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Leadership, Self-Deception and stretching the dot

by Bren on March 29th, 2005

Occasionally I read stuff in different places that just seems to fit. Pleasant coincidences, if that’s your thing. Others would say divine nudges. Whatever, I just like it when it happens.

I’ve been listening to an audiobook called Leadership and Self-Deception and it’s been pretty great. It’s in the "business novel" format. I’m not terribly comfortable with that format, since it seems kinda forced, but it works okay. I felt the same way about Goldratt’s stuff, even though I learned a ton from it. This book doesn’t really have an author. It’s written by The Arbinger Institute, which is kinda weird too, since I like to envision an actual person behind my books, rather than an organization. Again, whatever. It works, so that’s fine.

Anyway, Leadership and Self-Deception seems to be about two things. First, it’s about learning to serve others by getting out of our own ego-universe. Second, it’s about how to know what you don’t know. That’s the funky self-deception part–uncovering your own hidden biases and agendas. In the book, there’s a protagonist, Tom, who chronicles his meetings with Bud and Kate. Bud and Kate are the jedi of self-deception management. The whole argument is framed as "in the box" vs "out of the box." This was a little confusing to me at first, but essentially, "the box" refers to self or ego. When you’re focused on your own needs, you’re in the box. When you’re focused on the needs of others, you’re out of the box. In the box is bad. Out of the box is good. Most of us are more like Jack-in-the-boxes (Jacks-in-the-box?)…popping in and out of the box all day long.

So back to the coincidence/divine nudge thing. I noticed that Dwayne just listened to the same book over the weekend. He’s got a good review over on his site–between the two of us, you ought to know if it’s up your alley.

Relatedly, Evelyn Rodriguez has a post about "wild mind", into which I read a whole lot of the same kind self-deception stuff. She quotes from a book called Wild Mind, which sounds like a worthy read to me. Though her post is about writing, it’s not about writing, and her last paragraph is a classic!

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