Season 2, Episode 1: Dr. Lisa Lahey: Are You Secretly Working Against Your Own Growth?
Season 2 of On the Balcony begins by looking sideways — exploring the frameworks that stretch Adaptive Leadership into new terrain.
In this first episode, Michael Koehler sits down with Dr. Lisa Lahey, co-author of Immunity to Change, faculty at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Minds at Work. Lisa's work on adult development has profoundly shaped how we understand leadership — not as a set of skills to acquire, but as an internal capacity to grow.
The conversation explores a question many of us wrestle with: Why do we resist the very changes we say we want?
Lisa's answer: competing commitments and big assumptions. We're not just resisting change. We're protecting something we care deeply about — even when we don't realize it.
This episode gets personal. Lisa coaches Michael through his own immunity to change around pushing his colleagues to use more AI. What emerges is a powerful demonstration of how our internal "immune system" keeps us safe — and stuck.
What You'll Explore in This Episode:
The shift from socialized to self-authoring mind
How we move from looking outside ourselves for approval to authoring our own values and commitments — and why this developmental shift matters for leadership.
The Immunity to Change framework
A practical, four-column exercise that uncovers the hidden commitments and big assumptions creating resistance to change.
A live coaching session
Lisa walks Michael through the process in real time, revealing how deeply protective mechanisms work — and how to begin testing the assumptions that hold us back.
How adult development and Adaptive Leadership are related
Both frameworks help us face complexity, hold competing commitments, and grow through challenge rather than around it.
The influence of Chris Argyris
How Argyris's work on organizational learning shaped both Lisa's thinking and the broader field of developmental leadership.
The power of the pause
A reflection on pausing not as a luxury, but as an act of deep responsibility to ourselves and the world.
Quotes from This Episode:
"You can grow your capacity to experience the world in different ways. And that difference keeps enabling you to hold greater complexity, take more perspectives, and handle greater ambiguity."
— Dr. Lisa Lahey
"There is a next place in development where you no longer are subject to meeting everybody's expectations of you. Instead, you get to be the author of your own expectations — grounded in your own sense of who you are and what you value."
— Dr. Lisa Lahey
"You have an aspiration to grow. You want to develop some capacity. And yet at the very same time, unbeknownst to you, you've got a whole inner curriculum actively working to protect yourself."
— Dr. Lisa Lahey
"The immunity to change process invites us to consider: we don't just have worries. We actually have a part of us actively committed to making sure those worries don't come true."
— Dr. Lisa Lahey
"It is not a luxury to pause. It is an act of deep responsibility to ourselves and the world."
— Tara Brach (shared by Dr. Lisa Lahey)
Links & Resources:
Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
https://www.amazon.com/Immunity-Change-Overcome-Unlock-Organization/dp/1422117367
Minds at Work
https://mindsatwork.com/
About Dr. Lisa Lahey:
Dr. Lisa Lahey is co-founder of Minds at Work and co-author of Immunity to Change and An Everyone Culture. She is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she co-teaches "Practicing Leadership from the Inside and Out" with Michael Koehler. Her work focuses on adult development, organizational transformation, and the internal dimensions of leadership.