Is It Strategy or Self-Protection?

Don’t Trust Your Gut Without Checking Your Motives

As leaders, we constantly make decisions. We shift org charts. We reschedule meetings. We cancel one-on-ones. Many of those choices are operational. But too often we “decide first” and only later justify ourselves.

What happens when we reverse that order and start by asking why?

Psychological research suggests that human minds are built not only to reason, but to rationalize. Research on “motivated cognition” shows that when people want a particular outcome, that desire shapes how they gather information, what they pay attention to, how they interpret evidence, and even how they remember events (Balcetis, 2007). 

This means that even with the best intentions, we can fall prey to self‑deception: believing that our actions serve mission and values when in fact they serve convenience, comfort, or avoidance. One classic illustration: in experiments where people had the opportunity to cheat on a test and then predict their future performance, many overestimated their abilities — not because they honestly believed they were smarter, but because they wanted to believe their success reflected real ability, not luck or dishonesty (Chance, et. al, 2015). 

In leadership contexts, this tendency can have serious consequences. Writers studying “self‑deception in leadership” note that leaders often misassess their own motives and actions,  convinced they are being strategic, objective, or principled when they are merely protecting ego or avoiding discomfort (Loeb Leadership, 2022).

By asking “Why am I doing this?” before acting, and doing so with humility and curiosity, we create a mental checkpoint. That space allows us to examine whether actions are problem-solving, avoidance, convenience, or the pursuit of long-term impact. That kind of pause helps us lead with intention rather than momentum.

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