Self-Deception

How do people continue to live with themselves while they are engaging in a course of conduct that is obviously (from an objective point of view, anyway) destructive to themselves and/or others? We are all capable of compartmentalizing, and of deceiving ourselves in shocking ways, and sometimes with tragic results. There's a nice article today in the Huffington Post, by Tony Schwartz, that discusses this question. I love his responses. Here's an excerpt:

Each of us shares an infinite capacity for self-deception. What we fail to see - or willfully resist seeing - runs us, outside our awareness. What we're willing to see, however painful it may be, we have the potential to influence.

I've been mulling over this paradox the last few days in thinking about the economic crisis we're in and the stories that some of its most egregious players had to tell themselves to rationalize the choices they were making.

What explanation did Bernie Madoff come up with to justify systematically defrauding thousands of clients, including friends and philanthropies, out of billions of dollars over many decades?

What I believe they were missing, above all, were active inner lives. The antidote to self-deception is self-awareness. Among the thousands of senior corporate executives I've met and worked with over the years, no single quality is more conspicuously absent, or less actively valued.

Introspection is a word you'll almost never hear inside a modern corporation. The strong leader doesn't hesitate, or waver, or question his motives. Suffering over a decision, expressing self-doubt, acknowledging uncertainty, and above all, truly stepping up to responsibility for a mistake or a misjudgment - all of these are viewed as potential signs of softness and self-indulgence, weakness and vulnerability. They're behaviors to be avoided at nearly any cost.

For most corporate executives I've met, the inner life is terra incognita - a vast, unexplored territory they scarcely recognize and assiduously avoid...

People's inner and outer worlds remain largely disconnected - and especially so in corporate life. Fear of the unknown - of looking at the unvarnished truth -- is a much more powerful force in the lives of leaders than most of them consciously recognize.

Rather than seeking to grow, see more deeply, break past their own barriers and enlarge their worlds, too many leaders instead use their potent minds to rationalize, justify, minimize and disclaim responsibility for the dysfunctional, self-serving and expedient choices they make.

Allergic to uncertainty, ambiguity and nuance, they choose up sides, come to conclusions prematurely and view the world in reductionistic terms: black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, now or never. In the process, they narrow their vision and limit their options.

Self awareness - the capacity for objective self observation - is a way for leaders to recognize their limitations, fuel their humility and make choices reflectively rather than reactively. Cultivating an inner life also makes it possible to grapple with what they believe in and stand for, and make decisions from the inside out, rather than expediently, to drive the next quarter's earnings.

Companies are only as evolved as the leaders who run them, and the people who work for them. What got us here won't get us where we need to go. Incremental change isn't going to be sufficient, given the enormous challenges we face.

What we need instead is an evolutionary leap. It isn't going to come from a technological breakthrough, or new insights about operational efficiency, or a different system for managing people. It will happen when leaders have the courage to connect their inner lives to their outer behaviors and begin to hold themselves accountable for the impact of their decisions, not just on their companies, but on the greater good over the long term.