5 Steps to Dealing with Blind Spots

Yes, it’s true.  Even leaders have blind spots.  One of the things I’m discovering is that these blind spots are often self-induced.  Why?  Because it can be oh-so-easy to buy into the myth that, as a leader, you must somehow know it all.  Which means you can walk around with the idea that there’s nothing you can’t handle.  Which, in turn, can very quickly lead to the place of not admitting when you don’t actually know the answer to something.  In other words, you end up being actually unable to see when you’re floundering, or about to flounder.  Blind spot.

What is it about our society that puts this pressure on leaders?  What would become possible if leaders were allowed some latitude, allowed the opportunity and given permission to get things wrong, make mistakes like anyone else, admit to their shortcomings?  Would these in anyway diminish their leadership abilities?  My guess — and actually, my experience — is that it wouldn’t.  My guess is that having leaders own and acknowledge their blind spots — even allowing others to point out blind spots and support leaders in circumventing them — would actually enhance leadership ability in the long run.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  leaders who are allowed to be human — and perhaps more importantly, leaders who allow THEMSELVES to be human — are actually the leaders who lead effectively.

So, all this being said, how does one deal with blind spots?  What strategies can be used to acknowledge and then move around these areas?  Here’s my  5-step system:

1. Surround yourself with trustworthy people who will, in a non-judgmental, completely supportive way, point out when there’s something you’re not seeing (a blind spot).
2. Become familiar with your own voice of judgment so you can recognize when it starts speaking, and then turn your attention to the voice of reason which allows you to make mistakes.
3. Let go of having to be perfect — in fact, celebrate mistakes as learning opportunities.
4. Remind yourself that some of the greatest leaders in history made mistakes — and achieved victory by moving past those.
5. Once in a while, shut your brain off and act from the heart — the heart’s blind spots aren’t nearly as debilitating as those of your brain.  In other words, your heart will rarely steer you wrong.

Bottom-line:  blind spots exist.  That’s all there is to it.  Whether you’re a leader, a follower, or someone who hasn’t yet found your place in the game of life, you have blind spots.  Trust me.  And, owning them and knowing that they’re simply part of the deal is critical.  Once you’ve done that, you can take steps to navigate over, through and around them.

The Lessons Never Stop

One of the things that is true in this world, whether you’re a leader or not, is this:  by virtue of the fact that you are human, your are bound to engage in continual learning.  Life lessons and teachable moments abound.  Everyday, there is some new piece of knowledge that will present itself to you, some new experience that you will face.  It’s inevitable.  The lessons never stop.

Sometimes, these lessons come fairly well spaced out — there’s time for you to stop, catch your breath, assimilate the learning before moving on.  At other times, the lessons seem to come at you at a fast-and-furious rate, rather like being bombarded with snowballs from every angle possible, leaving you with no time to breathe, let alone think or assimilate.  This is the sort of week I find myself caught in at the moment.  Actually, to be honest, it feels like it’s been a couple of weeks’ worth of this sort of pace.  and in my conversations with others — again, whether leaders or not — this sort of experience seems fairly common.

What I’m noticing is that there are a couple of ways  to be with this sort of bombardment.  One, given that everything is essentially pelting me at once, is to lay down and try and escape from it all.  The bombardment still occurs, but there’s a way that I can bury my head somewhat and avoid the inevitable bruising.  Sort of an escapist strategy.  Keeps the pain at bay, but doesn’t actually result in me gaining anything or learning anything.  Which means that the life lessons will present themselves again at a future date, because that’s the way life works in my experience; if you don’t learn the lesson the first time, it’ll resurface later.  So I get to ask myself, do I want to learn this now or postpone this for later?  Always a difficult choice.

Another option is to allow the lessons to come at me, and try and learn from them all.  The challenge with this one is that my brain can only focus so much.  After that, nothing makes sense, so inevitably, I will miss stuff — and probably not the stuff I want to miss.

A third option is for me to keep myself in the game, keep myself really grounded and aware, so that I’m consciously choosing which lessons to pay attention to, and which to let go for now.  This is essentially the route I’m choosing at the moment.  The challenge with this strategy, especially as I hold myself in my leadership game, is that as I hold myself in a space of awareness, I can move very quickly into a corresponding space of judgment — judging myself for not absorbing all of the lessons, for having to learn the lessons at all, for being in this space, etc; etc;.  Which, let’s be honest, doesn’t serve at all.  Judgment tends to undermine any learning which might be happening.

So, what to do?  How do effective leaders be with the experience of life lessons in away that minimizes the need to relearn the lesson later, but doesn’t move one into overwhelm or judgment?  I”m not sure I’ve come across the definitive answer on this one yet.  My sense, however, is that it absolutely requires letting go of judgment,  opening myself to the learning and allowing relearning a lesson be an okay option.  Yes, I think that’s it.  And, as a leader, learning to let go of the judgment and stand in awareness as I learn and grow may in fact be the biggest life lesson of all.

Leadership Without Judgment?

The title of this blog post has a question mark in it because I’m curious as to the possibility of being able to lead without judgment.  I state that just in case my thought-process isn’t obvious.  Actually, I suppose my initial curiousity has more to do with judgment-free language than judgment-free leadership.

You see, throughout my coaching today, I’ve run into a theme whereby I see clients — hear clients — judging their choices as good or bad, or some version thereof.  This has me wondering whether or not it’s possible to evaluate something, whether it’s an action or a choice or whatever, without judging it.  For me, while the distinction is subtle, I believe it exists nonetheless.  And, I think when you can evaluate without judgment — without condemnation — then you facilitate growth, movement and progress far more easily than when you stand in judgment.  I guess that’s the essence of what’s coming up for me:  an awareness that judgment somehow contains a seed of condemnation, and that such condemnation stifles growth.

So, what becomes possible for you or me as leaders, when we can evaluate things from the place of simply evaluating?  Without beating ourselves up for the choices we’ve made or the perspectives we’ve held?  Without engaging in put-downs about where our choices have gotten us versus where we’ve wanted to go?  What opens up when we can lead and evaluate simply from a place of allowing and evaluating?  I have a hunch that, while evaluating without judgment seems contradictory in some ways, if we can actually find a way to do this — if we can stop making ourselves right or wrong and simply allow our observations to be just that, observations — then we will actually find ourselves moving forward, growing and evolving more effectively.

I guess the bottom-line thought that I’m holding at the moment — or at least entertaining — is the thought that judgment does not serve authentic leadership. Evaluation absolutely serves leadership.  So, in order to be an effective leader, you must be willing to continually evaluate — without going to the place of judgment.  Something to try on for a bit, I think.

I Know You’re Right…And What If You’re Wrong?

This is a question that I love to ask.  Whether I’m working with a client or just evaluating a personal circumstance, exploring the possibility of being wrong can offer incredible insight in a situation.  All of a sudden, what seemed so cut-and-dried 30 seconds ago, becomes less so as you entertain a new vantage point.  Believe it or not, possibilities open up, friction fizzles away and tension disappears when you can be with the idea — or at least hold it as a possibility for a few seconds — that you might actually be wrong.

Asking yourself if you might be wrong is another strategy for “walking a mile in another person’s shoes” or finding another perspective.  You see, there’s a teaching I once heard which says that there are always at least three sides to a story:  yours, mine and the truth.  The funny thing is that both you and I believe that we’re privy to the truth, to the “rightness” of the story.  The challenge of course is that any time you find yourself entrenched in an “I’m right on this issue” perspective, you actually close yourself from being truly engaged with whatever’s going on.  You’re so busy “being right”, that you start to alienate the world around you, and truly miss the point.

The key to holding the question of right and wrong is to do so with a sense of detachment, a letting go of judgment.  Admittedly, when you’re in the land of “right and wrong” letting go of judgment seems counter-intuitive.  And yet, if you can actually find a way to hold right and wrong lightly, without making either position “good” or “bad”, you can start to be with the world in a more constructive way.  You can actually move through conflict  and disagreement with a sense of ease, knowing that whether or not you’re right or wrong is less a matter of judgment, and more an opportunity for self-growth and evolution.

Bottom-line:  let go of believing that you’re absolutely right, and entertain the possibility that you might be wrong.  Don’t wait for everyone else to be wrong — believe that you might be wrong too, and watch the truth reveal itself in a new light.  My guess is you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

When “Right” is Disguised as “Wrong”

I’m sitting here this morning contemplating “what’s right” and more specifically, how one knows when something is right. For example, how do you know when a course of action is right?  How do you know when it will serve? These questions are arising for me as a result of having reached a crossroads of sorts, and being uncertain as to which path to follow.  I’m sure you can relate to the resulting sense of angst (but maybe I’m just assuming you can relate — maybe you’ve never in fact been in this situation!)

For many years I’ve held the belief that you know when something’s right because it feels right.  What I’m starting to realize now, however, is that sometimes you’ve got to move through a “feeling wrong” experience before things feel right.  The temptation in this scenario, of course, is to assume that the initial “wrongness” deems the whole course of action wrong.  My sense is that this sort of thinking actually sets you up for unnecessary slogging.

Here’s an example.  At this particular point in my life, in my career, I have numerous goals and objectives.  Most of these still ring true as things which I want to accomplish; those that don’t, well I’m in the process of letting those go.  The challenge I’m encountering is that my best-laid plans are going somewhat askew, due to a number of reasons.  In order to get back on track, I’m sensing that I’m going to have to ask for some help — specifically, asking people for resources which I sort of figured I would be able to access on my own.  For me, the notion of asking others for resources of any sort generally feels “wrong.”  And I could easily let this feeling of “wrongness” stop me from asking.  When I take a step back, however, and look at the big picture, what I realize is that by not asking for resources, I’m likely to waste time and energy that could otherwise be put into the achievement of my goal.  In other words, while there’s an initial sense of “wrong”, in the long run, this choice could actually be “right.”

The ultimate challenge, of course, is that in this game of life you can’t actually know if something’s right or wrong until you do it.  Sometimes, the things that feel right turn out to be mistakes, and the things that feel wrong actually serve in a way you could never have imagined.  The trick, I’m beginning to understand, is to lose the judgment of right and wrong altogether, particularly with respect to the outcome, and simply choose a course of action — and then choose again as necessary.  It’s imperative to stop being hard on yourself, judging yourself for “wrong” choices, and keep your eye on the ball at all times, whatever that ball is for you.

Bottom-line is this, best summarized by Don Miguel Ruiz’s 4th agreement in his book The Four Agreements:  always do your best.  Some choices will serve, others will not, and if you’re doing your best at all times, then you simply cannot hold yourself in contempt.  It really is all good.