Mitch Warner on Leadership and Self Deception

Oct 2, 2024

Mitch Warner, managing partner at the Arbinger Institute and co-author of renowned leadership books, dives deep into the complexities of mindset and leadership. He discusses how self-deception undermines relationships and how defending one’s self-image can create barriers, even with children. Mitch emphasizes viewing others as people rather than objects to enhance influence and improve collaboration. Moreover, he explores the importance of curiosity over judgment in interactions, ultimately advocating for authentic leadership that fosters genuine connections.

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INSIGHT

Art Mirrors Communication

Art and communication share a core: creators pour pieces of themselves into a message and viewers bring their own lens to interpret it.
Mitch Warner argues we miss meaning when we assume others must see things exactly as we intended.

INSIGHT

We Reveal Ourselves When We Interpret

People reveal themselves both in how they see reality and how they communicate it, so expecting identical interpretations is futile.
Embracing differing perspectives unlocks richer interactions and better relationships.

ADVICE

Understand Before Judging

Avoid approaching others with a lens of judgment; instead ask who made the marks and why to better appreciate their idea.
Seek to understand a person's background to reduce premature dismissal and see the virtue in their contributions.

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Mitch Warner is a managing partner of the Arbinger Institute, which is a global leadership development firm. He directs the development of Arbinger’s leadership development programs and highly customized large-scale organizational culture change initiatives. Mitch has been instrumental in Arbinger’s rapid growth, including its expanding international presence in over 20 countries. He’s also a heck of a writer; he’s the co-author of Arbinger’s bestselling books Leadership and Self Deception (which we get into at length in today’s conversation), The Anatomy of Peace (which we actually don’t really dive into in today’s conversation), and The Outward Mindset (which is really the precursor for a lot of our conversation today). Mitch is obsessed with mindset and how mindset can impact how we show up not just for ourselves, but for the people around us. Mitch has delivered training and consulting internationally to leaders and organizations across a broad range of industries. He’s a sought-after teacher, speaker, and advisor to leaders of corporations, governments, and organizations of all kinds around the world on the topics of leadership, collaboration, mindset, and culture change. He also is at the forefront of conflict resolution, alignment, and strategy. This conversation gets deeply into mindset, really into leadership, and we’re going to talk about how mindset impacts leadership at great length. Lastly, I bring myself into today’s conversation and I hope you appreciate it; I try to make these conversations as real as possible and bring in current challenges that I am dealing with, so I hope you find your own place and space in today’s conversation and think about how you can increase your own self-awareness and maybe some of the things you’re struggling with on a day-to-day basis, whether it’s personally or professionally.

Mitch had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“Art is a communication between the artist and the viewer” (6:05).

“The most interesting thing about art to me is that it’s not just self-expression” (7:05).

“Everybody has the capacity for creativity” (10:45).

“The purpose of art is not photography” (12:20).

“The point is not to see the reality in the same way, the point is to realize we’re going to see that thing differently based on our experiences, based on what we’re bringing to it” (14:10).

“When I approach a person with a lens of judgment, I fail to recognize that I’m seeing myself as already different than they are” (16:25).

“No matter what form it takes, whatever I’m trying to project keeps me cut off from the people in my life” (25:10).

“The challenge with a word like ‘authenticity’ is it’s so easily misunderstood” (28:45).

“At the end of the day, all of us are the same in a key, fundamental way: we all know what’s underneath behavior, and what’s underneath behavior is how we see” (31:05).

“It’s not like our experiences are neutral; they’re all charged, and we live in an environment that has all sorts of social expectations” (46:10).

“The work is to become free of self-deception, of the lies that we tell ourselves that get in the way of us just being with other people” (52:30).

“There’s different ways to go toward a problem” (54:45).

“People have a broad spectrum of possibility” (55:40).

“If I’m self-deceived, I can’t lead” (57:10).

“People don’t respond to our behaviors… What people respond to is how they’re being seen” (58:05).

“The problem with self-deception is the fact that not only can I not see that I’m the problem, but I resist the very possibility that I’m the problem” (1:05:50).

Additionally, you can find the Arbinger Institute website here. I’d also highly encourage you to purchase Mitch’s books wherever books are sold. You can also connect with Mitch on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Thank you so much to Mitch for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.