The Change Gym

The idea of The Change Gym emerged from the experience of its founder, Dr Steve Barlow. In 2009, Steve completed his award-winning research into the psychological structure of individual change readiness.

At the time, Steve worked for the NSW Department of Corrective Services in Sydney, delivering anger management training to maximum security inmates in a metropolitan prison. This experience with inmates raised a critical question in Steve's mind - what is the difference in mindset between inmates ready for progressive change and those not ready? And further, how do inmates indicate their change readiness via their speech?

What was the outcome of this research? The initial result was a theoretical framework for understanding the nature of individual change readiness. This framework then enabled Steve and his team to develop valuable tools to measure and build change readiness in people.

These tools include the only psychometric test that measures how much change readiness people have compared to the general Australian population. They also include a blended learning program that builds the change readiness of individuals and teams - by an average of 38% over 90 days.

We have used these tools to build individual change readiness since 2015. We have used them in a one-on-one coaching context as well as group training contexts. 

These tools and programs are part of the Master of Leadership course at the University of Tasmania's School of Medicine. Steve has taught the change readiness component of this course since 2017. 

Over the past decade, Steve and his team have worked on developing a more comprehensive model of change readiness. Organisations consist of people, so change readiness at the individual level is very important. But organisations are more than the total of its people. Other aspects of change readiness affect performance and progress.