Agenda’s for Change
This is an update on a blog I wrote in 2009. I’ve been puzzling over what the Interaction Styles model would predict about change. Then it hit me…the movement tendency that is favored by each Interaction Style would give us some insight. In the past, I have talked about how if you push a change too fast and too hard, you will get resistance that may result in only a temporary change. My consulting bias is always to work with the system to move it to where it wants/needs to go. Now, I’m wondering if this is universal wisdom or a Behind-the-Scenes Interaction Style bias on my part! So, let’s explore that a little bit. When developing the Interaction Styles lens on personality type, I and my colleagues identified four movement tendencies after reading about the three tendencies identified by Karen Horney and cited in the Social Styles literature. These three—push against, move away from, move towards—seemed to clearly go with our experiences of three of the four Interaction Styles, so we looked for the ‘missing’ movement and came up with ‘move with’ as opposite of push against. Four Change Agendas Against: The In-Charge tendency is to push against in...
