This morning I picked Leadership and Self-Deception back up and scanned through all of my underlines and highlights with new eyes and a new awareness. Its simple message is this. When you have a sense of what is right – for example in business to “do my best to help the company achieve its results” you have two choices. You either honor that sense. Or you betray it. Each decision, each moment is a choice.
Betraying that sense is a self-betrayal that then creates a victim mentality where the person believes he/she is righteous, good, and hardworking and believes others to be lazy, untalented, and disposable, in short, objects. What happens next is predictable – miscommunication, mistrust, low engagement, demoralized attitudes.
This principle holds true in all aspects of life.
And I think it’s a useful framework for understanding a lot of our interpersonal communication issues as a society today.
On page 64 the authors lay it out like this, with my experience in italics:
1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of self-betrayal. For example, when I felt that our more seasoned Customer Success team should help the new Sales team, but then I didn’t want them spending all their time on calls I thought Sales should be able to do solo.
2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. So then, I started to see the new sales guys as lacking initiative, uninterested in learning, and helpless.
3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted. Woe is me! Now I have to manage these two teams while the Head of Sales doesn’t train his team and gets all the credit for us landing new deals.
From there – things get ugly as a leader. These thoughts influence your behaviors and become characteristic of you. What’s worse these self-betrayals provoke those around you to also put up barriers and hold on to judgments instead of honoring what is right in the moment.
In my case back at that time, I became a caricature of a bossy female leader. Always looking disappointed. Always running from one meeting to the next. Always seeing how the Sales team wasn’t up to par. It was an exhausting way to live – and certainly didn’t help us achieve our goals faster!
What happens next is predictable – we mistreat one another and obtain mutual justification for our actions. I’d argue we are seeing a lot of that in the culture right now. I’m right! You’re wrong! Case closed.
What are your values and principles?
And when given the choice – do you honor them? Or do you betray them – and start to see problems with everyone else as a result?