JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE / Summer 2006 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/joe.20100 © 2005 Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee. Reprinted with permission of Harvard Business School. All rights reserved. I NTENTIONAL C HANGE PERSONAL GROWTH With the power and responsibilities of leadership come extraordinary chal- lenges, and even the best leaders can get trapped in a cycle of stress, pressure, sacrifice, and dissonance—with potentially disastrous implications for their ca- reers, relationships, health, and happiness. Building on their work with Daniel Goleman in Primal Leadership (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), the au- thors point the way to renewal through a process of intentional change. The five steps lead to sustainable changes in habits, perceptions, and mood, as well as an enhanced ability to get results through greater understanding of your own and others’emotions—the heart of resonant leadership. © 2005 Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee Richard Boyatzis is professor in the Departments of Organizational Behavior and Psychology at Case Western Reserve and a fessor of Human Resources at ESADE in Barcelona. Annie McKee is cochair of the Teleos Leadership Institute and teaches at Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Along with Daniel Goleman, they authored Primal Leadership: Realizing the Powe Intelligence (Harvard Business School Press, 2002). This article is excerpted from the authors’ book, Resonant Leadership. Cop with permission of the publisher. Copyright © 2005 Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee. * * * 49 M eaningful and important changes do happen by chance. Without a high degree of aware- ness, we may not notice the changes for a long time—or until others comment on them. In this sense, desired changes often appear discontinuous. In complexity theory, these surprises are called “emergence.” For most of us, though, the important changes in our lives feel like epiphanies; they are truly discoveries. With increased mindfulness, the process of change seems smooth or even seamless. Part of the challenge of creating and sustaining ex- cellent leadership is to recognize, manage, and even direct one’s own process of learning and change. People who manage their own development inten- tionally are poised to make good choices about what they need to do to be more effective and more satisfied with their lives. Drawing on decades of research, much of it conducted by Richard Boy- atzis, we can now say with some certainty that t Intentional Change Model can help people to en- gage in personal transformation successfully, an with excitement and enthusiasm. 1 Longitudinal research studies in the last few years have shown that sustainable change occu as we focus on five major discoveries: 2 1. The ideal self, or what you want out of life and the person you want to be—leading to your personal vision. 2. The real self, or how you act and are seen by others; the comparison of the real self to the ideal self results in identification of your strengths and weaknesses—leading to your personal balance sheet.