Arbinger Institute

So that's the story of Anatomy of Peace.

It's written by the Arbinger Institute, right? A group full of smart people, not just one individual author.

[laughs] By the way, we had, um, we had the managing director of the Arbinger Institute on our podcast a couple years ago, so check back through the archives.

But Rick, first of all, what about my description of the book on our kickoff call made you intrigued? Right? You, you...

I, I think you had 10 books ahead of this book on your list already.

vision?Yeah, I just think that our ability for self-deception is almost limitless.

Um, there's a, I think it's the Arbinger Institute maybe is the name of it.

There's a book called Leadership and Self-Deception or something like that.

Mm-hmm.

And I hope people actually take that question with them rather than simply hearing it and moving on.

And that comes from my reading of the series Leadership and Self-Deception Through the Outward Mindset from the Arbinger Institute.

And that question, because it takes away the rank Like if I walk into a situation and the best thing I can do is go out and buy pizza for everybody, then that's what I do as the leader.

I go buy pizza because everybody else has it.

And then they realize that at the end of the day there's a cer- there's some type of system or some type of way that we do things that is purposely or unintentionally, it's, it's happening every time, but it's not happening on purpose, some type of reaction or system that is undermining what they really want.

And there's a great book out there by the Arbinger Institute.

It's called Leadership and Self-Deception, and it's about these cycles that we ourselves create and then sustain in order to justify our responses and...

Oh, it's a great book.

The book of this week is The Anatomy of Peace.

It's by the Arbinger Institute, the same group behind Leadership and Self-Deception, a book I'm sure a lot of you have read or seen the key insights from.

This one goes even further.

It's not really a book about conflict resolution technique as much as it is a book about why the techniques don't work until something more basic changes first.

You're not wrong about the facts.

You're just not seeing the whole picture because you stopped looking for it the moment you decided who the person is and how this relationship is going to go.

The Arbinger Institute has a term for this state.

They call it being stuck in the box.

Far from being formulaic, it's something that's a little bit more of a heart and a mind disposition.

I really love the book by the, uh, Arbinger Institute called Outward Mindset, The Outward Mindset.

Uh, they also have a book I've recommended many times called Leadership and Self-Deception, but both of those books kind of focus on this idea of we are trying to live outward from us to others, to, you know, for lack of a better phrase or maybe for the perfect phrase, uh, blessed to be a blessing, if you will.

Um, and hospitality, if anything, is trying to find out how we can, in, in a, in a multitude of ways, both reasonable and unreasonable, bless people and serve them and be something to them that they count in the pro category, not the con.

It's not at all like this typical American self-help book.

It's published by something called the Arbinger Institute.

Nice.

And it's all about this externalizing and internalizing that You know, they talk a lot about being in the box and being in the box means that you're basically starting to blame others and you're kind of deflecting from yourself.

But part of what we do for our onboarding is we recommend books so that we can all get on the same page.

And one of the books that I recommended for her is a book that greatly impacted me called Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute.

And one of the things that it does is it challenges us around this tendency that we have as humans to create boxes for people.

And we see it a lot in the political realm, but it can be in cultural things, racial things, where we think we understand the person's political right or political left.

And it's Leadership and Self-Deception.

I'm not sure if you've heard of that one, but it's by the Arbinger Institute.

And it really put it right in front of me.

But there are, I think, becoming a student to it is the key.