Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey

Robert Kegan is the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard University. Additionally he is the Educational Chair for the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education and the Co-director for the Change Leadership Group. Kegan is a psychologist who teaches, researches, writes, and consults about adult development, adult learning, and professional development. His work explores the possibility and necessity of ongoing psychological transformation in adulthood. He is also interested in the fit between adult capacities and the hidden demands of modern life, and when there is a gap, how adults can best traverse that gap. In addition to his faculty appointment, Kegan serves as educational chair of the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education; as co-director of a joint program with the Harvard Medical School to bring principles of adult learning to the reform of medical education; and as co-director of the Change Leadership Group, a program for the training of change leadership coaches.

Lisa Lahey is associate director of the Change Leadership Group at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard and co-founder and do-director of Minds At Work. An expert in adult development and an experienced practicing psychologist and educator, she works with leaders and leadership teams in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. With a doctorate from Harvard in developmental psychology, she combines her expertise of individual development with a deep knowledge of organizational psychology and teamwork. Her work focuses on the interconnection between these two arenas of change, with the goal of helping teams and groups to support individuals’ development and for individuals to enable teams to perform optimally. She specializes in helping adults close the gap between their good intentions and intended results by focusing on expanding mindsets and behavior options.

Kegan and Lahey are the authors of:

Immunity to Change: How to Overcome it and Unlock Potential in Yourself and your Organization (2009)
Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools” (2006)
How The Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work (2001)

Immunity to Change

Immunity to Change:  How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization, published in January of 2009.


As adult learning experts, Kegan and Lahey are intrigued by why adults don't adapt to conditions that are necessary or even life enhancing. Situations that don't seems rational include the smoker who continues to smoke despite health issues, or the heart patient that refuses to change their lifestyle, or why people are so unsuccessful in changing their diet permanently?

The answer, they conclude, is that change is difficult, especially for adults who have invested many years in developing coping behaviors and underlying beliefs that actually compete with the new behavior that is needed.  In Immunity to Change Kegan and Lahey discuss the steps necessary for adults individual and teams in organizations to discover what hidden commitments keep them locked in their habitual ways of thinking and behaving, keeping them immune to change.

Successful adaptation or change for adults (individuals and whole teams) begins with discovering the hidden or competing commitments and the set of beliefs (mindset) that keeps those behaviors strongly locked in place.  Only by changing the mindset can individuals or teams make progress in adapting new behaviors.

This book is important to independent school audiences because it is a detailed and pragmatic companion work to Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck and because of the many, many schools seeking to achieve growth and adaptive change in their cultures.