Change and leadership

If you ever hear words such as "Change is good" or "Your leadership is welcome" my advice is to be very worried.

Change, or adaptive challenges as Harvard's Ron Heifetz coins it, is central to the work of leadership and it is often hard and risky rather than welcome and easy. Robert Kegan has argued that it is no mystery why New Year’s Eve resolutions and many leadership changes are not sustained. He believes that individuals and collectives have an "immunity" to certain changes because they are highly threatening and involve pain and loss.

To exercise leadership often involves asking ourselves and others to change, to learn something new or to take responsibility for something and this can cause a lot of anxiety. People often resist our leadership efforts because of fear and anxiety. In the face of this resistance to our leadership we often try to avoid the anxiety or we revert to "command and control" measures.

How might manager leaders overcome the immunity to change trap and be successful at leading sustainable change?