Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box

Or the sort of person who’s important or competent or hardworking or the smartest. Or being the sort of person who knows everything or does everything, or doesn’t make mistakes or thinks of others, and so on. Almost anything can be perverted into a self-justifying image.”

“By blaming, I invite others to get in the box, and they then blame me for blaming them unjustly. But because I feel justified in blaming them while I’m in the box, I feel that their blame is unjust and blame them even more.

mistreated but because we’re in the box, and the box lives on the justification it gets from our being mistreated.

The more people we can find to agree with our side of the story, the more justified we will feel in believing that side of the story. I might recruit my spouse to join with me in blaming my son, for example, or I might gossip about others in order to gather allies at work in my collusion against another person or department.

“Exactly, Tom, and as long as I am focused on myself, I can’t fully focus either on results or on the people to whom I am to be delivering those results.