Nothing Personal — It’s Just Business
Thanks for giving me a few minutes to share a couple of thoughts about leadership and taking care of business. I found an interesting book that has some ideas worth consideration. In Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box, produced by the Arbinger Institute and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers in 2002, I discovered what I think is an important truth for everyone but especially for leaders. It starts with a simple but rather strange proposition. Self-deception determines my experience in every aspect of life. There you go. Let me share it again. I don't know for sure about you but I personally find the assertion very strange. Self-deception determines my experience in every aspect of life. Okay, I'll move on. The arguement works like this. 1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is an act of "self-betrayal." 2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. 3. When I see a self-justifying world, my view of reality becomes distorted. 4. When I betray myself, I enter the box. 5. Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me. 6. By being in the box, I provoke others to be in the box with me. 7. In the box, we invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. We collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box. It might seem that if others are also in the box, my being in the box may not be all that big of a deal. It's a state I can easily justify or at least rationalize, since everyone is doing it. So what doesn't work in the box? Why do I need to get out and stay out? 1. While I am in the box, there is little hope that others will change their behavior, attitudes or perceptions of me and of their world. I am and remain their justification for maintaining the status quo. I am the everyone in everyone is doing it. 2. In the box, doing my best to "cope" with others is limited by my perspective. I do things and behave in ways that are contrary to what I feel I should do. It doesn't feel right but I think I have no real choice, no reasonable alternative. It's nothing personal, it's just business. It's a dog eat dog world, either I get the bear or the bear gets me, that's just how it goes. 3. Leaving the box is not an option, or at least that's the way it seems to me. Sure, I could get out of the box but I definitely don't want to be out there by myself. Unless everyone is leaving the box or nearly everyone is leaving, I will just stay in the box where it is safe, even though it does not feel quite right to me. It's just business. 4. I know that in theary we could all sit down and talk this over but that is certainly not going to happen. Communicating about how we feel and what would be the right thing to do is just not how to take care of business. As I said, it's business and talking about feelings, personal values and what we truly believe is just not how business is done. What would people think about me if I started talking about all that warm and fuzzy stuff? It's for sure I'm not interested in finding out. 5. Even if I thought climbing out of the box was a good idea, and I don't, I would need a whole new skill set. I am a business person and not the warm and fuzzy type. I have to focus on getting the job done and not on all that touchy feely stuff. I don't have either the time or interest it would take for implementing those new skills and techniques. It's just not me. 6. Changing my behavior is not something that is either needed or wanted by me or by those I do business with. We are all comfortable in the box or perhaps only think we are comfortable in there. My point is that it doesn't matter either way. It's how business is done and everyone is doing it. There is not much point in thinking about getting out of the box anyway. I have been in there so long that I don't think I could get out if I wanted to. I don't have a clue about how I would even start.