Leadership and Self-deception

Getting out of the box

Published by:

The Arbinger Institute

Leadership is about making things happen.  It is taking a company into the future, solving problems, meeting challenges and addressing issues that confront a company in its quest to achieve outstanding sustainable results.

To the extent that a leader practices realistic perception he or she will grasp the core issues that need to be addressed.

Conversely, if a leader is self-deceived or has blinds spots, he or she will make poor decisions and fail to achieve desired results.  The book “Leadership and Self-deception” explains how managers see what they want to see to support a given perspective.  This is called “self-deception”.  The authors also describe the consequences of self-deception, namely:

• the inability to see that one has a problem
• the lack of problem-solving skills
• seeing self and others in a systematically distorted way
• volatile and mistakable relationships
• not taking responsibility for oneself
• feeling victimised
• making poor decisions

These consequences cause great harm in business and in personal life.

The book takes the form of a narrative where Tom, a newly appointed senior manager, is coached by an executive named Bud Jefferson.

Bud takes Tom through a process of self-discovery where he identifies the self-deception that Tom is guilty of.  Bud uses many examples and stories aimed at helping Tom to overcome his problem.

One of the studies that Bud uses is the case of Ignaz Semmelweis.

Semmelweis was an obstetrician who lived in the mid 1880s.  He worked at the General Hospital in Vienna where the mortality rate amongst women giving birth was 10%.  In other words one in ten women died in childbirth.

There were three typical symptoms that were associated with maternity deaths:

a)    Fever

b)    Inflammation

c)    Breathing difficulties

Fever was treated by cold towels being laid on the patient.  Inflammation and swelling necessitated bleeding the patient, sometimes with leeches.  Breathing difficulties were addressed by improving ventilation – for example, open windows.  But nothing worked.  Women continued to die within days of showing symptoms.

Semmelweis was extremely concerned.  He tried everything he could think of, to no avail.  Mothers still died.  Then something unusual happened.  Semmelweis took a four month leave of his duties from the Vienna General Hospital and noticed, on his return, that the death rate had fallen significantly in his absence.  How was this possible?

After due consideration, he came to the conclusion that while in the care of midwives, expectant women survived.  Under his care many women died.  Gradually Semmelweis came to the realisation that midwives did not work on cadavers.  Doctors did.  They did research on dead bodies, as did Semmelweis.

Furthermore, after dissecting bodies, doctors did not clean or sterilize themselves before delivering babies.  Could this be the missing link?

From his observations, Semmelweis concluded that bacteria from cadavers and other diseased patients were transmitted to healthy patients from doctors.  That was why the high mortality rate was attributable to physicians and not midwives.

As soon as Semmelweis introduced the practice of washing hands thoroughly, in a chlorine and lime solution, the death rate dropped from 10% to 1%.  Only one in a hundred women died in childbirth.

Semmelweis was taken aback.  He sadly remarked, “Only God knows the number of patients who went prematurely to their graves because of me.”

This is an example of thinking out of the box.  Taking responsibility and seeing things as they really are.  Not succumbing to the delusion of self-deception.

Interestingly, Semmelweis’ colleagues refused to accept his findings.  To say that doctors were the cause of the death in patients was repulsive and ridiculous in their minds.  So they rejected objective conclusions and retained their delusions and self-deceptions.  Their thinking remained ‘in the box’.

To his dying day Semmelweis was treated as an outcast, denied any form of recognition and even regarded as insane.  It was only after his death that Semmelweis was given the recognition and approbation that he so richly reserved.  Today he is regarded as the father of modern medicine.

Self-deception, or being in the box, always shifts blame or rationalises a particular perspective.  Consequently, proof is produced that justifies one’s position or action, even when it is obvious to others that such a stand is inappropriate.

In business, self perception, or being in the box, destroys relationships, it pits people against one another, and it is the cause of much conflict, disagreement and even power struggles.

Many people try to address ‘in the box’ issues by:

• trying to change others
• doing their best to cope
• leaving
• improving communications
• changing their own behaviours

Generally speaking these actions don’t work.  At best they may accommodate ‘in the box’ thinking but they don’t solve the problem.

They way of escaping the box of self-deception, and changing for the better, is to start taking three inappropriate actions and replace them with three ‘out of the box’ strategies:

1. Don’t focus on what others are doing wrong. Rather focus on what you can do to help people.
2. Don’t worry whether others are coming to your assistance and supporting you.  Rather concern yourself about helping others.
3. Don’t be a perfectionist.  Rather do the best you can.

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