Uncovering Leadership Blind Spots

What tends to hold leaders back isn’t the people on their teams, or the people above, or the organization. While they may contribute, it’s the personal beliefs that tend to get in the way. Believing you don’t have to consult others when making decisions or that you only need to say things once and everyone’s going to change course. Believing that feedback is a one-way street or that performance is easy to observe and measure. Believing that people will bring you bad news or that people will give you the feedback you deserve or need, whether it’s positive or negative. Believing you’ll always maintain an unfiltered view of what’s going on in your teams. The list goes on.

Leadership fallacies are all around us when we step into managerial roles that, inevitably, will also require us to step up as leaders. Which in turn changes the relationship with the people around us. They will treat us differently, if only ever so slightly, they will sense the power differential. Information will not be flowing as freely as you would like it to be. Just by virtue of your positions, you’ll develop blind spots. You can’t stay in tune with everything that’s going on. You can’t talk to people all the time. You can’t be in every meeting. You won’t (or may even never) find out how people think about your work, management, and leadership style.

That blind spot can develop into something you either use to learn and improve yourself, or it develops into a frustration that decreases the trust you have in the people on your team (and vice versa). You’ll be more tempted to go into meetings, look at the code yourself, and take on more work because you don’t trust others to do it right. This cycle tends to deepen until someone breaks out of it. Either you burn out or your people leave.

But when you stay curious, when you want to learn and improve yourself, you get to constantly question whether there’s something you’re not seeing. Think not of doubts but of curiosity. The blind spots are inevitable, they will develop in places you don’t expect them.

When everyone around you isn’t neutral anymore, and other leaders are busy trying to uncover their own blindspots, it helps to have an impartial party to ask you the question nobody around your dares to ask anymore. They can ask you the questions you’d rather avoid, that lead to discomfort, to questioning your own contributions to a situation or problem.

That’s what a good coach does. They can help you see and unpack things you’d rather not touch. They can ask uncomfortable questions. They’re here to spar with you and help you understand the bigger picture you’re working in. They can help you understand what the people that frustrate you may be thinking or feeling. They can help you build empathy for yourself and for others.

That’s what coaching was like for me when I started. I felt utterly alone and without any support. There was nobody I could just ask what I should do as a CEO and then later as CTO. She didn’t give me the answers, but she asked me the right questions to help me find them. She helped me navigate difficult conversations and challenging situations.

The coaching episode that stuck with me, though, is one where she noticed something about me and my behavior. At the time I was a German working for a California company. After a few months she observed that I’ve become quite American in my habits and how I talk about things. She noticed that I might’ve lost some of the value as being a German in an environment that’s culturally less prone to address problems and conflict out in the open.

That observation came as quite a shock to me, both because I took pride in my innate German-ness that brings a level of frankness and candor that, when channelled in the right (i.e. culturally appropriate) ways, has value. I considered myself to be the one saying the things out loud that others were thinking or didn’t want to think. When I saw something, I said something. That’s how I viewed myself.

Having that identity threatened felt like a shock to my system. But I used the energy to formulate a plan. The observation alone opened up a new avenue (or Weg in German) for myself to figure out what the most valuable skills are that my German-ness brings to the table. I also got to think about which Americanisms (or Californianisms) I valued. In a team of mostly US-based folks I didn’t need to bring all of my German-ness along. I just needed to figure out which parts served me well and pick those.

The end result for me was that I was more open again to speak my mind and say things that had the potential to shake things up, but I did so without being brash and unkind about it. I chose to always look for things that I appreciated alongside the things I thought needed improvement. The result was a hybrid that suited the value that I brought to the table and the cultural environment I was in.

On my own, and having nobody to reflect this kind of observation back to me, I probably wouldn’t have taken that step. This is exactly what a good coach does. They challenge our assumptions. They observe and say things nobody on our team would dare to say to our face, or they simply wouldn’t notice it. They ask “How did you come to this conclusion?” They offer kindness and support while ensuring that you do things for the right reasons. They challenge us.

Not every coaching conversation is like this. But the ones that stick with you, the ones that bring about an important shift in your thinking or behavior, those are the ones that truly land and that make the work worthwhile.

On our most recent podcast episode, we discuss coaching, we share our own coaching experiences, including the awkward bits, and what coaching sessions tend to be like for our clients.

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