Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences

Some of the greatest risks leaders face are difficult to recognize because they emerge from trusted strengths, established assumptions and information that never reaches the decision-making table. Blindspotting helps leaders examine what may be missing from their understanding before an invisible risk becomes a visible, costly consequence.

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Blindspotting: How to See What’s Holding You Back as a Leader is a book written by clinical psychologist and executive coach, Martin Dubin. His premise is that leaders can be held back by things they do not know about themselves and therefore cannot see operating in their decisions, relationships and behaviour.

He identifies six areas in which these blind spots tend to occur: identity, behaviour, traits, intellect, emotion and motive.

What makes his argument particularly interesting is that our blind spots are not always obvious weaknesses. They can develop from the very strengths that helped us become successful.

Decisiveness can become impatience with questions. Confidence can make it difficult to recognize when our understanding is incomplete. A preference for collaboration can delay a decision that needs to be made. Strong analytical ability can keep us searching for information way past a reasonable point where we can safely take action.

The strength has not disappeared. It has shifted towards a shadow position, way beyond what the situation requires.

Your shadow side refers to the hidden downside or blind spots of your core drives. It is where an overextended strength or natural talent flips into a negative behavior when you are stressed, drained, or misaligned.

That is an important distinction because most leaders know they have weaknesses. They may even be able to name them. What they are less likely to question is whether one of their trusted strengths has started working against them.

You may for example be driven to win and be distinctive but on your shadow side you can become ruthlessly competitive, hyper-focused on status, or deeply anxious about failure and mediocrity. You may be driven to bring order and structure but operating in your shadow can see you morph into a rigid control freak, micro-manager, or the person who panics when faced with spontaneous changes. You may be driven to build and figure things out but just as easily can slide into over-complicating simple tasks, analysis paralysis, or dismissing practical human feelings for technical perfection.

The interesting thing with blind spots is that other people may see them way before you do!

As leaders rise, the information reaching them often becomes more carefully managed. People learn what to say, what to soften and what to leave out. Questions that could interrupt the leader’s thinking may never be asked.

The leader may therefore feel increasingly certain while receiving less of the information needed to test that certainty.

Enter blindspotting

Blindspotting is the deliberate practice of looking beyond what is immediately visible and examining what may be affecting the situation without our awareness. It requires us to consider the possibility that the risk we are managing is not the only risk present.

A leader may be carefully managing financial risk while overlooking the assumptions used to justify the investment. The organization may focus on the risk of losing a high-performing employee without examining the effect that person is having on everyone else. A team may develop an elaborate response to a performance problem without establishing whether the problem is one of capability, clarity, authority or trust.

What appears to be the problem can attract so much attention that nobody examines whether it is the right problem.

Invisible risks are difficult to navigate because they are not included in our assessment of the situation.

They do not appear in the proposal, the forecast or the discussion. Yet they can influence how the problem is defined, which information is considered relevant and what eventually gets decided.

Navigating them does not require a leader to become suspicious of every conclusion or delay action until every uncertainty has been resolved. No decision comes with perfect visibility.

It does require enough humility to question what appears obvious.

1. What are we assuming?
2. Whose perspective is missing?
3. What information have we dismissed because it does not fit our current explanation?
4. Is a familiar strength affecting how we are interpreting the situation?
5. What might we be unable to see from where we are standing?

The purpose of these questions is not to undermine confidence. It is to determine whether that confidence rests on an accurate enough understanding of what is happening.

Blind spots will always exist. We cannot eliminate what we do not yet know. We can, however, develop ways of making the unseen more visible before it becomes costly. This may be one of the most important forms of risk management available to a leader.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

Think about an important decision you are currently considering. What assumption, strength or established way of seeing the situation might be preventing you from recognizing another risk?

About Giselle

Most costly decisions begin with a wrong read of the situation.

I’m Giselle Hudson — The Pre-Fixer. I help leaders see the real problem before they act, in my writing and in my work. I don’t fix; I pre-fix. Most advisers jump to solutions before they’ve found the real problem. I find it first — the part that isn’t fully visible yet. Once we see that clearly, everything else falls into place, and confident, right action can follow.

Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations — helping leaders make sense of complexity before they commit significant time and money to the wrong thing.

What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?