Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth, and joining me from Utah, he said, kind of North of Utah is Mitch Warner. And Mitch works at the Arbinger Foundation, or Institute, I should say. And they've had a book out for many years, but it's gone through several different iterations and rewriting, and a new one will come out in spring of this year called Leadership and Self-Deception. Do you have a copy of the book you can hold up or no?

Mitch Warner
Copies are with the publisher, so they'll be printed here in in August and released in the fall of this year.

Greg Voisen
Okay, so Mitch, thank you for being on Inside Personal Growth and spending a few minutes with our listeners to talk about this new edition that's coming out. But Mitch is a bestselling author and Arbinger Managing Partner, background in healthcare and organizational turnaround. He's also the coauthor of Arbor news, latest bestseller, and this was the outward mindset. He writes frequently on practical effects of mindset at the individual and organizational levels, as well as the role of leadership in transforming organizational culture and results. Mitch is an expert on the topics of mindset and the cultural change. Leadership strategy, performance management, organizational turnaround and conflict resolution. He's a sought-after speaker, and as I said, he's a partner. He is a managing partner at the Arbinger Institute. If you want to learn more, we're going to have a link to the blog, and it's going to go to Arbinger, a-r-b-i-n-g-e-r.com, that's arbinger.com there you can learn more about all the programs that the Institute promotes. But today we're going to be talking about their new, revised book, which has been out, as he said, Since when was the original printing of this 2000 2000 Okay, so we're talking 24 years, for a long time. So, it's gone through four different iterations. So if you would tell people a little bit Mitch about the institute, how it works, kind of how it was set up, and what your role is there. I think they'd like to know that. You

Mitch Warner
bet? Yeah, really, the Arbinger Institute is a organization that is dedicated to bringing the self deception issue out in the front for the public, for organizations who are wrestling with it but don't know that they're wrestling with it. I mean, there's massive organizational dysfunction, huge cultural challenges in organizations. And in our research over the last really, 45 years, what we've uncovered is that self deception, this fundamental issue that's beneath behavior, is what's driving that dysfunction. So our work is to work with organizations to help them overcome those challenges, to really bring humanity back into the workplace, and help organizations see what's possible when they do

Greg Voisen
so at the speed of which things are going today, around leadership and all this custom design, and many of These organizations that are custom designing, I know that basically, Marshall Goldsmith speak speaks about this a lot. He's been on the show many times, and as a good friend, you know, we've got to kind of really look at more customization for people in leadership roles. We've got to foster that. Where are, is the Arbinger Institute, with relation to actually kind of progressing that forward, because we are seeing such huge speeds of change, Mitch and people trying to just get a grasp around all the uncertainty.

Mitch Warner
Yeah, you know, it's interesting for me, when I look at what leaders are grappling with, they so often want to find the answers outside of the organization, that there's some, you know, there's some silver bullet, something that they could do behaviorally, that would change what they're accomplishing, and that somebody's innovated around that, and they can bring that in and adopt it. But the problem that I find with that, the problem we find within organizations, is that what's really at the heart of leadership is not some behavior that the leaders put on that's in response to some new challenge. It's actually learning to see the people that are around them, to see the people that they lead as people. People, and to enable those people, to empower them to see those that they're serving as people. All the innovation that needs to happen happens when people see the people that they're serving as people, and they become so curious and alive to their needs, not well, this is what I've been tasked to do from a leader from on high, and so I'm going to do that, and the leaders figured out how everybody's supposed to do all of this stuff. It's that leaders see people as people, and they empower them to see those that they serve as people. And when that happens, those people on the front lines of the work say, you know, there's something we could be doing differently that would be more helpful given all of these changing circumstances of our rapidly evolving environment. What if we did that? And I have the power to do that. That's where the innovation happens that I'm seeing in organizations. It's not because a leader puts on some new behavior that's being directed from some innovation expert. It's that within that organization, they learn how to see people and then become incredibly immediately responsive and feel empowered to do that. That's where we're seeing the most powerful innovation happening.

Greg Voisen
Well, so Laura is, you know, and you're, you're leading to, or talking about, you know, this high level of emotional intelligence, to be empathic, to have a high level of understanding and to communicate better with people, communicate with compassion and understanding, while at the same time making some hard decisions. As a leader, you've got to do both. You know, there's it's a double edged sword. How would you define self deception, and why is it such a pervasive issue in leadership and in organizations today. I mean, obviously you guys wrote this book originally 2020 here we are, 24 years later, and it's still the same problem.

Mitch Warner
Yeah. Well, look, self deception is really just the problem of having a problem and not knowing that I have a problem and resisting that fact. I mean, you can think about the people in your life who have challenges and create challenges for other people, and if that were the only problem, all you'd have to do is tell them, hey, you're creating a problem in this way for others. But that's not how it goes. You know, people are so resistant to the possibility that they are even part of the problem that they're experiencing. And that's really self deception. It's becoming blind to the the reality that exists around me, of which I'm a massive contributor. And so this distortion, this this self deception, is is the problem of having a problem, not knowing I'm that problem, and fundamentally resisting that fact. And you see that showing up also all sorts of places and organizations,

Greg Voisen
almost like they're blinded by it, right? Or they're not in touch with it. They're not seeing it. So, you know, I think for our listeners, it might be good for you to look at the self deception and share kind of a real life example of self deception from the book and how it impacts an organization, because one of the ways everybody learns is by examples and by stories. So the more stories we can tell, the greater that is an opportunity for my listeners to learn. Do you have a good one from the book that you'd like to talk about?

Mitch Warner
Oh sure, well, you know, Greg, we actually wrote the book in a narrative form, a fictional narrative, because we felt like it'd be easier for people to see themselves in the book if we wrote it in the story form. But then within the book, there's lots of different vignettes that we pulled from our clients and a number that we pulled from ourselves. In fact, one of the stories that we included in this last edition was an experience that was happening inside our own organization, and between sales and marketing, we have, you know, these two powerful organizations, sales and marketing, that were in the middle of what was really a pretty a pretty nasty conflict. And the reality was, when you think about self deception, neither group could see fully how they were contributing to the problem. They had all the excuses in the world as to why they couldn't do their work based on the work of the other right? So I can see exactly how marketing is a problem from the sales perspective, and from the sales perspective, I can see exactly how marketing is a problem, but I can't see how I'm actually contributing to that or even provoking it. What we discovered internally is that what was happening was what we call a collusion. A collusion isn't just a conflict where both sides are stuck in self deception and can't see how they're contributing to it. A collusion is actually a dynamic in which both parties are provoking the other party to be blameworthy. Because if I choose to see you as less than a person, I'm actually never okay with that. So I have to provoke you to engage in the very behavior I say I don't. Like because at least then I'm justified in having chosen to see you as less than a person, as a problem. And we saw that internally. And the two leaders of those teams realized that what we talk about all the time, what we help organizations uncover, was happening right here in our organization, between those two teams. And you see that all the time, sales and marketing. See it between sales and finance. You see it all over the place, doctors and nurses, these departmental team by team, collusions. And what was fascinating was that we just applied our own work that we help organizations apply to ourselves. And we said, Okay, well, what's happening here is this the full truth? What we've these narratives that we've been developing about each other now, they're not the full truth. In fact, if, if we really see the other side as people, we could start to get curious about, what are their needs, what are their challenges, what are their objectives? How are we getting in the way of that? How are we making that harder? And when you become curious like that. When you regain a sense of each other's humanity, all of those problems just go away, and the collaboration transforms. And so we actually in the middle of writing that fourth edition, seeing that happening internally, we said, we gotta just be really straightforward about putting that in the book. That's a very clear example that I think people see inside their own organizations all the time.

Greg Voisen
I think the psychology that is really something to kind of investigate, because, you know, as social media has prevailed the, I'm going to just say the divide in this country about what we think about other people and their opinions. I mean, I'm using this example, but this is a great example, even in the workplace, right? It it's like, Okay, I've got a different generation that thinks a little bit differently. I'm coming from a certain spot all of these things, versus seeing people that you've said now, like probably 15 or 20 times, and seeing the person as another person, right? Really having some level of compassion and empathy. And I think it's the Dalai Lama who said this, and he always laughs all the time. He says, The only thing that's going to save this place is compassion and the compassion for the other souls. So what are some of the common ways self deception affects a person's professional and personal relationships, according to the research that you've done at Arbinger Institute, because there is truly a huge impact, not only professionally, but personally.

Mitch Warner
Oh, yeah, it it doesn't matter what, what the context of a relationship is, whether that's happening in your home, whether that's happening in work, the dynamic is the same. It's just the particulars are different and and self deception destroys relationships in every context. You know that dynamic we were just talking about collusion. If I've chosen to see the people around me as less than people, they sense that they'll respond to that apart from any behavior that I might be engaging in on the surface, and and, and I will end up provoking those very behaviors I say I don't like I won't be able to see it. That's the problem of self deception. I will, I will systematically blind myself to all evidence that would refute this caricature of the other person that I've created in my head. And so will they. And I'll go on the lookout for evidence that confirms that this person is not worthy of my regard. This person is not worthy to be seen as a person. And what you said, Greg, is interesting. We'll often use labels as a very quick shorthand to find whole swaths of excuses as to why this person isn't fully in person. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
well, if you would, and this is, wasn't one of our Pat questions, but it always pops up for me when we're talking about personal development, which is what this is. You know, everybody has an ego, and everybody runs around with a set of beliefs, and those particular beliefs frequently get in the way of having a meaningful conversation about the truth. And so when you keep saying self deception, we speak about the truth. What is the truth? So is my truth Your truth. Is their truth, my truth, if you would address that issue because, look, the ego beliefs, whatever you want to refer to, it is, but it is true. Beliefs can change, but when somebody stands very firmly on a belief and won't get off of the pedestal, it has. Has this effect to repulse the other person, right, meaning that they're going to go further away. They're going to have less opportunity to interact with you. They're not going to want to do that. What would you say about that? I know it wasn't one of our Pat questions here, but obviously this material is material. It's real deep and very rich,

Mitch Warner
Greg, would you just indulge me in just playing out a quick hypothetical? Because I think we can talk in the abstract, and that's not as helpful as if we talk about, like, how this really carries out. Sure. Okay, so imagine you and I work together, okay, and, and let's say that I come across a piece of information that I know would be really helpful to you. Well, if I'm seeing you as a person, which is, I think the fundamental truth that matters most is that you are a person who matters as much as I'm at but let's say that I come across a piece of information, and if I'm seeing you as a person, if I'm alive to that truth, then I'll just have a sense. Oh, go share the information with Greg, and I'll go do that, and then I'll continue on my work, and we'll be still focused on results. But let's say I don't, let's say I choose not to share that information with you. What happens all of a sudden, I begin to see you and myself in a totally different way. I might see you as lazy, because, you know, if you were doing your work, you'd come across this information anyway. I might find you as see you as needy. I might see you as a problem that only one of us can get the promotion that's coming up, right? And how would I see myself? Well, I'm hard working, I'm smart, you know, I clearly was doing my work. That's why I came across this information. And I'm a victim in all of this, because now I have to wrestle with whether I give you this information. Notice what just happened to my world. And you talk about this abstract idea of the truth, the reality is the truth that I started with was that you're a person, you matter like I matter. And because I was grounded in that truth, I just had a sense to give you the information, share it with you. The moment I choose not to do that, to betray my own sense of what you as a person deserve for me, then I have to create an entire world that is untrue, that is distorted, and who created that me, you don't even know that is going on, Greg, that's why we call it self deception. It's it. It's a distortion of my own creation. And yet I believe it, and everything in my life tells me that that's true, that distortion, all my feelings, all my emotions, can't be trusted anymore. You know the way I feel about you, the way I see you. Now, you know how I talk to other people about you, and it doesn't end there in my relationship with you, Greg. Now you know being so hard, working, so smart, so capable. You know, a victim in all of this. Do you think I'm just gonna put that view of myself down when I walk into another circumstance? No, I'm gonna that now becomes characteristic of me, and I'll engage with the whole world through the lens of this distorted view of me and everybody else I see in relation to that distorted view of me. I walk into a meeting and I'd say, Yeah, I'm super focused on results. I care about just having the best idea. No, I don't. I now care about making sure that that image of myself, that's a distortion, that's not the truth, is preserved. And if you, if you support that great we're friends. If you threaten that, because you now have a great idea that's not okay. You know what I mean?

Greg Voisen
So Well, the first thing that happened by you withholding the information that you didn't share from me created this false sense of reality for you, but at the same time, it was not a place where you moved into collaboration, you moved into competition. And so the reality is, is it became about you, not about us, right? It's either we or I, right. And I think when you start to remove the i from most of this conversation, you now start to talk about we, and if it is in the best interest of we, it's in the best interest of we as a team, as a company, as whatever it is that we're moving in, because we need to move together. I do know that there's challenges in that, and so I'm going to ask you a question, what strategies do you recommend for leaders today to overcome this self deception and improve their leadership effectiveness? Now you could easily say, Well, you hit the nail on the head. It's about cooperation and not competition. It's about seeing the other points person's point of view. But I think there's something even deeper.

Mitch Warner
Yeah. I mean, look, it doesn't help anyone who's stuck in self deception to say, hey, being. Collaborative that doesn't help. Because all the reason in the world why collaboration is not only hard, it's impossible with someone that I don't see as a person. So in our experience, rather than just say, well, you're behaving in a competitive way, behave in a more collaborative way that doesn't help. You've got to actually remove the blame. And so I'd say, first of all, be on the lookout for blame for excuse making. That's that's a really clear telltale sign that that there's self deception that's going on in an organization. But I'd say, as a leader, the strategy to overcome that is to get really curious. To just get really curious. Who are the people around me? What are their needs, what are their challenges, what are their objectives? What's life like for them? What's it like for them to work with me as their leader? And if I can get curious about that, then it's not a it's not a self improvement project that keeps me focused on myself, that that bolsters this ego that you're talking about. It's, it's about getting outside of myself. That's the key strategy. Is, who are these people around? What are their challenges? What's their reality? And now my leadership is in response to them, rather than just, you know, adopting some behavioral prescription or trying to get other people to adopt some new behavior that they're not engaging. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Greg Voisen
Well, I think curiosity. You know, I have had Steven Kotler on here many times, and we've talked about this whole process of getting from and most people who are in leadership are very curious. And you've said curiosity a few times, but moving from a place of curiosity to a place of a purpose, from a place of purpose to a vision and or a goal, and then from that vision and or goal down to the proximal goals that need to happen with inside of our organization to act to actually achieve the vision. But it all started, interestingly enough, with the curiosity to want to find an initiative that I could help solve a problem, or I could help somebody else, or I could do something else. So when you follow that little train of thought that I just had, how does how can an organization create a culture that minimizes this self deception and promotes genuine and I'm going to underline the word genuine collaboration. We're just talking about competition versus collaboration. And I think some of the companies that have exemplified it true life stories that I would point to that kind of pop out right of the way. And I use this example because they think they have a culture that is inclusive, and Patagonia would be one. Zappos was one when Tony was around, and I'm sure it probably still is the same. But when you get organizations of people together, 1000s of people in organizations, you have differences opinion. You have different communication styles. You've got different ways, but you've got leaders that are supposed to be uniting people to move in one line towards some kind of alignment to get some mission accomplished. How would you say we can do this with greater levels of collaboration and get rid of this self deception?

Mitch Warner
So a great question. Well, first, I think, to have a shared language inside of an organization that enables us to pinpoint what's really going on when there is dysfunction, when there's a breakdown in collaboration, you know, when we only have kind of behavioral constructs through which to see what's really what's happening. That's where we think the problem is. We don't, we don't have language, a shared language, inside of an organization to pinpoint the deeper issue and to diagnose that together. And I think that's step one. But step two, what you were talking about that look, we've got to have people that are aligned, that they see their work and then the various sub pieces of their work, and in a way that is aligned with everybody else. In my mind, what happens in organizations is that people fundamentally misunderstand what it means to have a job and and if you can't, if you don't get that right, nothing that you do will matter. You know, people think that my job is to do a set of tasks, and I might have even some fairly robust objectives around those tasks, but they're not necessarily connected to other people. And the way we measure what it means to have a job and to do a job, well in an organization, reinforces. All of those challenges that we see around self deception. So So you can imagine an organization that fundamentally rethinks what it means to have a job in the organization that my work isn't just to do a set of tasks or achieve a certain set of objectives. It's to do that in a way that enables all of the people impacted by what I do to be more successful in what they do, that fundamental shift changes everything, because now we're not trying to impose collaboration that we're and we're fundamentally fighting against the way people are thinking about their work in imposing collaboration, we're saying no, no, your work in the beginning is to see who's impacted by what you do, and then for you to become really curious about what they're trying to accomplish. It's then on you to find ways to adjust what you're doing to help them be more successful. What what gets measured gets done. But you look at organizations where we're not measuring the impact that people are having on the people around them and their ability to succeed. We're sitting What are your objectives? What are your tasks? Are you getting those done? Are you, you know? Are you on or off target? What are your capability sets? But in terms of the impact, we're not measuring that. So part of what we do inside of organizations to make sure that this actually lives and breathes that real, as you said, real, authentic collaboration happens is we help people fundamentally rethink what it means to have a job by measuring as part of their job the impact that they're having on others. When that shift happens, it unlocks sustainable, real, authentic, organic collaboration.

Greg Voisen
Value. Of those are three, three very powerful words put together in that sentence. So what I want to do is not extract or pick on the sentence, but I think at Arbinger Institute, you guys have years of experience at looking at cultures inside organizations. You also know that there's stakeholders that still have to be satisfied as a result of what it is that I do based on my job. Meaning, okay, yeah, I've got a job, but at the same time, I have stockholders, I have stakeholders, I've got vendors, I've got all these other people, and in big corporations, that is kind of the way it still runs. It's still looked at as we've got to be profitable or we're not going to be in business. We love the fact that we treat our people with empathy and compassion, but we still have to be in business and we still have to make a profit. If you were to comment on some statistics since you've been with Arbinger and what you could relate to my audience. What would you say if they made an investment in this, the return is going to be in the way of engagement, retention, people staying in their jobs, people enjoying their jobs, more people wanting to come to work and share their ideas, people being more innovative and creative and finding solutions to help the greater good.

Mitch Warner
Well, you know, we put out multiple research reports every year that actually tracks those across across organizations as a whole, and then we have a number of case studies that show organizations that engaged in that kind of an investment, and what their return was based on what they were trying to achieve, whether that was greater retention or engagement or profitability. And I would just say this across the board, what we find is in line with what a study that was conducted by McKinsey a couple years ago found they surveyed through a longitudinal study of many, many organizations across industries. What happens in organizational change? So it doesn't matter what you're trying to change. They looked at all sorts of organizational change initiatives, and they found that organizations that identify, there's a direct quote, organizations that identify and address mindset at the outset are four times, four times more likely to succeed in whatever they're trying to change than organizations that bypass mindset change and go directly to behavior change. So when

Greg Voisen
you you wrote a book on mindset. So maybe we'll talk just to tad. You know guy, Kawasaki was just on the show for think remarkable his book. And I love the gentleman because of his background with Apple and Mercedes Benz and Canva and all that. But Carol Dweck, who basically has, obviously somebody you've studied and looked at mindset, and we look at that explain to the listeners who maybe don't know, because you are one of the experts on this, what that really means and how it makes an impactful difference.

Mitch Warner
Great question. Look, when we think about mindset, we think about what is actually driving. Behavior, we know that behavior has an origin. Where is that? It's in how we see, and when you think about mindset, how I see, that's both driving the behaviors that occur to me to engage in, number one, and the influence and effectiveness of those behaviors. Number two, there's lots of different ways that we can look at mindset. You know, for example, Carol Dweck, who you mentioned, she's looking at a fix to the growth mindset, which is really a fundamental belief about me and my inherent, inherent ability to grow or not to grow. There's all sorts of other ways that we might look at mindset. And many different, many different researchers have looked at different ways that we can understand mindset, that the way I see myself in the world, that drives behavior. But what we have found over the 45 years of working with organizations of all kinds and sizes and the research we have done is that the fundamental difference in mindset that matters most to organizational and personal effectiveness is not how I see myself, it's how I see other people, whether I see people as people or fundamentally as objects. You know, whether that's a vehicle in my way or or vehicle I use, or an obstacle in my way, or just irrelevant to me, the way that I see other people changes what I do and the influence of what I do more than any other way to understand mindset. So rather than focusing on, hey, I've got to change my mindset in order to be more effective in an organization, or if I'm the leader, I've got to change everybody's fundamental self view. What we've found is more effective is we've got to help people become alive to the people around them. We've got to help people see each other as people. What's that shift in mindset happens? The behaviors that you want to see change? They happen spontaneously out of that new mindset. That's what we found.

Greg Voisen
I think you're absolutely right. Mitch, I want you to run for president, because we don't have a candidate, at least one of them that sees the world from that kind of mindset. So and and because this is my podcast, I can have some political say. So there, you know it. It is true. You know that that how we see other people as human souls with the same needs and wants and desires that we have to live a good life, to be involved with their family, to be engaged in their workplace, to make a difference in the world in some way, whatever it may be, through their work or outside community work, to be involved in community, to give back all of these things. You're we? The guy that founded TED talk just wrote a book on infectious generosity, and, you know, my program supports a nonprofit that I started. So the reality is, it's like, you know, how are you giving back, and what sense of self worth do you have as an individual with respect to that? And I might be getting a little philosophical here, but on the other hand, I think not so much. I think that what defines your edges is your edge, and the edge that you have is the ability to wake up every morning and make a contribution, no matter where it is or what you're doing, and a contribution in a positive way. And that leads me to you guys talked about here the role of feedback, right? So here we are. I'm somebody, I'm a leader. I've got a team. Let's just define the situation now. What role does feedback play in addressing self deception, and how can leaders effectively give effective feedback? Hang on one second. I'll try and get rid of this. There we go. We'll try that again. That should have been on. So let me ask the question again, because we'll cut that. So what role does feedback play in addressing self deception, and how can leaders effectively give and receive feedback?

Mitch Warner
It's a great question. You know, to overcome self deception, I have to get outside of myself, and sometimes that's really hard to do. Sometimes, getting feedback from someone else about how I'm showing up and the impact that I'm having that I have fundamentally chosen not to see systematically blinded myself to is really, really helpful. And so I rely on that from others who see me as a person, and I would say that that is at the heart of great feedback. It's not so much a formula. People see through that all the time, that's it. And if I give feedback, that's really formulaic in nature, or because I feel like, well, that's what I'm supposed to do, that's what you're going to respond to. But we also all had the. Experience of getting feedback from someone that really sees us where our success, we knew mattered as much to that person giving us the feedback as their success, and even if it was clunky, we just responded. You know, we weren't defensive, because we knew that they cared. And I think that's the core of it, is, if I can see the people around me as people that matter like I matter, I'm going to tell them the truth, and they'll know that I'm telling them that truth because they matter, because I see them as a person. I'm working with the leader right now who is really struggling to give clear and direct and straightforward feedback to someone, and as we looked at that, the person felt the person I was working with, this leader, felt paralyzed because they felt like they didn't know how to do it. But what we got to was actually this person doesn't yet matter to you the way you mattered. And once that shift happened, once that leader started to think about what, what do I really want for this person? What do they want for their own career? What would be most helpful to them, the truth about what was going on, at least the way the leader saw it. They couldn't hold back and from giving them that. And I've seen that in my own life, you know? I I see it as a leader the times where I'm just self focused and it's about me, and I postpone doing the right thing and to having a hard conversation. It's just about me.

Greg Voisen
It's not true human and, you know, many times we give signals in other ways than verbal feedback. You know, there's nonverbal feedback, and a lot of times that's like stuff where you're not available. You tell people to go away and you don't have time. And you know, because we've got so many things in our world today that literally can take us from focusing on being here now, being in the present moment. And one of the best things a leader can do is learn to recognize that staying in the moment, that staying present. There was a book risen about presence and leadership is the most important thing that that somebody can do. Now I realize the words I say are easier to talk about than they are actually to execute in the course of the day. But I've always said that, if you just took a video camera and somebody followed you around during the course of the day and then they played back the video camera, would you like what you saw? And I think if you liked what you saw, then that's your letting, your leading an honorable wife. If you didn't like what you saw, then you need to start changing some of these things, which leads me to organizational it's not only personal change, but so organizational and cultural change. What steps can organizations take to ensure that overcoming self deception leads to long term, sustainable change. Now that's for a lot of my listeners out there today in middle management who are listening to this podcast, they're going to say, great, you know, we've tried these change initiatives, and how many change initiatives fail? You know, 80% of them that we've tried have failed, and they've failed because of resistance. They failed because of the mindset. They failed because of the self deception. They failed because of all of these factors that we haven't addressed. Now I understand that, and this question is a big one, because the key word here is sustainable. If I'm going to go into a project to change, I certainly should want it to be sustainable, because I see that change as being something better than, not less than any comments.

Mitch Warner
Look it takes discipline mindset. Mindset is a fluid thing, and so I don't just change the mindset once in an organization and we're good. Now, if I'm engaging in behavior change alone, I should expect those to fail. Don't be surprised. We work with organizations all the time that have seen those fail, but when you're working on mindset and you're fundamentally helping people see differently, that's fluid, and it takes discipline, and what I said before is critical. We create experiences where people learn to see the reality around them, that people around them more than they ever had before, and that that prompts, it sparks behavior change more than talking about behavior change, but the only way to keep that alive is what we were talking about earlier. It has to be measured. It has to be baked into the way we work. Think about this. There is nothing that any person does in an organization, nothing that is not designed or intended to help someone else be more successful. If there is don't do it. You know you were talking about. Stakeholders before the stakeholders are looking to have a return on their investment. They're looking for an organization to succeed. If an organization is filled with people that say, everything that I do is to help other people, and we're going to measure it. That measurement is the discipline that keeps that mindset focused outwardly, not inwardly, on me, but on the people around me. So I'd say, look, step one, get out of the behavior change only paradigm. Let's move to shifting mindset. And you can it's possible, but then once you do recognize that will be fluid, people can easily fall back into self deception the moment I choose not to see a person as a person. I've got to have excuses for that, and I'm going to build those excuses so I fundamentally have to continue to see my job and have my performance measured in terms of what other people are accomplishing as a result of

Greg Voisen
how I show well, those those KPIs that we're measuring, those things that we're measuring as a company. And I think I remember having an author on here that wrote a book called Flux. It's now been a huge success. And I think in many of these organizations, what we would define as flux is our ability to kind of low, our ability to not resist, our ability to bend, our ability to move and change, versus being so rigid, which is why, when I look at leadership training programs these days, I look for, where is the flux? Where do we design this so that it's better? And looking ahead, what do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for leaders in addressing self direction in this increasingly complex world, which it might be perception, but I think to many people today, they're actually feeling that it's not to them, that it's not complex, that it isn't challenging, that it isn't uncertain. What are some of the opportunities that you see for leaders addressing it and working in the kind of environment that we are today, which is hugely complex, very uncertain in many circumstances, and no ability to kind of predict The future per se, and this ability to grab or put our hands around something and feel like we're making a difference at the same time, sometimes I say David Allen used to say, you know, and getting things done, right? This goes down to accountability, getting things done. He used to say that you used to have to have an inbox, and he's going to be on the show next week around a book called team. So I'll plug that for people, you got to have all this amorphous stuff that's floating around out there that we're trying to get our hands around. We've got to have an inbox that captures that and a place to put it. And I always thought that was so brilliant, because much of this stuff floats around, but we allow it to float around in our minds, and then it takes up room, and we can't do the things that we really want to do. So personal self management that way is a key factor. But there are other huge opportunities I'd like for you to address.

Mitch Warner
You know, I have a friend named Warren and had a, what appeared to be a very successful career in mortgage banking, I'd say, in the multi billion dollar organization of which he was a part. He was seen as a leader, in fact, maybe the most productive, in terms of getting things done. He got things done. And then one day, a few years ago, his CEO, who was engaged in this work, sat down with him and said, Hey, Warren, we're not getting what we need from you. And it was shocking to him, especially kind of at the late stage of his career, with all this evidence of his performance behind him and and the CEO cared enough about him and the company to say, actually, Warren, it's not about getting things done that's important, but you're getting things done at the expense of others in this organization and their success and in order for you To stay even though you're the highest producer inside of this multi billion dollar company, or one of the highest producers, you have to now get things done in a way that helps other people be more successful. And that was a fundamental shift, and it changed both Warren his experience in the company and at home, and it changed the ability of the company to succeed in what for them is a highly kinetic environment where they have to adapt all the time. But you've got people internally who say, Yeah, accountability is about getting things done. No, it's not about getting things done. It's about getting things done. You. In a way that takes into account my impact on others. If you can make that shift, you can navigate all of the complexity the world is going to continue to change. It's going to become even more kinetic and and there's challenges in that we're now not actually physically face to face. We don't get to interact with people in the same so many of our interactions are tech mediated, nice, but exactly like this one, but at the end of the day, I've got to see my work differently. And when you have an entire organization of people who see their work that way and hold themselves accountable for their impact, not just what they get done, it changes actually what they prioritize? Right? If I see my customers that way, what are they trying to get done? No, what are we trying to do as an organization? Are we doing that really well and efficiently and all that? No, no. The ones that will last, the companies you're going to be talking about Greg in 10 years, are the ones today who are asking themselves, what's our customer trying to get done? What's life like for them? What could we do differently that would be helpful? Now, all of those things in my inbox, all that stuff that I'm bombarded with I see really clearly, do that and let the other things fall away, because that that's what's important.

Greg Voisen
I like what you're saying, and I think it's absolutely true. And I think that for my listeners, it's about all my relations. You know, when you look at the tapestry of life, and you look at how many people you impact as you walk through this life, from the time you were born to the time that you leave this physical plane on the earth, it's really the tapestry of every relationship that you've had, and those relationships having been left with you, leaving a meaningful impact with those people, while at the same time getting things done and doing it, it like, you know, on a team basis, heading towards some kind of common goal. And I think that's I recently saw profiled, the young man who started that movement. I m a, l, s, and when you look at the at the that challenge that was talked about with the where people were dumping water on their heads, if you remember that, remember everybody was doing that bucket challenge, and he raised millions and millions of dollars and got Congress to change. There was somebody who really, really exemplified, to me, having a cause to bring 1000s of people together to do something good and to get governmental change in the laws on Social Security to actually not have to wait five months for people to start getting benefits when they got als so I thought it was just an impactful way to look at it. I think when people are outside themselves, looking at something greater than themselves, trying to make a contribution to make something better, you always find something that good comes out of that, because people unite around that, they unite around that common good and that common cause. I mean, we could name hundreds of them, and I think that's what you're doing at Arbinger, with this work. You're literally trying to get people to unite together for the common good with inside the organization. Might be my simple way of putting it, but it is the way that you guys are coming across with the message, any last word for our listeners, Mitch, that you'd want to leave?

Mitch Warner
No, I think you're right. Greg, we all want to be part of something bigger. And the amazing thing is, you know, whether your organization is explicitly socially minded in your mission, or you're making screwdrivers. The reality is who we are is who we are together, and that experience at work can be remarkable. No matter what the work is. We can do that together in a way that matters, because who we are together matters and so, yeah, I think that's for me. The invitation is to continue to see the people around me as people, because that changes fundamentally my experience of life.

Greg Voisen
I think that's a key message to this, to the book, to the Arbinger Institute. And I want to let all my listeners know, go to Arbinger, a-r-b-i-n-g-e-r.com. There, you'll find more information about the books. You'll find more information about this book, the courses that they teach, the things that they do around leadership, the resources that are available, the events they're having. Again, you can also request a consultation from them at that website, but it's Arbinger, A, R, B, I N, G, E, r.com, there you can learn more about it. Mitch Werner, pleasure having you on. Thanks for being on inside personal growth and spending a few minutes with my listeners talking about your fourth edition of a book that's 24 years old coming back out again later. Year called Leadership and self deception. And I want to let my listeners know, don't make this we're going to put a link to Amazon if you want to wait for that. Fine. But actually, any of the books that Arbinger has, any of them that Mitch has written, I could put a high recommendation on. Thanks, Mitch.

Mitch Warner
Thank you, Greg, great to be with you.