“I was trapped inward at home and at work,” Lou continued. “When we took Cory to treatment, the parents were all required to attend a meeting. I assumed it would be to brief us on how they were going to fix our kids. Instead, it taught me some of what you have learned here.
“Although,” Lou chuckled, “I fought it tooth and nail. I couldn’t be the one with a problem! I owned a company. I had my act together! But eventually, with the help of some remarkable people, I started to see more clearly.
“And I didn’t like what I saw: a leader who was so sure of his own brilliance that he micromanaged and suffocated the brilliance in others; a husband who took his wife entirely for granted; a father”—Lou’s voice broke—“a father so unyielding and disapproving that he couldn’t see how much his sensitive, creative, beautiful boy yearned for his approval.”
“It was one of the most painful and hopeful experiences of my life. Because recognizing my contributions meant that I could finally change things.”
“When you lay it all out like that,” Tom said, gesturing to the collusion diagram, “it seems so obvious. But I’m still having a hard time understanding why things get so tangled up. I know it happens—I told Theo and Ana yesterday about an old supervisor I wanted to see fail, even though it hurt my own team’s project—but what keeps us so fixated on justification when it only makes things worse? It doesn’t make sense!”
“You’re right, Tom,” Theo said. “It really doesn’t make sense, not from a more clear-sighted perspective. It’s like trying to make sense of a nightmare after you wake up. It’s only within the distortion that the falsehoods appear convincing.”
“What do you think?” Lou asked. “Why do we put so much of our energy and effort into justification, even when it drives collusion? Even when it doesn’t get us anywhere helpful?”
“I think,” Ana said, “that sometimes we’re just afraid.”
“Say more,” Lou encouraged.
“I mean, it can be scary to own up to what you’ve done—when you knew what you should do and you didn’t. Maybe we’re afraid that our self-betrayal defines us—that it means we’re bad or petty or selfish or incapable.”
“Or maybe even afraid that other people will find out, and we’ll be punished or rejected or lose their respect and admiration,” Tom said.
“Great insights,” Theo said. “When we betray ourselves, fear can drive us inward, motivating us to find justification within a falsehood.
“But the fear is an illusion too. It’s a result of being inwardly focused. It keeps us from accepting responsibility and admitting our mistakes, even though those are the very actions that build trust and move us forward. It is a cruel irony that when we let an inward mindset and fear guide us, we end up pushing people away and creating the very realities we’re most afraid of.”
“I didn’t want my son to get into trouble or to distance himself from us,” Lou said. “But the cloud of my disapproval and distrust certainly didn’t make him want to spend time at home. And I didn’t want my leadership team to fight each decision or quit, but who would want to stay somewhere they were micromanaged and criticized? My inward mindset fed collusion and caused endless problems.”
“When we’re inward,” Theo said, “we blame and accuse others with our thoughts, words, behaviors, and even our emotions. And all of it can fuel the deception.”
“Will you say more about the emotions part?” Ana asked. “Words and behaviors—even thoughts—all seem like things we can choose, at least to some degree. But emotions seem like a different category to me.”
“Emotion is connected to perception,” Lou replied. “We are afraid when we perceive danger, angry when we perceive an injustice, resentful when we perceive mistreatment, right?”
“That makes sense,” Ana said.
“But because self-deception is itself a problem of perception, our feelings can reflect and deepen the fantasy.”
“For example, Ana,” Theo said, “imagine you had some delay on the way to work this morning, but your cell phone died, and you somehow couldn’t get ahold of us. After a while, Tom and I would see that you were late. Your absence would be a fact; the interpretation, of course, is not. Ideally, we’d both feel concern, assuming that you had a good reason and hoping you are okay.
“But if we’re inward, the way we interpret these facts will be drastically different. For example, if I was seeing myself as worse than others, I might feel insecure, thinking you didn’t show because I blew it yesterday. Tom, on the other hand, might have more of a better-than self-image and feel superior, happy to be seen as the more reliable new manager. Whatever emotions we felt, they wouldn’t actually be based on the facts of the situation.
“The feelings would be reflections of the distorted views of ourselves and others that we brought to the situation. I would experience your behavior as threatening to my image as a good facilitator, and Tom would experience it as a boost to his self-image as the most committed manager. Of course, both of these are interpretations that have more to do with us than with you, and they might be completely disconnected from reality. The different emotions he and I experienced would be very real but not a reliable guide to the truth of what was really happening.”
“So rather than believing that our emotions say something objectively true about reality,” Lou added, “it can be much more productive to recognize that our emotions say something true about our perception of reality.
“This is a critical distinction because understanding this difference enables us to acknowledge a feeling without allowing our knee-jerk emotional responses to assert themselves as the whole story.”
“Instead of drawing an immediate conclusion like ‘I’m angry because you made me angry,’” Theo offered, “a more honest reaction might be ‘I’m angry because I think you meant to embarrass me’ or ‘I’m angry because I think you’re blocking what I want.’”
“In that first interpretation,” Lou noted, “there’s nothing to be done. The other person has all the power. But in the other ones, I have space to question and explore. Did the person actually intend to embarrass me? Or was I reacting defensively about some aspect of my self-image that was threatened? Why do I think they were trying to make my life harder? And, maybe most importantly, do I want to be angry? Why am I choosing this?
“When we fail to take responsibility for our emotions, it’s often because we don’t question or take responsibility for our perception. Does that help, Ana?”
She nodded, jotting down some notes.
“When we pay attention to our emotions this way—as indicators of our perception instead of proof that someone else is blameworthy—they can help us realize we’re being inward. Impatience, entitlement, disdain, and similar emotions can suggest that we’re seeing ourselves as better than others, while envy, anxiety, or resignation can indicate that we’re seeing ourselves as worse than others.”
“I knew emotions couldn’t be trusted,” Tom said.
“That’s not exactly what we…” But then, Theo saw Tom’s smirk and chuckled.
“Oh man,” Ana sighed. “I’ve been in a collusion without even realizing it.”
“Tell us more,” Theo invited.
“There’s someone on my team I’ve been unimpressed with since I got here,” Ana said. “I felt like she was lazy and disengaged. And she’d come up in multiple conversations with other team members, so I knew that I wasn’t the only one who saw her as a problem.
“But I didn’t want to bring anything up with her directly. There’s been plenty going on with the merger, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. But I’d been getting more and more annoyed with her.
“Last week, we had a meeting with the entire sales team, and I asked her to present on the project she had been working on. This is ugly to admit, but I think I wanted her shortcomings to be shown publicly so I wouldn’t feel bad about letting her go.
“But she did a phenomenal job presenting, and the presentation itself was excellent. I mean, first class. I should’ve felt relieved or excited to see her shine because her role is important. But instead, I felt…,” Ana paused, “embarrassed? Even suspicious. Like I wondered if someone else prepared the presentation for her.”
“So why are you seeing it as a collusion, Ana?” Theo asked.
“Well, I thought she was disengaged, and part of me knew that I needed to have a conversation about expectations and get on the same page. But I didn’t. And I’m seeing now that by avoiding that conversation, I was provoking her to disengage more. I even stopped inviting her to some meetings that she should’ve been in, given her role. I was mad at her for being disengaged while at the same time preventing her from participating. Seems pretty obvious that I’ve been driving the dynamic I was complaining about. I didn’t want to be mean or confrontational, which is why I didn’t talk to her. Now I see that I was just protecting an image I cared about rather than caring about her.”
“What would you say that image is?” Theo asked.
“I think I wanted to be seen as a likable manager,” Ana answered.
“That’s an excellent discovery,” Theo said.
“And brave to own up to it,” Lou added. “On the surface, not wanting to be mean or confrontational seems like a positive motivation. But leaders have an obligation to help others improve. Shirking it is neither helpful or kind.”
“Right,” Ana said. “But hard to see any of that when you’re in the middle of it.”
“What do think you should do about it?” Lou asked.
“I’ve got to own it. I can see that.”
“If this employee is here,” Lou said, “would you go take care of that today?”
“Today?” Ana asked, clearly caught off guard.
“No time like the present!” Lou said, smiling.