Self-deception is the most debilitating of organizational issues. This is because problems can’t be solved if the people responsible for the problems remain resistant to the possibility that they may need to change.
We share an example of this issue in our book The Outward Mindset, an exploration of multiple case studies that illustrate how to turn teams and organizations outward. The story is particularly relevant as it is about the man who was the inspiration for Lou in Leadership and Self-Deception. His name was Jack Hauck.
Jack was the founder and longtime CEO of a company called Tubular Steel, a Saint Louis–based national distributor of steel and carbon products. Years ago, Jack had engaged one of the world’s best-known consultants to help Tubular overcome the toxic infighting that plagued the senior management team and stymied the growth of the entire company. After months of trying one approach after another without success, Jack asked this consultant if he knew of any other approach the company could try. The consultant was acquainted with Arbinger’s work and recommended that Jack explore our ideas.
During our first meeting with Jack and his team, we focused on helping each executive team member reassess their contribution to the challenges the company faced by carefully considering the following statement: As far as I am concerned, the problem is me.
Jack was eager to solve his company’s problems, and he saw real promise in this approach. However, he remained blind to how he was failing to apply our work to himself. At the end of the first day with his team, feeling energized by the headway he thought they were making, he stood up to reaffirm his commitment to the effort. “I want you all to get the message,” he said. “I’m going to have posters made and put up all over the building.” Then, pointing his finger at the assembled executives and officers, he said, “Don’t forget: as far as you are concerned, the problem is you!”
You can imagine the reaction of his team members. In the very moment Jack thought he had gotten the point, he had completely missed it. This blindness to personal responsibility is the problem of self-deception. Gradually, Jack overcame this blindness and began to see more clearly. As a result, his company completely turned around, even in the face of a difficult economy in which the market for its products was collapsing. Over a three-year period, the market size for Tubular Steel’s products shrunk from ten million tons to six million tons, but the company tripled its revenue over that same period. Tubular Steel was able to achieve this growth only because the team members were able to evaluate, quantify, and address the problem of self-deception that had been holding them back.
Arbinger Research about How to Assess Self-Deception
Our research has revealed a way to assess the level of self-deception in an organization. Participants in our workshops anonymously rate their own and their organizations’ mindsets on a continuum from 0 to 10—from entirely inward to entirely outward. Interestingly, on average, people rate themselves much higher on this continuum—that is, as much more outward—than they rate their organizations. As you might expect, this result surprises no one. People nearly universally expect that they and others will rate themselves more highly than they will rate their organization. Why is this so universal? How is it that, almost without exception, every single employee of an organization believes that they are personally more outward than the collective of employees that make up the organization as a whole?
The math, of course, doesn’t work. A company that truly deserves a rating of 4 out of 10 on the mindset continuum, for example, can’t be populated by people who, on average, rate themselves at an 8 on the same continuum. The difference between how we rate ourselves and how we rate others is what we call the self-deception gap. Self-deception is what explains this often overinflated view of ourselves relative to others.
Our research shows that people intuitively know of the problem of self-deception. They know of it not primarily because they recognize it in themselves but because they observe in others the tendency to overinflate performance relative to results, and they observe how people explain this difference by blaming others for problems rather than taking responsibility. An interesting aspect of self-deception is that people who observe and recognize these behaviors in others are no less likely to engage in the same problematic, counterproductive behaviors themselves. However, they believe their own self-assessments are more accurate than the overinflated, self-congratulatory assessments of their peers. Just like Jack Hauck at Tubular Steel (or Lou Herbert), they see the problem—they just don’t see it in themselves.
Measuring the Self-Deception Gap
This nearly universal self-deception gap is reaffirmed in formal assessments we administer within our client organizations. A survey instrument called the Arbinger Mindset Assessment measures in a detailed way where respondents rate the mindset operative throughout their organization and where they rate their own.
The mindset assessment asks questions that measure characteristics such as awareness, helpfulness, accountability, alignment, collaboration, self-correction, coordination, inclusivity, generosity, transparency, focus on results, openness, appreciation, recognition, empowerment, initiative, engagement, and psychological safety. Looking at these various elements and averaging results across industries, we have found that people rate their colleagues in their organizations at an average of 4.6 on the continuum, whereas they rate themselves on average at 6.8. In other words, individuals rate themselves 40 percent better than the rest of the people in their organizations relative to these characteristics.
The self-deception gap between respondents’ self-views as compared to their views of others narrows with respect to one of the characteristics in the mindset assessment. In our experience, this characteristic is the single biggest indicator of mindset in an organization. We call this characteristic horizontal alignment, which is a measure of the extent to which people understand the objectives, needs, and challenges of those lateral to them in their organizations.
The reason why horizontal alignment is such a helpful indicator of mindset is that a hyperactive self-interest—which is what drives someone who is inward—doesn’t incentivize a person to build awareness about the objectives, needs, and challenges of their lateral coworkers. Self-interest may well drive someone to learn about the objectives, needs, and challenges of their boss, but an inward mindset won’t invite the same effort toward people situated horizontally from oneself in an organization. From the perspective of an inward mindset, that kind of effort doesn’t seem to be relevant as it seems unlikely to make much of a personal difference. The inward-mindset perspective is wrong on both counts, but the blindness perpetuated by that mindset obscures reality.
Interestingly, people rate their own and their organizations’ horizontal alignment lower than any other characteristic in the assessment, regardless of organizational size, sector, or industry. Accordingly, efforts to increase horizontal awareness within and across teams is a key step in eliminating self-deception. To this end, Arbinger equips leaders with practical tools to help them increase the horizontal awareness and alignment that is key to collaboration and reduce the competing objectives and silos that undermine accountability and organizational results.
Accessing and Using Arbinger’s Mindset Assessment
The Arbinger Mindset Assessment is available for your use. It is a twenty-question instrument that takes less than five minutes to complete. You will receive an automated analysis of your individual and organization’s mindsets based on your answers. You may take the assessment free of charge at arbinger.com/assessments.
If you wish to get data on a team, department, or entire organization, Arbinger can grant you access to the group-level instrument, which will yield a group-level assessment that includes, among other data points, a measure of the self-deception gap in the organization. Contact Arbinger to set up a group-level assessment and access the transparency required to enable real change.