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Why Do Leaders Deceive Themselves?

The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes. ~ George Orwell

As much as we’d like to believe that we’re rational human beings, we can all too easily mislead ourselves. Self-deception is a process that encourages us to justify our false and invalid beliefs.

Individuals, organizations and communities experience self-deception — the root of most problems, according to the Arbinger Institute, a Utah-based consulting firm. It’s human nature to blame others, externalize causes and deny our role in organizational struggles. This tendency is so pervasive that few of us escape its reach, and self-deception intrudes into every aspect of our lives. Nowhere is it more destructive than at the top of the leadership food chain.

You’ll find that self-deception:

  • Obscures the truth about yourself
  • Corrupts your view of others and your circumstances
  • Destroys your credibility and the trust others have in you
  • Inhibits your ability to persuade others
  • Thwarts wise decision-making

 

Fortunately, recognizing this leadership trap can inoculate you against its consequences. If, however, you believe that guarding yourself against wishful thinking will prevent self-deception, you may be in for a bumpy ride. Ongoing vigilance is required to preserve immunity, note Arbinger’s experts in Leadership and Self-Deception. Awareness will:

  • Sharpen your vision
  • Reduce feelings of conflict
  • Enliven the desire for teamwork
  • Redouble accountability
  • Enhance your ability to achieve results
  • Boost job satisfaction and overall happiness

 

Are You “In” or “Out” of the Box?

Leadership and Self-Deception features an entertaining story about an executive who is facing challenges at work and home. His exploits expose the psychological processes that conceal our true motivations and intentions from us and trap us in a “box” of endless self-justification. Most importantly, the book shows us the way out.

When you’re “in the box,” you are speaking with your interests and goals in mind. Through the lens of self-justification, you’ll find external factors and other people to blame. You’ll deny responsibility for problems and fail to identify your part in perpetuating them. In your interactions, you’ll try to change other people and convince them to do what you would do.

When you’re “out of the box,” there’s room for openness, authenticity, and interest in and empathy for other people. You’ll seek the true basis for problems, including your own participation. You’ll be less interested in assigning blame or judgment, or being locked into unproductive battles.

Confidence Games

One of the most documented findings in psychology is the average person’s ability to believe extremely flattering things about himself. We generally think that we possess a host of socially desirable traits and that we’re free of the most unattractive ones.

Most people deem themselves to be:

  • More intelligent than others
  • More fair-minded
  • Less prejudiced
  • Better drivers

 

While confidence and a fair view of one’s capabilities and strengths are essential, overconfidence and an elevated sense of worth lead to fragile relationships. When we focus on proving ourselves, we spend far too much time on defending and justifying our behavior. We cut ourselves off from opportunities to understand our colleagues. Our ego prevents us from communicating an interest in others. In other words, we lack empathy.

The vast majority of people attribute their successes to themselves and their failures to external circumstances. This self-serving bias is a feeble attempt to positively reinforce our sense of worthiness and self-esteem.

Our preferred perceptions lead us to test hypotheses that are slanted toward our chosen direction. By consulting the “right” people, we increase our chances of hearing what we want to hear.

We’re not consciously distorting information, but we have considerable opportunities to jiggle various criteria and arrive at conclusions that favor our biases.

Managerial Self-Deception

Try telling a colleague or subordinate that he has a problem, and the depth of his self-deception will become clear.

Helping others see what they’re unwilling to recognize is a widespread leadership challenge. It’s especially tricky when we observe it in others, yet are unable to acknowledge it in ourselves.

In business psychology, the prevailing wisdom has assumed that a high degree of self-confidence leads to promotions and leadership success. New studies, however, prove otherwise, writes business psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic in Less-Confident People Are More Successful (Harvard Business Review blog, July 2012).

A moderately low level of self-confidence is more likely to make you successful, Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic asserts. Don’t confuse this with a very low degree of self-confidence. Excessive fear, anxiety and stress will inhibit performance, impede decision-making and undermine interpersonal relationships.

But low-enough self-confidence can work in your favor because it:

  1. Makes you pay attention to negative feedback and be self-critical. This means you’re open to learning and improving. Most of us tend to listen to feedback and ignore the negative in favor of the positive. If you want to overcome deficits, you must listen to both positive and negative comments.
  2. Motivates you to work harder and prepare more effectively. If you really want to achieve leadership success, you will do whatever it takes to bridge the gap between the status quo and your professional goals. 
  3. Reduces your chances of coming across as arrogant or delusional. People with lower levels of self-confidence are more likely to admit their mistakes instead of blaming others — and they rarely take credit for others’ accomplishments. 

 

If you’re serious about becoming a strong leader, lower self-confidence can serve as a strong ally, inspiring you to work hard, conquer limitations and, put simply, avoid being a jerk.

Inspired Leadership

When you’re courageous enough to question your own behavior and motives, you model the behaviors you wish to see in others.

Help yourself and your staff by:

  1. Reading Arbinger’s Leadership and Self-Deception.
  2. Working with an executive coach to pinpoint areas of self-deception.
  3. Asking yourself, “What’s my part in any given problem?”
  4. Identifying ways to set aside your ego and achieve optimum results.
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Take a Look in The Mirror

Since at least the time of Plato and Socrates some 2400 years ago, mankind has been implored to “know thyself,” in life and in business. Individually, this is often taken to mean knowing your strengths so you can leverage them and knowing your areas of weakness so you can improve them or compensate for them. But it involves much more than this. While at the business level, many organizations struggle with getting more done with fewer people and less resources. As your employees have changed roles or added responsibilities, you need to have confidence that you have the right people in the right positions to get the best possible results.

In some cases you do have the right team members in the right places and in some cases you probably made some wrong choices, as we all have. Companies forced to reorganize made quick decisions resulting in people landing in the wrong roles. Likewise, companies that have experienced significant growth have ended up with similar staffing outcomes. Diagnostic assessments can help you identify performance gaps and help your company effectively understand and align the talents, behaviors, and motivators of every employee. Having the right employee in the right position is as critical to each individual’s success as it is to the success of the entire company.

The first step in bridging performance gaps is for management to commit to a people development process for employees. It should be based on the skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for them to do their jobs successfully. If the size of the organization is large enough, it can be implemented by HR. Regardless, the objectives and strategies of developing employees, and how those employees are going to help drive results, needs to be owned by management.

After commitment has been gained and the objectives have been identified, diagnostic assessments can help determine individual performance gaps, since developmental opportunities will be employee-specific. Assessments can also be utilized as an important tool for creating skill development as well attitudinal and behavioral improvement while eliminating employee and organizational resistance to change.

There are a multitude of individual assessment tools available, but regardless of which we utilize, when working with clients we focus diagnostically on the whole person as defined by these three key areas:

  1. WHAT natural talents do your employees possess? An analysis of TALENTS gets at a person’s ability to do things, how they make decisions and interact with the world around them, as well as how they perceive themselves.
  2. WHY are your employees motivated to use their natural talents, based on their personal motivators and drivers? An analysis of MOTIVATORS gets at why people do things. Everyone has their own unique mix of personal drivers and motivators that help guide them toward success. Understanding what really drives a person is a crucial element of success.
  3. HOW do your employees prefer to use their natural talents, based on their preferred behavioral style? An analysis of BEHAVIORS gets at a person’s manner of doing things; how they do things. Since each individual has their own unique preferences and habits for how they like to behave, this understanding is crucial when working with team members as a leader or a manager, or in an environment that requires conflict resolution.

 

Establishing new behaviors requires that the employee feels able to adopt those behaviors and feels comfortable doing so. A well-designed people-development process focused on objectives leveraging diagnostic assessments drives long-term change. After the completion of a development process, we consistently see high levels of adaptable change with sustainable results. To learn how to achieve these types of sustainable results for your people and your business give us a call or visit www.pb-coach.com.

When you are looking in the mirror, you are looking at the problem. But, remember, you are also looking at the solution.

 

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Argh! Do I have to go to another meeting today?

Which of these situations has happened to you?

  • In your last meeting, did you walk out without a clear idea of what you were supposed to do?
  • Have you looked around a meeting and wondered why all those people were invited?
  • Have you calculated how much money your organization is “spending” waiting for meetings to start?

We all know that business can’t operate without meetings – meetings to plan, meetings for updates, meetings to keep communication lines open.   However, effectively-run meetings are often hard to find in the workplace.  A survey by Hofstra University projected that over $40 billion is wasted on mismanaged meetings every year.   Since there are between 11 million and 33 million meetings conducted in the United States every day, the business of meetings is critical to everyone’s continued success.

As a result of discussions with a cross-section of employees and organizations, we’ve put together a Top Five list of tips for effective meetings. 

Tip #1:  Communicate the goal and the agenda for the meeting.  Publicize that goal when you schedule the meeting, and then evaluate every topic against that goal – if the discussion doesn’t support the goal, then it shouldn’t be in the agenda.   At Intel Corporation, they keep a poster in every meeting room that says “Do you know the purpose of this meeting?”  How many meetings actually include a firm agenda that is published in advance to all the attendees?  An agenda should clearly state the topics, an approximate length for discussion, the “owner” of each topic, and action steps for each topic. 

Tip #2:  Identify the meeting participants.  Recent research shows that after the first seven participants, every additional person lowers the productivity of the group in a meeting.   Wow!  Consider your own meetings – how many do you go to that have more than seven participants?  Consider who really needs to attend based on the agenda.  Also, remember that the more people invited to the meeting, the longer the meeting will take.

Tip #3:  Establish the ground rules for the meeting.  Some typical items to include in the ground rules are when agendas are due to participants, the use of technology in a meeting, and start and end times.  Designate a time keeper who is not the meeting organizer.  One of the biggest time wasters is meetings that don’t start and end on time – wouldn’t you agree? 

Tip #4:  Use a Parking Lot.   A Parking Lot is a place to put topics that fall outside the meeting agenda – or that should be postponed for later.   Some meeting organizers use visual Parking Lots – such as a piece of large paper posted on the wall where ideas can be posted during meetings so they don’t get lost.  Some meeting organizers simply record parking lot ideas on a pad of paper – or assign someone to capture them and send the list out for inclusion in future meeting agendas.  The disciplined use of a “parking lot” will keep your meetings on track and on agenda.

Tip #5:  Set Clear Action Items.  Establish what is next, how will it be done, who is responsible, and deadline details before you leave the meeting.   How do you hold people accountable in your meetings?  Even if you are not the meeting organizer, you can still push for accountability – remind the host to set clear next steps and timelines.

Bonus Tip:  Evaluate Your Meetings.   Periodically, take the time to review the regular meetings in your organization.  Do they all still have a clear purpose?  Are they the right length?   Are the right people attending?  What needs to change in order to make your meetings more effective?

As a final thought, consider this quote from Patrick Lencioni’s book, Death by Meeting, “Most executives I know spend hours sending email, leaving voice mail, and roaming the halls to clarify issues that should have been made clear during a meeting in the first place … I have no doubt that sneaker time is the most subtle, dangerous, and underestimated black hole in corporate America.” 

What is your biggest meeting challenge?  We want to hear from you.  Write to us and share your stories and your ideas.   And if you want to dive deeper into this topic – and especially how to make your meetings more effective even when you are not in charge of them, email us at mgoldman@pb-coach.com.

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It Starts With An Attitude

Ever wonder why it seems like th rich get richer and the poor get poorer? It all starts with an attitude.

Scenario One – The Rich Get Richer:

Step 1 – Attitude: Susan has a goal of achieving great things in her business and believes her potential is limitless. Her attitude practically shouts “I believe in myself and I believe in my business!”.

Step 2 Action: Because of Susan’s belief and attitude, she takes massive action. She is an unstoppable machine.

Step3 – Results: Susan’s massive action leads to incredible results.

Step 4 – Attitude – Susan’s incredible results feed her beliefs and make her attitude even stronger.

This stronger attitude drives even more massive action, greater results and the cycle goes on…up and up and up.

Scenario One – The Poor Get Poorer:

Step 1 – Attitude: John has a goal of achieving great things in his business but is pessimistic about his potential in this economy. He sees other around him struggling. Why should he be any different?

Step 2 Action: Because of John’s beliefs and attitudes, he takes little action. He’d rather wait and see when the economy will turn around.

Step3 – Results: Because of John’s lack of action, he sees little results.

Step 4 – Attitude – John’s poor results feed his beliefs and make his attitude even more negative.

This attitude drives even less action, poorer results and the cycle goes on…down and down and down.

What are you doing to feed your attitude today?

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Passion!

My name is Mike Goldman. I’m an executive coach and my purpose in life is to change the world by helping people discover and live their passion.

The purpose of this blog is to help me achieve that purpose by communicating breakthrough ideas and tips to make that happen.

Imagine what your life would look like if you lived your passion everyday. Imagine how it would feel to wake up in the morning and say “I can’t wait to go to work today!”. Wouldn’t it be great if work felt like a hobby.

If you’re a business owner, imagine the impact of your employees feeling that way. What would that do to your company’s performance? What would it do for morale? What would it do for your competitive advantage?

I hope you’ll join me by reading this blog and sharing your ideas. I look forward to our conversation.