Self-deception affects everyone. It’s like being stuck in a box–despite our best intentions, we have a biased view of problems, are blind to their underlying causes and our roles in them. It erodes our effectiveness and happiness levels in work and life, and can spread like a virus to infect everyone around us. In this free Leadership and Self-Deception summary, you’ll get a synopsis of the book, an explanation of the box, how we get stuck in it, and how to free ourselves to see new possibilities and solutions.
Leadership and Self-Deception: An Overview
This book is written as a parable, set in the Zagrum Company. The parable starts with Tom Callum, one of Zagrum’s new senior managers/ division heads, being invited for a day-long, one-on-one self-deception meeting with his new boss, Bud Jefferson. Such meetings are a tradition at Zagrum – they’re such a crucial part of Zagrum’s success that the top management invests personal time to inculcate the ideas in every senior management staff who joins Zagrum.
The fable takes us through Tom’s discovery process and aha moments, as he realizes that he has been in the box, and sees how it has affected his relationships and results at work and at home.
Understanding “The Box”
Self-deception is a problem encountered by every human being. It’s like being stuck in a box – we become blind to what’s really going on, including our roles in problems. You can get more details from our 11-page summary but this is what is means in a nutshell:
How Do We Get In The Box?
As human beings, we intuitively know what we should do for others. When we’re out of the box, we see what we can do, and we often want to do things for others (e.g. holding the door for someone, apologizing for a mistake, sharing a useful piece of information). Yet, we often don’t do what we know we should, i.e. we betray ourselves. Once we betray ourselves, we start to create justifications for our lack of action – we exaggerate others’ fault, inflate our own virtue, magnify things that justify our self-betrayal, and blame others for making us feel/ act the way we do – which skews how we see the world.
Imagine you failed to complete a project on time. You know you should take responsibility, but instead, came up with a white lie about being very ill that week. You’ve just betrayed yourself. Soon, you start to notice how Susan had a mistake in her submission, and Tom missed out an important reference. You feel better, thinking how sloppily they’ve rushed through their work, unlike all of the previous times when you completed your projects perfectly. Before long, you find yourself thinking, “No wonder I couldn’t complete my work – all these slackers are just putting up half-baked stuff and I’m the only one taking it seriously!”
The book includes several other relatable, everyday examples to show how the box affects us and the people around us, both at work and at home. Some highlights include:
• Living in the Box. With time, some boxes may become so innate to us that we carry them with us, and we constantly see things through our biases and self-justifying lenses.
• Collusion. When we’re in the box, we focus on blame and justifications, which trigger others to also get into their boxes; A downward spiral begins and we basically collude to stay in our respective boxes.
• Thus, when we’re “in the box”, our effectiveness is limited and no amount of skills and techniques will work (including tolerating others, changing our outward behaviour etc.). Self-deception can be one of the biggest hindrances to organizational results, with symptoms like a lack of commitment, trust and accountability, conflict, stress, poor teamwork, and communication issues.
Our 11-page Leadership and Self-Deception summary provides more details of the ideas above, as well as tips on how to get out of the box and stay out of the box.
Applying Ideas from Leadership and Self-Deception
The principles in this book can be applied to all aspects of your work and personal life. Based on real-life feedback from readers, Arbinger has identified 5 useful areas of application: hiring, leadership and team-building, conflict resolution, staff transformation, and personal development. You can find out more details from in our complete summary.
Getting the Most from Leadership and Self-Deception
The book was originally published in 2000, and this second edition (published in 2010) expanded on the original book with updated material and ideas for application. This is an easy-to-read parable, with numerous work- and personal examples that are highly-relatable and packed with nuances to reflect the common challenges and scenarios in our work and life. Ready to free yourself from the self-deception and see new possibilities? Check out our complete book summary bundle which includes an infographic, a 11-page text summary, and a 23-minute audio summary.
Reading the book in itself can provide an out-of-the-box environment for us to examine our relationships and effectiveness. For more references and details, you can buy the book here, or visit www.arbinger.com.
Learn more about how to recognize your boxes, get out of the box and achieving lasting peace: read The Anatomy of Peace summary!
About the Arbinger Institute
Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box is authored by The Arbinger Institute. Arbinger provides training, consulting, coaching, and implementation tools that move individuals, teams, and organizations from the inward mindset to the results focus of an outward mindset. This is built on the knowledge that, without a change in mindset, newly adopted behaviors won’t stick and results will suffer. Arbinger is the world leader in transforming mindset, and their programs and methodology are based on 45 years of research in the psychology of human behavior and motivation, and more than 35 years of experience working with organizations worldwide.
Leadership and Self-Deception Quotes
“Of all the problems in organizations, self-deception is the most common, and the most damaging.”
“It isn’t about perfection… It’s simply about getting better.”
“We won’t know who we work and live with… until we leave the box and join them.”
“Companies fail for the same reason families do… both are organizations of people.”
“Your success as a leader… depends on being free of self-betrayal…. Only then do you invite others to be free of self-betrayal.”
“Self-betrayal is the germ that creates the disease of self-deception.”
“The box is a metaphor for how I’m resisting others… I’m actively resisting what the humanity of others calls me to do for them.”
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