Book Review Of Tom Mcdonald's Leadership And Self-Deception

The book, Leadership and Self-Deception, contains stories and illustrations that helps leaders develop a positive mindset and learn to prevent self-deceit from spreading throughout entire organizations. The Zagrum Company provides the main character, Tom Callum, with thorough training to learn to distinguish between his own perceptions of people in contrast to how people are. Employees can often perceive how their managers think of them and respond according to these perceptions. The company mentioned in this fictional story provides excellent insight and educates the reader on how people often betray ourselves and have an internalized false perception of others that results in rationalizing their wrongful actions (The Arbinger Institute,
Callum’s problem, in which he describes a list of events that cover the major extent of the manager’s issues, such as failing to put gas in the car because he thought his wife could do this instead, breaking his promise to take his kids to visit a ball game, taking them to a game but making his kids feel bad, and taking a handicapped parking spot and pretending to have an impairment so that others wouldn’t be angry. Then, he continues to mention problems at work, such as being nice to his employees to get them to comply with his orders, even though he has contempt for them and sees them as being idle and unskilled employees. Tom Callum begins to get upset and disagrees with Bud because he feels as if he treats his employees the way they should be treated and strives to help and inspire them to work hard. Afterwards, Bud tells Tom that he is doing more harm than he is aware of and that he is not treating his employees the way he should. Bud admits that he struggled with the same issues and can assist Tom with his issues by teaching him about the study of humans (The Arbinger Institute,
Bud then asks about how his kids changed his views on life. Afterwards, Tom remembers feeling inundated but thankful. Bud explains that he felt the same way. Then, he proceeds to tell Tom a story when he worked at one of the top firms in the nation as a lawyer and worked many hours. He was given a complex assignment that required him to leave his wife and newborn baby for however long it took to complete the job task. Yet, he isolated himself from the others and did not discuss the assignment with the others on the twenty-fifth floor as he was supposed to because he became disconnected. No one made him aware that the meetings were conducted and that the files were modified. However, Bud held the other lawyers responsible for failing to keep him informed. He then continues to express to Tom about the problem he told him about, the study of people, which involves people deceiving themselves. This occurs when people fail to see their own shortcomings because they only see situations from their own point of view. He explains to Tom that the business tactic at Zagrum is to decrease this problem within people and within the company (The Arbinger Institute,