1001: Transforming Relationships by Overcoming Self-Deception with The Arbinger Institute’s Mitch Warner

Pete Mockaitis
Mitch, welcome.

Mitch Warner
Thanks so much, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am so excited to be chatting with you today because Leadership and Self-Deception is one of my favorite books of all time, and I didn’t know who I could talk to on the show about it because the author is just The Arbinger Institute. And so, I was like, “Who? I don’t know, I guess.” And then you show up in my inbox, that it’s like, “This is the coolest thing ever.” So, thank you and welcome.

Mitch Warner
Thank you. Yeah, I’m excited for our conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. Well, maybe just to back it up a smidge, what is The Arbinger Institute? And how does a whole organization write a book?

Mitch Warner
Oh, great question. The Arbinger Institute is an organization that helps other organizations transform their culture. And the way we help people transform their culture is by helping people transform their people, specifically, at the level of mindset. A lot of people think about transforming a culture or transforming people in terms of behavior, “Okay, well, here’s what people are doing. Let’s fix that. Let’s get people doing something different than they’re doing today, and then we’ll get a better result.”

And our work illuminates the fact that every behavior that people are engaging in is driven by how they see. It’s driven by their mindset. And so, our work is to help organizations transform at the level of mindset. And then when that happens, people start behaving differently and they get better results. And so, the books that we write, including Leadership and Self-Deception, as well as the other books, are all deeply informed by the work that we’re doing with clients.

And that’s not one person. That’s a whole team of people that are going in to help organizations do the work of transforming their results. So those stories are coming through our team from our clients, and they inform everything that we do. And so, while we have teams of people that actually write those books to share those ideas more broadly in the world, we write them as an institute because we are an institute, and it’s really fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And the book doesn’t read as though a piece of writing by committee. It is riveting and lovely, and transformation. That’s something we’re all about here. So, could you kick us off perhaps with a really phenomenal story of folks being transformed by some of these principles? Could you walk us through a person and what went down with regard to what they were thinking and doing and the new ideas that got in their head, and the new things they did, and what happened?

Mitch Warner
One that comes to mind is a leader named Louise Francesconi. She ran a 17,000-person division of a very large organization, and she decided that she was going to own the cultural transformation that she knew had to happen inside of the organization. And it was actually an organization that, when we started working with them, had been newly acquired, and she was put in charge of this division.

So, you got these two different groups of people, and these two groups of people are trying to come together, and they realize that they have to cut a significant amount of money. In fact, $100 million was the task of this newly combined leadership team. We’ve got to cut a $100 million dollars from the business, and we’ve got to grow the business at the same time.

Well, they’ve been involved in the work of cultural transformation that Louise wanted to own inside of this division, and so they just called and they said, “Hey, how would we leverage these ideas that we’ve been working with to tackle a really complex problem like that?” And we said, “Well, we’ll come and we’ll be on site as you do that.” And they came together in the typical way, “All right, let’s cut $100 million,” and Louise set it up in what she thought was the right way to set it up, “All right, everybody come, you’ll all present what you’re going to do to contribute to this big goal.”

And we all know how people show up like that. People are territorial, they don’t want anything to be cut from their area of the business, they kind of present something that’s perfunctory, but you just know you’re never going to get there in this way. Everybody is really just thinking about themselves. They’re coming to that with what we call an inward mindset, “I’m not malicious, but I’m definitely not focused on my impact on other people. I’m focused, really, on how this is going to impact me.”

And they got to a point about halfway through the day where they just realized, “You’re not going to make this happen.” And so, my colleague at Arbinger’s took Louise aside, and said, “Hey, would you mind if I just help shape this meeting?” And she said, “Sure, be my guest.” And he said, “Okay, we’re going to take two hours.”

Now, out of an eight-hour day, that’s a lot of time. But he said, “We’re going to take two hours. And I just want you to pair up with someone else in this room, and you’re going to spend the first hour just explaining to your counterpart all the things that you’re working on, all the things that you’re wrestling with, the things that you’re struggling with. And we’re going to do that for an hour, and then you’re going to spend the next hour just coming up with any way that you could help the other person that you’ve been learning about save their money, not cut their money, just save their money.”

And it was like magic. You had people who were now alive to the people around them for the very first time, really, and going, “Oh, my word. I didn’t realize that what you were trying to do in this organization was so important and how hard that is, but how critical it is, too. Here’s ways I think I could help you save that, that critical piece of the business.”

And it got everybody so far outside of themselves that they started to come up with, on their own, ways that they could help the other people in the business save their money. And as a result, they found redundancies and ways that they were costing themselves, the business, more than they needed to so that they got to cutting a $100 million dollars by the end of the day, and not one person had to lose their job in the process. It was stunning.

And I think about that experience often because it just illustrates what happens when people get outside of themselves, when they just start thinking about, “Hey, who are the people around me? What are they trying to accomplish? What could I do, given the resources that I have, in order to help people be more successful?” And you don’t have to be a leader to work that way. You can be anyone in an organization.

And I’d say that the people in organizations that are most valuable to the organization, doesn’t matter what role you sit in, whether you supervise people or not, are the people that think that way. They just figure out how to get outside of themselves and go, “How do I help other people accomplish their objectives given what I can do?” They’re the magic in an organization.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds cool. And I’m not going to try to lean into my Bain strategy consulting background, but I’m so curious about these initiatives that saved a hundred million without losing any heads and people feel good about. So, could you give us just one example of an initiative that someone came up with, like, “Hey, this would help you save money,” and someone receives that and says, “Why, thank you,” as opposed to, “Back off, pal”?

Mitch Warner
Well, the first thing that happened in that room is one of the people stood up and said, “Based on what I’m learning from the person that I’ve just been meeting with,” in a serendipitous way. It wasn’t, you know, “Okay, you meet with you, you meet with you.” It wasn’t like that. “It was just the things that I’m learning about this person, I actually think that I should be reporting to that person.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Mitch Warner
That was the first move that happened in that room. And, look, that doesn’t happen in organizations. It doesn’t happen in meetings like this. No one raises their hand and says, “You know what? I think I should go down a rung in the ladder in our org chart.” That doesn’t happen, but it does when a person says, “You know what? We could succeed if all of the things that I’m doing, which in, a Venn diagram, really overlap with this other organization, if all those things were consolidated.”

And what they saw is that there were facilities, there was equipment, there were processes that had significant redundancy to this other department. And so, from the perspective of this person, they couldn’t say, “Well, I think you should report to me.” They just said, “You know what, for the good of this organization, I could report to you. And if we did that, if we consolidated into one unit instead of two different departments, we could get rid of all of those redundancies, work our teams in the same facilities, on the same equipment, with the same process.” That got them to their first seven million.

But, more importantly than that, it put in motion a domino effect in that room where people realized, “Hey, being part of this company means I don’t have to protect myself. In fact, I can figure out things that I could do that are so innovative because they’re no longer filtered through the lens of self-protection or self-advancement.” When it gets to that point, oh, my word, you can accomplish anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it really is beautiful. You said that doesn’t happen, it does sound almost like miraculous or spiritual, and they’re like wisdom traditions that are speaking of these matters associated with putting others, being in service of others, and kind of losing your ego and these kinds of things. So, I want to talk about the particulars of the individual mindset at length. But, first, I want to hear, in an organizational setting, how do we start to get the memo that, “It is, in fact, safe to do this, and I am not going to get my head chopped off if I lower the defenses”?

Mitch Warner
That’s a really good question, and that’s a question that is easier, I think, if you’re a leader to say, “How do I send that message?” If you’re not though, then it will feel risky. Let’s just be honest, it will feel risky to say, “You know what? I’m going to step out and I’m going to do the kinds of things that I feel would have the highest and best impact on the people around me. And it might mean that I forget some things about the past that I’ve used as justifications for why I haven’t done that to date. It might feel risky. because of where we’ve been.”

But the funny thing is, what I’ve experienced is, that people that take what feels risky, that step, discover that that’s the thing that actually propels their own success. You can’t do it. Here’s the irony about it. You can’t do it to improve your chances of succeeding as an individual. It’s just that I’ve seen that that is the natural outcome. It’s the byproduct.

When people step out and say, “You know what? Let me take a risk and just let me see this person as a person. What are they trying to accomplish? Let me adjust something.” Everybody is going, “That’s what we need in the organization. Those are the kind of leaders we need.” It’s just what I see.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that is really beautiful. And I’m thinking about it even, I’ve witnessed this, even in, like, super transactional situations, like there’s a sales meeting that’s occurring, there’s a person that wants to sell something and a person that might want to buy that something. And I’ve seen this a few times when on, as the seller and the prospective buyer, when the seller says, “You know what? Given what you’re describing, or what I’m seeing here, what I have to offer isn’t right for you right now.

Like for a roof, “First, you’ve got to handle that masonry situation, or the roof I’m going to put on there isn’t actually going to keep the water from leaking. So, I don’t do masonry, so you’ve got to handle that first, and then maybe I could help you out afterwards.” Or, it was a digital marketing agency that said, “Hmm, you know, what we’re really good at is promoting this other kind of a result, and we don’t actually have the experience to get a bunch of email addresses associated with this consumer base, and so we’d really be just rolling the dice. And I don’t feel really comfortable putting your money at risk that way.”

And then that same person said, “Pete, I think you should absolutely hire this company.” And we did. Because that builds such tremendous trust that, putting your own self-interest aside, your short-term, immediate self-interest aside, built such trust and good recommendations and vibes, and I think they got more out of it as opposed to trying to grab the deal in front of them.

Mitch Warner
You see that all the time. I mean, is there any role in your life where you’re not more successful if you’re trusted as an advisor by the people that you’re trying to help or serve? I mean, whether you’re a leader, and the people that you need to be seen as a trusted advisor by are the people you lead, or you’re a salesperson and you’re trying to get people to buy, or you’re a parent and you’re trying to help younger people develop into better people. I mean, it doesn’t matter what your role is. And you see that all the time.

And sometimes it looks exactly like you’re saying, “You know, I don’t have the solution for you but I think I know who does. Let me help you get connected with that person.” I remember a dear friend of mine was a leader in a sales organization, but said, “You know, I was in the middle of this transaction. It was the end of the year.”

“I had my quota, and I knew that I had to get this deal over the line in order to meet my quota, and so I pressured this client that I had to get this deal over the line and it wasn’t in their best interest because I was trying to get them to buy in bulk something that they should really have amortized over multiple years when they actually would use this product.”

And the client actually called him on it, and said, “Hey, just so I’m clear, are you doing this for you, or are you doing this for me?” And it was so convicting that, all of a sudden, he realized, “Yeah.” And in that moment, he had this choice, and the choice was, “Am I going to be honest and be just human with this other human being, or am I not?” And he made the choice to just do what he felt was risky, and he said, “To be honest, I’m doing this for me, and I’m so sorry.”

And the interesting thing is that, while he adjusted the deal and he missed his quota, that client was a client for years, far longer than that contract would have been, whatever he was trying to sell. I mean, we got to be honest, sometimes we do take short-term hits by doing the right thing, but ultimately that’s where our success really lies. Those clients, they stay with you forever. There are so many examples of that.

And it can even be as small as, you know, a friend of mine, a colleague, was delivering an Arbinger workshop. And in the middle of this workshop with a client realized that they were bugged with some of the people in the room that were kind of resistant.

Mitch Warner
They were frustrated, they were annoyed with these people in the room, and they realized, “Oh, my word, I have got to make a decision. Do I keep going knowing that I’ve been irritated or do I own that fact, given that it’s a reality?” And they came into the room, they took a break, came back to the room, and they said, “I have to take ownership. I’ve gotten annoyed with some of you that are resistant, and it’s kept me from getting curious about what are you so resistant to. Can I just…?”

And, all of a sudden, the room changed and people said, “Well, this is what we’re resistant about.” And for the first time, that person could facilitate the workshop that they were there to facilitate because now they’re working with actual people. It felt risky, but the truth is it unlocked the very thing that they were there to do. And I think that’s the irony that you and I are talking about. Whatever feels risky, turns out will unlock the very thing that gets us the result that we’re there to accomplish in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
Mitch, I love this stuff because it grabs the heart in terms of what is being a human about and, like, we got jobs, and we do them, but sometimes it could feel like they are just, like, “Follow the processes. I am a robot executing value-creation activities,” right? But when you speak about this stuff, and I read Leadership and Self-Deception, it comes alive in terms of we are human beings who have values and feelings about stuff.

And, sure enough, it does work out often, not always, that when you step up and are courageous, you take a risk and call a spade a spade, say what’s really going on, and compassionately listen to another person’s point of view, cool stuff happens. I remember, this is the weirdest example, but I was in high school and there was a girl, and we were kind of dating, kind of not, we need to DTR to find the relationship better, I guess.

Anyway, and so it was the weirdest situation, a fun bunch of friends, and we got in this weird little argument and it’s like we were litigating, like, who did who wrong in the course of this semi-romantic relationship. And so, we were sort of arguing in front of the jury. And we weren’t really getting anywhere, and then they left. It was just the two of us, I said, “Hey, yeah, I actually didn’t know you felt that way about this thing. I’m really sorry. And I wasn’t trying to do this. Tell me more about that.”

And it was amazing how it just totally shifted the view, it’s like, “Are we litigating or are we trying to understand, like, the other person and where we come from?” And it’s a totally different energy, and it might be, “soft” or “touchy feely,” but it is effective in terms of, “Okay, this relationship is restored, there’s trust, and we’re off to the races, moving and making things happen.”

Mitch Warner
Somebody once, who experienced this work, said, “Oh, this is soft like a brick.” It hits you and it’s at the core of our relationship. So, to the degree that we believe that relationships actually are what’s driving results, whether it’s in a personal relationship with a partner or it’s in an organization. If you believe that relationships drive results, then what unlocks those relationships is critically important.

And what you said, I think, is so interesting, this litigating who’s right and who’s wrong. In the book, in Leadership and Self-Deception, this whole idea of self-deception that gets in the way, we say sometimes there’s a risk of calling a spade a spade. Usually, the risk is calling myself a spade, when I am a spade, when I’m not seeing clearly. It usually never helps to call someone else a spade. Let them find out the truth about them. But, for me, in a situation where I feel a need to litigate, to justify, it means that something is off. It means that something is wrong and I know it.

I know it at such a deep and professional level that I’m really good at hiding it from myself. I mean, imagine that you and I work together, and I come across a piece of information and I think, “Oh, my word, this would be super helpful for Pete.” The straightforward thing to do would be to just share it with you. But if I betray my own sense of what would be helpful to you as a person, who has needs and challenges and objectives, who’s real to me, just a person that I’m working with, if I go against that sense, if I betray my own sense, then all of a sudden, I need to feel justified for that betrayal.

And how do I do that? I create a world where it’s okay for me to have treated you as less than a person. And so, I might see you as competition, I see you as a threat. Only one of us could get the promotion after all. Or I see you as lazy because, if you didn’t come across this information on your own, that means that you’re probably not doing your job. Or I see you as incompetent, or I see you as stupid, or whatever the case might be, and I see myself as all the opposite of those things.

And now, there’s this whole narrative in my head. You’re not even aware of this Pete, but I’ve got this narrative in my head of why it’s okay for me to be the way I am with you. And why do I need that? It’s because I’m actually not okay with the way I’ve chosen to see you. And I’ll invite you to be exactly what I say I don’t like. I’ll invite you to be all of those things, because if you are, then I’m justified in how I chose to see you. You’ve got this whole human dynamic that came about and I’m litigating that in my own head, but it all stemmed from me.

And I think the hopeful thing about that is, given the fact that I’ve deceived myself, I can also reclaim the truth, just like you did with that girl you were dating in high school. In the moment, at any time, we can go, “Wait a minute. That’s been my impact? I’m seeing you now again? I’m so sorry.” If I can let go of all of those falsehoods, then we can just be truthful together again. We can be human together again. That’s, I think, the hope of it. It’s both how scary it is, the way this snow-balls, but how easy it is to reclaim the relationship that we can have at any moment if we choose to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Mitch, you’re saying so much good, wise stuff. And in the book, there’s an expression they use a lot, and I hear it in my own voice, in the voice of the Audible narrator, when I’m doing it, it’s like, “You’re in the box!” So, Mitch, tell us, what does it mean to be in the box versus out of the box, metaphorically?

Mitch Warner
The box is this metaphor for that distorted way that I’ve come to see the world that gives me justification for my own self-betrayals, the way I’ve chosen to see other people falsely. So now, I’ve got this distorted view of you and me. It’s two-sided. I can’t see you in a less-than way without seeing myself as superior, or vice versa if I get justification that way.

You can imagine a version like that, right, “Oh, my word, I don’t have any privileges here, and I’m new to the team, and Pete is so connected, and he’s so much smarter than I am, he’s so much more gifted than I am. He probably came across this information years ago. If I could go to him now and share this.” So, now I’m worse than, you’re better than. It doesn’t matter which form that takes, it’ll look different depending on how I get justification in any relationship.

But that distorted view, it’s like living in a box. I no longer see reality. I’ll only see the things about you or me that reinforce that false self-image and that false image of you that gets me justification. Because more than I want you to change, more than I want the relationship to be healed, more than I want to work productively to save our family, or our company, or our community, I want justification. And I won’t just carry that distorted, I won’t just live in that distortion of a box with you. I’ll carry that around in a new situation.

I’ll walk into a meeting, and you’re not even there now, but I’m so invested in this view of myself that, “I’m so smart and capable and noble, because the worst thing that you can do when you work with someone like Pete is spoon-feed them information. So, I’m doing the very best that I can, that I’m smart, I’m capable, I’m more capable.” I walk into a meeting and people are presenting ideas. I’m carrying this box, this distorted view of myself into that meeting.

If you were to ask me, walking in then, “Hey, Mitch, what kind of leader are you? What kind of contributor are you? What kind of team member are you? Are you the person that needs to have all the best ideas?” I say, “No way. I’m the kind of person that likes ideas no matter where they come from.” But if I’ve got a view of myself that I’m really smart and capable or whatever that case might be, and then I share an idea and it gets shut down, somebody says, “Oh, you know what, Mitch? I’ve tried that in some other organization. It didn’t work very well. I think we could do this though.”

If I didn’t have this box, if I wasn’t living in this distorted reality, I’d go, “Oh, awesome! I’m glad you’ve tried that. All right, how do we do what you’re suggesting we do? Let’s mobilize around that.” But if I’m living in this box, if I’m carrying this distorted view of myself and others around, all of a sudden, that idea that might save our team, that’s a threat. It’s a threat to my self-image. I experience this all the time at work, but also at home.

You know, I’ve got this image that I deserve to be listened to or whatever. All of a sudden, I walk into situations with my kids. I’m not seeing them. I’m not even seeing myself. I’m just in this distortion field because I need to feel justified for that distorted way that I’ve chosen to see them and me, and now I’m not interacting with what they say. I’m interacting with threats to this self-view that I’ve got that’s so important to me, because at least if that distorted view of myself and others is correct, I’m justified in not seeing the people around me. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely, it does. And this idea is so big and powerful and transformative when you get your arms around it. And so, I mean, I’ve read the book, and if folks haven’t, I just want to make sure they’re not like, “What are they smoking? This is some trippy stuff.” Could you give us some super common examples, like we see all the time in terms of how folks find themselves, deceiving themselves, and then getting into trouble, like the top one or two or three things that occur perhaps nearly universally to humans interacting with other humans?

Mitch Warner
Well, look, there’s a thousand examples of how self-deception shows up in my life, but I won’t see them because self-deception, by definition, is a lie I’m telling to myself. So, what’s odd about that is I can’t see the lie even though I’m the liar because I’m so invested in believing that it’s the truth. In fact, my own emotions will tell me that this is the truth.

So, one of the easiest ways to see it, where self-deception is showing up, and self-deception, let’s just be clear, it’s just the problem of people having problems and not knowing that they have that problem, which would be easy to fix if we’re like, “Hey, Mitch, by the way, the way you’re talking to your kids right there, that’s going to alienate your kids. Is that what you want?”

Or, “Hey, Mitch, the way that you’re showing up in this meeting is actually going to have people resisting your idea instead of embracing it.” Or, “Hey, Mitch, the way that you’re avoiding this conversation with this employee over there, you’re talking to everybody about them instead of talking to them, your team member, that actually will exacerbate the problem. It’s going to keep going rather than get better.”

I mean, it’s like the most basic things that we can see if we’re not the person in the middle of it. And this would be easy to fix if you could tell me, “Hey, Mitch, by the way, the way that you’re talking to your kid is probably going to alienate them.” It’s not just that in self-deception I can’t see it. It’s that I resist that possibility, “Well, do you see how they’re talking to me? How else am I going to get through?” or, “Do you see what this employee is doing? They never listen to other people.” Whatever the case might be, but we don’t see it.

And you can look anywhere in your life where people are creating problems for themselves and they don’t notice it. They can’t tell. So how do I discern it? How do I know where this is happening in my own life? I have to look for the red flags of this box. And the red flags are, “Are there people that I’m blaming for my situation, for my experience? Am I horrible-lizing any people in my life? Am I seeking allies? Am I talking to people about other people? What might that signal?”

You said I litigate. I do that in my own head, Pete. I lawyer up. I find myself driving home from work and I tell myself this story. It’s like I’m playing out this courtroom scene, and I’m creating this case for why I’m right. Even the feeling that I’m right might be an indication that I could be telling myself a story here and it may not be the full truth. I could be self-deceived.

Those telltale signs, it might be that I exaggerate values, “Well, you know what? This is fair.” I wasn’t thinking about fairness when I was just working with someone else. It’s when I betray my own sense of what other people need, and now I’m in this distorted box where I’m looking for justification. Actually, that word itself, wherever I feel justified or I’m looking for justification by talking to others and gathering allies for me, that’s a pretty big red flag that there’s a reason I’m trying to feel justified, and it’s because things aren’t right as they are.

So, I just say look for those instances. Look for those instances where I’m experiencing any of those red flags, and then ask myself, “Is it possible that this isn’t fully the truth?”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Mitch, if I could put you on the spot, hardcore, could you share with us one recent instance in which you caught yourself caught up in this?

Mitch Warner
Oh, absolutely. I found myself with a team member here at Arbinger, one of the senior leaders, and I realized that I had had conversations with this person repeatedly, where I saw problems around what was happening inside of their team. And when they would ask me, “How are things going?” I would kind of dance around it, and I was talking to other people pretty straightforwardly about the problems that this person was creating for me and what I thought was for the company.

And then, finally, one person said to me, “Hey, what do you think it’s like for that person when you have conversations that aren’t really straightforward?” And in the moment, I realized I’m actually sabotaging this person’s success because I think I might want them to fail. Otherwise, why would I not tell them what I’m seeing if this could cost them their success?

And the reality is, I wanted to be justified. As long as they were behaving in these ways, then I was okay talking about them as a problem, seeing them as a problem. What you do with that, that’s where it can feel risky, but I always finish those conversations where I then step forward and say, “Hey, you know what, I haven’t been telling you the truth about what I’m seeing that’s problematic on your team or in you.” And it was an incredibly healing experience.

And what I saw in that conversation was all the ways that I had been creating problems for this person. So, yeah, it happens. I’ll be honest, Pete, those discoveries happen at least weekly, sometimes daily, where I realize I’m not real with other people, and I need to be in order to do my job.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Mitch, I appreciate that vulnerability and sharing a lot, and I think that’s powerful context right there in terms of if you catch yourself doing this, that doesn’t mean you’re very bad and very wrong and “Shame! Shame!” It means, “Hooray, you’re engaging the stuff correctly.” And in so doing, you’ve illuminated a pathway to improving your relationships and your results, and even, I’d say, your very character and the rewarding-ness of life itself, if I may be so bold. And that’s awesome. And so, it’s encouraging to hear you, the almighty managing director of The Arbinger Institute.

Mitch Warner
Oh, no, no, no.

Pete Mockaitis
That you, you too, realize you have these discoveries frequently, and I think that’s just a good message for anyone who starts going down this road, and is like, “Geez, I am a real jerk.” It’s like, “Well, we all kind of are. And it’s nice that you’re identifying specific opportunities for improvement, and you’re going to be on a nice little upward character trajectory with better relationships and results to go with it.”

Mitch Warner
Look, the only thing that qualifies any of us at Arbinger to do the work that we’re engaging is that we see it all the time in our life. It’s just constant. I’ll just say one thing about this process. There’s two ways to go about trying to improve myself. One is a project that’s really about me improving, “I want to be free of the box. I want to be a person who’s not self-deceived.” That’s great, but I just find in my own life that that never actually gets me where I want to be in the relationships that matter to me.

The other way I get there is I just go, “Man, what’s life like for this other person having to live and work with me when I’m like this? What are they trying to accomplish? What are they trying to achieve? What are their needs and challenges and objectives? What’s life like for them?” And then when I focus on that, all of a sudden, I can see clearly, more clearly than I can when it’s just a self-improvement project, the ways that I’ve been getting in other people’s way, and then I just respond. When I do that, things get better, faster than when it’s a self-improvement kind of project. You know what I mean?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that sense of conviction and what’s life like. And I think that’s a superpower question right there because, to even face that question soberly and honestly, it takes courage. Like, just the thoughts you’re willing to entertain in your own head, it takes some courage, like, “You might not want to do this when driving because the temptation is immediate.”

Like, “Well, they’re wrong!” It’s like, “They deserve it!” It’s almost like there’s a little monster that’s just, like, trying to run. Like, “No, no, no! Don’t look here, don’t look here!” when that is exactly the place that needs to be looked. It’s like, “What’s life like? Oh, it probably kind of sucks. It probably feels very unsettling to be on the receiving end of this day after day after day.”

And then to just internalize what you hath wrought, the pain and destruction that you have brought on to others hurts. But I think that’s a great sign that you’re growing in self-awareness and compassion, and it’s kind of like the immediate precursor to breakthrough.

Mitch Warner
Absolutely. And if you get there, if you find yourself able to begin to see, “Oh, my word, this is what I’ve wrought. This is what life, I think, is like, having to live or work with me.” Go share that with the person. Go tell them. We call this at Arbinger, “Meet to give.” So often we meet to get, “What would it look like if I just met to give?” And I say, not, “Hey, here’s some changes I think I can make.” You should share that. But, first, tell the person what you’re seeing that you weren’t seeing before when you started to think about what life has been like for.

And I’d just be that clear, I’d say, “Hey, you know what? I wonder if we could have a conversation, because I’ve been thinking about what life has probably been like for you having to live or work with me. And, look, I don’t know if this encapsulates all of it. I’m actually curious about what exactly it’s been like from your perspective. But just sitting there, trying to think about what it likely it’s like, I think it’s like this.”

“And as I think about your objectives, I think your objectives are this. I think this is what you’re trying to accomplish. And here’s how I think I’ve been making that harder, and I just got to own that. I am so sorry. But I’m actually curious. Is that right? Are those the challenges? Are those your objectives? Or what would you add?”

Going to someone, and saying, “Hey, tell me how I’ve been a problem for you,” don’t expect anything from that conversation. Don’t expect someone who you’ve had friction with to be like, “Oh, well, great. Actually, this…” They won’t tell you. You haven’t created a safe enough space. You haven’t demonstrated enough interest in figuring out that, and being willing to own it. But when you do that, even if you don’t have it completely right, all of a sudden, they say, “Oh, actually, yeah,” or, “Well, kind of, but it’s actually a little bit more like this.”

And all of a sudden, you start learning and you get curious, and you say, “Okay, tell me more about that.” That process of just owning it, showing that you’ve been doing some thinking, showing that you’re curious about what your impact has been, that does more to change a relationship than probably anything else you can do. I would say that nothing changes in an organization, nothing, until the relationships between the people that have to work together, transform.

And nothing moves the needle more in transforming those relationships than people doing the work to think about their impact, and then going and honestly sharing that and owning it, and then getting curious about how they might have been wrong around that, and finding ways to help. You offer, “Hey, so, well, given all that, I think I could do this. Would that be helpful?” And they’ll say, “Oh, actually, yeah,” or, “Well, it’s a little bit different.”

It’s no different than the conversation you should be having with family members, with siblings, or a partner, or your kids if you’ve got kids. It’s exactly the same. Just try it. Go meet to give with the people in your life and do the work in advance, and then own it honestly. You’ll be amazed at the transformation that that will begin to put in motion.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Being on the receiving end of that is, like, it could be like startling. It’s like the end of “A Christmas Carol,” like, “What happened to Scrooge? This is amazing! A Christmas miracle!” Beautiful stuff. Mitch, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Mitch Warner
No, I just say don’t think that this is some theoretical thing. This isn’t. This is the way that we work when we’re at our very best selves. We’re just honest. We see each other as people. We’re outward. We take responsibility. And to the degree that you can uncover the places where you haven’t been telling the truth about how you’ve been creating challenges you haven’t seen, that move will do more to set you free to do the kinds of things that you want to see in your life that will propel your success in any relationship than, in my experience, any other work that you could do. So, just jump in, take the next step.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Awesome. Well, now, Mitch, can you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mitch Warner
There’s many, but one of the ones that I personally love comes from Abraham Lincoln, when he said, “I don’t like that man. I should probably get to know him better.” I mean, it’s not terribly profound, except it is. If there’s people in my life that I’m resisting or struggling with, what would it mean if I just got to know them better? What would it mean if I just went and met to learn with that person?

I keep that in mind every time I think, “Man, I don’t like that person. I’m bugged,” or, sorry, irritated. “I’m experiencing friction. Maybe I really need to get to know this person better.” And the truth is every time, that’s unlocked something new for me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Mitch Warner
Oh, great question. There was a study that was done by McKinsey a couple years ago. It was this longitudinal study over many organizations that found something that I have found in our work with organizations. What they found is that organizations that identify and address mindset at the outset are four times more likely to succeed at changing whatever they’re trying to change in the organization than are organizations that just bypass mindset change and go directly to behavior change.

When I saw that study, I thought, “Oh, my word, here is independent research that just validates the work that we’re doing every day.” You’ve got to begin with mindset. Going to behavior won’t work because every behavior is an outgrowth of mindset. So, if you can master that, you can change anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Mitch Warner
Two that I keep coming back to, one is Insanely Simple. It’s a really powerful view into the work at Apple to get to simplicity, and what that can mean in your organization or in your own work as an individual. What would it look like to get to real simplicity? And the other one is called Creativity, Inc. It’s the Pixar story, and how that team of people was able to unleash creativity by really overcoming ego and seeing each other and their customers as people. We use the Adobe suite constantly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you or The Arbinger Institute shares that really seems to connect and resonate with folks that gets quoted back to you often?

Mitch Warner
When you think about a job, whatever your job is, with an outward mindset, there’s a particular pattern. Sometimes when we think about a job, we think, “Well, here’s all of my tasks, here’s my objectives,” the kind of things you could put on a job description. But when you’re really outward, you don’t start with what you do. You start with what other people need to do, who depend on you in the way you go about your work.

My manager, my customers, my co-workers, my direct reports if I’m a leader, if you start there and just see people, what are they trying to accomplish, then you will find the most innovative, powerful ways to adjust what you’re doing every day to be more helpful to them. And the truth is, there’s nothing that anyone does in an organization that’s not intended or designed to help someone else.

So, when you unlock that, that, “My job is to help other people accomplish their job better, so it’s in my power to figure out the innovative ways to change what I do moment-to-moment to be more helpful,” and then measure that impact. Go check in and say, “Hey, I changed this? Was that helpful? I’m thinking of adjusting this. Would that be helpful?”

You can remember that with the acronym SAM, see others, adjust efforts, measure impact. Employees that do that are the most valuable employees in the company. And so, I’d say that’s the thing people walk away, remembering day to day. The way to stay outward, the way to not get bogged down in self-deception or lies I’m telling myself, is to just orient my work every day, what I’m doing moment-to-moment in an outward way. See others first, then adjust my efforts and measure impact.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Mitch Warner
Just come to our website, Arbinger.com. We’d love to have a conversation with you, figure out what are your challenges, what are you trying to accomplish. There are tons of resources there that can help you get started on this journey to living and working with an outward mindset. Or, go online and buy our books. You can go to Amazon. You can go to any other retailer. Pick up Leadership and Self-Deception and see what that unlocks for you in your own work. Wherever you are, whatever you’re trying to accomplish, pick up the book, we’d love to hear from you about it.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Mitch Warner
I’d say, going back to what we were talking about, Pete, go and meet to give with the people that you have friction with. Just do that work. If there are people in your life that you’d actually just like to improve the relationship but there hasn’t been friction, I’d say go meet to learn. Just get curious. No other agenda. You could do this today.

Pick someone in your life. It could be someone in your family, it could be someone that you work with every day, and just say, “Hey, I’d love to just learn more about what your needs and your challenges and your objectives are. Would you be willing to just let me get curious about those for a minute? I’d love to learn more.” You’d be amazed at what that would unlock. Meet to give, if there’s been friction. If there are people in your life you just love to have a different relationship with, go and meet to learn.

Pete Mockaitis
Mitch, this is powerful stuff. Thank you. I wish you many, many happy days and minimal self-deception.

Mitch Warner
Thanks so much, Pete. It’s been great to be with you.