Leaders need to be confident, but can they be overconfident? Of course, and we all know examples of leaders like that. Naturally, we never include ourselves. And that is the problem – we all have blind spots. A recent article by Joan Shafer, Adam Bryant and David Reimer entitled Revealing Leaders’ Blind Spots’ (read it here) highlight that the gap between the areas that leaders think they need to improve, and those identified by those they lead is quite wide – highlighting blind spots.
This is inevitable, and not necessarily an issue, unless leaders choose not to understand what these blind spots are and to address them. Following their research into this, the authors concluded ‘that leaders are mostly oblivious to the way their colleagues view their weaknesses.’. The authors also note that these disconnects have consequences, including hampering the organizations ability to execute its strategy.
The theory arrived at by the article is that if executives realised how they were perceived by their co-workers and leadership teams, they would better understand how to improve their performance. To highlight the lack of understanding held by executives, the research found that in 80% of the cases reviewed, there was no alignment in the top three areas needed to work on, in 19% there was one or two matches and in only 1 percent of cases was there total agreement.
Significantly, EQ and time management were two of the major areas where leaders were unaware of their ineffectiveness. But the biggest blind spots were:
- Visibility and accessibility
- Development of teams and upcoming leaders
- Vision, strategy and organizational priorities.
The authors conclude that ‘there is a 96 percent likelihood that leaders do not understand that their organizations perceive them as ivory-tower executives who do not provide adequate clarity on their company’s strategy’.
A reading of the full article will explain these in more detail, including offering some strategies to address this. However, the biggest step any leader can take, is to understand and accept that they do have blind spots.