Should I stay or should I go?
Change can definitely feel like balancing on a dodgy step bridge, stuck between whether to ‘stay or go’! What can help is understanding more about how people respond during change and the ‘Zero Point’ you need to work to ensure future choices are energised and confident.
I was recently introduced to the ‘Immunity to Change’, a compelling, validated framework developed by Professors Robert Keagan and Lisa Laskow from Harvard’s school of education. If you say the name out loud - ‘Immunity to Change’- you get an inkling of the paradox – like the biological immune system we have to protect us from harm, we equally have an emotional immune system that keeps us safe from the ‘Ideas that we have, that we don't know we have (and which) have us. (James Hillman)’ – the things that hold us back and keep us trapped in our own self-deception.
Keagan and Laskow developed a tool which they liken to taking an ‘X-Ray’ of your personal immunity to change. It begins with stating an important goal you want to work on. In building my ‘X-Ray’ I used my desire to spend less time working and more time being truly present with my family.
I was asked to list all the things I was not doing to achieve that goal. I admitted that I was continuing to take calls during dinner time; cutting short family outings to ensure I finished a piece of work and working late into the night as three behaviours stopping me from achieving my important goal.
Next step in building the ‘X-Ray’ was to answer the question ‘what would worry me if I did the opposite of everything I had listed above? ‘Dig deep I told myself – you can do it!’ ...let’s see… I would worry that I would damage my professional reputation if I didn’t deliver beyond expectations; I would worry that I would lose my clients.
Next was to dig even deeper…ok if that is what would worry me, what were the big assumptions I was making in regard to all this? Well…I was assuming that if I did not deliver beyond what was expected, my clients would go to someone else to get the work done and stop depending on me.
I would lose the livelihood my family depended on me providing. I would not be needed in my professional or personal life.
Wooh! This was something I had not expected. And it’s here that I drew myself back to the Four Rooms of Change ™ and the moment when the notion of the Zero Point which is found in the room of Confusion was first introduced to me.
I have loved the Four Rooms of Change ™ since I heard Marv Weisbord, organisational development legend, reference the framework at a session I attended on facilitating participatory engagement processes. The idea of there being four frames of mind we experience during change and transition was not only intriguing but it’s transformational potential, palpable. The simplicity of knowing and being able to acknowledge the feelings and behaviours associated with Contentment; Self-Censorship and Denial; Confusion; and Inspiration and Renewal was liberating. I was hooked. The task ahead was clear. I found out everything I could about the developer, Swedish psychologist Claes Janssen, and the framework’s application and impact.
Fast forward a few years and I was being instructed by Bengt Lindstrom, who worked with Janssen developing the framework’s diagnostic tools; the Personal Dialectics and the Organisational Barometer. When we got to the very important ‘Zero Point’ I intuitively recognised the insight even though I had few words and no process with which to unpack it. The Zero Point is an idea or aspiration we carry with us through the rooms, something we hold onto in the hope it will take us back to Contentment. Lindstrom’s colleague Drusilla Copeland, emphasised the need to ‘work, work, work’ the Zero Point because without knowing it, real change is not possible – you might get a short reprieve and leave Confusion for a time to flirt with Inspiration and Contentment but without knowing and letting go of what you are holding onto you will invariably wind up back in Self-Censorship or Confusion again.
Janssen compares the Zero Point to a ‘sailing boat held in chains’; Copeland couched it in terms of the mental state, and, to my delight, the title of my favourite Clash song Should I stay, or should I go?’ I got the ‘sense’ of the Zero Point and was certainly familiar with the sensation of feeling stuck between ‘stay or go’. But, how do you ‘work’ the Zero Point? What process could I use?
And so pivotal moments in exploring and learning frameworks collided - the Zero Point of the Four Rooms of Change ™ and the Immunity to Change process. The Zero Point I wanted to work, understand and address, was to let go of the fact that I was assuming that the only way to sure up being needed was by making everyone dependant on me!
The final step in the Immunity to Change X-Ray was to design and implement an experiment to test that assumption. During my next assignment when working out timelines with the client, I outlined a schedule that would allow me to finish the work but also afford me a life beyond work. Was it difficult to follow through on the experiment? Absolutely! It felt risky – just like a dodgy bridge! Was the experiment and its implementation difficult? Yes, and there was a lot of ‘should I stay, or should I go?’ hesitating moments as I realised, I had spent a lot of time building this emotional immune system and now I had to raise it to the ground and rebuild.
And what happened? The work was finished according to the more realistic schedule. It was more enjoyable for me and for my client. My personal life was more enjoyable too and my family were happier because I was present. Once undertaken and analysed – the ‘letting go’ of the self-deceptive assumption - the Zero Point - facilitated a more focused exit from Confusion and the arrival into Inspiration and Renewal was more energised and confident.
Should I stay or should I go?