Leadership and Self-deception:Getting Out of the Box

The Arbinger Institute was founded by Terry Warner and led by a team of managing directors including Jim Ferrell, Duane Boyce and Paul Smith. The books “Leadership and Self-deception” and “The Anatomy of Peace” are two bestselling works of this very institute. “Arbinger” is French meaning of the word “harbinger” which means forerunner. The aim of Arbinger Institute is to change mindsets for best results. This book is pertinent to human sciences discipline where philosopher Terry Warner along with team of scholars is trying to solve the problem of self-deception, which is central obstacle to personal and organizational effectiveness as well as productivity. The narrative, i.e., story telling approach is followed in the book for building rationale and logical arguments for change in order to transform human behaviors and taking human potential to the next level. This book is having three parts where first part talks about “Self-deception and the Box”, the second about “How we get in the Box” and the third part of the book is “How we get out of the Box”. The term “box” is representing the chief problem “self-deception” which is also attributed as a disease in the book. Although this book is based on actual experiences but no character or organization described in the book represents any specific person or organization except the historical character Ignaz Semmelweis (Carter and Carter, 2005).