Change processes, the activities that enable change, and change leadership, meaning how to lead change processes, both influence the success of change. However, a surprising omission from this knowledge is how do leaders choose between change processes? This article explores leaders’ choices between two orientations of change processes—illustrated by dialogic and diagnostic organizational development—in 79 cases of organizational change. It identifies that change is successful when leaders choose to oscillate between these two processes as change unfolds. Developing a model that explains this evolution, the article describes how the change leadership practice of concurrent inquiry interacts with the two representations of knowledge described by diagnostic and dialogic theories to inform a choice to oscillate. For scholars, this model further integrates the theoretical perspectives of dialogic and diagnostic theories. For practitioners, it provides a means to navigate between extant theories and, as such, ameliorate outcomes.

变革过程（促成变革的活动）和变革领导（即如何领导变革过程）都会影响变革的成功。然而，这一知识中一个令人惊讶的遗漏是领导者如何在变革过程之间做出选择？本文在 79 个组织变革案例中探讨了领导者在变革过程的两个方向之间的选择——以对话和诊断性组织发展为例。它表明，当领导者选择随着变化的进行而在这两个过程之间摇摆时，变化就是成功的。本文开发了一个解释这种演变的模型，描述了并发探究的变革领导实践如何与诊断和对话理论描述的两种知识表示相互作用，以告知振荡选择。对于学者来说，该模型进一步整合了对话理论和诊断理论的理论视角。对于从业者，它提供了一种在现有理论之间进行导航并改善结果的方法。