Leadership and Self-Deception / Self-Betrayal

 

What are we talking about / SO WHAT?

                       

Self-deception actually determines one’s experience in every aspect of life. (vii)

[S]elf-deception has many different symptoms…Organizations die, or are severely crippled, by those symptoms (111).

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THE “CORE COMPETENCY”

 

What we’ve discovered in the years since is that almost everyone at work betrays himself or herself in this same foundational way. So everything we do here is designed to help our people avoid that self-betrayal and stay out of the box. Our success in that endeavor has been the key to our success in the marketplace... So what is it?  To achieve results together. (149) (111b)

To Achieve Results Together

í      î

                                    Covey’s “Win-Win”                        Porter’s “fit”

                                    Oshry’s Partnership                      Wilber’s “Disaster of Modernity

                                    E Pluribus Unum                           Axial Age (compassion, GR)

“we must either love each other or we will die”

HOPE!

Our experience in teaching about self-deception and its solution is that people find this knowledge liberating. It sharpens vision, reduces feelings of conflict, enlivens the desire for teamwork, redoubles accountability, magnifies the desire for teamwork, redoubles accountability, magnifies the capacity to achieve results, and deepens satisfaction and happiness. (viii)

 

So your success as a leader…depends on being free of self-betrayal. Only then do you invite others to be free of self-betrayal themselves. Only then are you creating leaders yourself – coworkers whom people will respond to, trust, and want to work with. (154b)

 

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THE KEY

 

lAnd when we’re out of the box and seeing others as people, we have a very basic sense about others—namely, that like me, they too have hopes, needs, cares, and fears.l (64)

 

If you want to know the secret of Zagrum’s success, it’s that we’ve developed a culture where people are simply invited to see others as people [not objects, resources, etc.]

 

But notice – everyone else has duplicated all that stuff, but they’ve yet to duplicate our results. And that’s because they don’t know how much smarter smart people are, how much more skilled skilled people get, and how much harder hardworking people work when they see, and are seen, straightforwardly – as people. (39-40)

 

 

lOutside the box = higher levels of awareness = The Golden Rulel

 

CAREFUL – DEAD ENDS

DOING ¹ BEING

Others can tell:

 

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. (31

 

And if you do what might on the surface be considered the right thing, but do it while in the box, you’ll invite an entirely different and less-productive response than you would if you were out of the box. For remember, people respond not primarily to what you do but to how you’re being – whether you’re in or out of the box toward them.

 

Beyond Behaviorism:

 

“Is the distinction we’re talking about fundamentally a distinction in behavior, or is it deeper than that?”  “ It’s deeper,” I said. (46)

 

No matter what skill you teach me, I can be either in the box or out of the box when I implement it. (133)

 

One of the reasons you may be struggling to understand how you got out of the box is that you’re trying to identify a behavior that got you out. But since the box itself is deeper than behavior, the way out of the box has to be deeper than behavior too. Almost any behavior can be done either in the box or out of the box, so no mere behavior can get you out. You’re looking in the wrong place.

 

In other words, there’s a fundamental problem with the question “What do I need to do to get out of the box. The problem is that anything I tell you to do can be done either in or out of  the box. (138)

                                                                        YES, BUT...

Doesn’t the GR = more work, more obligations?

Being out of the box and seeing others as people doesn’t mean that I’m suddenly bombarded with burdensome obligations. 147   If you look back, I think you’ll find that…you’ve probably felt overwhelmed, over-obligated, and over-burdened far more often in the box than out.  148

 

Doesn’t the GR = wimpy disciplining?

I’m just sitting here wondering how you can conduct a business seeing others as people all the time. I mean, won’t you get run over doing that? I can see it applying to family life, for example, but isn’t it a bit unrealistic to think that you have to be that way at work too, when you’ve got to be fast and decisive?

 

The point is that it’s possible to deliver just that kind of hard message and still be out of the box when doing it. But it can be done out of the box only if the person you are delivering the message to is a person to you. That’s what it means to be out of the box. And notice – and here’s why this is so important – whose hard message likely invited a more productive response…So regarding hard behavior, here’s the choice. We can be hard and invite productivity and commitment, or we can be hard and invite resistance and ill will. The choice isn’t to be hard or not, It’s to be in the box or not. (47)  (plus see 157b)

THE DYNAMICS

 

Self-betrayal is the germ that creates the disease of self-deception. 111

 

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…the implications are astounding. And astoundingly unsimple. (66)

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Getting In the Box

Notice…Most people when they start a job have about the same feelings about it that you did. They’re grateful for the employment and for the opportunity. They want to do their best—for their company and for the people in it. But interview those same people a year later and their feelings are usually very different. (151)

 

Self-betrayal is the germ that creates the disease of self-deception (111)

ll(defensive reasoning + self-fulfilling prophecies) > 83 ll

 

It’s scary, isn’t it?

I’ll say.

But it’s worse than that, even….having betrayed myself, how do you suppose I started to see myself?  ..as the victim.  (68)

 

When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. (71)

Okay, I understand that. ..I go into the box when I betray myself. (81)

 

bitching and blaming (aka, defensive reasoning)

So notice, my blaming didn’t stop with my thoughts. In the box, my feelings blamed too….In the box, my whole way was blaming – both my thoughts and my feelings…. (78)

So what caused my irritation and anger at Nancy? My own self-betrayal. (79)

In the box, I was a talking excuse factory --- both for myself and for others. (124)

 

Staying in the Box

 

So far we’ve learned how we get in the box. At this point we’re ready to consider how we carry boxes with us. (82  The result is that over time, certain of these self-justifying images become characteristic of me. They’re the form my boxes take as I carry them with me into new situations. (83, see 88 also).

 

But remember, once I get in the box in response, I actually need the other guy to keep being a jerk so that I’ll remain justified in blaming him for being a jerk. (153

 

Collusion!

By blaming others, I invite others to get in the box, and they then blame me for blaming them unjustly. But because, while I’m in the box, I feel justified in blaming them, I feel that their blame is unjust and blame them even more. But of course, while they’re in the box they feel justified in blaming me and feel that my further blame is unjust…. (92)

 

So around and around we go. Think about it: we provoke each other to do more of what we say we don’t like about the other. (95)

 

In fact, Bryan and I provide each other with such perfect justification, it’s almost as if we colluded to do so….the box lives on the justification it gets from our being mistreated. So there’s a peculiar irony to being in the box. 101

 

But when I’m in the box, who, in fact, has the problem?

You do.

But what does my box provoke in others?

It provokes them to behave badly toward you.

Yes. In other words, my box provokes problems in others. It provokes what I take as proof that I’m not the one with the problem.

Yeah, that’s right.  (103)

 

I was carrying the disease I blamed everyone else for. I infected them and then blamed them for the infection. Our organizational chart was a chart of colluding boxes. We were a mess.  (125)  OSHRY!!!

 

Getting Out of the Box

 

We know in that moment what we need to do – we need to honor them as people. And in that moment – the moment I see another as a person, with needs, hopes, and worries as real and legitimate as my own – I’m out of the box. (144)

 

Staying Out of the Box

First, we need to institute a process in our company where we help people to see how they’re in the box and are therefore not focusing on results. Second – and this is key, especially for me personally – we need to institute a system of focusing on results that keeps us out of the box much more than we have been: a way of thinking, a way of measuring, a way of reporting, a way of working. 161

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First, Break All the Rules!

 

 

 

 

 

And you can ask the counselor; you can ask the king;

and they'll say the same thing; and it's a funny thing:
Should we go outside?  Should we go outside?
Should we break some bread? Are y'interested?

                                                                                      Joanna Newsome

                                                                                      Sprout and the Bean