Do employees in your organization completely trust you as a leader? If not, this is not probably because you have bad leadership skills. Rather, this is probably because you lack awareness of some unseen knowledge about your leadership flaws that derail even the most capable leaders. This danger is called a leadership blind spot. And that’s perfectly normal as 89%of front-line leaders battle through at least one blind spot in their career. However, if you can analyze and identify key blind spots and address them with data-driven analytics, you can overcome the difficult waters of self-discovery and come out as a truly exceptional leader.
What is Leadership Blindspot?
Let’s understand the concept through a real-life scenario.
ConsiderJohn as the CEO of a 50-year-old organization. When John speaks onstage, he radiates strong leadership. He receives good feedback for his strong vision and inspiring presentation every time he speaks.But when John decided to collect the opinions of his key employees regarding a recent meeting on future agenda through an assessment tool, he surprisingly found out that most of his employees lacked clarity on where he was leading them. He realized that organizational communication was his blind spot. John then decided to have a one-on-one conversation with everyone, and soon, the company witnessed a 360-degree change in the performance of most employees.
You can’t fix what you can’t see.
Leadership blind spots help leaders understand how they think they are showing up to the world versus how others perceive them.
CommonLeadership Blind Spots
According to researchby Dale Carnegie, here are some common leadership blind spots that most leaders fail to recognize:
- Failure to show appreciation:
A team feels appreciated when the leader says “thank you” and recognizes their hard work. But most leaders fail to say it out loud, even though they appreciate the effort. This creates a blind spot and the team feels undervalued.
- Not admitting when they are wrong:
Some leaders think admitting mistakes would make them look weak. They try to cover things up instead of taking responsibility for their actions. They must know that doing just the opposite would earn them more trust and respect from others.
- Pretending to Listen:
This is one of the common blind spots. Leaders sometimes pretend to listen to their admirers while focusing on other responsibilities. When people recognize this act in their leaders, they tend to reciprocate similar seriousness toward the proposed goals.
- Lacking honesty with self and others:
A duty of the leader is not just to lead the way but also to feel others and advice how to overcome challenges during the process. This comes as a result of being honest with self and others about upcoming situations rather than focusing on goals without any concern. The lack of honesty of such kind can blind spot the leader from understanding the team better.
- Relying only on their own opinions:
Some leaders solely depend on their own decisions. Instead of welcoming ideas from all directions for making an informed decision, they choose to risk team effort to exercise their ego.
Tips to help conquer blind spots:
Let’s take a look at some of the tips that can help you identify what holds you back as a leader to overcome leadership blind spots with ease.
- Create Continuous Feedback Loops
As a leader, it’s your prime duty to collect continuous feedback from your key employees and stakeholders to understand where you stand from their perception. It’s not as difficult as you’re imagining it right now.
The process is simple. First, create specific questions in line with your leadership and team challenges. Once the list is prepared, share it with your key leaders and collect their feedback. Assign an average score for each key measure collected through an open-ended feedback loop. It will help you identify the loop holes and take proactive actions.
- Track Your Leadership Growth
Track key metrics of your leadership with objective data. What does that mean?This will help you identify trends and specific situations that tend to trigger certain blind spots. For instance, you might notice that you constantly struggle to take responsibility for your actions often. Mark this in your leadership journal as a challenge and set a time frame to overcome it with the right strategy.
- Take Actions Against Ongoing Needs and Challenges
Identifying blind spots is one challenge and taking massive actions to overcome them is another challenge in itself. It goes beyond goal setting asit challenges your core emotions behind every action and link back to your big vision. After all, you can’t influence others as a leader if you don’t know what that action looks like. One of the easiest ways to tap into that zone is to constantly ask yourself the purpose behind all these initiations. This step will help you solidify your purpose and mentally prepare you for actions.
ClosingThoughts
As a leader, working on your leadership blind spots can be your key to unlock the greater leader in you. Use the tips shared above to identify leadership bottlenecks, address them with data-driven insights, and track your progress over time. Lastly, remember to take massive actions to turn your previously disengaged employees into big fans of your leadership skills.
