From Blind Spots to Clarity: Leading Yourself and Others More Effectively

Blind Spots - dangerous when driving, even more dangerous when our blind spots are driving our life and we don’t even realize it! We know they exist; we just don’t slow down long enough to examine them.

Let’s start by examining what blind spots are. We can’t achieve clarity or change without first identifying what obstacles are standing in our way.

Blind spots are areas in our life where we are unaware or too busy to sit down and examine but which can lead us to negative outcomes.

When thinking about blind spots, look around your room to identify all the things that are red. Take about 10 seconds to look around. Then close your eyes and tell me what in the room was blue. We see what we are focused on. We fail to see what we do not focus on!

I’ve recently been coaching someone who has been considering a significant pivot in their career. They asked me to help them get to the root of some of the concerns they had around their current career. They had questions about why they no longer felt joy, fulfillment, or passionate about their current career path and wanted to know what it was they weren’t seeing. Their company has recently been going through growth and changes, and they were concerned that their joy had gone away, wondered why they were dispassionate about things when they had always been so fully engaged. They were also concerned that this loss of joy, fulfillment, and passion was impacting their leadership and in turn, causing them to let down or fail their team.

I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with this individual over many years, so I already had some insight into the situation and the concerns and struggles they were dealing with. So, I began asking a lot of questions. When was the first time they realized they were not feeling fulfilled in their career? When had they started feeling disengaged. What, why, when, how questions. Over and over. For every answer there came another question. Each question digging a little deeper, sliding through another layer of thought patterns, concerns, feelings of guilt. At one point in the conversation I asked a question that made them stop. They weren’t sure of the answer to this one. They let me know they needed to think on it.

After a couple days they reached out to me. They had an answer to that question. They had been able to exam what had caused this change. They were able to break through the feelings and input of others by having been asked the right questions. Those questions had cleared a pathway through all the other things, all the other stimuli, all the other thoughts and feelings of theirs and of others to allow them to see clearly what had led them to this place and this moment.

So often we have discussed issues or decisions with the people around us who have a vested interest in the outcome. They are not misleading or trying to create more uncertainty for an individual but can do so simply because of their own feelings around the situation. For example, this individual’s partner had concerns around how a career change might impact their finances, their security, even their lifestyle. The hours they would have to work, the vacation time they would be losing. In their partner’s defense - these are all valid concerns and questions. They also had input from their leadership team about how great they were in their position, about how much they had done to lead the organization and develop others and bring the company to where it was today, so they didn’t want to let anyone down. This person was uncertain on so many levels except that they were no longer fulfilled nor finding joy in their work. For their own mental health, their own peace, they needed to be able to take all these feelings out and examine them without additional stress around finances, leadership input, or other influences in order to understand what was driving their discontent.

When we are trying to make decisions, we need to be able to spend time examining all our thoughts and feelings. We do this by asking ourselves the right questions:

- What am I feeling?

- Where are these feelings originating from?

- What happened to get me to this place?

- What are the facts?

- What are the assumptions I’m making?

- Am I triggered when I am feeling this/these emotions?

- Are these feelings being influenced by other people?

- Are these feelings influenced by my insecurities?

- Why am I feeling this way?

- What emotions am I feeling most strongly?

- Have I ever felt this way before?

- What is within my control?

- If I had a magic wand, what would make the situation or feelings better?

- How would I advise someone if they came to me with these feelings?

- What questions would I ask someone else to consider if they were coming to me for help?

- How long have I been feeling this way? Is the feeling ongoing, fleeting and random, or completely new?

- What is the outcome I desire?

- How can I get to the outcome I want?

- What are actions I can take right now to start moving me in the direction that leads me to the outcome I want?

These questions allow us to take a step back from what’s driving us in the moment and allow us to create a gap that gives us time to take these feelings out, examine them, and find clarity.

From our personal feelings and goals to our relationships, to our leadership style - how we handle our blind spots can make or break us, our relationships, and our careers.

As leaders, our blind spots will impact us, but will also impact our leadership and management style. This can lead to significant impact to our teams - their dynamics and organizational success. These blind spots in leadership can lead to misunderstandings, misalignment, low employee morale, and many missed opportunities.

There may have been times in our careers where we had a leader or were the leader that struggled with being questioned, led with overconfidence, didn’t ask for input or outside perspectives, avoided tough conversations, and led with negative feelings about others. In many cases this stems from feelings that as a leader we must have all the answers or is driven by the leaders insecurities. In all cases, this leadership style is detrimental to team health and leads to disengagement and resentment from team members.

From our biases, habits, and perspectives blind spots impact our teams. In leadership roles, asking for input from our teams, identifying triggers, creating a pause to allow for thoughtful response rather than immediate reaction and taking time to examine the responses or reactions we have creates a self-awareness that allows us to grow as leaders. As we grow as leaders, we also model to our teams that we can make mistakes, we can address those, we can be seen as human and flawed, and we can grow. We can be questioned and asked the “Why” behind decisions without feeling threatened. We don’t need to be seen as the knower and keeper of all information but instead we know how to find answers, we can take the thoughts and opinions of others without feeling targeted, threatened, or diminished.

Strong leaders take time to examine how they are doing and how they are impacting their teams. They address blind spots. The best leaders have coaches and mentors who they can reach out to, who they take input from, and who push them to grow. In our personal lives, we should also have coaches and mentors who drive us to be better.

From our personal life to our relationships, our community engagement, and to our work life - we should be taking time to get clarity. Taking time to get clear on our blind spots, our feelings, and our desired outcomes leads to us showing up as our best self. We can lead ourselves and others best when we are very honest with ourselves and take steps to identify areas to work on.

Growth starts with awareness!