Leadership and Self-Deception, Fourth Edition: The Secret to Transforming Relationships and Unleashing Results

by The Arbinger Institute

the recurring challenges we face in our relationships and organizations stem from—or are made worse by—our failure to see ourselves and others clearly: as people.

mission is to bring humanity to the workplace.

This book is about learning to understand, recognize, and mitigate self-deception.

others matter like we matter.

Ana Rivera and Tom Callum.

Theodore Jefferson

“It’s at the root of all organizational dysfunction. It undermines leadership, stifles innovation, and gets in the way of real collaboration. But despite the issues it causes, the problem is often overlooked and almost always misunderstood. Acting differently isn’t enough to solve it.”

was the second-most-junior member of the team, and my job was to draft the fifty or so agreements that sat underneath the major lending contract. It was a heavy load of tedious work, but I was eager to prove myself.

“Anyway, I worked hard to wrap up or trade off my assignments so that I could take three weeks off when David was born. We were exhausted and we were happy.

“I was crushed to leave Tracie and our week-old baby. And I felt robbed of the extra time off I had earned.”

They left me longing for home and feeling more bitter about the project.”

“When I joined the firm, I knew I was signing up for long hours and inconvenient travel. But here—when we most needed the project to come together—my frustration and resentment were keeping me from offering my best work.

“As far as I knew, no one else had the challenges I did, but I was working hard despite them. In fact, in my mind, I might’ve been the most committed and engaged person on the deal! But any member of my team could have told you I had a problem,”

“a problem with my focus, my engagement, and even my performance. I was failing to catch issues I was hired to anticipate, and it was negatively impacting our project at a critical moment.

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

“I wasn’t telling myself the truth about what was going on, and my view of others had become distorted. I was self-deceived.”

“But there were things I could have done differently,” Theo continued. “Instead of isolating myself and indulging in my self-pity, I could have reached out to the people it was my job to coordinate and collaborate with.

“I wasn’t seeing things clearly. I was focused on myself and making excuses. Those are all symptoms of what we’re talking about—self-deception. And there’s no way to begin to change if you can’t see the problem.