Hello. Thanks for stopping by. If you would like to learn more about personal and organizational change, why not subscribe to the RSS feed. Or, if you're old school, Bookmark This Site

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine this scene…
It’s January 2nd. You’ve recovered from your New Year’s Eve hangover and your New Year’s Day televised football and cheese balls binge. You wake up at 5:30am and head straight to the gym, with about 800 other determined souls. You walk and run and lift for an hour. Feeling good about your efforts, you go on with your day.

It’s January 3rd. When your alarm goes off at 5:30am you can barely lift your arm to press ‘Snooze.’ You roll over, promising yourself you will get up the next morning and get right back to your new routine.

It’s February 20th. You’ve been to the gym 5 whole times in the last month. You haven’t lost any weight and you can’t run any farther than when you started. You are already planning a resolution for next year.

Does this sound familiar? Typically we think of failed New Year’s resolutions as a problem of willpower. We believe that if we just try harder, we can overcome our internal resistance to getting up early, eating vegetables, budgeting, or whatever it is that we want to tackle. However, we may be sabotaging our own efforts in order to hold on to something else that we value.

This model comes from, “How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work,” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. (I may write a full review of this book at a later time.) They suggest that when we hold a commitment, but can’t seem to get anywhere with it, it may be because we hold another, competing commitment that works against us achieving that goal. That commitment is often created to support an assumption that may be completely unconscious. In order to uncover what this commitment and assumption might be, they devised the Four Column exercise. My example exercise is below.

In the first column, I have determined that the first-level commitment is to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. However, in the second column I acknowledge that I’m not exercising or eating a way that supports that commitment. By examining this issue further, I uncover that I have a competing commitment to my current routine that allows me to maintain my self esteem. This commitment comes from the Big Assumption that I will have to become uncomfortable and confront my self-esteem issues if I work to achieve my weight goal.

As Kegan and Lahey explain, our psyche has its own immune system that works to maintain our psychological equilibrium, much like our body’s immune system works to maintain our physical equilibrium. By trying to change any significant condition in my life, I am disrupting that equilibrium, which is how my competing commitment may work against me to prevent me from succeeding in my efforts.

After working through this process, my immediate reaction is to want to fix the problem. However, Kegan and Lahey suggest that we carry our competing commitments with us and not try to reconcile them immediately. In their system, their is danger in trying to resolve conflict too quickly because we tend to “cover up” our competing commitments and drive them deeper into our subconscious. Instead, they suggest that we stay in a relationship with our competing commitments and explore the value that they bring to our lives. In fact, our Big Assumptions can often be correct. In my example, losing weight generally is uncomfortable and may very well involve confronting self-esteem issues. After spending enough time in relationship with these assumptions and commitments a new solution may emerge. For example, I might choose to accept the fact that I will have to deal with my self-esteem to be successful in my weight loss efforts, so I will incorporate counseling and a trainer to help me.

Everyone has grappled with self-sabotage at one time or another (if you haven’t please leave a comment telling me your secret!). The Four Quadrant exercise is one tool for working through the root causes of this frustrating issue.