First of all, if you haven’t read it already, read Leadership and Self-Deception. Immediately. I devoured this book in two days, two evenings really. And it was already changing my life after just a few hours. One thing I was struck by while reading it was how applicable it was to the ROAR process. Specifically, the book elaborated on and enhanced how to perform the second step of ROAR, Accept the Truth.
The Key Truth of Leadership and Self-Deception
The key truth that lies at the heart of the book is that when we are focused on others, we can see situations clearly. When we are focused on ourselves, we’re so busy skewing the evidence to justify our self-perception, we can’t see anything clearly. We are mistaken about the situation. We’re mistaken about the other actors in the situation. We even make mistakes about how we view ourselves.
The book explains how to recognize which state you’re in. Then it explains what is necessary to get from the undesired state to the desired state. And it gives a great big heaping pile of gentle forgiveness for all the times we’re in the undesired state. Because that’s part of being human. The idea is to be able to recognize when you’re in an undesired state and move to the desired state as quickly as possible. Sound familiar?
The Accept Step of ROAR
The second step of ROAR, Accept, requires you to see your situation clearly. The advice given in Leadership and Self-Deception will help you to see your situation more clearly. The more clearly you can see the situation, the better your solutions and path forward are going to be. In the book, this is born out by the mythical Zagrum company who implements these leadership practices. Zagrum achieves results far superior to every other company in its space.
So read Leadership and Self-Deception. And use the principles in it to improve your ability to implement the ROAR process. Also, become a better leader and a better human being.
