How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation

by Lisa Laskow Lahey and Robert Kegan

Book Overview

In this intensely practical book, Harvard psychologists Kegan and Lahey take readers on a carefully guided journey designed to help them arrive at their own particular answers to solve the puzzling... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0787955353
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

A simple and profound method for achievement

This book presents a simple worksheet to help you analyze your resistance to change. Once completed, you will understand the inner conflicts that hinder your personal and professional development despite your best intentions. Of course, simply understanding these conflicts isn't enough, so the authors present methods to understand the usefulness of your resistance, eliminate your judgement around it, and harness its power for change. This method has helped me overcome my greatest dissatisfaction at work and I've experienced amazing results. I must warn, however, that despite being simple it entails quite a bit of self observation and continued effort. But this in itself is a huge asset. I highly recommend this book for anybody experiencing even the slightest dissatisfaction at work or in life.

Finally Understanding Change Resistance as Useful Information

Imagine getting so much perspective on habits you're not happy about that you can actually keep your commitments to yourself. Using language structure as both the diagnostic and the cure, Kegan and Lahey offer up a fresh guide to creating sustainable change. While it is designed to be used for workplace issues, it can also be used in other aspects of life. This book is clear, well-written, and so easily accessible it can even be used as a workbook. In fact the authors recommend a study group, and give clear steps to applying the model and specific case studies of participants who have successfully used it to create change. The significant difference between this and all other "managing change" books is a respectful recognition of competing commitments. That is, we don't need to conquer resistance, we need to understand it as a legitimate and experienced based reluctance designed for self-protection. Only then can the source and the solution be brought to light. This way of thinking is a treasure.

A great break down of common problems

I love the analysis of the way we communicate breaks down common misconceptions. This book shows the things that create negative responses and reactions. I think that while it shows ways to change, very few people actually change. I plan to use these concepts with my employees and see if it has an impact. My supervisor told me about this and advised trying it out with a partner first. I can see ways that I and others I work with fall into patterns that can be changed. Judy

Like a mirror to see yourself in

This book does for business leaders and their teams what the 7 Habits (Covey) did for individuals back in the 90s, but it goes a step forward: it's packed with case studies. I won't add to the discussion about the Seven Languages for Transformation, since my fellow reviewers have already gone into extensive detail about them. The key concept that the book left me was the idea of diving into conflicts to have them "solve" you, as opposed to running away from them or trying to solve them. The basis for this idea has to do with the learning opportunities that a conflict has to offer, and the opportunities of self-discovery to dig out blatant inconsistencies between what we say we care about and what our language and actions actually shows.Overall, the book is a very easy read, whether you do it in order to seriously implement its suggested methodology (and it is one serious set of ideas it carries) or just as a mirror to help you laugh at your so-called professional commitments.

Seven International "Languages"

Kegan and Lahey explain that their book "is about the possibility of extraordinary change in individuals and organizations. It locates an unexpected source of boundless energy to bring these changes into being" and then assert that "if we want deeper understanding of the prospect of change, we must pay closer attention to our own powerful inclinations not [italics] to change. This attention may help us discover within ourselves the force and beauty of a hidden immune system, the dynamic process by which we tend to prevent change, by which we manufacture continuously the antigens of change." I am convinced that most human limits are self-imposed...that in Pogo's words, "We have met the enemy and he is us." The authors do indeed focus on what they call "an unexpected source of boundless energy" which significant change requires. Throughout the book, they examine what they call "Seven Languages for Transformation" and suggest how to gain fluency in each. Four are Internal Languages: Commitment, Personal Responsibility, Competing Commitments ("Diagnosing the Immunity to Change"), and Assumptions We Hold ("Disturbing the Immunity to Change"). Fluency in these four enables us to build "The New Machine." There are also three Social Languages: Ongoing Regard, Public Agreement, and Deconstructive Criticism. Fluency in these three enables us to maintain and upgrade "The New Machine."It is important to keep in mind that we communicate with others as well as with ourselves in three primary ways: body language, tone of voice, and content (ie what we verbalize). Decades of scientific research reveals that, in face-to-face contact, body language has the greatest impact, followed (at a significant distance) by tone of voice and then content. In voice-to-voice contact (eg during a telephone conversation), tone of voice has perhaps three times greater impact than does what is verbalized. I mention all this by way of suggesting that HOW we communicate with others and (especially) with ourselves has a major impact on behavior. Hence the importance of replacing a negative attitude. with a positive attitude. For example, to replace the Language of Complaint with the Language of Commitment. What the authors provide is a cohesive and comprehensive process by which to recognize, understand, and then eliminate various barriers to personal and then to organizational change. In recent years, organizations throughout the world have invested hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars in the improvement of systems of various kinds. What is sometimes overlooked or at least underestimated (at great cost in terms of hours as well as dollars) are the negative attitudes of those involved in change initiatives. Kegan and Lahey eloquently and convincingly suggest specific strategies to transform those attitudes through fluency in seven "languages" within the curriculum of what they view as a "new technology" of learning. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to chec