Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box

by The Arbinger Institute

“I couldn’t see, for example, that the more I took responsibility for my team’s performance, the more mistrusted they felt. They then resisted in all kinds of ways: Some just gave up and left all creativity to me, others defied me and did things their own way, and still others left the company altogether. All of these responses convinced me all the more of the incompetence of the people in the company, so I responded by issuing even more careful instructions, developing even more policies and procedures, and so on. Everyone took all that to be further evidence of my disrespect for them and resisted me all the more. And so on, round and round—each of us inviting the other to be in the box, and in so doing, providing each other with mutual justification for staying there. Collusion was everywhere. We were a mess.”