The Box of Self-Deception

"Identify someone with a problem and you'll be identifying someone who resists the suggestion that he has one.  That's self-deception - the inability to see that one has a problem. (The Arbinger Institute in Leadership and Self-Deception, 2nd ed., p. 17)

We are "in the box," as the Arbinger folks say, when we engage in certain behaviors which create or reinforce our self-deception.

Of course, I'm not sure that the above is always the case. A leader who has a problem may be so self-aware, self-confident, and self-effacing that he or she simply acknowledges reality by making amendments and correcting their behavior.

However, most of us are not quite that perfect, so "the box appears to fit" in many cases, so to speak.

This is a prime example of how deceiving others leads to self-deception. We change perceptions of who or what is to blame, and, in the process, convince ourselves that we are still okay. Self-deception is linked to our level of responsiveness to various aspects of work in many ways.

Here are three of those many that I feel are particularly critical ways in which we deceive ourselves about what we do and who we are:

WE FOCUS ON "THINGS TO DO" RATHER THAN ON RESULTS ...

I often focus on the difference between being busy and being productive in my coaching work. This is as much for myself as for others, because we all suffer to some degree from falling into a period of great effort, which produces the appearance of great effort, but produces little or no actual measurable results. Eventually, we may even collapse into a puddle of depleted energy cells ... without having actually accomplished anything.

Being busy should not be an end in itself, but it is often used as a mask to hide our reluctance to engage with the more powerful and potentially productive activities. Being busy is usually being safe.

We respond to activity, rather than outcomes.

WE CHOOSE NOT TO LEARN OR SHARE INFORMATION ...

There's an old saying of which I am quite fond, that goes something like this: "He has been with us twenty years, but has one year of experience repeated twenty times" to show that measuring experience by length alone does not help us. Many organizations have employees who fit this description, not in the exact number of years of service, but in the outdated education they use. We live in a world where information changes at a blinding speed and what we learned a while ago becomes outdated easily.

If you think a college degree from thirty years ago qualifies you for today's marketplace, you are simply fooling yourself. I cherish my degrees earned at various schools over the years, and I use bits of information I learned a long time ago on a regular basis.

But if I depend on my initial college degree to provide any credibility, I am simply fooling myself.

Even up-to-date information can be abused. We have also probably experienced The Gatekeeper - that employee who knows many things about the organization. They are sometimes the archivist or primary record keeper of valuable information and sometimes just the vice president's executive assistant ... the point is they use their knowledge as power to maintain their position.

The Gatekeeper may be benevolent or malevolent, but their primary tool is closely guarded information and their primary mission is to keep it that way.

We focus on hoarding information and not on growing or spreading it.

WE LOOK TO SOMEONE OR SOMETHING ELSE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY ...

We play "The Great American Blame Game", as I have heard it called. I would guess that other countries and cultures have very similar games to be played, because this stems from a very human desire to avoid punishment. While understandable, it is not particularly emotionally or psychologically healthy, since avoiding responsibility is based on not accepting reality, but manipulating perceptions.

There are at least three significant outcomes from shifting responsibility to others or to circumstances:

We get really good at doing so, to the point of automatic response. Not accepting responsibility becomes our default position. This is not a positive skill set to develop.

We temporarily avoid the negative consequences that often accompany responsibility. Note the use of the word "temporarily" here ... it's key. As the very old saying goes, "What goes around, comes around."

We miss the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and make better ones in the future. This is the worst outcome from not accepting responsibility for outcomes.  If we do not learn, we repeat our behavior, even when it produces negative results.

We concentrate on avoiding, rather than on learning and growing.

SO PEOPLE OFTEN ENGAGE IN SELF-DECEPTION BY AVOIDING RESPONSIBILITY TO ESCAPE CONSEQUENCES.

None of the above is probably any type of revelation to you.  Observant people in any organization will nod knowingly as they read my words, because these situations and behaviors are commonplace.

Even though self-deception is around us and maybe in us, we should not simply accept or support self-deception, in ourselves or others. The first important element of actual change is to create awareness and the first place to create awareness is within ourselves.

How have you deceived yourself in a past work situation?  

How are you deceiving yourself now?  

What can you do to change that?

Acknowledgments:

Inspiration for this post came from a Responsiveness assessment from Tom Krapu, to whom I am indebted.