Blurry Vision: The Origins of Leadership Blind Spots
Blurry Vision: The Origins of Leadership Blind Spots
Leaders are impacted by a variety of factors.
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Blind spots in leadership—where leaders lack awareness or fail to recognize how their behaviors and decisions impact others—can have significant origins in various psychological, environmental, and social factors.
Psychological Traits
Cognitive Biases: These mental shortcuts are like leadership kryptonite. They warp decision-making with favorites like confirmation bias, where leaders cherry-pick information to suit their views, or overconfidence, where they sashay with an inflated sense of their own competence, often crashing hard when reality kicks them in the ass!
Fixed Mindset: It's like wearing blinders. Leaders in this mode believe they've hit their peak, making them painfully blind to personal growth or innovation. They're basically telling the world, "I'm done evolving." As a coach, this can be the most challenging way to break through with a client; however, when growth occurs, it's like starting a new life!
Emotional Intelligence Deficits: A leader lacking emotional intelligence is like a bull in a Tiffany store, but worse. No exaggeration! They fumble through emotional cues and crush team morale, often clueless about the emotional and mental wake left behind in personal and professional relationships.
Environmental Considerations
Company Culture: A toxic culture breeds blind spots and offers zero psychological safety. If openness feels more like walking the plank, leaders aren't going to hear the truth. Instead, they operate in a bubble where feedback is filtered to echo their beliefs.
Echo Chambers: This group behavior is my least favorite and arguably the most damaging for everyone involved. I've experienced this first-hand and often during my corporate career. Picture leaders encircled by yes-men/women. It's a comfort zone where everyone nods, but nobody grows. This siloed feedback loop can disconnect leaders from reality, leaving them unprepared for genuine challenges. Unfortunately, this collective blind spot is rampant in most companies across levels.
Lack of Diverse Experiences/Perspectives: Leaders need a varied career palette to avoid a narrow, almost tunnel-vision approach to leadership. It's like thinking you've seen all of Europe when you've only visited the Eiffel Tower. There's so much more to leadership than working with those like you.
Social Influences
Groupthink: Groupthink, or 'apathetic brainstorming,' is essentially creative thinking gone wrong, where the push for unanimous agreement suffocates innovation and buries dissent. It's the perfect recipe for disaster, cooking up decisions that no one questions because, well, harmony over truth, right? Healthy challenges will only strengthen a team!
Power Dynamics: Who dares to speak the truth to the boss in power hierarchies? This dynamic sets a leader up for a fall by shielding them from critical feedback and filling their ears and egos with false truths until reality delivers a sucker punch–they never see it coming!
Social Identity and Roles: Social norms subtly shape a leader's moves, often without them noticing. Whether it's traditional gender roles or cultural expectations, these influences can skew a leader's self-assessment and cloud their judgment, making them prisoners of societal scripts, crippling their ability to embrace reality and ability to lead themselves or others.
Recognizing and mitigating these blind spots isn't just about self-improvement—it's about survival in leadership. It demands a courageous commitment to self-awareness and an environment where challenge is welcomed, not just tolerated.
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