Think you're a great leader? Make sure you aren't guilty of one of these three reality-distorting traits.

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The late Steve Jobs speaks during his keynote speech at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California June , !""#$

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Every great leader possesses a degree of what Walter Isaacson (in his iography of !teve "o s# descri es as $an a ility to distort reality.$ What Isaacson %eant is that "o s forced his will on &pple' often pushing people to create things they never thought possi le--a powerful asset in any leader. (ut that reality distortion effect works oth ways. It also %eans that every leader' to a greater or lesser degree' distorts the reality around themselves' leading to tensions' inconsistency' and ad decisions. There are two reasons why leaders who live in a u the%selves and those they lead. le eco%e so dangerous to

)irst' the %ost insidious aspect of this is that it happens in see%ingly %undane ways which are hard to spot' ut which have far-fro% %undane conse*uences to the group' tea% or organi+ation. !econd' the u le effect is directly proportional to the a ility of the leader. The etter they are at what they do' the larger the u le grows' and the harder it eco%es to urst. (,eers and colleagues will readily urst a reality u le of an

insecure or less than effective colleague' ut the highly successful leader is rarely challenged.# -ere are the three things %ost great leaders get wrong' and which together' place the% inside a negative reality distortion field. 1. The time needed to do things. /isionary leaders work at such strategic heights that they consistently underesti%ate how long it actually takes to get stuff done. (My esti%ate is that %ost visionary leaders have a seven-ti%es perception error. If they say so%ething will take an hour to do' it will actually take a day0 if they think a day is enough' it'll take a week.# This particular for% of reality distortion regularly gets positive play in the %edia' who love stories of derring-do where y the hard-charging visionary leader refuses to accept what %ere %ortals tell the%' and instead push their tea% to superhu%an feats of achieve%ent in unheard-of ti%e fra%es. 1nfortunately' the sad reality is that for every pu lished tale of whip-cracking rilliance there are a thousand e2hausted' fra++led tea%s forced to produce crappy' unsustaina le gu%-and-glue solutions for no other reason than their leaders ina ility to tell ti%e. 2. The relative importance of people and ideas. The second u le-creating reality distortion that visionary leaders fall prey to is the tendency to categori+e everything--every idea' every person--at e2tre%es. &n idea is either rilliant or it sucks. There's no in- etween. ,eople are either for us or against us. Etc. This for% of reality distortion is certainly colorful' and can even e fun to watch play out' ut for those who get tarred with an e2tre%e negative categori+ation' ased on little or no evidence' it's de%orali+ing' and for everyone else it's 3ust plain confusing. 3. What other people hear you say. ,erhaps the %ost da%aging reality distortion visionary leaders are su 3ect to is an (al%ost# endearing ina ility to truly co%prehend what others have heard the% say. Weirdly enough' this works on two al%ost contradictory levels.

&t one e2tre%e' visionary leaders' who talk to think' will often engage in an orgy of %using' setting up straw %en to test a theory0 arguing the point a out things they actually elieve0 positing hypotheticals in order to rainstor% options' all with the net effect of co%pletely confusing those listening. 4n the other hand' when they do %ove into instruction-giving %ode' visionary leaders often %ake the wholly unsu stantiated assu%ption that everyone around the% can read their %inds' using opa*ue' al%ost %ysterious' rief' allusions to convey highly i%portant directives. Take a look at your interactions with others this week. Which of these reality distortion techni*ues are you engaging in?