Personal blind spots are difficult to discuss for one obvious reason: if you could already see them clearly, they would not be blind spots.
We all have them. A leader may believe that close supervision demonstrates commitment while the team experiences it as micromanagement. Another person may describe himself as decisive while people around him experience impatience. Someone may believe she communicates clearly because the conclusion is obvious in her own mind, while her colleagues repeatedly leave conversations uncertain about what they are expected to do.
The behaviour is visible to other people, but the person producing it may not recognize it. That is what makes a blind spot dangerous. It can influence relationships, decisions and results while remaining outside the leader’s conscious explanation of what is going wrong.
The lesson I learned while driving
I understood this concept more clearly while learning to drive. My instructor explained that if I encountered a critical blind spot, I could not simply assume that the area was clear. I needed to get out and check it myself or ask someone to check it for me. Where possible, it was preferable to get out and look.
That instruction applies powerfully to leadership. When you cannot see something from your position, confidence does not remove the obstruction. You have to change your position, use another person’s view or do both.
A driver who refuses to check a blind spot because nothing is visible from the mirror is not being confident; the driver is misunderstanding the problem. The danger exists precisely because the mirror cannot reveal it. In the same way, a leader cannot conclude that a personal weakness does not exist merely because introspection has failed to uncover it.
Self-reflection is important, but there are parts of ourselves that other people experience more directly than we do. We hear the intention behind our words; they feel the effect. We remember the pressures influencing our behaviour; they encounter the behaviour itself. To understand a blind spot, we need access to both perspectives.
The four windows of self-awareness
There is a four-part framework I learnt some years ago, called the Johari Window. Psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham developed it as a model of interpersonal awareness and it divides information about a person into four areas:
- The open area contains what you know about yourself and what other people also know about you.
- The blind area contains what other people can see about you but you do not recognize in yourself.
- The hidden area contains what you know about yourself but have not disclosed to other people.
- The unknown area contains qualities, motives or potential that neither you nor other people have yet recognized.
For leadership, the blind area deserves particular attention. This is where unnoticed habits live: the facial expression that discourages disagreement, the tendency to interrupt, the failure to provide context, the change in tone under pressure or the habit of rewarding speed while publicly claiming that quality matters most.
The model also reminds us that self-awareness is relational. You cannot understand yourself entirely in isolation because leadership happens in the effect you have on other people. Feedback moves information from the blind area into the open area, where it can finally be examined and changed.
Ask people what they can see
The most direct way to discover a blind spot is to ask. However, asking, “Do I have any blind spots?” may produce little useful information. The question is too broad, and people may be uncertain about how honest they are permitted to be.
Give them something specific to assess. You might say:
I believe I communicate expectations clearly, remain calm under pressure and give people enough authority to do their work. I suspect that I can be impatient and may move into details too quickly. Based on your experience of working with me, how accurately do these descriptions fit me?
You can ask people to rate each behaviour on a scale of one to ten, with ten representing the strongest performance. Ask for an example supporting the score and one change that would improve it. The numerical rating allows patterns to emerge, while the example gives the number meaning.
Do not limit the survey to qualities you already suspect. Include space for people to identify behaviours you have not named. Otherwise, the exercise may merely confirm the boundaries of your present self-awareness.
It is also helpful to compare three perspectives: how you rate yourself, how your leaders or peers rate you, and how people who report to you rate you. The differences can be more instructive than the average score. If you rate your communication as nine while the people responsible for executing your instructions rate it as five, that gap deserves attention regardless of how articulate you believe yourself to be.
Ask people who experience you differently
The quality of feedback depends on whom you ask. If you consult only close friends or people who depend heavily on your approval, you may receive a softened version of reality. If you consult only someone who recently had a conflict with you, the response may be disproportionately shaped by that event.
Seek a range of people who encounter you in different situations. This may include your spouse, friends, co-founder, peers, direct reports, former colleagues, customers and mentors. They do not all need to complete the same assessment because each group sees a different part of you.
Your family may understand how you respond when tired. Employees may know whether you create room for dissent. Customers may see how you behave when the company makes a mistake. Former colleagues may recognize patterns that your current team has not known you long enough to observe.
Look for themes across independent sources. One comment may reflect personal preference or a misunderstanding. The same comment appearing repeatedly from people who do not coordinate with one another is evidence of a pattern.
This does not mean the majority is always correct. It means repeated feedback should be investigated rather than dismissed.
Observe changes in other people
Sometimes a blind spot announces itself through another person’s behaviour before anyone describes it directly. Someone who was previously open becomes guarded. A normally jovial colleague becomes quiet around you. Team members stop volunteering difficult information. Meetings become full of agreement, but execution afterward reveals unresolved concerns.
Instead of immediately concluding that the other person has developed an attitude, pause and ask what may have changed in the interaction. Did your response to a previous mistake make the person afraid to speak? Have you repeatedly interrupted? Did you publicly correct someone in a way that created embarrassment? Have you asked for opinions and then punished disagreement?
The change may have nothing to do with you, which is why you should not treat observation as proof. Use it as a prompt for a conversation. You might say, “I have noticed that you have been quieter in our recent meetings. Is there something about how I have been communicating or responding that has made it harder for you to contribute?”
Ask with genuine curiosity. If the person senses that you are seeking reassurance rather than truth, you will probably receive reassurance.
Get feedback close to the event
Feedback becomes more useful when it is connected to a recent, specific event. After giving a presentation, leading a meeting or handling a difficult conversation, ask someone you trust what worked and what weakened your effectiveness.
Do not wait six months to ask whether a presentation was clear. The listener may remember only a general impression by then. Ask while the details are still fresh: Which part was unclear? Where did I lose the room? Did I answer the question directly? Was my tone appropriate? What did I assume the audience understood?
The same principle applies when forming a habit. Suppose you are trying to remember people’s names and use them properly in conversation. Pay attention to whether the technique feels natural to others or forced. Ask for feedback where appropriate, then adjust. A good intention can still create an awkward effect if it is practised without awareness.
Immediate feedback creates a short learning loop. You act, receive information, make an adjustment and try again before the behaviour becomes deeply established.
Make feedback recurring rather than ceremonial
A single survey can reveal something important, but blind spots change as responsibilities change. A founder leading five people may need to overcome the tendency to control every detail. The same founder leading fifty people may develop a different blind spot: becoming so removed from operations that important realities are filtered out before reaching the top.
Create a recurring rhythm for feedback. Depending on your role, this may happen monthly, quarterly or twice a year. Ask what you should continue doing, what you should stop doing and what you should begin doing. Review the previous feedback and ask whether people have noticed a change.
The purpose is not to conduct a popular vote on your leadership. Some decisions will remain unpopular and necessary. Feedback should help you understand your effect, not surrender responsibility. A leader can hear that a decision caused disappointment while still concluding that it was correct. The blind spot may lie in how the decision was communicated, not in the decision itself.
Recurring feedback allows you to distinguish discomfort caused by necessary leadership from damage caused by avoidable behaviour.
Do not punish the truth you requested
Many leaders say they want honest feedback, but their response teaches people never to offer it again. They interrupt the explanation, defend every example, question the person’s motives or quietly reduce trust in whoever spoke.
If people must pay a price for telling you the truth, your blind area will grow. The organization will learn to manage your emotions rather than improve your awareness.
When receiving difficult feedback, listen to the entire point before responding. Ask for clarification. Repeat what you heard to ensure that you understood it. Thank the person, even if you need time to decide whether you agree. Avoid making an immediate promise to change every behaviour mentioned; first look for patterns and examine the context.
It is possible for feedback to be inaccurate, incomplete or unfair. Humility does not require accepting every opinion as fact. It requires taking the information seriously enough to investigate it. The goal is not to believe everybody. The goal is to prevent pride from making you incapable of learning from anybody.
Compare your intentions with your outcomes
Another way to expose blind spots is to examine where your stated intentions repeatedly fail to produce the expected result.
If you say that you empower your team, but every important decision still returns to you, something in your leadership is preventing authority from travelling. If you believe you communicate clearly, but work is repeatedly delivered in a form you did not expect, the problem may not always be incompetence. If you say that people can bring you bad news, but you are consistently the last person to know when something is wrong, your reactions may be contradicting your invitation.
Results do not explain everything, but repeated gaps between intention and outcome deserve investigation. Ask what behaviour, incentive or communication pattern could be producing the result. Invite the people closest to the work to help explain it.
Blind spots often survive because leaders judge themselves by intention while everyone else experiences the outcome.
Turn awareness into visible change
Discovering a blind spot is not the end of the process. Awareness without behavioural change can become another form of self-indulgence. Once a pattern is clear, define what you will do differently and how people will know.
If you interrupt people, practise waiting until they finish and taking notes instead of speaking immediately. If you micromanage, agree on outcomes and decision boundaries before the work begins, then resist entering the process unless an agreed trigger occurs. If your communication is incomplete, write down the context, expected result, owner and deadline before assigning the work.
Tell the relevant people what you are working on and invite them to flag the old behaviour when it returns. This can feel uncomfortable, but it makes change observable and gives others permission to support it.
Return to the people who gave the original feedback. Ask whether the behaviour has improved and what still needs work. Their answer will tell you whether you changed your internal understanding or your external effect.
Change your position so you can see
The driving lesson remains useful: when the blind spot is critical, do not continue moving merely because you cannot see any danger. Stop. Change your position. Look for yourself, and ask someone with a clearer view to help you.
Personal blind spots are not evidence that you are uniquely flawed. They are part of being human. The danger begins when position, pride or success convinces you that you no longer need other people’s perspective.
Ask questions. Observe how people change around you. Request specific feedback after important moments. Use recurring assessments, compare your self-perception with other people’s experience and examine where your intentions repeatedly fail to produce the expected outcome.
You will never eliminate every blind spot, but you can build a life in which they are discovered earlier and corrected before they cause avoidable damage. A leader does not become self-aware by seeing everything alone. A leader becomes self-aware by creating enough honesty around himself for other people to help him see what his present position cannot reveal.
Reference
- Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, The Johari Window: A Graphic Model of Awareness in Interpersonal Relations.
Leave a Reply