What Do You Not See?

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Destructive. Leadership.? Every successful leader always has blind spots.? Behaviors that hold ourselves and others back.? Or even worse.

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More and more, ?the world’s most successful leaders, from Harvard professors to McKinsey partners are leveraging vulnerability to discover and address their leadership blind spots. Interest is often focused on behaviors that negatively impact collaboration and performance.?

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Working on the behaviors that hold you and your team back is not new. Marshall Goldsmith ’s bestseller and classic What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There was endorsed by dozens of successful CEOs way back in 2007.

My mission to help highly successful leaders recognize and address their blind spots, creating even more prosperity along the way.

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Several recent innovations make double-clicking on and addressing your blind spots more simple than ever before. Not easier.? Behavioral change remains brutal and hard work.? The good news is that an even more structured process today delivers faster and more consistent results.?* ?

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Sharing your weaknesses with others requires vulnerability.? ?When a senior leader demonstrates vulnerability, they fuel their team with psychological safety.? In my work with or for more than 100 organizations, I have often seen vulnerability from the top trigger a virtuous cycle of vulnerability and improvement for the entire leadership team.

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Being vulnerable is not comfortable.? Could it be that the deeper we understand where we get in the way of others, the easier for us to become vulnerable?? In any case, first, we need to know where our behavior negatively impacts others.? ??

Prior to my Leadership Circle assessment I only had a small part of the picture.? When a colleague gifted me a Leadership Circle 360-degree assessment, my eyes were opened.? Even a few tears were shed.? Being vulnerable is not for the weak of heart.

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Discovery of our blind spots is the first step. Several paths exist. Let’s start there.

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Discovery

Anonymous and confidential behavioral interviews with co-workers are a powerful option to gain insights into our dark and shadow sides.? For those lucky enough to have a trained psychologist as a coach, it is even possible to gain deep insights into the underlying fears that trigger these ineffective behaviors.? Other good options exist.

Thousands of different assessments are available today and each can bring its valuable insights.? Of the 15+ assessments I have been privileged to complete, The Leadership Circle is my favorite.?

Imagine an MRI full body scan on all aspects of your leadership. ??Measuring your leadership compared with a global database of over 100,000 leaders on 37 distinct and unique leadership dimensions.? Each leadership dimension with a rating from 1 to 100 ?for how you see yourself and how others perceive you. ?All are visible: graphically or in a table, on one single screen or page. ?All with double-click drill-downs to provide detailed descriptions of each dimension. Or a list of the questions used to collect the data. Or even a “How to” guide for reflection and improvement for each of the dimensions.

My assessment showed multiple creative (think growth mindset) ?strengths and 2 main areas where my reactive (think fear-triggered) leadership, a superpower when used for the collective sparingly, was occasionally overused.? Overuse translates in the blink of an eye to becoming toxic. ?

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Pleasing others can be highly useful when used in a limited way.? My uberpleasing nature held me back from sharing with courageous authenticity the unspoken truth in the room. Truth which in my heart I knew and did not share for the benefit of the collective.? Ouch.? The good news was with focus and some coaching help, I discovered this is a behavior I can improve. The impact of speaking the unspoken is so much greater than I ever imagined. Thank you to those who provided this valuable 360 feedback.

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And my relentless drive for results caused me to become less self-aware.? My uberdrive was not visible to me, since the drive I saw in myself (right red circle, black line) was much less than others experienced (shaded green).? Yikes!? Again the good news was that with practice, reflection and help from others, I learn (mostly) to hesitate long enough to have a choice before entering "hyperdrive" mode.

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What especially resonated with my assessment experience were the statistical relationships between each of the 37 creative and reactive tendencies and effective leadership. For data geeks like myself, the negative correlations between the creative and reactive tendencies were especially valuable. ?There is even a proxy for collaboration with business success.? As a “numbers guy” seeing the strong negative correlation between Controlling/Drive and Self-Awareness was a godsend, unleashing a clarity and focus on improvement I had not yet experienced.

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The Hard Part

Once you recognize your blind spot(s), what next?? Depending on your ambition and how important results are to you, trying to change the behaviors behind your blind spots with a colleague or spouse can be a good start.? A coach can also provide valuable time to think and reflect.? The most powerful alternative is to work with a coach in a structured process, while at the same time enlisting the help of your co-workers as accountability partners.?

Enlisting your co-workers to provide FeedForwards and to evaluate your progress supports not only behavioral change in your leadership, but also unleashes a change in the way others perceive your leadership.? This perception of your leadership is your identity, your personal leadership brand. Your leadership brand is how others see, collaborate with, and even evaluate your promotability.

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Happy Ending and a Small Bonus

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Because changing behavior is so difficult, enlisting a coach and co-workers is for many the best choice.? For those looking for even more certainty around behavioral change, Master Stakeholder Centered Coach? Frank Wagner shares a secret from his decades of coaching the most successful leaders.?

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His advice:? invite the most time-constrained, busiest executives to capture in 2-3 minutes daily reflective learnings in an online app.? When shared with the coach in advance and combined with 15-minute weekly check-ins, the results, as perceived by coworkers, are faster and measurably greater.?

What is your experience with discovering and addressing your blind spots?

* Based on co-worker mini-survey results from my sample of 47 leaders accompanied.

Bill Zeeb helps successful leaders to accelerate progress on their most important work. He serves as Ambassador for The Leadership Circle in Europe. A member of 100 Coaches and Stakeholder Centered Coaching? Master Coach, Bill and the infinitas team focus on helping technical Founders and their leadership teams to measurably improve their collaboration and business performance.