Richard Boyatzis on Using His Intentional Change Theory to Re-Learn Guitar

Richard Boyatzis is one of the world’s leading scholars on emotional intelligence, behavior change, and leadership. One of his claims to fame is his development of Intentional Change Theory (ICT), which focuses on achieving change in sustainable ways. Boyatzis is putting his own theory to practice studying guitar at Berklee Online.

“My research has shown that what really motivates people is not pain, and it’s not goals,” says Boyatzis, a Distinguished University Professor at Case Western Reserve University. “Turns out specific goals close you down neurologically to being open to learning. What really motivates people to continue with learning or change, is vision, purpose, and it’s bigger than goals.”

For Boyatzis, his vision and purpose is to play guitar with the musicality and artistry of his instructors, like Bruce Bartlett and Robin Stone.  

“When Bruce would play the opening eight stanzas of ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ that Johnny Smith made very famous, or when Robin would play this Santana song that still is in my head weeks later, that is so motivating; it reminds me of why I am doing this,” he says.

With an undergraduate degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT, and a PhD in social psychology from Harvard, Boyatzis will be the first to tell you that he’s not after a Berklee degree, or even a certificate. “Who am I going to show that to?” he jokes. Boyatzis is simply looking to get better at guitar by taking courses. So far, he’s taken Guitar Chords 101 and Guitar Scales 101, and he’s sticking to a strict practice routine to make sure he can rise to the occasion. 

“I decided early on that the only way I was going to be able to handle this, especially when my fingers were screaming that they were on fire, was to make sure I had two practice sessions a day,” says Boyatzis. “I went through a period where I was taking Tylenol every night and spreading arthritis cream on my hands, but that seems to have stopped, and I seemed to be stretching enough.”

Boyatzis enrolled at Berklee Online with the encouragement of his wife. She thought he needed something fun to do outside of work, especially as he writes his next book, which he considers his magnum opus.

“My wife knows that I have this ability to focus and stick-to-itiveness,” he says, “which is why I get so much writing done in publications, but she’s been impressed by the fact that I’m still doing the two sessions a day. Again, there’s nothing in it except my curiosity and joy of learning.”

This isn’t the first time that Boyatzis is picking up the guitar; he’s returning to it after a 60-year hiatus. Growing up in Queens, NY, as the son of Greek immigrants, Boyatzis’s parents supported him taking guitar lessons, but encouraged him to pursue his affinity for math and science as a career. Throughout high school, Boyatzis played paying gigs all over NYC and even saved up enough money to cover his first year at MIT. 

“There were four of us who were at the heart of it, but the key was we did dance music, which is derisively called ‘boom chicka,’” he says. “We did American Legion Hall parties, Democratic Club, Republican Club, VFW, Kiwanis, played some supper clubs, but we also got into ethnic music. So we did Italian weddings, Greek baptisms, Polish weddings, etc. … So I loved it. And even though I was quite a nerd, I’d practice at least an hour or two every night, and we’d always have rehearsals on weekends and we’d have jobs.”

When Boyatzis moved to the Boston area to attend MIT, he stopped playing gigs because the union scale was one-third of what it was in NYC. Plus, his studies were pretty rigorous. However, he says that he still managed to get a group of his fraternity brothers together once every month or so to play music. 

“I was teaching two of my fraternity brothers to play the guitar and a whole bunch wanted to learn,” he says. “I got one into playing the drums, but we didn’t have a bass player. So we got a guy from another fraternity. If I had known that in a few years that he would form the group Boston—Tom Scholz—I might have had a different career path, but at any rate.”

When Boyatzis became a full-time professor, his life became too busy to play guitar. His storied career includes publishing more than 250 articles, writing nine books, creating Coursera courses that have enrolled 1.5 million students to-date, and traveling the world to give lectures. Even though he wasn’t playing guitar, he still found a way to incorporate music into his teaching. 

“I always open my lectures with music,” he says. “I get people, whether it’s 50, 100, or 2,500, standing up and clapping and dancing because of its effect on the neural network, the default mode network.” 

Boyatzis started studying with Berklee Online in the winter semester of 2024. He is taking the summer to review the Berklee Online courses he’s already taken and will be starting his 200-level guitar courses when the next semester begins in September. What’s helping him stay motivated is straight from a chapter in his internationally best-selling book, Helping People Change. 

“You literally want people to break with reality to dream, because you do it in a different part of your brain,” he says. “And if people did that, and they periodically reminded themselves of it, it’s a phenomenal motivating force. It gets you through the rough spots. Learning requires a lot of emotional self-control, which in and of itself is stressful. So what keeps you going? These moments of emotional support, these moments of joy, these moments where all of a sudden, in my case, I play something and say, ‘Oh my God, that sounds great! How did that happen?’”

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