The Leadership Illusion

Illusions are either natural or man-made. When a full moon hovers low in the night sky, luminous and seemingly much larger than usual, our eyes are deceived by its proximity to the horizon. Our perceptual system makes a faulty calculation about the moon’s actual size but it’s a perfectly natural mistake. The two rings in Figure 1.1 create an illusion of two rings interlocking. Look more closely and it becomes apparent that the circles and their perceived connectivity are actually impossible figures. This is an artist’s illusion, an intentional sleight of mind that takes advantage of the way evolution has shaped the way we perceive and interpret depth, shape and three-dimensional space. The key difference between these two illusions is that if we concentrate hard on the latter we can begin to see through the deception; try as we might with the moon illusion, our perceptual error continues. No matter how long we stare at the moon, even when we know the science we can never persuade our perceptual system to construct in our mind’s eye a more accurately sized view of this lunar landscape. This book is about what we have called the “leadership illusion”: a naturally occurring, inevitably biased and fundamentally flawed view of leaders and their worlds. The leadership illusion is not a new phenomenon — it has been fooling us since our conscious minds began to grapple with the nature of leadership. Figure 1.1 Interlocking rings