We would all like to think that we are completely aware as leaders of what is happening around us and completely self-aware of how we are contributing to it but here is a harsh reality:
You probably are missing a lot… you have blind spots.
No matter how much time we invest in personal development, leadership development, and improving our skills as managers we all have blind spots in our leadership. We aren’t seeing some important things that affect the performance of our organization, our people, and our outcomes.
Those blind spots may lead you to make poor choices (as they did recently with Wells Fargo and their “incentives”), they may be contributing to a poor office culture which you as the leader don’t see, or they may simply be limiting your employee’s engagement in their work which leads to poor productivity, outcomes, and likely loss of some of your talented team members.
The reality is that every leader has blind spots… you aren’t alone. The difference between leaders who succeed and those whose blind spots cause them to fail is how they address them.
6 Ways to Deal with Leadership Blind Spots
Here are 6 ways you can deal with your blind spots to help you move forward toward success:
Raise Your Awareness
You likely suffer from some of the same blind spots as other leaders and executives, so do some research and self-examination to see which ones you might be missing. According to the research from OnSearch Partners and Stockwell Performance Advisors in their white paper, the top 10 leadership blind spots are: under-communicating strategic direction and priorities, poorly communicated expectations, waiting (hoping) for performance to improve, buying into the myth of the “irreplaceable employee”, investing too much time trying to coach “radical change”, hiring for capability and nothing else, accepting the current capabilities and limitations of your team, acting as the sole integrator of team goals and performance, believing all needed information flows up and down, and going quiet in times of change and uncertainty.Read the white paper for more detail on each of these big blind spots. The bottom line is that if you are a leader you are likely guilty of one or more of these. Just being aware of the common blind spots allows you to be more self-aware of the ways that they are affecting you, your team, and your outcomes.
Build Diversity
Many leaders that I come in contact with have built their teams with people who are just like them. They hire in their own image so they have a group of professionals who most likely agree regularly, take similar approaches to goals, and bring similar life and professional experiences to the table. While hiring a homogeneous team does tend to cut down on disagreements and tension, it severely limits your potential because it cuts down on disagreements and tension.The Harvard Business Review recently published an article called Diverse Teams Feel Less Comfortable – And That’s Why They Perform Better that outlines some of the research and reasons why diversity is so important. Hire people who have different backgrounds and approaches to you. Hire people who will challenge you. Seek out people who are smarter than you. Hire for diversity and reap the benefits.
Assess Your Past Performance
We all have the benefit of an annual review (or more often if you have a progressive manager who provides frequent feedback) but it is human nature to quickly review and “shelf” the feedback we receive as you move back to your day-to-day challenges. It is good practice to set aside time on a regular basis to reflect on your past successes and failures. You should look for clues about your own behaviours that contributed to those results. I recommend using the empathy mapping tool on yourself to help you really understand how your own actions may be improved. Think about yourself and what you are seeing, hearing, and feeling. Consider how that contributes to your positive and negative actions. I guarantee this approach will be enlightening and will help with your self-awareness as new challenges arise.
Assess Your Habits and Work Styles
How you approach work and your daily habits can have a significant impact on those around you, specifically those who work for you. Are you typically doing all the talking in a meeting? Do you race through material that you know well, assuming everyone can keep up? Do you tune out and multi-task when your employees are talking with you? You may need external to help you understand how your work styles and habits are perceived by others. Tools like a 360 evaluation or anonymous interviews of some of your team members by an impartial third party can help to get you some candid feedback. Candid feedback is critical to assess how you are impacting others. Take time to reflect on how those actions, behaviours, and habits are affecting those people you need to engage. Then work to modify those behaviours and habits that are hindering your desired outcomes.
Focus on People and Relationships
Connecting with people is one of the most important tools to improving your performance as a leader. You need to personally and authentically engage with each individual on your team to create an engaging environment. Again, the empathy mapping tools can be helpful to understand how people are behaving and reacting here. I have also used other more sales-oriented tools to think about how I build those relationships. One tool I really like is the Mackay 66 from Harvey Mackay which is designed to help you learn and track your knowledge of customers. While the tool is designed for salespeople, you can use the same approach when working with your team members. How much do you really know about each one of your staff? What’s important to them? What does their family look like? Do you know what their goals are? What about what’s happening in their life outside of work? Learn and care about your team members and you will be rewarded with engagement beyond your wildest dreams (and many fewer blind spots).
Be Aware of Your Strengths (and their related Weakness)
You should be aware of your personal and leadership strengths, but you should also be aware of the negative impact of your strengths when they are taken to the extreme. In stress situations, we lean heavily on our strengths and can take them too far resulting in a negative outcome. If you are a fast decision maker with limited information that may be a strength in a fast moving environment. But when taken to the extreme it may result in unnecessary risk-taking if you start making decisions without enough information. If you are very organized and well planned that might be very beneficial in project delivery. But when the pressure is on it may actually limit your ability to move a project forward. While you spend time planning and organizing, the project may be spinning out of control. Think carefully about the strengths you have and the types of situations where they might not work for you. Be aware of situations where you need to break from your comfort zone and take a different approach. Success comes more often when you can think about your strengths differently.
Final Approach: Find a Mentor
One other approach you should consider is finding a mentor or coach who can give you a different perspective. Having someone who you can sit and talk with who will ask you challenging questions, offer differing opinions and experiences, and force you to think about things differently can help you identify your blind spots. Regular conversations will help you identify them before they cause you real problems.
Ultimately, sticking your head in the sand and pretending you don’t have blind spots is the surest way to fail. Take time and do the work to improve your awareness to better address your blind spots. Your investment will definitely pay off on your path to leadership success.
Tim Empringham is a passionate advocate for Innovation in organizations of all sizes as a mechanism to drive growth, create uncontested market space, create new customer value, and drive efficiency into the internal organization. His focus is on disruption of thinking and markets through integrative thinking, structured Innovation frameworks, and leadership development of Innovation and Change leaders within the organization.
