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

From Booklist
Language is the primary tool by which we communicate. Kegan and Lahey argue, though, that the words we use do more than represent feelings and attitudes. The very choice itself of one word or expression over another can determine feelings and attitudes and--most importantly--actions. Kegan is a Harvard professor of education; Lahey is a psychologist specializing in adult development. In order to demonstrate their complex concept of the role of language in transformational learning, they offer this book, in part, as an instruction manual for collaborative exercises in self-assessment. They identify seven languages that one should adopt to overcome both internal and organization resistance to change. Four of the languages are internal or personal. For example, one should use the "language of personal responsibility" to replace the "language of blame." The other three languages are social. Here, for instance, the "language of public agreement" supplants the "language of rules and policies." The authors conclude with examples of ways "to deepen [the] practice of all seven languages." David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Why is the gap so great between our hopes, our intentions, even our decisions-and what we are actually able to bring about? Even when we are able to make important changes-in our own lives or the groups we lead at work-why are the changes are so frequently short-lived and we are soon back to business as usual? What can we do to transform this troubling reality?

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Why is the gap so great between our hopes, our intentions, even our decisions-and what we are actually able to bring about? Even when we are able to make important changes-in our own lives or the groups we lead at work-why are the changes are so frequently short-lived and we are soon back to business as usual? What can we do to transform this troubling reality?

In this intensely practical book, Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey take us on a carefully guided journey designed to help us answer these very questions. And not just generally, or in the abstract. They help each of us arrive at our own particular answers that can solve the puzzling gap between what we intend and what we are able to accomplish.
How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work provides you with the tools to create a powerful new build-it-yourself mental technology that allows you to:
Diagnose your own immunity to change
Unleash the boundless energy currently trapped in this immune system
Maintain and upgrade this state-of-the-art mental technology for lasting change.

The building blocks for this new technology are seven transformational languages, each permitting new kinds of thinking, feeling, and experiencing. Kegan and Lahey show us how we can use these languages-in our conversations with colleagues, friends, and as importantly, in the way we talk to ourselves-to transform:
Our complaints into commitments
Our blaming into responsibility
Our view of our own ineffectiveness into an understanding of its hidden genius
The assumptions we take as truths into exploreable, changeable ways of understanding ourselves and the world
Our tendency to praise and prize into deep-running ongoing regard
Social regulation by rules and personnel policies into the power of public agreement
Destructive and even constructive criticism into the bigger possibilities of "deconstructive criticism"
You'll want to read this book with pen in hand. The authors invite you in, not as an observer but as an active participant-to help you make powerful, lasting change in your life and the lives of those you seek to help or lead.

SYNOPSIS

You'll want to read this book with pen in hand. The authors invite you in, not as an observer but as an active participant-to help you make powerful, lasting change in your life and the lives of those you seek to help or lead. The authors 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 of Education.

AUTHOR DESCRIPTION

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.