Clean the Mirror

"Of all the factors that can undermine behavioral integrity, among the most dangerous is managers' inability to see an integrity problem in themselves. The issue often arises because of our natural desire to see ourselves as consistent. In many companies, a manager's path to success seems to lie in verbal endorsements of espoused values, while his actual behavior is expected to align with certain implicit norms and standards that may be more widely accepted. For example, managers often talk about empowerment without actually yielding any power. When this happens, psychological defense mechanisms activate to divert the manager's attention from the contradiction so he can feel better about himself. The self-deception tends to perpetuate the problem."
[from "The High Cost of Lost Trust", Tony Simons, Harvard Business Review, September 2002]