Druid Magazine

This edition tackles the issue of self-deception and provides methodologies to help people overcome it.

For too long, the issue of self-deception has been the realm of deep-thinking philosophers, academics, and scholars working on the central questions of the human sciences. The public remains generally unaware of the issue. That would be fine except that self-deception is so pervasive it touches every aspect of life. "Touches" is perhaps too gentle a word to describe its influence. Self-deception actually determines one's experience in every aspect of life. The extent to which it does that, and in particular the extent to which it is the central issue in personal and professional leadership, is the subject of this book. Leadership and Self-Deception, first published in the year 2000, became an international bestseller. Launched with no fanfare when Arbinger (and its work) was little known, the book generated tremendous word-of-mouth momentum. Sales of the book continue to grow at an increasing rate even today, and the book continues to appear on bestseller lists around the world, many years after publication. The book is currently available in more than twenty languages.

Explains why self-deception is at the heart of many leadership problems, identifying destructive patterns that undermine the successes of potentially excellent professionals while revealing how to improve teamwork, communication, and motivation. Reprint.

Unknowingly, too many of us operate from an inward mindset—a narrow-minded focus on self-centered goals and objectives. When faced with personal ineffectiveness or lagging organizational performance, most of us instinctively look for quick-fix behavioral band-aids, not recognizing the underlying mindset at the heart of our most persistent challenges. Through true stories and simple yet profound guidance and tools, The Outward Mindset enables individuals and organizations to make the one change that most dramatically improves performance, sparks collaboration, and accelerates innovation—a shift to an outward mindset.

The new edition of an international bestseller helps individuals and organizations shift to a new mindset that will improve performance, spark collaboration, accelerate innovation, and make your life and the lives of everyone around you better. Without even being aware of it, many of us operate from an inward mindset, a single-minded focus on our own goals and objectives. This book points out the many ways, some quite subtle and deceptive, that this mindset invites tension and conflict. But incredible things happen when people switch to an outward mindset. They intuitively understand what coworkers, colleagues, family, and friends need to be successful and happy. Their organizations thrive, and astonishingly, by focusing on others they become happier and more successful themselves! This new mindset brings about deep and far-reaching changes. The Outward Mindset presents compelling true stories to illustrate the gaps that individuals and organizations typically experience between their actual inward mindsets and their needed outward mindsets. And it provides simple yet profound guidance and tools to help bridge this mindset gap. This new edition includes a new preface, updated case studies, and new material covering Arbinger's latest research on mindsets. In the long run, changing negative behavior without changing one's mindset doesn't last—the old behaviors always reassert themselves. But changing the mindset that causes the behavior changes everything.

A penetrating analysis of the dark corners of human deception, enlivened by intriguing case histories and experiments.

This third edition of an international bestseller—over 2 million copies sold worldwide and translated into 33 languages—details how its powerful insights on motivation, conflict, and collaboration can benefit organizations as well as individuals. Since its original publication in 2000, Leadership and Self-Deception has become an international word-of-mouth phenomenon. Rather than tapering off, it sells more copies every year. The book's central insight—that the key to leadership lies not in what we do but in who we are—has proven to have powerful implications not only for organizational leadership but in readers' personal lives as well. Leadership and Self-Deception uses an entertaining story everyone can relate to about a man facing challenges at work and at home to expose the fascinating ways that we blind ourselves to our true motivations and unwittingly sabotage the effectiveness of our own efforts to achieve happiness and increase happiness. We trap ourselves in a “box” of endless self-justification. Most importantly, the book shows us the way out. Readers will discover what millions already have learned—how to consistently tap into and act on their innate sense of what's right, dramatically improving all of their relationships. This third edition includes new research about the self-deception gap in organizations and the keys to closing this gap. The authors offer guidance for how to assess the in-the-box and out-of-the-box mindsets in yourself and in your organization. It also includes a sample of Arbinger's latest bestseller, The Outward Mindset.

From the New York Times best-selling author and host of Hidden Brain comes a thought-provoking look at the role of self-deception in human flourishing. Self-deception does terrible harm to us, to our communities, and to the planet. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? In Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being. The lies we tell ourselves sustain our daily interactions with friends, lovers, and coworkers. They can explain why some people live longer than others, why some couples remain in love and others don’t, why some nations hold together while others splinter. Filled with powerful personal stories and drawing on new insights in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Useful Delusions offers a fascinating tour of what it really means to be human.

Your hard work is paying off. You are doing well in your field. But there is something standing between you and the next level of achievement. That something may just be one of your own annoying habits. Perhaps one small flaw - a behaviour you barely even recognise - is the only thing that's keeping you from where you want to be. It may be that the very characteristic that you believe got you where you are - like the drive to win at all costs - is what's holding you back. As this book explains, people often do well in spite of certain habits rather than because of them - and need a "to stop" list rather than one listing what "to do". Marshall Goldsmith's expertise is in helping global leaders overcome their unconscious annoying habits and become more successful. His one-on-one coaching comes with a six-figure price tag - but in this book you get his great advice for much less. Recently named as one of the world's five most-respected executive coaches by Forbes, he has worked with over 100 major CEOs and their management teams at the world's top businesses. His clients include corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson and Johnson and GE.