# Immunity to Change  ## Metadata - Author: [[Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey]] - Full Title: Immunity to Change - Category: #books ## Highlights - The problem is the inability to close the gap between what we genuinely, even passionately, want and what we are actually able to do. Closing this gap is a central learning problem of the twenty-first century. ([Location 230](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=230)) - Tags: [[pink]] - This disjunction between our increased understanding of the need for change and our lack of understanding as to what prevents it is the first of three fertile problems that lay the foundation for this book. ([Location 233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=233)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Note: First of three problems - riding alongside the public optimism reflected in enormous organizational investments in people development is a deep-seated private pessimism about how much people really can change. ([Location 245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=245)) - Tags: [[pink]] - The field of “leadership development” has overattended to leadership and underattended to development. An endless stream of books tries to identify the most important elements of leadership and help leaders to acquire these abilities. Meanwhile, we ignore the most powerful source of ability: our capacity (and the capacity of the people who work for us) to overcome, at any age, the limitations and blind spots of current ways of making meaning. ([Location 293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=293)) - Tags: [[pink]] - True development is about transforming the operating system itself, not just increasing your fund of knowledge or your behavioral repertoire. ([Location 300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=300)) - Tags: [[pink]] - leaders who ask themselves, “What can I do to make my setting the most fertile ground in the world for the growth of talent?” put themselves in the best position to succeed. ([Location 339](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=339)) - Tags: [[pink]] - When we experience the world as “too complex” we are not just experiencing the complexity of the world. We are experiencing a mismatch between the world’s complexity and our own at this moment. There are only two logical ways to mend this mismatch—reduce the world’s complexity or increase our own. ([Location 347](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=347)) - Tags: [[pink]] - These three adult meaning systems—the socialized mind, self-authoring mind, and self-transforming mind—make sense of the world, and operate within it, in profoundly different ways. ([Location 402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=402)) - Tags: [[pink]] - what I think to send will be strongly influenced by what I believe others want to hear. ([Location 417](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=417)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Note: How socialized minded people “send” messages - what I “send” is more likely to be a function of what I deem others need to hear to best further the agenda or mission of my design. ([Location 436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=436)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Note: How the self-authoring minded sends messages - mental complexity strongly influences whether my information sending is oriented toward getting behind the wheel in order to drive (the self-authoring mind) or getting myself included in the car so I can be driven (the socialized mind). ([Location 440](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=440)) - Tags: [[pink]] - The self-transforming mind can stand back from its own filter and look at it, not just through it. And why would it do so? Because the self-transforming mind both values and is wary about any one stance, analysis, or agenda. ([Location 451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=451)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Each different level of mindset complexity differently draws the line between what is subject and what is object. Greater complexity means being able to look at more (take more as object). The blind spot (what is subject) becomes smaller and smaller. ([Location 490](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=490)) - Tags: [[pink]] - increased mental complexity and work competence, assessed on a number of dimensions, are correlated. ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=519)) - Heifetz says the biggest error leaders make is when they apply technical means to solve adaptive challenges. ([Location 609](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=609)) - Distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical ones again brings our attention back from the “problem” to the “person having the problem.” ([Location 612](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=612)) - psychologist William Perry once said are the two most important things to know about people you are trying to help change: “What do they really want [column 1], and what will they do to keep from getting it?” ([Location 679](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=679)) - Change fails to occur because we mean both things. It fails to occur because we are a living contradiction. ([Location 736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=736)) - It is not change that causes anxiety; it is the feeling that we are without defenses in the presence of what we see as danger that causes anxiety. ([Location 891](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=891)) - “What’s the single thing you think is most important for me to get better at?” ([Location 1100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004OEILH2&location=1100))