Alexander Nusselt — NN Logo Alexander Nusselt
A person in front of a mirror — the self-image is set in motion when behavior changes.
Mindset 5 min read

Behavioral change & identity — why real change wobbles

Behavioral change rarely fails on willpower. It fails on identity — on the question of who we are when the old behavior no longer works. That holds for individuals, for teams, and for organizations.

In a sparring session, a divisional board member says: "We described the behavior we want. We ran the trainings. And still, everything is just like before. What are we missing?"

The answer is rarely in the training. It sits one layer deeper.

At the individual level, behavioral change gets treated as a question of will — you just have to want it. In organizations, as a training question — we'll run a workshop on that. Both miss the point.

Behavior is more than doing. It is tightly tied to self-image, values, and beliefs. Anyone who changes is calling into question not only their behavior — but their inner picture of themselves.

That holds for the person who says no for the first time after years of being the always helpful one. It holds for the team that is no longer the fast crew but is now expected to deliver carefully. And it holds for the organization that has to give up its identity as the engineering market leader to become a software player.

In all three cases, the same thing happens: identity wobbles before the new form has settled.

Why identity is so hard to let go of

Our brain loves security and predictability. Even burdensome patterns of behavior give us something to hold on to — simply because they are familiar. Changes that touch the self-image are experienced as risk. The inner system reacts with resistance, withdrawal, or emotional overload.

In organizations it looks exactly the same, only at scale:

  • Teams that have proven themselves in the old role defend that role — even when it no longer fits.
  • Leaders who have been successful with a particular style hold on to it, even when the context calls for a different one.
  • Organizations whose collective identity is built on certain strengths quietly sabotage every initiative that calls that identity into question.

That isn't stubbornness. It's identity protection. And as long as that isn't addressed, every behavioral change stays theater.

Six phases of identity disturbance

Psychotherapeutic practice offers a model that we find again, almost exactly, in sparring work — with individuals, teams, and organizations:

  • Starting state — stability through familiar patterns. Even when they have long been dysfunctional.
  • First questioning — doubts about the effectiveness of the old patterns; the wish for change grows.
  • Disturbance & dissonance — the self-image begins to wobble. Ambivalence rises: you know what you should leave behind, but you don't want to let go of the familiar.
  • Crisis & emptiness — an identity vacuum. The old patterns no longer work, the new ones haven't stabilized yet. This is where the risk of relapse is highest.
  • Reorientation — first new narratives, values, and behavioral ideas emerge.
  • Integration — old and new parts of the self connect. The change holds.

Phase 4 is the critical point. That is the phase in which the coaching program ends, the change project reports a success, the workshop fades — and the system quietly slides back into the old state, because the vacuum was unbearable.

Anyone serious about changing behavior has to learn to stay with this phase. Alone. In a team. In an organization.

What helps

In supporting behavioral change three tools carry — they come from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a behavioral therapy approach in which Alex Nusselt is trained:

Acceptance. Change is allowed to be uncertain, contradictory, and uncomfortable. Anyone who does not accept the vacuum jumps back. In organizations that means: not every phase of change has to be celebrated. Some phases have to be endured.

Defusion. Recognizing thoughts such as "That's just how I am" or "We're an engineering culture, after all" as mental constructs — not as identity. They describe what was. Not what has to be.

Values orientation. Behavior can be derived from values. Those who know what they are changing toward can hold the vacuum longer than those who can only name what they are moving away from. In transformation programs this is massively underestimated: the toward carries you through Phase 4. The away from does not.

The three tools aren't only effective in individual therapy. They are transferable to teams and organizations, when taken seriously.

Identity crisis as a developmental opportunity

The phases of disturbance aren't only normal. They are often the only reliable sign that something is actually moving.

When a change project runs through without identity wobbling anywhere in the organization, then in all likelihood nothing has really changed. Structures got rearranged, processes renamed, slides updated — but what people do because they are who they are has stayed the same.

Real behavioral change costs identity. Temporarily. It isn't pleasant. But it is the precondition for the system not falling back into the old state afterward.

What this means for leadership

Anyone who supports behavioral change in an organization has to factor in the identity dimension — otherwise they burn energy on something that will never hold.

In concrete terms that means:

  • Before a change begins, understanding which identities carry the old behaviors — in people, in teams, in the organization as a whole.
  • Planning for Phase 4 (the vacuum), not skipping it. It needs stability from outside — relationships, connection to values, clear processes — not less pressure and not more pressure.
  • Toward what before away from what. A values orientation carries you through the vacuum.
  • Patience with relapses. They are often the sign that you hit the right point — not the wrong one.

Behavioral change is slow. Identity change is slower. Anyone who tries to accelerate both is sabotaging both.

That is the lesson we carry from work with individuals into advisory work with larger systems. It scales. And it makes the difference between an organization that announces change and one that integrates change.

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