Changing others through changing ourselves

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Changing others through changing ourselves

• Real adaptive change can only be achieved by
  mobilizing people to make painful adjustments in
  their attitudes, work habits, and lives. In
  adaptive change, people must step outside known
  patterns of behavior they must surrender their
  present selves and put themselves in jeopardy by
  becoming part of an emergent system. This
  process usually requires the 1) surrender of
  personal control, 2) the toleration of
  uncertainty, and 3) the development of a new
  culture at the collective level and 4) a new self
  at the individual level.

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Traditional Change Strategies

• Empirical-rational strategy
• Educate about the logic and benefits of change
• People may understand why they should change, but
  they are often not willing to make the painful
  changes necessary for adaptive change.

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• Power-coercive strategy
• Emphasizes political and economic power, forcing
  people to change through the use of external
  sanctions.
• Usually evokes anger, resistance, and damage to
  the fundamental relationships of those involved
  in change

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• Normative-reeducative strategy
• Individuals still guided by rational calculus,
  but extends beyond self-interest to the common
  good.
• Leader welcomes the input of others as equals
  into the change process
• Involves others in an honest dialogue while
  mutually searching for win-win solutions.
• ACT puts a greater emphasis on the need for
  leaders to change themselves

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Advanced Change Theory (ACT)

• Seeks to create an emergent system
• Recognizes hypocrisy and patterns of
  self-deception
• Personal change through value clarification and
  alignment of behaviors
• Frees oneself from the system of external
  sanctions
• Develops a vision for the common good

• Takes action at the edge of chaos
• Maintains reverence for others involved in change
• Inspires others to enact their best selves
• Models counterintuitive, paradoxical behavior
• Changes self and system

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• Changing an organization requires leaders to
  change themselves first
• Emergent system
• Requires shift away from self-interested behavior
• Leader strives for inclusion, openness, and
  development and minimizes the need for hierarchy
• Recognize hypocrisy and patterns of
  self-deception
• Discrepancy between what people espouse and how
  they behave
• Reduce integrity gaps
• Natural defense mechanisms often shut down change
  process. Claim that we want progress, but often
  pursue the preservation of our current position

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• Argyris there is a systematic discrepancy
  between what people espouse and how they behave
  and they are often unaware of it.
• Results in miscommunication, self-fulfilling
  prophecies, escalating errors
• Universal human tendency to organize our lives
  around four basic values
• Remaining in control
• Winning
• Suppressing negative feelings
• Making a rational pursuit of objectives

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• Personal change through value clarification and
  alignment of behaviors
• Be open to the possibility of reframing your
  viewpoint in a situation
• Ensure behavior is aligned with key values
• Free oneself from the system of external
  sanctions
• Do what is right rather than what is prescribed
  by existing laws, rules, or authority
• Go against the status go

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• Develop a vision for the common good
• Must be a vision for the common good if others
  are expected to make painful changes
• Takes action to the edge of chaos
• Courage to act on faith
• Maintains reverence for others involved in change
• Trust rather than control becomes the basis for
  relationship
• Competence
• Integrity
• benevolence

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• Inspires others to enact their best selves
• Ask for stretch efforts while modeling courage,
  integrity, competence, and concern for others
• Models counterintuitive, paradoxical behavior
• See the big picture system complexity
• Changes self and system
• Change must begin by looking inside

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• Revolutionary power follows from the practice of
  reflection, self-examination, and the creative
  enactment of clear principles. When a person
  enacts principle driven behavior, it challenges
  the current system and forces people to chose
  between what is expedient/easy and what is the
  right thing to do. This kind of awareness
  separates people and generates conflict. It
  alters everyone, including the leader of change.
• Your circle of influence might be larger than you
  believe

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• ACT practitioners become empowered when they take
  responsibility for themselves, risk new
  behaviors, and evolve meanings.
• Leaders become self-authorizing individuals with
  a unique voice
• Organizations cannot empower people. People can
  only empower themselves.