How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work

Robert Kegan, Ph.D., is the William and Miriam Meehan Professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and author of The Evolving Self and In Over Our Heads. Lisa Laskow Lahey, Ed.D., is research director of the Change Leadership Project at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

• Acknowledgments ixIntroduction: What Do You Really Want . . . and What Will You Do to Keep from Getting It? 1Part One: The Internal Languages: Building the New Machine 111 From the Language of Complaint to the Language of Commitment 132 From the Language of Blame to the Language of Personal Responsibility 333 From the Language of New Year’s Resolutions to the Language of Competing Commitments: Diagnosing the Immunity to Change 474 From the Language of Big Assumptions That Hold Us to the Language of Assumptions We Hold: Disturbing the Immunity to Change 67Part Two: The Social Languages: Maintaining and Upgrading the Machine 895 From the Language of Prizes and Praising to the Language of Ongoing Regard 916 From the Language of Rules and Policies to the Language of Public Agreement 1037 From the Language of Constructive Criticism to the Language of Deconstructive Criticism 121Part Three: Carrying on the Work 1478 Running the Internal Languages 1499 Running the Social Languages 187Epilogue: Toward the Transformation Highway: Transcending the Limits of the Information Age 229The Authors 235Index 237