Leadership and Self-Deception: Joseph's notes

Here are notes from my reading of Leadership and Self-Deception. The executive reading version- rather than Cliff Notes, it is Joe's Notes. These extracts really don't do justice to this book. Please read it.

Leadership and Self-Deception

The Arbinger Institute

Barrett-Kohler. 2002

16 “That’s self-deception… the inability to see that one has a problem.”

24 “…we can tell how people feel about us, and it’s to that we respond.”

25 Are you really interested in the other person or are you interested in what they think about you? Are you interested in what they can DO for you?

31 “…no matter what we’re doing on the outside, people respond primarily to how we’re feeling about them on the inside.”

34 “I see others as somehow less than they were- as objects with needs and desires somehow secondary and less legitimate than mine.”

43 “…people respond not primarily to what you do but to how you’re being.”

59 “The point of this isn’t perfection…It’s simply that we get better- better in systematic and concrete ways that improve the company’s bottom line.

65 & 71, 75-103 “Self betrayal:

1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of self-betrayal.

2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal.

3. When I see a self-justifying world, my view of reality becomes distorted.

4. When I betray myself I enter the box. (The box is where I objectify other people.)

5. Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me.

6. Being in the box I provoke others to be in the box.

7. In the box, we provoke mutual mistreatment and obtain justification.We collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box.

74 “I focused on and inflated her faults when I needed to feel justified for mine.”

99 “Being in the box, I need problems.”

105 In the box you can’t focus on results because you are focused on yourself.

130- What doesn’t work in the box: (Being in the box is blaming others)

1. Trying to change others

2. Trying my best to “cope” with others

3. Leaving

4. Communicating about my box

5. Implementing new skills or techniques

6. Changing my behavior

133. “…skill training in nontechnical areas often has so little lasting impact.” Because people are in the box when they apply them. “…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.”

141. “…we change the in the moment we cease to resist what is outside our box- others.”

148 “…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.”

165-66

Knowing the material

¶ Self-betrayal leads to self-deception and “the box”

¶ When you’re in the box, you can’t focus on results.

¶ Your influence and success will depend on being out of the box.

¶ You get out of the box as you cease resisting people.

Living the Material

¶ Don’t try to be perfect. Do try to be better.

¶ Don’t use the vocabulary- “the box” and so on- with people who don’t already know it. Do use the principles in your own life.

¶ Don’t look for others’ boxes. Do look for your own.

¶ Don’t accuse others of being in the box. Do try to stay out of the box yourself.

¶ Don’t give up on yourself when you discover you’ve been in the box. Do keep trying.

¶ Don’t deny you’ve been in the box when you have been. Do apologize, and then keep marching forward, trying to be more helpful to others in the future.

¶ Don’t focus on what people others are doing wrong. Do focus on what you can do right to help.

¶ Don’t worry whether others are helping you. Do worry whether you are helping others.