Book Review Leadership
and Self Deception, The Arbinger Institute, 2010
Leadership and
Self-Deception was originally published in 2000. In the past decade it became an international
bestseller and is now available in over 20 languages. The new updated version of the book has the
additional value of the descriptions “the various uses people have made of the
book and its ideas over the last decade” (p.xii).
The contents of the book are presented in a fictional story
line that is replete with redundancy and weakened by a sermonizing
approach. The central thesis of the book
is also missing any Christian understanding of interpersonal relations and sin,
repentance and forgiveness. Those
understandings are fundamental to healthy work and team environments. But too often they are not applied even in
Christian organizations. Therefore, since
the basic problem of self-deception is within Christian and non-Christian
organizations alike, the uncovering of the roots and patterns of self-deception
is helpful.
According to the authors, self-deception occurs when people
can’t see their own negative behavior and its effect and therefore feel that
any problems (in the organization or family etc.) are someone else’s
fault. The authors call this “being in
the box – cut off, closed up, blinded” (p. 16). They maintain that people are in or out of
“the box” depending on how they see and treat other people, how they are aware
of others’ needs and concerns and try to meet them. People “in the box” tend to minimize others
and treat them as “objects, a threat, a nuisance, a problem…they are there to
do what we want and if they fail, they’ll hear it from us. But this attitudes creates tension and
ill-will” (p.40).
One of the most important insights in the book is how the
authors contend self-deception starts - with self-betrayal. “Self-betrayal
happens when we realize someone has a need and we choose not to act on that
realization and address that need. [We have betrayed a basic sense of what we
know is good and right for another in that specific situation. In Biblical
terms that is sin: “Whoever knows what is right to do and doesn’t do it, sins” Ja.4:17]…Once we commit that self-betrayal, we
judge those around us negatively and tend to paint ourselves positively,
justifying whatever we’re doing or failing to do…Self-justification becomes our
on-going focus (pp. 66,73, 76)…If people
act in ways that challenge the claim made by a self-justifying image, we see
them as threats. If they reinforce the claim made by a self-justifying image,
we see them as allies. If they fail to matter to a self-justifying image, we
see them as unimportant” (p.88). In
business people focusing on self-justification “can’t fully focus on either
results or the people to whom you are to be delivering those results. You are
focused on yourself, your results, your reputation” (p. 109). Such
self-justification distorts the truth and blame-shifts the problem to others. The authors’ fictional story line traces the
downward spiral of attitudes that result in the work environment and family
life from such self-deception – a story line where “over time certain boxes
become characteristic of me and I carry them with me” (p.85).
The authors say that you get out of the box when you “stop
resisting the call of others’ humanity upon you…you recognize your own
self-centered justifications and experience deep regret for how you have
treated others” (pp.145, 147). You own the attitudes of “blaming,
defensiveness, an inflated view of your own contribution to your success, and
your focus on self” and choose the paradigm shift to ‘accountability
transformation’ when people help each other and stay focused on results and one
another in deep responsibility-taking and accountability” (p.172).
Reviewed
by M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D., 5/31/12
