This book, written by the Arbinger Institute, has the potential to change the way we think, behave, and live our lives, both at home and in the workplace. It revolves around the crucial problem of human nature: self-deception. In psychology, self-deception refers to the mental process through which the subject deceives himself without realising it, ignoring the negative aspects of any given situation, and replacing them with positive ones.
The authors believe that this psychological mechanism is the reason for almost all conflicts in life, and that it is also closely related to the lack of productivity that many people experience. For this reason, the concept is also extremely relevant in the world of work, business, and leadership.
People tend not to be aware of this problem when they are experiencing it, and that is why the authors define this situation as being “in-the-box”. This expression should not be confused with other forms of limiting thoughts or behaviours, in this case, it simply refers to being or not being in a situation of self-deception.
To explain this better, we can look at an example from the very early stages of our life.
Let's imagine a baby girl who is learning to crawl. She begins by pushing herself backwards around the house. Backing herself around, she gets lodged beneath the furniture. There she thrashes about – crying and banging her head against the sides and undersides of the furniture. She is stuck and she hates it. So, she does the only thing she can think of to get herself out – she pushes even harder, which only makes things worse; she is more stuck than ever.
If this infant could talk, she would blame the furniture for her troubles. After all, she is doing everything she can think of. The problem couldn’t be hers. But of course, the problem is hers, even though she can’t see it. While it’s true she’s doing everything she can think of, the problem is precisely that she can’t see how she’s the problem.
This is how we end up in-the-box of self-deception. It blinds us to the real cause of the problem, and, once we are blind, any action we take to resolve the situation will be ineffective, because it is misdirected. Often, we end up aggravating it further. This is why self-deception has an enormous influence over our leadership: because being a leader means knowing how to lead and improve the state of things. How can we possibly expect to make someone or something better if we are not even able to get a clear view of the situation we are dealing with?
People get stuck when they have problems they can't see, precisely because if they can't see them, they don't even know they have them. They mistakenly believe that the causes of a particular situation are external, that problems are generated by others, when they should instead look at themselves to see what they did to create the situation before them.
