CHAPTER 10

LIES LEADERS LOVE

“Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.”

—ROBERT HEINLEIN

A few years ago, I worked with a manufacturing organization that was redesigning its main operating processes. The CEO asked me to facilitate a meeting where a number of different leaders in the company would be discussing how their respective parts of the process could dovetail once implemented. The event was in a beautiful old hotel with lots of mahogany trim and old oriental rugs. Within a few minutes of checking in, I was hanging up my clothes and heard a voice coming through the back wall of the closet. The occupant in the room next door was on a cell phone talking loudly. The walls of the old place were so thin, it was like this person was standing in my room. I made a conscious effort not to eavesdrop, but even humming the 1812 Overture really loudly did not help. What was worse, I knew exactly who the person was. Even worse than that was that it was very obvious who was on the other end of the call and what they were talking about. It was not company business. Two senior officers of the company, one of whom reported to the other, were having a torrid affair. I knew one was married and had several children. I knew the other was recently divorced. A few months later a janitor discovered the pair in his office after hours in a very compromising position. The senior executive was fired, and the company settled what could have been a nasty sexual harassment suit.

I have not seen either party since they left the company, but I would love to interview them to find out what they were thinking. What were they telling themselves about the affair? How did they justify the relationship that had so many pitfalls and conflicts?

SELF-DECEPTION: WE DECEIVE OURSELVES

Although some might maintain that these two people were not thinking at all, my experience as a psychologist tells me that their belief systems underwent some significant reformatting in order to justify their actions. We can only speculate about what their distorted belief file might have been. The most troubling explanation would be that one of them promoted the other and believed there should be something in return. Both might have believed that “This is just a physical relationship and is not hurting anyone.” It might have been that “Lots of people in the company have slept around; it’s not a big deal.” What if they believed they were deeply in love but needed some time to work out the complexities? Even in a culture in which moral relativism is in fashion, we probably agree that their actions were wrong. Whatever tortured logic they might have applied to justify their behavior was simply self-deception: “The act or an instance of deceiving oneself, especially as to the true nature of one’s feelings or motives.”¹

In self-deception, we choose to believe that something is true when, in fact, it is not true in order to bring about a state of inner harmony. We insert a different belief into our belief file that provides us with personal harmony instead of the discordance we may feel about our actions or prospective actions. Why would we do this? The simple answer is that we have the innate ability to choose a belief that makes us feel better about ourselves and/or less guilty about something we are doing. We are capable of muting that unpleasant accusation we feel when there is something we really want to do. This self-trickery allows us to do what we want and feel less discord than when we deliberately violate what we know is right.

Self-deception can be so misleading that even when individuals for whom we have great respect tell us we are going off track, we deny the basis for their concern or ignore their advice entirely. Powerful individuals can even start to believe they are invincible. Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book about the 2008 presidential campaign, documents the repeated efforts by many senior members of John Edwards’s political party to persuade him to abandon his sexual misconduct with a campaign staff member. Edwards either denied his affair with Rielle Hunter or ignored their advice.² His downfall became inevitable and imminent because of his self-deception.

WHAT MAKES LEADERS VULNERABLE TO SELF-DECEPTION?

As mentioned in Chapter 6, it is often power in some form (organizational position, wealth, fame, etc.) that breaches the containment walls of our core and makes us more vulnerable to self-deception. Power not thoughtfully regulated weakens our core, causing the inner person of the leader to become less able and/or less inclined to challenge errant beliefs.

Dennis Kozlowski and his shower curtain mentioned in Chapter 8 provide some important insight about how power weakens the walls of our core. We can only speculate, but his self-deception might have gone something like, “I made Tyco what it is today . . . I deserve this . . . the shareholders owe it to me . . . I am entitled to a few perks.” Although the shower curtain and the many other excesses in which he indulged strain credulity for any rational person standing off to the side, a leader intoxicated with power and success actually believes the lie and then acts on it. Self-deception invariably sets the stage for the lapses in judgment that Kozlowski clearly had.

HOW DO WE DECEIVE OURSELVES?

In the news conference where Tiger Woods apologized for his extramarital affairs, he illustrated how self-deception occurs. “I knew that my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply” (italics mine). By adopting a false belief we act in a way that, in a rational moment, may seem absolutely crazy. Given that Tiger Woods was violating his marriage commitment, he may have said to himself something like, “I deserve this. I am rich and famous. I have a stress-filled job and am gone from home much of the year. The normal rules just don’t apply.” By inserting this belief into his belief file, Tiger, at least temporarily, reduced the disharmony he felt over what he was doing.

When contemplating a certain action, we can “believe” ourselves into behaviors that put us and others in great jeopardy. Tiger’s “new belief” was not true, and eventually, his self-deception caught up with him. Later, in the same news conference quoted above, he admitted his self-deception. “I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me.”³

Power also potentially makes us narcissistic. At the same news conference during which Tiger Woods discussed his marital infidelities, he admitted that “I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself.”⁴ Narcissism makes us more prone to find beliefs that justify our actions even though those actions are uniquely self-serving and may even cause harm to others.

When we choose to change our beliefs, we do not have a rousing epiphany, and say, “I think I’ll change my belief so that I’ll feel better about myself.” Rather, this debate happens at the level of our quiet inner voice. This is why self-talk is so important. Unless we pay attention, the belief change occurs with little to no self-awareness. The re-engineering of our beliefs is usually subtle, not blatant, because it occurs over time deep within our core.

Once established in our core, false beliefs then get us off track. We simply lie to ourselves via a false belief (self-deception), then talk ourselves into doing something wrong, risky, or just plain dumb. We act even at the risk of self-destruction.

The dominos of flawed beliefs begin to fall. We lie to ourselves. We buy the lie as truth. We then sincerely tell others the “truth” that we have convinced ourselves is true. We will never forget President Clinton staring straight into the camera to assure us that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” Somewhere inside Clinton’s twisted logic, I think he actually believed what he was saying. We have an unlimited capacity to rationalize our behavior, and self-deception is in its most powerful state when we believe the lie ourselves. Leaders who lie to others lie to themselves first.

SELF-DECEPTION BREAKS US

Several years ago I was alone on a Friday night while Anne visited her mother. I started channel surfing and randomly landed on the movie Unthinkable, which tells a very disturbing story about a subterranean government agent who tortures people during national security crises to get critical information. Samuel L. Jackson plays “H,” the shadowy figure who uses horrific, unthinkable interrogation methods to save the country from 9/11-type attacks. The movie raises all kinds of legal and moral issues, but what I found most interesting was H’s statement, “Every man, no matter how strong he is, lies to himself about something. I will find your lie. I will break you.”⁵

“Every man, no matter how strong
he is, lies to himself about something. I
will find your lie. I will break you.”
—“H” IN UNTHINKABLE

The more obvious symptoms in someone who falls from a position of influence are arrogance, narcissism, fear, lack of authenticity, or a failure of self-regulation. Underneath these symptoms are false beliefs similar to those Tiger expressed in his news conference—“I don’t have to follow the normal rules” or “I’m entitled,” etc. I have heard people say, “Tiger got caught, and that’s the only reason he apologized.” I do not know if that is true, but isn’t it amazing how many people do get caught? General David Petraeus is thought by many to be the smartest and most competent general to lead the U.S. military since World War II, and yet he lost his job as director of the CIA over a tabloid affair. Self-deception has a way of breaking us no matter who we are and how buttoned-up we might be.

Maybe we do not personally identify with the list of ten lies in the “Ten Lies Leaders Love” box; however, there is a high degree of likelihood that we lie to ourselves about something equally consequential. This lie becomes our Achilles’ heel. The pressure of more responsibility, more power, or more visibility inevitably puts us at greater risk for self-deception if we are not careful. Self-examination and the resulting self-awareness are not frivolous exercises. Effective introspection thoughtfully catches us in the act of self-deception and corrects our own belief system before the lie breaks us.

It is important to clarify that I am not saying we are bad people. It is highly unlikely that we are latent ax murderers. What I am saying is that we have vulnerabilities that must be understood and addressed if we want to be leaders who make an impact with our lives. Great leaders are desperately needed today, but our world is filled with challenges, pressures, and stresses that make it difficult for us to sustain an enduring legacy.

TELL OURSELVES THE TRUTH

Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron, along with a few other insiders, agreed to misstate quarterly earnings.⁶ Misstating earnings is a go-to-jail offense, which is where Lay would likely be today if he had survived a heart attack in his Colorado vacation home. Lay’s close associate, Jeffrey Skilling, went to jail to serve a twenty-four-year sentence.⁷

I did not know Kenneth Lay, but his personal story is fairly typical of many leaders. He grew up in meager circumstances. He studied hard, received a Ph.D. in economics, and served in the U.S. Navy. He shrewdly navigated the founding and growth of a major company in the energy business. He gave a lot of money to charitable causes and was a committed member of his church. Many who knew him well would say he was a good man.⁸

Enron was a fast-growth company that wowed everyone with its market dominance and meteoric rise in value. There was tremendous pressure to maintain the value of the stock. The pressure was so intense that even a good man for very good reasons would seek any way to keep the company’s stock performing well.

We can only speculate about what Lay might have said to himself, but it likely went something like this:

       I just told all the employees to invest their 401(k)s in our stock. If we report poor earnings, the market will kill us, and a lot of our really good people will lose money and their excitement about our company. My credibility will be shredded. We’re going to get earnings back on track. These accounting maneuvers are aggressive but will keep our stock price up. We will get the profits up and do a restatement of earnings for this quarter sometime later this year.

What if Ken Lay actually said something to himself like I described above? What if he had caught himself in the lie that in essence said, “The end justifies the means.” What if he had challenged that belief and said, “We cannot and will not misstate Enron’s earnings because that is inconsistent with my own and our company’s values. That would be a fundamental violation of our company’s core value of integrity.” This is all a matter of speculation, but it is plausible that Enron would still exist and be a thriving contributor in the energy world, and that any losses in Enron’s stock value would have eventually recovered—if only Ken Lay had arrested his false belief.

The most important point to capture here is that we are just as vulnerable as Ken Lay or any other fallen leader if we do not apply certain disciplines to protect our core. How we catch ourselves early in the process of self-deception and change those errant beliefs is the subject of the next chapter.

From the above list, which lies are you most vulnerable to lodge in your belief file?