Using the story/parable format so popular these days, Leadership and Self-Deception takes a novel psychological approach to leadership. It's not what you do that matters, say the authors (presumably plural--the book is credited to the esteemed Arbinger Institute), but why you do it. Latching onto the latest leadership trend won't make people follow you if your motives are selfish--people can smell a rat, even one that says it's trying to empower them. The tricky thing is, we don't know that our motivation is flawed. We deceive ourselves in subtle ways into thinking that we're doing the right thing for the right reason. We really do know what the right thing to do is, but this constant self-justification becomes such an ingrained habit that it's hard to break free of it--it's as though we're trapped in a box, the authors say.

Learning how the process of self-deception works--and how to avoid it and stay in touch with our innate sense of what's right--is at the heart of the book. We follow Tom, an old-school, by-the-book kind of guy who is a newly hired executive at Zagrum Corporation, as two senior executives show him the many ways he's "in the box," how that limits him as a leader in ways he's not aware of, and of course how to get out. This is as much a book about personal transformation as it is about leadership per se. The authors use examples from the characters' private as well as professional lives to show how self-deception skews our view of ourselves and the world and ruins our interactions with people, despite what we sincerely believe are our best intentions.

While the writing won't make John Updike lose any sleep, the story entertainingly does the job of pulling the reader in and making a potentially abstruse argument quite enjoyable. The authors have a much better ear for dialogue than is typical of the genre (the book is largely dialogue), although a certain didactic tone creeps in now and then. But ultimately it's a hopeful, even inspiring read that flows along nicely and conveys a message that more than a few managers need to hear. --Pat McGill


From AudioFile
In this fictional tale an executive learns the great secret of leadership effect-iveness: to get out of the self-deceptive box of narcissism and start connecting in empathic and respectful ways with others. We're in the box when we treat others as objects or focus on what's wrong with them instead of what we can do to help. Without discounting the value of strong managerial direction, the story reasserts something we know but don't practice--that people are more likely to be enthusiastic and effective when they know we care about them. The smooth reading by the incomparable William Dufris allows the story to be absorbed and savored. A worthwhile addition to anyone's audio library of management classics. T.W. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Current organizational theory finds itself in the same situation that medicine faced a century and a half ago. In those days, doctors didn't understand how a single disease could lie below the surface of a range of different symptoms, and they had no conception of how germs cause disease. As a result, they could only treat symptoms. Leadership and Self-Deception shows how business, like people, can be afflicted by "disease" - in this case self-deception, the major culprit in corporate failure. The book explains how leaders can escape self-deception and put to use the skills, systems, and techniques that will bring success to themselves and their organizations.

SYNOPSIS

Leadership and Self-Deception introduces readers to an important new idea in organizational thinking. It shows how the problems that typically prevent superior performance in organizations are the result of a little-known problem called "self- deception."

￯﾿ﾽ According to the authors, people who are in self-deception live and work as trapped in a box. Blind to the reality around them, they undermine performance-- both their own and others'. The problem is, being in the box they can't see that they undermine performance. Consequently, they don't change, and neither do their results.

￯﾿ﾽ The good news is that there is a solution to self-deception and the costly problems that arise from it. Leadership and Self-Deception shows what self- deception is, how people get trapped in it, how it kills organizational performance, and--most importantly--the surprising way to solve it.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People