Thanks Les, helpful clarification. I work very much with intrinsic motivation (Common Cause values & frames). Dan Pink’s work arrives at similar conclusions – autonomy, mastery, purpose 🙂

Hi Eleanor,
Actually it’s probably not a model to recommend. It’s been argued that Lewin never meant it to be a comprehensive change model and that its authority is something that happened after his death as change managers continued their age-old quest for silver bullets. He was focusing on managing change in large organisations and decided that something might be needed to shake employees out of complacency and this might be emotionally arousing. In the end it’s become an excuse for insensitive top-down change programs. Nowadays we recognise that employees (and humans generally) come pre-loaded with frustrated motivations (autonomy, competence, relationships, altruism, competitiveness etc etc etc – there’s a lot!!) and all we often need to do is offer people a safe chance to step up (read anything by Dan Pink). Lewis was a very early thinker in this field. Ideas like self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, social modelling etc came afterwards and help us think much more sensitively about behaviour change. Warm regards – Les