The piece that caught my attention in Spirit was promoting Wray Herbert’s book On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits telling me to “think again” and “Eliminate the worst of (my) brain’s bad habits.”

Why not wipe out some bad brain habits? I had the next couple hours to kill.

Three Habits on the hit list:

• The best things in life are free
• Familiarity breeds contempt
• Don’t change horses in midstream

Herbert argues that each of these conventional wisdoms is flawed. I argue that these are typical of the conventional wisdoms that create roadblocks to affecting change.

The best things in life are free. “The brain doesn’t share this belief,” says Herbert. “Indeed, the human mind is biased to believe the opposite—that if something is common and freely available, it’s worthless. Scarcity equals value to the primitive brain, and vice versa. Birdwatchers who are being paid for each bird they spot immediately perceive a scarcity of birds. The same misperception can skew life choices: The more important it is to you to find a partner or a job—the more you value those goals—the scarcer the opportunities appear to be. People give up, or they settle for less, all because of our outdated intuitions about rarity and worth.”

Familiarity breeds contempt. “Familiarity actually breeds affections,” says Herbert. “It allows us to zip through the store and buy the brands we always buy, without time-consuming deliberation. But it can also lead to bad judgment. Princeton psychologists studied new stock offerings, comparing those with familiar names to those with difficult-to pronounce names. The companies with easy names outperformed the companies with odd names, which means consumers were buying stocks based on the readability of the name. That’s frightening. Our bias for the tried-and-true limits us in life.”

Don’t change horses in midstream. “Think of decision-making like lifting weights. It’s effortful; it consumes fuel in the form of glucose. The brain is literally anti-decision. Unless there is a compelling reason to make the effort, our brains will default to no decision. This consistency bias has all sorts of implications. Consider this: 99.9 percent of French adults are organ donors, compared to only 28 percent of Americans. It’s because in France, everyone is a donor by default. In most of the United States, it’s the opposite. Because of this hard-wired resistance to change most people simply don’t.”

So, as Herbert tells it, the fear of change is hard-wired into our brains. This is why leaders must “rally” so much support, continually cheer-lead and follow-up all these efforts in such a strong and enthusiastic fashion.

Instituting organizational change is usually for the good of the organization, or because change will bring about greater capacity, or even ease employee workload. Yet, people by nature will dig in against this change, not believing that working more efficiently will be of personal benefit, much less good for the organization.

Of the numerous books published on the theories of change management it is the theories of William Bridges that were most illuminated by Herbert’s brain mechanics case studies.

1. Phase One: People have to make a REAL ending with the old way
2. Phase Two: Neutrality—people may need to go dormant as they navigate change prospects.
3. Phase Three: Beginning over again with new energy and purpose

Change can be scary; consider what the audience may be hearing and what scares them about change. In Herbert’s models we see that often people don’t even realize what their “primitive brain” is telling them is scary. Good to know if the team you are leading appears to be working against you.

As I approached my entry here on Leadership and Community this question got me thinking about the myriad of leadership books.  What is the leadership book that changed my life?  It’s a hard question having read a good number and probably forgetting plenty more.

There is one that always comes back to mind: Leadership on the Line:  Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky.

When I read Leadership on the Line several years ago, it was inspirational.  Heifetz and Linsky use compelling stories of leaders from all walks of life in their various walks in life to describe the challenges of courageous leadership.  However, looking back, my reading was mostly an intellectual exercise—almost as an observer of leaders and acts of leadership.  It was the first time I had heard the metaphor “getting on the balcony” which almost seems commonplace in organizational management and leadership circles today.  And yet, still a hard thing to often do.

Heifetz and Linsky astutely point out that with courageous leadership and adaptive change comes conflict and loss.  Now, as an organizational leader, I recognize and appreciate the depth of these two emotions, which are certainly heightened as our organizations, levels of government, and communities struggle with change presented by our economic, social and political realities.  A time that calls for courageous leaders and adaptive leadership at all levels.

Did Leadership on the Line change my life?  That might be a high bar for a leadership book to vault, but it has become one to read and re-read. (Their latest The Practice of Adaptive Leadership is also in my cue.)  I would suspect others come to mind for you and much as they do me, such as John Gardner’s On Leadership, Jim Collins’ Good to Great or Margaret Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science, and the list goes on.

Let’s get a dialogue going about our bookshelves.  Share your answers:  what leadership book changed your life?