Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box

Self-deception is like this. It blinds us to the true causes of problems, and once we’re blind, all the “solutions” we can think of will actually make matters worse. Whether at work or at home, self-deception obscures the truth about ourselves, corrupts our view of others and our circumstances, and inhibits our ability to make wise and helpful decisions.

Whenever we are in the box, we have a need that is met by others’ poor behavior. And so our boxes encourage more poor behavior in others, even if that behavior makes our lives more difficult.

Living the material Don’t try to be perfect. Do try to be better. Don’t use the vocabulary—“the box,” and so on—with people who don’t already know it. Do use the principles in your own life. Don’t look for others’ boxes. Do look for your own. Don’t accuse others of being in the box. Do try to stay out of the box yourself. Don’t give up on yourself when you

Self-betrayal” 1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of “self-betrayal.” 2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. 3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted. 4. So — when I betray myself, I enter the box.

The more people we can find to agree with our side of the story, the more justified we will feel in believing that side of the story.

discover you’ve been in the box. Do keep trying. Don’t deny that you’ve been in the box when you have been. Do apologize; then just keep marching forward, trying to be more helpful to others in the future. Don’t focus on what others are doing wrong. Do focus on what you can do right to help. Don’t worry whether others are helping you. Do worry whether you are helping others.

Which brings us back to your question, Tom. In your prior job, when you were thinking that your old boss was a real jerk, were you trying to help him, or was this judgment of him really a way of just helping yourself?

As usual, there aren’t enough last minutes.

The bigger problem was that I couldn’t see that I had a problem.” Bud paused for a moment, and then, leaning toward me, he said in a lower, even more earnest tone, “There is no solution to the problem of lack of commitment, for example, without a solution to the bigger problem — the problem that I can’t see that I’m not committed.

Self-betrayal” 1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of “self-betrayal.” 2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. 3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted. 4. So—when I betray myself, I enter the box. 5. Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me. 6. By being in the box, I provoke others to be in the box. 7. In the box, we invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. We collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box.

What doesn’t work in the box 1. Trying to change others 2. Doing my best to “cope” with others 3. Leaving 4. Communicating 5. Implementing new skills or techniques

We provoke each other to do more of what we say we don’t like about the other!

That night, I would have told you that the thing I wanted most was for Bryan to be responsible, to keep his word, to be trustworthy. But when he actually was responsible, when he did what he said he’d do, when he proved himself trustworthy, was I happy?” “No.” I shook my head in wonder at the thought. “You probably still would have been irritated, huh? You might have even gotten after him for squealing the tires.” “I’m ashamed to admit that I did something just as perverse,” Kate replied. “After he came in the door — having made it in time, mind you — rather than thanking him, or congratulating him, or acknowledging him, I welcomed him with a curt, ‘You sure cut it close, didn’t you?’ ” Kate sat down. “Notice — even when he was responsible, I couldn’t let him be responsible.” She paused. “I still needed him to be wrong.

What must it be like to be the son of someone for whom you can never be good enough?

There’s another lesson here, of course,” he said. “You can see how damaging an in-the-box leader can be. He or she makes it all too easy for others to revert to their boxes as well. The lesson, then, is that you need to be a different kind of leader. That’s your obligation as a leader. When you’re in the box, people follow you, if at all, only through force or threat of force. But that’s not leadership. That’s coercion. The leaders that people choose to follow are the leaders who are out of the box. Just look back on your life and you’ll see that that’s so.” Chuck Staehli’s face melted from my mind and

They’re all examples of self-betrayal — times when I had a sense of something I should do for others but didn’t do it.

Kate leaned toward me. “What I need most when I’m in the box is to feel justified. Justification is what my box eats, as it were, in order to survive. And if I’d spent my whole night, and really a lot longer even than that, blaming my son, what did I need from my son in order to feel ‘justified,’ to feel ‘right’?” “You needed him to be wrong,” I said slowly, a knot forming in my stomach. “In order to be justified in blaming him, you needed him to be blame worthy.

Merely knowing the material doesn’t get you out of the box. Living it does. And we’re not living it if we’re using it to diagnose others. Rather, we’re living it when we’re using it to learn how we can be more helpful to others—even

The lady who offered us her seat, on the other hand, saw others and the situation clearly, without bias. She saw others as they were, as people like herself, with similar needs and desires. She saw straightforwardly. She was out of the box.

Self-betrayal” 1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of “self-betrayal.” 2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. 3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted.

Then you understand how we live insecurely when we’re in the box, desperate to show that we’re justified—that we’re thoughtful, for example, or worthy or noble. It can feel pretty overwhelming always having to demonstrate our virtue. In fact, when we’re feeling overwhelmed, it generally isn’t our obligation to others but our in-the-box desperation to prove something about ourselves that we find overwhelming. If you look back on your life, I think you’ll find that that’s the case—you’ve probably felt overwhelmed, over-obligated, and overburdened far more often in the box than out. To begin with, you might compare your night last night with the nights that came before.

The bigger problem was that I couldn’t see that I had a problem.

Self-betrayal” 1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of “self-betrayal.” 2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal.

And that is, when I’m in the box, I need people to cause trouble for me — I actually need problems.

As we’ve been talking about, no matter what we’re doing on the outside, people respond primarily to how we’re feeling about them on the inside. And how we’re feeling about them depends on whether we’re in or out of the box concerning them. Let me illustrate that point further with a couple of examples.

7. In the box, we invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. We collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box.

That’s right. The truth is, her faults seemed relevant to whether I should help her only after I failed to help her. I focused on and inflated her faults when I needed to feel justified for mine. After I betrayed myself, the truth was just the opposite of what I thought it was.

Self-deception is like this. It blinds us to the true causes of problems, and once we’re blind, all the “solutions” we can think of will actually make matters worse. Whether at work or at home, self-deception obscures the truth about ourselves, corrupts our view of others and our circumstances, and inhibits our ability to make

In summary, then, the myriad ways in which people have used this book and its ideas fall within five broad areas of application: (1) applicant screening and hiring, (2) leadership and team building, (3) conflict resolution, (4) accountability transformation, and (5) personal growth and development.

think I’d prefer tomorrow morning.