How we talk can change the way we work

If we want a better understanding of the prospect of change, we first need a better way of seeing into our own powerful inclination NOT to change. Considering every workplace as a language community, psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey show us how our aspirations for change are undermined by the ordinary language forms we use to talk with others and to think things through in our own heads. Individually, we make countless sincere pledges to ourselves and to others to change in some important way. We may temporarily accomplish the change, but we commonly return to status quo. In “How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation,” Harvard Graduate School of Education psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey explain that most individuals and organizations are immune to deep and lasting change in spite of best intentions.