Why is the gap so great between our hopes, our intentions, even our decisions-and what we are actually able to bring about? Even when we are able to make important changes-in our own lives or the groups we lead at work-why are the changes are so frequently short-lived and we are soon back to business as usual? What can we do to transform this troubling reality?

In this intensely practical book, Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey take us on a carefully guided journey designed to help us answer these very questions. And not just generally, or in the abstract. They help each of us arrive at our own particular answers that can solve the puzzling gap between what we intend and what we are able to accomplish. How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work provides you with the tools to create a powerful new build-it-yourself mental technology.With an inspiring mix of organizational analysis, worksheets, and sample dialogues, the authors of this revolutionary new technology for personal learning, leadership, and organizational change, show how all managers and executives are actually leading "language communities". The workplace, they reveal, is a community where certain ways of talking are encouraged and others made apparently impossible. But by using the seven new workplace "languages" presented in this book to reveal the underlying feelings and motivation in one-to-one and group discussion at work, leaders can concentrate individual and social energy to transform communication and culture in the workplace.