Leadership And Self-Deception: Getting Out Of The Box

Leadership And Self-Deception: Getting Out Of The Box
by Arbinger Institute

Leadership And Self-Deception: Getting Out Of The Box
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Book Summary Information

Author: Arbinger Institute
Narrator: William Dufris
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Published: 2005-01-30
ISBN: 1572704446
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America

Book Reviews of Leadership And Self-Deception: Getting Out Of The Box

Book Review: Leadership and Self-deception
Summary: 5 Stars

This is a great book. It is easy to read and held my interest. Many of the principles included are those we already know, but have never seen them explained or really examined them ... Although it is not a Christian book, I found this book to be full of truth.

Summary of Leadership And Self-Deception: Getting Out Of The Box

When Tom Callum, a troubled executive struggling with his new job, is asked to spend two days meeting with the executive vice president at the Zagrum Company, he unexpectedly learns about self-deception. Self-deception results when someone acts contrary to what they know is right. By ignoring that altruistic, internal voice, one triggers a chain of events that ultimately result in destructive behavior.

The "disease" of self-deception underlies all leadership problems in today?s organizations. However well intentioned they may be, leaders who deceive themselves always end up undermining their own performance. This straightforward audio uses Tom Callum's story to demonstrate that while knowing how to avoid this problem is central to business relationships and success, awareness is equally important in one's personal relationships.


Using the story/parable format so popular these days, Leadership and Self-Deception takes a novel psychological approach to leadership. It's not what you do that matters, say the authors (presumably plural--the book is credited to the esteemed Arbinger Institute), but why you do it. Latching onto the latest leadership trend won't make people follow you if your motives are selfish--people can smell a rat, even one that says it's trying to empower them. The tricky thing is, we don't know that our motivation is flawed. We deceive ourselves in subtle ways into thinking that we're doing the right thing for the right reason. We really do know what the right thing to do is, but this constant self-justification becomes such an ingrained habit that it's hard to break free of it--it's as though we're trapped in a box, the authors say.

Learning how the process of self-deception works--and how to avoid it and stay in touch with our innate sense of what's right--is at the heart of the book. We follow Tom, an old-school, by-the-book kind of guy who is a newly hired executive at Zagrum Corporation, as two senior executives show him the many ways he's "in the box," how that limits him as a leader in ways he's not aware of, and of course how to get out. This is as much a book about personal transformation as it is about leadership per se. The authors use examples from the characters' private as well as professional lives to show how self-deception skews our view of ourselves and the world and ruins our interactions with people, despite what we sincerely believe are our best intentions.

While the writing won't make John Updike lose any sleep, the story entertainingly does the job of pulling the reader in and making a potentially abstruse argument quite enjoyable. The authors have a much better ear for dialogue than is typical of the genre (the book is largely dialogue), although a certain didactic tone creeps in now and then. But ultimately it's a hopeful, even inspiring read that flows along nicely and conveys a message that more than a few managers need to hear. --Pat McGill

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