The Wheel of Change

Marshall Goldsmith (Ph.D. ’77) is the world’s leading executive coach. In 2010 he was named as one of UCLA Anderson’s “100 Inspirational Alumni” and in 2012 received Anderson’s “Distinguished Alumni of the Year” award. The editors of the UCLA Anderson Blog asked Dr. Goldsmith for his thoughts on change and transition.

 

Nearly 40 years after receiving my Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Management (now the Anderson School of Management) in 1977, I have written Triggers. Triggers is about creating behavior that lasts. It’s about becoming the person we want to be and how we do that.

I had a wonderful experience at UCLA as a teaching assistant and pursuing field studies. I was a Chancellor’s Fellow and was active in Beta Gamma Sigma. And, during this time I was involved in Bob Tannenbaum’s Ph.D. encounter group. It changed my life.

Professor Tannenbaum taught me one of the greatest tools of changing behavior – that we have to look at ourselves to change. It was through his feedback that I learned that we all have a blindside (at the time mine happened to be arrogance). As I mention in my book, I don’t believe there is a harder task for adults than changing our behavior.

 

For many of us, change is impossible because we are so optimistic (and delusional) that we try to change everything at once. When changes don’t happen as quickly as we’d like, people don’t notice that we’ve made a change, or some obstacle presents itself, we give up.

Discouraged by our failure, overwhelmed and disheartened, it’s hard to commit to change again. And, we fail to become the person we want to be.

 

The Wheel of Change

For many years now, I’ve been using “The Wheel of Change” to help clients decide what to change and where to put their efforts. The Wheel of Change illustrates the interchange of two dimensions that we need to sort out before we can become the person we want to be.

The positive to negative axis tracks the elements that either help us or hold us back. The change to keep axis tracks the elements that we determine to change or keep in the future. Thus, in pursuing any behavioral change we have four options: change or keep the positive elements, change or keep the negative.

Here’s a brief description of each of these options.

1. Creating represents the positive elements that we want to create in our future.
2. Preserving represents the positive elements that we want to keep in the future.
3. Eliminating represents the negative elements that we want to eliminate in the future.
4. Accepting represents the negative elements that we need to accept in the future. 

These are the choices. Some are more dynamic, glamorous, and fun than others, but they’re equal in importance. And three of them are more labor-intensive than we imagine.

And, that’s the simple beauty of the wheel. When we bluntly challenge ourselves to figure out what we can change and what we can’t, what to lose and what to keep, we often surprise ourselves with the bold simplicity of our answers and can thus take significant, real steps towards becoming the person we really want to be.