Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box

by The Arbinger Institute

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.

I had a problem I didn’t think I had—a problem I couldn’t see. I could see only from my own closed perspective, and I was deeply resistant to any suggestion that the truth was other than what I was thinking. So I was in a box—cut off, closed up, blind. Does that make sense?”

the discovery of the cause of self-deception amounts to the revelation of a sort of unifying theory, an explanation that shows how the apparently disparate collection of symptoms we call ‘people problems’—from problems in leadership to problems in motivation and everything in between—are all caused by the same thing.

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.

One way, I experience myself as a person among people. The other way, I experience myself as the person among objects. One way, I’m out of the box; the other way, I’m in the box. Does that make sense?”

“If I betray myself,” Bud said as he backed away from the board, “my thoughts and feelings will begin to tell me that I’m justified in whatever I’m doing or failing to do.”

“So once I betrayed myself, my view of reality became distorted,” Bud said in summary, turning toward the board.

“Self-betrayal is how we enter the box.”

“Inflate others’ faults”

“Inflate own virtue”

“Inflate the value of things that justify my self-betrayal”

She added “Blame”

Before he betrayed himself, Bud saw Nancy, whatever her faults, simply as a person who could use his help. I understood that. But after he betrayed himself, she seemed very different to him. She didn’t seem to deserve help anymore, and Bud thought he felt that way because of how she was being.

If you seem to be in the box in a given situation but can’t identify a sense you betrayed in that moment, that’s a clue that you might already be in the box. And you may find it useful to wonder whether you’re carrying around some self-justifying images that are feeling threatened.”

“My self-justifying image about being learned can be the very thing that sometimes keeps me from learning.”

he said, drawing a second person in a box. “By blaming, I invite others to get in the box, and

And the problem isn’t merely that the box makes me ineffective, it’s that it makes me destructive. From within the box, I end up inviting more of the very thing that I’m complaining about, as well as other behaviors, as Bud pointed out, that I will hate just as much, if not more.”

“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.

“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 blameworthy

“We’re not saying that in the box we enjoy problems. Far from it; we hate them. In the box, it seems like there’s nothing we would want more than to be out from under them. But remember, when we’re in the box, we’re self-deceived—we’re blind to the truth about others and ourselves. And one of the things we’re blind to is how the box itself undercuts our every effort to obtain the outcomes we think we want.”

“Once in the box,” Bud said, backing away from the board, “we give each other reason to stay in the box. We do this not only by mistreating the other person directly, by the way, but also by how we might begin to talk about or gossip about that person with others.

When we’re in the box, what motivates us most is the need for justification, and what will bring us justification is very often at odds with what is best for the organization. Does that make sense?”

we use the term ‘what-focus’ to describe whatever a person is focused on achieving. Out of the box, my what-focus at work is results. In the box, by contrast, my what-focus is justification. That’s the first reason why the box always undercuts results.”

“It has to do with my ‘who-focus’ when I’m in the box,” Bud answered. “You’re focused on yourself when you’re in the box, aren’t you?” I said. “Exactly, Tom, and as long as I am focused on myself, I can’t fully focus either on results or on the people to whom I am to be delivering those results.

company need to improve, which they surely do. Because when I’m blaming them, I’m not doing it because they need to improve; I’m blaming them because their shortcomings justify my failure to improve.

While it’s true that others may have problems they need to solve, are their problems the reason I’m in the box?” “No. That’s what you think in the box, but it’s a misperception.”

“trying to change others doesn’t work.”

‘Coping’ has the same deficiency as trying to change the other person: It’s just another way to continue blaming. It communicates the blame of my box, which invites those I’m coping with to be in their boxes.”

“In the box, whether I’m a skilled communicator or not, I end up communicating my box—and that’s the problem.”

“That’s why skill training in nontechnical areas often has so little lasting impact,” Lou said. “Helpful skills and techniques aren’t very helpful if they’re done in the box. They just provide people with more-sophisticated ways to blame.”

“the people problems that most people try to correct with skills aren’t due to a lack of skill at all. They’re due to self-betrayal.

“Because I was in the box, I couldn’t mean it. In the box, every change I can think of is just a change in my style of being in the box. I can change from arguing to kissing. I can change from ignoring someone to going out of my way to shower that person with attention. But whatever changes I think of in the box are changes I think of from within the box, and they are therefore just more of the box—which is the problem in the first place. Others remain objects to me.”

you can’t get out by continuing to focus on yourself—which is what you do when you try to change your behavior in the box. So yes, that is what we’re saying,”

“So consider this: If being in or out of the box is something that’s deeper than behavior, do you suppose the key to getting out of the box will be a behavior?” I started to see what he was saying. “No, I guess it wouldn’t,” I said, suddenly feeling hopeful that this thought would lead me to the answer.

“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.

In that kind of situation, it’s quite easy to get in the box because the justification is so easy—the other guy’s a jerk! 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. And I don’t need to do anything more than get in the box toward him to keep inviting him to be that way.

The difference between how we rate ourselves and how we rate others is what we call the “self-deception gap.” Self-deception is what explains this inflated view of ourselves relative to others.

An interesting aspect of self-deception is that people who observe and recognize these behaviors in others are no less likely than others to do the same things themselves. However, they believe their own self-assessments are more accurate than the overinflated self-assessments of their colleagues!

We call this characteristic “horizontal alignment.” It is a measure of the extent of understanding people have about the objectives, needs, and challenges of those lateral to them in their organizations.

Horizontal alignment is so poor in most organizations that, even when suffering from self-deception, people find it hard to obscure the fact that they themselves aren’t very good at it. Accordingly, efforts to increase horizontal awareness within and across teams is a key strategy both for helping people become aware of the inwardness that has characterized an organization and for helping individuals, teams, and entire organizations break free from the box. This