and limitations.
If you don’t succeed in making the adjustment, you’ll probably feel bad about yourself or ashamed. Additionally, it could damage other people’s faith in your ability to complete job on time.
Step 2: Describe the behaviour you need to change.
Next, clearly and honestly state what you are doing at the moment to prevent the change from occurring.
Making terrible New Year’s resolutions by simply committing to things you know you should be doing already is counterproductive. You should make them, but unless your behaviour changes, it’s quite improbable that you’ll follow through.
Instead, pinpoint the precise activities and conduct that are holding you back from realising your change objective. Saying yes to work even when I don’t have the time to do it may be one action using the example from above.
Step 3: Discover Your Hidden Competing Commitments.
Next, imagine the worst-case scenario if you abandoned the steps you listed in Step 2 and took the opposite course of action. This is likely to be fueled by a strong emotional response; perhaps it will make you uneasy or make you feel dreadful.
Imagine, for instance, informing your manager that you are too busy to take on a new assignment. You might be concerned that they’ll think less of you or become irate if they do.
Of course, you don’t want this to occur. You probably even have a strong internal motivation to stop this from happening in the first place. Your secret competing commitment in this situation might be, “I must not have my manager think that I’m incompetent.”
Other concerns are certainly possible for you. “People will think less of me,” you could believe. You would consequently be committed to “I am devoted to not offending people” or “I am committed to having people think good of me,” which are concealed competing commitments.
Step 4: Dispel Your Major Presumptions
Once you have outlined your conflicting commitments in detail, pinpoint the underlying presumptions at play. Consider this: “Why would the occurrence of the thing I’m determined to prevent be so bad? Why do I fear it will happen so much?”
The major underlying assumptions of the commitments listed in Step 3 can be, “If my boss’s opinion of me decreases, my career chances may be harmed.” as an illustration.
Some of the assumptions you find might be accurate, while others might not. People can only begin to see whether the underlying causes of their self-defeating behaviour are actually true after bringing to the surface these deeply ingrained worries and sentiments and being able to objectively assess them.
Instead of viewing the world via their assumptions, as Kegan and Lahey put it, this technique enables people to examine their assumptions.
The goal here is to clearly describe the assumptions that support your conflicting commitments rather than just finding the problem’s root cause (although you might have a “A-ha!” moment).
Step 5: Verify Your Major Hypotheses
Testing your assumptions to see if they are correct or incorrect should come after you are confident that you have located the genuine source of the issue. Your individual circumstances and the nature of the assumption will determine how you should proceed.
Using the SMART test by Kegan and Lahey is one technique to verify your hypothesis:
-Safe: Avoid taking any risks that can endanger your career or yourself.
-Modest: To test the waters, start off small.
-Actionable: Make sure you will have the chance to put this into practise.
-Research-based: Here, gathering information is more important than enacting change.
-Put your assumption to the test: ensure that the outcome will provide you with information that either supports or refutes the assumption.
If you’re unclear of how to design a solid test that satisfies Kegan and Lahey’s SMART criteria, discuss it with a dependable friend or coworker and obtain their opinion.
Keep track of any possibilities you could have passed up due to erroneous assumptions. Make a note of any challenging circumstances that prevented you from making the necessary change. This ought to provide you a better understanding of your fundamental beliefs and what you need to do to modify and get past them.
By getting to the root of your beliefs, the method should shed light on the fundamental reasons for seemingly self-destructive behaviour. This may frequently be a highly illuminating and even emotional activity. Such actions are frequently motivated by self-preservation.
Once you comprehend this, you can question the veracity of your fundamental presumptions or beliefs and break their power over you. This will enable you to comprehend the background of your behaviour in greater detail and, eventually, to change it in a way that is both genuine and long-lasting.
Major Points
Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey define immunity to change as the incapacity to change as a result of ingrained beliefs and competing commitments. These can be so deeply ingrained that they are unaware.
By carrying out the following five procedures, you can address an immunity to change:
1. Identify a change objective.
2. Specify the behaviour you need alter.
3. Discover any hidden conflicting obligations.
4. Expose your major presumptions.
5. Verify your hypotheses.
You will gain a greater understanding of the internal obstacles to change you face as well as what you need to do to go beyond them through this process.
If you found this article insightful, you might also be interested in exploring these topics further. Here are five articles that could capture your attention:
- Self-Coaching Strategies – Discover techniques to coach yourself towards personal and professional growth.
- Team Management – Learn effective ways to lead and manage a team successfully.
- Essential Competencies for Managing a Team – Understand the key skills and competencies required for effective team management.
- Providing for Your People – Explore strategies to support and nurture your team members’ development.
- Mentoring – Gain insights into the art of mentoring and how it can benefit both mentors and mentees.