I just came back from a trip to Orlando for an Internal Auditor conference, and got a chance to listen to some audiobooks on my fancy new iPod Shuffle. I just finished the audiobook version of "Leadership and Self-Deception", which could very well be one of those life-changing sorts of books.
The book is one of those that takes a business teaching and wraps it up in a story designed to guide you through a series of "a-ha" moments. In this case, it's about a new manager at "Zagrum Corporation" who is invited to a meeting with a senior exec at the company, and is told he has a "big problem" that he needs to solve if he's ever going to make it at the company. Things proceed from there, and some very powerful concepts are revealed.
From the title, it should be apparent that self-deception plays a major role in the book. The book not only deals with this, it deals with how your self-deception negatively impacts your dealings with others because it puts you "in the box" where you have tainted dealings with others, causing them to initiate tainted dealings with you, causing a vicious circle.
This is basically a primer on how to change the results you get in life by adjusting how you choose to approach, deal with, and think about other people. At times, I felt like I'd already gotten to the a-ha quite a bit before the author chose to spring it, but that doesn't change the value of the lesson they are trying to teach.
The book covers a set of concepts that look deceptively simple, but which could be very difficult to apply. My gut says this will definitely be worth continual effort - they will make you a better person at work and at home if you get better at the techniques.
Worth a read or listen, for sure. The link above is to the book version on Amazon - you can get the audiobook from Audible. Oh- by the way, as audiobooks go, it's pretty well done with good voice characterizations by the reader.