Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is. —Robert Walpole

German psychologist Kurt Lewin described life space as “the person and the psychological environment as it exists for him,” including the person’s experiences, learning, and goals. It is a multidimensional space, full of regions and forces. The different regions represent different mental, that is, psychological, situations or states. A change of location in the life space is a “behavior.” The cause of the change from one location to another is what Lewin calls a “force.” The drawing on the opposite page illustrates Lewin’s life space concept, using a honeycomb as a metaphor. The honeycomb frame is the boundary of the person’s life space. Each cell in the honeycomb is a psychological situation or state.

The core principle of change-centric selling is to help the client make changes in his life space—move from one of those cells to another.

The size of the life space depends on the person’s development and experiences. A child would have a smaller life space than would an adult. For example, a toddler has difficulty feeding himself, whereas an adult can explore the realms of gourmet cooking. Therefore, Lewin suggested that people with bigger life spaces have more options. In other words, they have what I call a bigger “change space.”

Help the client make changes in her life space by understanding:

At the beginning of your relationship, your view of the customer’s life space will be limited to a specific region or situation. So you will need to focus on the set of changes available to the person in that specific situation at that time; optimize locally. Over time, however, your view of the person’s life space will expand and you will be able to assist the customer with higher-impact changes that optimize “globally” across the person’s entire life space.

One of the biggest opportunities for change leaders is helping people expand their “change space” by removing perceived barriers to desired changes. Be sensitive to self-imposed barriers and add high value by helping the customer overcome them.

Understand how customer views her situation. Identify change options. Help remove barriers to the desired situation.