Summary
The article is a first assessment of the book "The box", the main aspects of the authors are dealt with, and the fundamental ideas dealt with in the book are summarized concisely, as well as their relationship with leadership in the company, finally arriving To an assessment highlighting positive and negative aspects, based on a study not only of the book but also of the opinion of other authors, the investigation culminates in the relationship of the book with one of the current trends in leadership, servant leadership.
Introduction
The change must be directed, the leader of the organization must transmit that vision and enthuse the rest with this new project. However, in a company you need leadership and management, there must be a balance between both. Without good management, companies tend to chaos, in such a way that their viability is seriously jeopardized.
The greater importance of the role of the leader comes from the fact that in recent years the world has become more competitive, unstable and demanding. Today, doing a little better than in the past is no longer a solution. Substantial changes are required in order to survive and be able to compete effectively in this new environment. More changes require more leadership.
True leaders achieve the famous “school of fish” effect on their teams. Everyone works in the same direction, synchronized and reacts to changes in the same way, making it difficult to identify who was the first to initiate the movement.
Talking about change also means talking about resistance to change. Although more than resistance, most people are predisposed. What generally happens is that you have resistance to internal and external uncertainty.
Many times, people are caught up in this dilemma. For the organization to move forward, it must be adapted, but this also generates fears of loss of status, stability, tranquility, and above all the mental difficulty of interpreting all these new changes.
The main objective of this work is to evaluate the book "La Caja"; For this, it was structured as follows: first, the author's fundamental considerations as well as the most relevant aspects dealt with in it will be enunciated, then the relationship that exists between La Caja and current leadership trends will be seen and finally a analysis of what is said about this book and what are our considerations.
The book the box, a leadership lesson
Title: La Caja (Leadership and Self-Deception)
Authors: The Arbinger Institute
Editorial: Empresa Activa, 2001
According to its authors, people subjected to self-deception live and work as if they were locked in a box. Blind to the surrounding reality, they undermine both their own work and that of others. But the problem is that, since they are locked in the box, they do not realize it and therefore do nothing to change. And so, their results do not vary either.
With this book it has been proposed to solve the old problem of self-deception, or what was originally called "resistance."
The problem is this: how can people simultaneously (1) create their own problems, (2) be unable to realize that they are creating their own problems, and yet (3) resist whatever attempts are made for helping them stop creating those problems?
As this book explains, this phenomenon is at the core of many organizational failures.
But it is not all bad news: there is a solution to self-deception and the costly consequences that derive from it; Through an entertaining and highly instructive story, The Box explains what self-deception is, how people fall for it, how it destroys organizational performance and, most importantly, what is the surprising way to end it.
That is the reason why many organizational problems seem insurmountable, because at their core they are self-deception and resist solution.
Arbinger led by CEOs: Duane Boyce, Jim Ferrell and Paul Smith is currently a business and academic consortium of leadership training and advice (multidisciplinary team).
The Arbinger Results system is made up of three phases. The first is the one presented in this book. Arbinger's clients come from a wide variety of industries, including telecommunications, aerospace, energy, computer technology, finance, banking, steel, automotive manufacturing, retail, healthcare, education, corrections, advertising and advertising.
The book is divided into three fundamental parts: the first part is related to everything that has to do with self-deception and the box, the second in how we enter the box and the third how we get out of the box.
Everything takes place in the Zagrum company, specifically a meeting that they hold as a company strategy "to minimize individual and organizational self-deception", so that their workers stay out of the box and generate results.
The Box is like a metaphor for how we sometimes resist others.
Self-deception is the inability to realize that one has a problem. So it blinds us from the truth and once we blind the things that occur to us, the only thing they will do is make the situation worse. Faced with this situation, it can be said that one is inside the Box.
Many associate being soft with being outside the box and being tough with being inside the box. It's not about being tough or not, but about being in or out of the box.
We can seemingly perform almost any external behavior being inside or outside the box, but being outside makes a huge difference in terms of the influence we exert on others.
The idea is not only to associate it with being inside or outside the box, when you treat a person as an object and proceed badly, you are inside the box as when you do the right thing in the wrong way.
It is possible to be with respect to one person inside the box and another person outside the box.
Self-betrayal is a whole process that is created that makes the person be inside the box: it is an act contrary to what one feels he should do for another, when one betrays himself, he begins to see the world in a way that justifies the Self-betrayal, seeing the self-justified world distorts the vision of reality, so we enter the box. Entering the box causes others to enter the box as well.
This whole process could be said in one sentence: the defects of others are exaggerated and their own are minimized.
Each of us has a certain sense of what others need and how we can help them, if I act against it, I betray myself. With the passage of time these characteristics can become part of one and in this way the box would be transported.
When one cannot identify any feelings for which he betrays, it is most likely that he is previously inside the box.
The justifying images are perversions produced inside the box about what would be great if it were reality outside the box. By blaming, I invite others to enter the box.
When you are inside the box, the results are not achieved because you only think of yourself, and the results of others are not considered as important as ours, in addition, others are induced to stay in the box, we retain information and resources, we try to control others and accuse others of being slow.
The moment you feel the intense desire to be outside the box you are already because feeling the desire is to be outside the box, it seems a miracle but this is how it works, the most difficult thing of all is to stay outside the box.
Now, how to get out of the box, one might consider it difficult, but since we can be for some outside the box and for others not, one feels those intense desires to leave the box when it is outside with respect to another person.
You change the moment you stop resisting problems. You have to learn to respect people and treat them for what they are, people.
To stay outside the box it is very important to respect what our sensitivity to be outside the box tells us what we should do for these people.
A leader inside the Box is harmful, since he induces everyone who works for him to go equally into their boxes. It takes a different kind of leader. When you are in the box, people follow you, if they do, only by force or the threat of using it, but that is not leadership, it is coercion. The leaders that people choose to follow are those outside the box. Success as a leader depends on freeing yourself from self-betrayal, in this way collaborative leaders are created to work with.
1. The leader in general must know that the people in his charge will be widely influenced and will imitate his behavior. Those aspects of his own character that he detests, if they are not corrected, he will suffer from those people who are under his leadership. It is important to understand that the leader has the virtue of understanding his responsibility and living in absolute coherence with what he teaches.
Therefore, the leader must know how to behave, listen, rectify their mistakes and assimilate both success and failure, always taking experiences and feedback for improvement.
The leader must become a reference, for example, a guide, and the main weapons to achieve this are: his ethics; the communication; dare; trust in others; the vision of the future; team work; and undertake tasks strengthening or enriching human relationships, based on motivation, that is, identifying needs and their solution to satisfy them, to properly bring people together and obtain the desired productivity.
… There is a germ of which we are all carriers to a greater or lesser extent, a germ that kills leadership causes a multitude of group problems. This germ can be isolated and neutralized… Self-deception is the disease, the germ is self-betrayal… Self-deception has many symptoms that damage the organization related to management skills. Everything happens because the carriers of the germ do not know they have it.
2. Leadership begins with the will: which is the only capacity that human beings have for actions to be consistent with intentions and to choose the behavior to follow.
Honesty means being free from deception. It is the quality that most people put at the top of the list of qualities they expect from a leader.
It is seen as a challenge for leaders to train others who are also innovative, inspire confidence and never lose sight of their horizon; But to achieve this, it must start from providing employees with enough power to make decisions and be absolutely responsible for them, (what is usually known as: empowerment movement.)
The most difficult skills to acquire for a leader are:
- Learn to emphasize choices and options, rather than answering the individual's questions Give honest feedback.
I intend to help you find out for yourself.
1. The leader is someone who identifies and satisfies the legitimate needs of his people and removes all obstacles so that they can serve the customer. Being the first means serving. What the leader has to do is push and encourage his people to give the best of themselves. The inverted pyramid symbolizes the model of a "Service Leadership" which is precisely what is evidenced in this phrase taken from the book La Caja.
The vigor, the impetus, the mind, the heart, the ideas and the desire to do are some of the things that cannot be managed, only led, this means that they cannot be commanded, ordered, controlled, arranged, regulated, administered, or required, because they depend on a spontaneous, voluntary, unregulated activity and on a choice. Management is a liberal art, its purpose is people, human nature. People and their capabilities are the engine of any society and its true cause of wealth. Techniques and technologies are undoubtedly important, but they are at the service of people and not the other way around.
The ultimate goal of management is to contribute to human development and progress by taking advantage of all the resources that we have at our disposal, especially the inexhaustible resources of human intelligence, avoiding waste.
The success of the Zagrum is that:
- They developed a culture in which they invite people to see others as people and to be considered and treated in that direct way. People respond accordingly. They are distinguished by a leadership mindset applied at all levels of the organization. They instituted a process in the company by which they help people to become aware that they are inside the box and to focus on getting results that allow them to be out of the box.
As they were out of the box they were able to identify and develop a specific plan of action that minimized basic self-betrayal.
What is said about the Book La Caja?
An anonymous person gives his opinion on this book.
In The Box, maybe you are trapped and you do not know how to get out… maybe you are not even aware… The point is that since a monk sold his Ferrari, they hide their cheese from the mice… it should not surprise you that they put it in box.
The approach is attractive, but the book writing is not really attractive.
In many cases there is excessive rambling and the metaphor of "the box": it is used excessively. It is not an entertaining story (perhaps it could be)… rather it is a claim of a consultancy that does not give simple solutions to get out of self-deception or the "box".
I do not doubt that it is a fairly frequent phenomenon in the business world. The text on the flap says: Most people spend a lot of time locked up there, and the multiplication of boxes is the root of many of the problems that prevent better job performance, affecting aspects such as leadership, teamwork, communication, responsibility, trust, commitment and motivation.
The feeling of "self-betrayal" is too forced in a world where progression, change, innovation, lack of training to work in teams simply justify the frequent situations faced by human resources in business organizations.
It must be my problem, but after reading the book… I couldn't get out of the box… Still it is an interesting reflection… It is always important to ask ourselves if we are in “the box” if we are deceiving ourselves.
"Is very good. Good for everyone. Useful and necessary in work relationships and, of course, in the family. La Caja, a basic concept developed in a simple and contagious way. Enjoy it." Ramón Bernat, vice president and CEO of Chupa Chups.
"A great book for leading knowledge workers in the 21st century business." Francisco Román, CEO of Microsoft Ibérica
«This book excites me. Identify the basic issue of all organizational activity. It describes our way of getting caught in the box of self-deception, and the way we break free from it. Like everything the Arbinger Institute team does. The box goes to the bottom of the issues, to our most basic humanity and our way of being. It is a work that, like the truth itself, grows with each new reading. I highly recommend it. » Dough Hauth, vice president of sales for Lucent Technologies.
Considerations about the book the box. Servant leadership
It is considered to have been a very creative way of presenting each of the aspects covered in the book. If it weren't for the examples from everyday life used, it would have been impossible to understand such complex concepts as self-deception and self-betrayal.
Yes, the book is extensive, especially for the systematic use of it, but this is compensated by its easy and pleasant reading.
At times it was like a vicious circle once being in the box, the reading progressed and the questions increased, but little by little the answers appear, until the last moment the reading catches you and makes you think to what extent we are or not in the box and what to do to get out.
It is also very good that the people who are interested in knowing more about Arbinger are given possibilities by the address of its website: www.arbinger.com
In the book La Caja, the authors approach the problem of self-deception and its relationship with leadership in the organization from a new perspective, they address one of the most common and difficult problems to solve: not realizing that we have a problem, of course, If we do not realize that we have a problem, how are we going to solve it then, hence the most important thing is to recognize that we have a problem, overcoming self-deception.
The book The Box calls us to reflect, not on our behavior but on the feelings that drive human behavior, since it starts from the idea that we know what others feel about us and that is what we respond to regardless of our thinking, advocating for the union of sentiment and human behavior in the organization. Faced with the same behavior, different results are achieved if we act in accordance with how we feel, if we manifest ourselves before people and not before objects, seeing reality as it is shown to us.
In the environment, people behave like a nuisance or a threat, or like a similar being, with needs like ours, depending on whether we are inside the box or not, whether we see the outside as it is. Inside the box, we conceptualize the world for our benefit and feel threatened by other people.
Outside the box we conceptualize the world as it is; without taboos; we see things directly; we see in short, people. It refers to the fact that once outside the box (self-deception has been overcome) the important thing is not our needs but the needs of others, to see people as such, then we see the outside as it is and put collective needs first. on top of individual needs.
The reason for a leader is to improve systematically to improve the organization, go ahead of the organization, guide it, trace the right path to meet the objectives, and this is achieved with servant leadership, only interacting directly with the masses, with the customer, we know what is best for them and therefore what is best for the organization. See figure 1.
Figure 1. Transformation of the command pyramid
Nothing is closer to servant leadership than when we are outside the box, we see people as such and we serve them, we are willing to put their needs before ours and satisfy them, feeling that it is the leader's reason for being. See Table 1.
Table 1. Characteristics of Servant Leadership Compared to Being Outside the Box
| Servant leadership | Outside the Box |
| Close to the masses | See people, not objects |
| Server | Help people |
| Collective goals | Results, achievement of objectives |
| Interpret your employees and clients | See the world as it is |
| Motivate and influence | Compromises |
Conclusions
- The box is a book that proposes a philosophy of behavior before life. It proposes a behavior to independent leaders, to a certain extent, of their techniques and methods, while noting that they need to be complemented. It offers a very creative vision of the problem of achieve the effective leadership that companies demand today The seemingly simple philosophy he proposes can lead to The important thing for people is that they are paid attention Leaders need to have authenticity, that is, have the ability to be themselves with people. Humility is not making yourself less but thinking less about yourself. Indulgence (not holding a grudge to the one who hurts us) does not mean that we have to pretend that what is not right has not happened, or not face them when it does.If the leader is not committed as a leader, he will probably end up abandoning and returning to the exercise of power. Leaders must be quick to anticipate and detect trends. In causing change instead of being mere spectators and breaking the rules if necessary. Being revolutionaries as leaders implies producing deep and lasting changes. Do not settle for what is established. See things from another perspective. Be creative. Continually asking yourself questions and finding the answers. Observe our surroundings from a certain distance and be objective. Not doing things because they have always been done that way, because it is the custom.In causing change instead of being mere spectators and breaking the rules if necessary. Being revolutionaries as leaders implies producing deep and lasting changes. Do not settle for what is established. See things from another perspective. Be creative. Continually asking yourself questions and finding the answers. Observe our surroundings from a certain distance and be objective. Not doing things because they have always been done that way, because it is the custom.In causing change instead of being mere spectators and breaking the rules if necessary. Being revolutionaries as leaders implies producing deep and lasting changes. Do not settle for what is established. See things from another perspective. Be creative. Continually asking yourself questions and finding the answers. Observe our surroundings from a certain distance and be objective. Not doing things because they have always been done that way, because it is the custom.
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The business training and consulting company (Arbinger) works for major international companies such as Lucent Technologies, LensCrafters, AT&T, Compaq or 3M.
