Most leaders (and in fact, most people) have the inability to be honest with themselves about their inadequacies; brutally honest, with growth as their goal. This inability leads to self-deception and justification. The problem is always ‘out there’, not internal. The fault lies with others, their attitude, their laziness, their incompetence. These leaders never seem to get to self-questioning, like: Am I open or closed to correction? Am I actively seeking to learn? Have I enthusiastically taught when I should have? Have I held myself fully accountable for my work or have I shifted responsibility when things went wrong? Did I move quickly to solutions or instead found perverse value in problems? Am I earning trust from my followers?
The Arbinger Institute, Leadership and Self-Deception, has done profound research on the problem of self-deception for leaders and I quote from the preface of their book on the subject matter:
“For too long, the issue of self-deception has been the realm of deep-thinking philosophers, academics, and scholars working on the central questions of the human sciences. The public remains generally unaware of the issue. That would be fine except that self-deception is so pervasive it touches every aspect of life. “Touches” is perhaps too gentle a word to describe its influence. Self-deception actually determines one’s experience in every aspect of life. The extent to which it does that and, in particular, the extent to which it is the central issue in leadership, is the subject of this book.
To give you an idea of what’s at stake, consider the following analogy. An infant is learning to crawl. She begins by pushing herself backward around the house. Backing herself around, she gets lodged beneath the furniture. There she thrashes about – crying and banging her little head against the sides and undersides of the pieces. She is stuck and hates it. So, she does the only thing she can think of to get herself out – she pushes even harder, which only worsens her problem. She’s more stuck than ever.
If this infant could talk, she would blame the furniture for her troubles. She, after all, is doing everything she can think of. The problem couldn’t be hers. But, of course, the problem is hers, even though she can’t see it. While it is true she’s doing everything she can think of, the problem is precisely that she can’t see how she’s the problem. Having the problem she has, nothing she can think of will be a solution.
Self-deception is like this. It blinds us to the true cause of problems, and once blind, all the ‘solutions’ we can think of will actually make matters worse. That’s why self-deception is so central to leadership, because leadership is about making things better. To the extent we are self-deceived, our leadership is undermined at every turn – and not because of the furniture.”
For the leader, or people in general, honesty about inadequacies, a lack of skills, or impure or selfish motives is a first step to eradicating self-deception. Blaming doesn’t help the leader or others to get better. When we blame, we blame because of ‘ourselves’, not others. The leaders people choose to follow (not obligated to follow) are the leaders who care and try and lift others up. These are leaders who admit their inadequacies and work on themselves sincerely and transparently, taking others on the growth journey with them.
