Intentional Change Theory (ICT) is Richard Boyatzis's theory of sustained, desired change: change that a person or a group wants, and that lasts. Boyatzis began the research in 1967 and has developed the theory for about 60 years. ICT describes change as a process with five phases and explains that process with ten principles. The same process applies at every level of human activity, from one person to dyads, teams, organisations, communities and countries.
The first principle is that a vision is the driver of sustained, desired change. For an individual, the vision is the Ideal Self, also called a personal vision. For a group, it is a shared vision. Boyatzis is specific about what does not play this role: goals, problems, plans, and the gap between the Real Self and the Ideal Self. The vision is the big picture and the reason why. It is about what is possible rather than what is probable, and it brings hope.
The Ideal Self includes a person's dreams and image of a desired future, their sense of purpose, and their core identity and values.
For coaches, ICT provides an ordered process to work through with a client. It also gives a research-based reason to start with the client's vision before goals, gaps or action plans.
Originator — Richard E. Boyatzis, Distinguished University Professor, Case Western Reserve University
What it is — A theory of sustained, desired change in individuals and in human systems: dyads, teams, organisations, communities, countries and global networks
Research base — About 60 years. Boyatzis began the work in 1967 with David Kolb and took it in his own direction in the 1970s
Complexity theory — Part of the theory since 1978. ICT treats change as discontinuous and non-linear, with tipping points
Five phases — Ideal Self or shared vision · Real Self · Learning agenda · Experimentation and practice · Resonant relationships
Ten principles — They cover the five phases, the two emotional attractors, non-linear change, the multilevel structure, resonant leadership, and social identity groups
Tipping points — The Positive Emotional Attractor (PEA) and the Negative Emotional Attractor (NEA), each defined on three axes: nervous system arousal, neural network activation, and affect
Definitive source — Boyatzis, The Science of Change: Discovering Sustained, Desired Change from Individuals to Organizations and Communities (Oxford University Press, 2024)
Richard E. Boyatzis — ICT is Boyatzis's theory. He is Distinguished University Professor at Case Western Reserve University, where he is a professor in the departments of organizational behavior, psychology and cognitive science. He also teaches at ESADE. He began the research in 1967 with David Kolb and took it in his own direction in the 1970s. He has used complexity theory in the work since 1978. Boyatzis is also known for research on competencies and, with Daniel Goleman, on emotional intelligence in leadership.
Boyatzis has written books with co-authors that apply ICT to leadership and to coaching. Those books are listed under Where it's learned. They apply the theory. The theory itself is his.
1967 — Boyatzis begins research on how adults change, working with David Kolb.
1970s — Boyatzis takes the work in his own direction.
1978 — Boyatzis begins using complexity theory to explain why change is discontinuous and non-linear.
Following decades — Boyatzis and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University run longitudinal studies of behaviour change, including multi-year studies of competency development in graduate management students. Earlier publications call the five phases "the five discoveries".
2006 — Boyatzis publishes "An overview of intentional change from a complexity perspective" in the Journal of Management Development. This paper is an overview. It is not the point at which complexity theory entered the work.
Later research — Boyatzis and his colleagues add fMRI and hormonal studies of the Positive and Negative Emotional Attractors.
2024 — Oxford University Press publishes The Science of Change, Boyatzis's full statement of the theory. It sets out the five phases and ten principles and integrates research from neuroscience, psychology, and team, organisational and community studies.
ICT describes a cycle of five phases. A person or group does not move through the cycle at a steady pace. Progress tends to come in sudden jumps, which ICT calls tipping points, and the emotional attractors described below decide whether a tipping point happens.
Phase 1 — The Ideal Self, or shared vision. The person articulates who they most want to be and the life they most want to live. A team, organisation or community articulates a shared vision. This phase is the driver of the whole process. Many coaches capture it in a written personal vision that the client returns to throughout the work.
Phase 2 — The Real Self. The person sees their strengths and weaknesses relative to their Ideal Self. In a group, the Real Self is the norms, values and culture of that group, and whether each one helps or hinders the shared vision.
Phase 3 — The learning agenda. The person makes a learning agenda and plan that uses their strengths to move closer to the Ideal Self. They may also work on one or two weaknesses. ICT advises choosing the weaknesses that are closest to the tipping point of becoming strengths, because progress on those is faster and the effort is easier to sustain. In a group, this is a shared learning agenda and plan.
Phase 4 — Experimentation and practice. The person experiments repeatedly with new feelings, thoughts, attitudes or behaviour. They then practise repeatedly to the point of mastery. ICT sets that point beyond the point of comfort.
Phase 5 — Resonant relationships and social identity groups. The person establishes and maintains resonant relationships: relationships of trust and support with a coach, mentors, peers and others. In the ICT diagram, this phase sits at the centre of the cycle and connects to each of the other four phases. Social identity groups, the groups a person identifies with, can help or hinder progress toward the Ideal Self.
The Positive Emotional Attractor (PEA) and the Negative Emotional Attractor (NEA) are psychophysiological states. ICT describes each on three axes:
Nervous system arousal — The PEA involves the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the body's renewal response. The NEA involves the sympathetic nervous system, which is the stress response. Stress impairs thinking, emotion and perception. In ICT, renewal is the only antidote.
Neural network activation — The PEA involves the default mode network, which allows openness to new ideas, people and emotions. The NEA involves the task positive network, which allows focus and analytic thinking.
Affect — The PEA involves positive emotions. The NEA involves negative emotions.
On each axis, the two poles suppress each other.
Being in the PEA makes a person or group open to new ideas, to their surroundings, to other people and to emotions. It acts as the tipping point into the next phase. In the ICT diagram, every move between phases is marked "PEA > NEA": the PEA has to outweigh the NEA for the process to continue. A person or group needs repeated brief episodes in the PEA to keep a change process going.
The NEA has a use, because the task positive network is what allows focus and analysis. A change process that stays in the NEA stalls, because the person or group is closed to new ideas.
This list paraphrases Table 1.1 of The Science of Change. Read the book for Boyatzis's exact wording and the research behind each principle.
The first phase, the Ideal Self or personal vision, is the driver of sustained, desired change. In groups it is a shared vision.
Being in the PEA makes a person or human system open to new ideas, their environment, other people and emotions. It is the tipping point into the next phase. The PEA and NEA are each defined on three axes: parasympathetic versus sympathetic arousal, default mode versus task positive network activation, and positive versus negative affect.
Sustained, desired change in people and human systems is most often discontinuous and non-linear.
The second phase is the realisation of the Real Self. For a person, it is their strengths and weaknesses relative to the Ideal Self. For a group, it is the norms, values and culture that are strengths or weaknesses relative to the shared vision.
The third phase is a learning agenda and plan that uses strengths to move closer to the Ideal Self, while possibly developing one or two weaknesses. The best weaknesses to choose are those closest to the tipping point of becoming strengths.
The fourth phase is repeated experimentation with new feelings, thoughts, attitudes or behaviour, followed by repeated practice to the point of mastery, beyond the point of comfort.
The fifth phase is establishing and maintaining resonant relationships.
ICT is a fractal theory. It describes sustained, desired change at every level: individuals, dyads, teams, organisations, communities, countries and global processes.
Resonant leadership relationships move information and emotions within and across levels of human systems.
Social identity groups help or hinder progress toward a person's Ideal Self or a group's shared vision. They also move information and emotions within and across levels, and this affects whether the change lasts.
Boyatzis adds that sustainable change usually requires change at more than one level, meaning the levels above and below the one in focus. He also notes that inclusiveness, adaptability and swarming are often what sustain a change, and that rational, analytic planning is not.
It gives the coach evidence for vision work. A coach working with a sceptical or analytical client can point to published research for the claim that a personal vision is the driver of change that lasts.
It sets the order of the work. ICT starts with the Ideal Self and returns to it. A coach who follows ICT does not start with problems, gaps or action plans. When the work reaches the Real Self, the coach covers strengths as well as weaknesses, and the learning agenda builds on strengths.
It explains the emotional conditions for change. The PEA and NEA describe why a coaching conversation about the client's vision opens the client to new ideas, and why a conversation about what the client should fix tends to close them. Helping People Change (2019) names these two approaches coaching with compassion and coaching for compliance. A coach can also use the PEA and NEA to notice when a session has moved into stress and defensiveness.
Definitive source — The Science of Change (2024) integrates about 60 years of research from neuroscience and endocrinology, behavioural science and psychology, team and organisational studies, sociology and anthropology.
Longitudinal research — Boyatzis and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University have run multi-year studies that track behaviour change in individuals.
Neuroscience — Boyatzis and his colleagues have used fMRI and hormonal studies to examine the PEA and NEA. This research supports the three axes described above.
Coaching research — Peer-reviewed studies by Boyatzis and his colleagues examine coaching that starts from the Ideal Self and the PEA, and compare it with coaching that starts from problems or compliance.
Multilevel research — The book gives examples of sustained, desired change in individuals, dyads, teams, organisations, communities and countries.
Vision and life-design coaching — The closest fit. The client needs to articulate a desired future and turn it into change that lasts.
Career transitions — A client deciding what comes next starts from the person they want to become, and only then looks at what is wrong with the current situation.
Leadership and founder development — ICT covers both the leader's own change and the leader's role in the change of others. Principle 9 describes how resonant leadership moves emotions and information across the levels of an organisation.
Team and organisational change — ICT applies at collective levels through shared vision, group norms and shared learning agendas.
Strengths-based and wellbeing coaching — ICT's use of strengths and the PEA fits well with Positive Psychology approaches.
Coach development — ICT gives new coaches a reason to stay with the client's vision before moving to problems and plans.
Less suited for — narrowly tactical engagements where the client has not agreed to vision work; acute crisis stabilisation; situations where the sponsor wants fast behavioural compliance and the person does not want the change.
These are Dream Coach Match's editorial observations about using ICT in coaching practice. They are not claims made by Boyatzis.
It takes time. The Ideal Self cannot be rushed. Clients or sponsors who want a fast tactical fix can find the early time spent on vision frustrating.
Balancing the PEA and NEA takes skill. Seeing the Real Self includes seeing weaknesses, and that can be uncomfortable. A less experienced coach can spend too little time in the PEA, or can avoid the uncomfortable parts altogether.
ICT does not prescribe the content of a vision. It explains the process of change and what sustains it. Some practitioners pair it with a structured life-design method to help the client give the Ideal Self concrete detail.
Coaching outcomes are hard to study experimentally. Each coaching engagement is different, which makes controlled experiments on whole engagements difficult to design. This is true of most coaching approaches.
Positive Psychology — Both work with strengths, hope and positive emotion. Many coaches use the two together.
Adult Development — Adult Development describes how a person makes meaning at a given stage. ICT describes the process by which a person or group changes. Leadership coaches often combine them.
Immunity to Change — Immunity to Change surfaces the hidden commitments that block a change the person wants. Some practitioners use ICT to establish the vision and Immunity to Change to work on what blocks it.
Solution-Focused Coaching — Both look forward. Solution-Focused work builds from exceptions and small successes that already exist. ICT starts from the Ideal Self.
Start with the definitive source. The Science of Change: Discovering Sustained, Desired Change from Individuals to Organizations and Communities (Boyatzis, Oxford University Press, 2024) is the full statement of the theory, including the five phases, the ten principles and the research behind them.
Books that apply ICT:
Helping People Change (Boyatzis, Smith and Van Oosten, 2019) applies ICT to coaching and to helping relationships in general.
Resonant Leadership (Boyatzis and McKee, 2005) and Primal Leadership (Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, 2002) apply it to leadership.
Academic overview. Boyatzis, "An overview of intentional change from a complexity perspective", Journal of Management Development, 2006.
Courses. ICT is taught at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, including its coaching programmes. Boyatzis's online course Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence introduces the theory to a general audience.
The driver of sustained, desired change is a vision: the Ideal Self for a person, a shared vision for a group. Goals, problems and plans do not play that role.
Intentional Change Theory (ICT) is Richard Boyatzis's theory of sustained, desired change: change that a person or group wants, and that lasts. Boyatzis began the research in 1967 and has developed the theory for about 60 years. ICT describes change as a process with five phases and explains it with ten principles. The driver of the process is a vision, which is the Ideal Self for a person and a shared vision for a group. ICT is a multilevel theory. The same process applies to individuals, dyads, teams, organisations, communities and countries. The full statement of the theory is Boyatzis's book The Science of Change (Oxford University Press, 2024).
The five phases are: (1) the Ideal Self or personal vision, which is a shared vision in groups; (2) the Real Self, meaning a person's strengths and weaknesses relative to the Ideal Self, or a group's norms, values and culture relative to its shared vision; (3) a learning agenda and plan that uses strengths to move closer to the Ideal Self, while possibly working on one or two weaknesses; (4) repeated experimentation with new feelings, thoughts, attitudes or behaviour, followed by practice to the point of mastery; and (5) establishing and maintaining resonant relationships. Earlier publications call these phases the five discoveries. Movement between phases is non-linear and depends on tipping points.
In summary: (1) the Ideal Self or shared vision is the driver of sustained, desired change; (2) the Positive Emotional Attractor opens a person or group to new ideas and is the tipping point into the next phase; (3) sustained, desired change is most often discontinuous and non-linear; (4) the Real Self is the second phase; (5) the learning agenda is the third phase; (6) experimentation and practice to mastery is the fourth phase; (7) resonant relationships are the fifth phase; (8) ICT is a fractal theory that applies at every level from individuals to countries and global processes; (9) resonant leadership relationships move information and emotions within and across levels; (10) social identity groups help or hinder progress toward the vision and affect whether change lasts. This is a paraphrase. See Table 1.1 of The Science of Change for Boyatzis's wording.
The Ideal Self is a person's vision of who they most want to be and the life they most want to live. It includes their dreams and image of a desired future, their sense of purpose, and their core identity and values. In ICT it is the first phase and the driver of sustained, desired change. In teams, organisations and communities, the equivalent is a shared vision. Boyatzis distinguishes the vision from goals, problems, plans, and the gap between the Real Self and the Ideal Self. None of those is the driver. The vision is about what is possible rather than what is probable, and it brings hope.
The PEA and NEA are psychophysiological states that act as tipping points in the change process. ICT describes each on three axes. The PEA involves parasympathetic nervous system arousal (renewal), activation of the default mode network (openness to new ideas, people and emotions), and positive affect. The NEA involves sympathetic nervous system arousal (stress), activation of the task positive network (focus and analytic thinking), and negative affect. On each axis the two poles suppress each other. Being in the PEA opens a person or group to new ideas and tips them into the next phase of change. A change process needs repeated brief episodes in the PEA to continue. The NEA is useful for focus and analysis, but a process that stays in the NEA stalls.
A coach using ICT starts with the client's Ideal Self or personal vision. The coach then helps the client see their Real Self, including strengths as well as weaknesses, and build a learning agenda that uses those strengths. The client experiments with new behaviour and practises to the point of mastery. Resonant relationships, including the coaching relationship, support every phase. Throughout, the coach helps the client return to the PEA so that they stay open to change. Helping People Change (Boyatzis, Smith and Van Oosten, 2019) applies ICT to coaching and calls this approach coaching with compassion, in contrast to coaching for compliance.
Many approaches to change start by identifying a problem or a gap and then set goals to close it. In ICT, the driver of sustained, desired change is a vision. Goals, problems, plans, and the gap between the Real Self and the Ideal Self do not play that role. Boyatzis's research indicates that problem solving and goal setting activate the task positive network and the stress response, which reduce a person's openness to new ideas and to other people. ICT does include the Real Self and a learning agenda, but they come after the vision, and the learning agenda builds mainly on strengths.
Yes. ICT is a multilevel, fractal theory, which means the same five phases describe change at every level: individuals, dyads, teams, organisations, communities, countries and global processes. At collective levels, the Ideal Self becomes a shared vision, the Real Self becomes the group's norms, values and culture, and the learning agenda becomes a shared one. Two principles explain how change moves between levels. Resonant leadership relationships move information and emotions within and across levels. Social identity groups help or hinder progress toward the vision. Boyatzis adds that sustainable change usually requires change at the levels above and below the one in focus.
The Science of Change (Oxford University Press, 2024) integrates about 60 years of research into the theory. The research comes from neuroscience and endocrinology, behavioural science and psychology, team and organisational studies, sociology and anthropology. It includes multi-year longitudinal studies of behaviour change run by Boyatzis and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University, fMRI and hormonal studies of the PEA and NEA, and peer-reviewed studies of coaching that starts from the Ideal Self.
Richard E. Boyatzis developed Intentional Change Theory. He is Distinguished University Professor at Case Western Reserve University. He began the research in 1967 with David Kolb and took the work in his own direction in the 1970s. He has used complexity theory in the work since 1978. Boyatzis has written books with co-authors that apply ICT to leadership and coaching, but the theory is his.
Start with The Science of Change (Boyatzis, Oxford University Press, 2024), which is the full statement of the theory, its five phases and its ten principles. For the coaching application, read Helping People Change (Boyatzis, Smith and Van Oosten, 2019). For the leadership application, read Resonant Leadership (Boyatzis and McKee, 2005) and Primal Leadership (Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, 2002). ICT is taught at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, and Boyatzis's online course Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence introduces it to a general audience.