Depressive or Delusive: Which is best in leadership?

Submitted by PhilDourado on January 16, 2008 - 1:31pm.

Colin posted a book review on leadership and self-deception in the Hub Book Club and said it provoked the most changed behaviour out of all the books his leadership group at Black & Decker had read and discussed.

That prompted me to dig out this from my notes - it's something Marcus Buckingham said at Leaders in London a couple of months ago - and to ask for your comments to help me clarify my own thinking. Complete honesty or a touch of positive self-delusion? Which works best in leadership? My instinct is always the former, but Buckingham said this:

"Some people are deluded about what they are best at. But delusion doesn’t matter (up to a point). If you think you are best at something, it improves your performance. In 360 assessments, there is one group that is the most accurate about assessing their own performance versus how other people assess them. And that’s depressives. The most highly productive people, by contrast, are slightly positively deluded about how good they are. So, self-awareness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be." *

Marcus Buckingham, speaking at Leaders in London 2007.

Shame, because part of my schtick about the problems with leadership is that leaders don't 'confront reality' enough (as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan put it). According to Buckingham, it's not as simple as that. I still think there are more downsides than upsides with self-delusion. And that managers and leaders being deluded about their own performance causes a dissonance between them and their colleagues and their customers that outweighs the boost to their own performance that a slight blindness to their own deficiencies might create.

What's the most powerful force in the Universe? Denial.

*That's my paraphrasing based on my shorthand notes, rather than a direct quote from Buckingham.

So, do please help me out by posting your own thoughts on this to help me clarify mine (and hopefully your own?). Thank you. Phil .

The Hub Tag Cloud: transparency, self-deception, Marcus Buckingham, integrity, honesty, denial

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depression or self delusion

By Denise VanEck on January 16, 2008 - 1:57pm

Oh, this is so interesting... I just did a talk on self awareness over the weekend. Like you, Colin, I pushed for the leaders in the room to grow in self awareness in pursuit of authenticity. I had really forgotten about this aspect of the self awareness journey. The question it raises for me is - is it possible to be both realistic in your awareness of self and slightly deluded? In my leadership coaching, I often tell leaders "get clear in your mind who you want to be and what you want to do... then live as if it is true." Could this be a both/and? Can leaders have startling clarity on themselves and also live as if they are a bit better than that in pursuit of the day that they really are? To me, this is a bit different than the narcissistic delusion that we so often see. Interesting stuff to chew on...

Aspirational Realist

By Kate Moor on January 17, 2008 - 9:45am

Phil,

What a complex and riveting question. I am a supporter of total honesty. To ‘think’ (delude) oneself that you are the best at something when you are not is to be in denial and in my view doesn’t improve performance. As leaders we shouldn’t kid ourselves that others don’t notice either. The down-sides are significant.

On the other hand to have an aspiration to be the best at something, and more importantly to visualize yourself as already achieving this is a positive attribute in building your performance. This is very different to delusive behaviour.

Kate

Clarification

By Colin Scowen on January 19, 2008 - 7:36pm

The self deception that the book describes is not a self centred deception, it is, for want of a better way of putting it, a 'everyone else centred deception'. And by everyone, I really do mean everyone. It starts from choice. The example that springs to mind is when a newborn babe wakes in the night. Mother and father are woken by the babe. Mother has had long days and nights with the child, and the father knows this. The father has come home from work, tired and stressed. The choice the father has is either to get up, comfort the babe, and then go back to sleep, or ignore the babe, pretend to still be asleep himself and let the mother comfort the babe. This choice sets up the behaviour patterns that follow.

If the father chooses to pretend to sleep, then thoughts like 'well, she's the mother, it's her job' and 'she doesn't realise how much I need to sleep' start to creep in, and then the bad nights sleep that they will get is, in the fathers eyes, the fault of the mother. He will behave at breakfast as if she did something wrong by not responding quickly enough to the babe, so that the crying disturbed his sleep.

If the father chooses to get up and comfort the babe, then those negative thoughts, that blaming, will not come. It may be that the baby can't reach it's drink, or has been scared by the cat chasing a mouse. A little comfort from father will put the babe back to sleep, will give mother a positive feeling towards the father for helping out. It will also, and this is the important bit, mean that when they get up in the morning, they will get on better.

Another example.

You are on a flight, there are a few spaces left, you get a seat with a vacant seat next to you. You put your briefcase on the seat, open your newspaper wide, and try to make it appear that if anyone sits next to you, it will be a most unpleasant place to sit. You are in effect making your needs more important than the needs of everyone else on the plane.

On the return flight, similar situation, but a married couple with a young child have been seated seperately. A man from the back of the plane stands up, briefcase and newspaper in hand, and offers his seat, so that there are three seats together in a row.

The difference. You are treating people as objects, whose needs are less than your own, while the other man is chooses to see three people with a problem, and chooses (IMPORTANT WORD THAT) to help.

The hard part for me, you, and everyone else is, how to sustain that thinking of people equally, how to recognise the choices that you are making and how they will affect your behaviour.

I have tried this at work, and at home, and it makes a difference.

Colin.

And now, clarification needed

By Colin Scowen on January 19, 2008 - 9:22pm

Phil,

my previous comment wasn't directly connected to your question, for which I apologise. So, I re-read the comments and have this.

I wasn't there, so maybe this was asked and answered, maybe not. But, how were these people characterised as depressive's. Were they asked as part of the assesment, or was it part of the 360 feedback? Or was it an observation by the researcher? And if asked afterwards, whether they feel that they have over egged it a bit, do they say yes, or no? (How do you think Gandhi would have been categorised?) Could depressive have been mistaken for modest?

Leaders don't confront reality enough. Which reality? Where? Internal reality, 'of who you are', 'what you are good at' etc, or external reality, 'moose on the table' , 'that problem is something that I REALLY feel needs to be fixed'. Maybe understanding the context of that statement would help a bit. I am assuming that most people will say both, I do as well, but I just want people to think about it before they answer.

Last one. How was productivity measured. Results only, or with feedback about style, or from the size of the projects, or from the size of the team etc?

In our group there are a couple of people who I would consider not to be positively deluded. (Depressive is not a word I like, it is too open to misunderstanding). They and I can see in their behaviour, that when something doesn't go right, they retreat back into themselves, put up a few barriers, and have to take a period of reflection to sort out the next steps. There are others whose reaction is different. They will try to find out straight away why something didn't work, then try again. When I see them doing this, and talk to them about it, they are very passionate. When something does go right, one is more in the background, just letting the fact that it has gone right shine through, the other is out in front saying 'we all did this'.

I think it is our perception of the two different types of behaviour that makes a difference. To see/hear someone saying 'we' drives our confidence in their leadership more. This confidence in their leadership may well make us more productive followers, thus adding to the productivity as a whole.

Taking two of our group as an example. One comes across as colder, more distant, the other as more persistent and driven. Since I know their MBTI's, I will tell you that they are both ESJ, one is a T, one is an F. One is from the UK, one is from Eastern Europe. Both are young, one has been with the company for about twice as long as the other. One worked his way up from the shop floor, one came in from Uni. Think about it, group those, and tell me which one you think is positively deluded.

Colin