Coaching is a distinct modality from therapy, and yet there is a ven diagram of overlap in some phases of work. For example, when a client is not making progress on a particular goal, I often will suggest we take a deeper dive into the psychological dynamics working both toward and against the desired goal.  I find it deeply satisfying to go on this learning journey—with curiosity and no judgment—where we methodically tweeze out the “weeds” holding a client in place.  Unlike gardening, though, it’s impossible to fully remove a weed; we just bring awareness to the weed and plant new seeds to better anchor and “grow” the desired change.   

Typically, I draw on Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s Immunity to Change (ITC) framework  to peel back the layers and reveal the unconscious and complicated dynamic happening within us.   A client and I will spend a session breaking down the following areas of the ITC framework:

1. Clarifying the desired goal and why it is so important to them

2. Articulating the behaviors one is doing that go against the desired goal or change

3. Unearthing the fears and commitments that detract from one’s ability to enact a new goal/behavior

4. Pealing back and revealing the core inner beliefs and assumptions that explain why one feels such “headwinds” in a particular seemingly oppositional goal. 

 With each successive layer of the conversation, we peel away deeper insights, and it tends to go slower and slower as we get closer to the root, which is the most significant assumption that no longer serves them.

 Here is an anonymized excerpt of the ITC work I did with a client recently on a perennial goal for leaders: delegating more work to the team to free up energy for higher level visioning activities.  There ia a lot more data collected and discussed, but this chart below simplifies the key insights in each phase.

This work is never straightforward, but it is always deeply satisfying.  I have seen several clients experience a deep sense of positive release and relief to finally understand the dynamics holding them in place; and with new wind at their back, clients can start to get a lot of positive momentum in the new direction.

At the close of the Immunity to Change mapping exercise, the idea is to set approachable experiment(s) to test one’s limiting assumptions and put one’s toe in the shallow end of the pool (versus committing to a double back flip off the high dive of the deep end).    For example, an experiment for the client above might be to hand over one messy project to a team member who is well equipped to handle it.

I appreciate that the focus of ITC is on raising awareness versus jumping into action, but over the years I have organically added a final “column” of the map, which brainstorms new seeds of belief for the goal at hand.  In the example referenced above, the client can move from running themselves ragged, and thinking they can do it all, to seeing themselves like a conductor of an orchestra, arranging others in making the music from a broader and higher perch.

In short, to have a different outcome we need to keep pruning our “gardens” to make sure we are truly wired for success. While we don’t all have the opportunity to do Immunity to Change map every day, the next time you find yourself stalled on an improvement goal, you might just ask yourself:

What are you more committed to in your actions that is taking you down an old, familiar path?

What committments do you have, below the surface, that are working against the new path?

We humans are complex and confusing, even to ourselves, so it’s incredibly helpful to have mapping tools like ITC that let us tweeze apart and loosen our resistance to change, even the very changes we choose and think we are committed to at a surface level.