We’d all like to believe we’re fully aware of what’s happening around us as leaders, and completely self-aware of our own impact. But here’s a crucial reality check: You probably have blind spots. We all do. No matter how much we invest in personal and leadership development, we all miss important things that can affect our organization’s performance, our team’s engagement, and our ultimate outcomes.

These blind spots can lead to poor strategic choices (as seen in numerous corporate missteps, like the Wells Fargo incentives scandal), contribute to a negative or stagnant office culture that leaders may not perceive, or limit employee engagement, leading to poor productivity and the loss of valuable talent. The difference between leaders who navigate these challenges successfully and those whose blind spots lead to failure often lies in how consciously they work to address them.

6+1 Ways SMB Leaders Can Deal with Leadership Blind Spots: A Fractional CIO’s Perspective

Here are practical strategies to help you illuminate and manage your blind spots, ensuring your Small or Medium-Sized Business (SMB), and particularly its technology strategy, stays on a path to success:

1. Raise Your General Awareness:
   • Many leadership blind spots are common. Research typical pitfalls (e.g., under-communicating strategy, poorly defined expectations, tolerating underperformance, hiring for skills over fit, an inability to see emerging disruptive technologies). The OnSearch Partners/Stockwell Performance Advisors white paper, for instance, once highlighted ten common ones. Simply being aware of these common traps allows you to be more self-aware and observant.
2. Build Genuine Team Diversity (Beyond Demographics):
   • Leaders often hire in their own image, creating teams that think alike and rarely disagree. While this reduces friction, it severely limits perspective and breeds blind spots. As the Harvard Business Review has noted, diverse teams (in experience, background, perspective, work style, as discussed in “Diversity: The Art of Thinking Independently Together“) often feel less “comfortable” precisely because they challenge each other, leading to better performance and fewer collective blind spots. In IT, this means ensuring your tech team or partners bring varied problem-solving approaches.
3. Rigorously Assess Your Past Performance & Decisions:
   • Don’t just file away performance reviews or project post-mortems. Regularly reflect on your successes and failures. What personal behaviors or assumptions contributed? Try using an “empathy map” on yourself: what were you seeing, hearing, thinking, and feeling during key decisions? This self-reflection can reveal patterns and hidden biases, especially regarding past technology choices or IT project outcomes.
4. Evaluate Your Habits and Work Styles’ Impact:
   • How do your daily habits affect your team? Do you dominate meetings? Rush through complex information? Multitask when others are speaking? These can be significant blind spots. Seek candid feedback through tools like 360-degree evaluations or by having an impartial third party (like a fractional CIO or an HR consultant) gather anonymous input from your team about how your style impacts their effectiveness and psychological safety.
5. Focus Intensely on People and Relationships:
   • Truly connecting with your team members as individuals is a powerful antidote to blind spots. Understand their motivations, challenges, goals, and even what’s happening in their lives outside work (to an appropriate degree). Tools like Harvey Mackay’s “Mackay 66” (designed for customer knowledge) can be adapted to deepen your understanding of your team. Genuine care builds trust, and trust opens the door to honest feedback that can illuminate your blind spots.
6. Be Aware of Your Strengths, and Their Potential Downsides:
   • Our greatest strengths, when overused or applied in the wrong context (especially under stress), can become weaknesses or create blind spots. A decisive leader might become impulsive. A highly organized planner might become rigid and slow down vital projects. Be aware of situations where your natural strengths might not be the best approach and consciously try a different tactic. For instance, a leader strong in traditional IT might have a blind spot to the potential of newer, more agile cloud solutions.

Bonus Approach: Find a Trusted Mentor or Coach (Like a Fractional CIO for Tech Blind Spots):

An external mentor, coach, or strategic advisor (like a fractional CIO for your technology domain) provides an invaluable objective perspective. They can ask challenging questions, share different experiences, and force you to consider angles you might have missed, helping you identify blind spots before they cause significant problems for your SMB.

What’s Next

Sticking your head in the sand and pretending you don’t have blind spots is a sure path to eventual failure. Investing the time and effort to improve your self-awareness and proactively address your blind spots will pay immense dividends in your leadership effectiveness and your SMB’s ability to “Succeed Sooner.”

Are you aware of potential blind spots in your SMB’s leadership or its technology strategy? If you’re looking for an experienced, objective partner to provide a fresh perspective and help you identify and address areas you might be missing, let’s connect with Succeed Sooner Consulting.