BLIND SPOTS CAN BE LETHAL!

I started writing this column to fine tune the CEO role on some of the blind spots that develop as leaders move into the top role. I focus on the reminders that make a CEO more effective in all kinds of ways.

But I want to say to those of you in leadership, that some of your blind spots are
lethal when they become a purposeful denial of another person's reality, a refusal to see a different point of view. It makes your job harder to see and understand someone or something you don't like, that you abhor. The need is to see it fully and then base your decisions and actions on a full view of the many sides of any position of stance. Then throw in a bit of compassion for the heck of it, knowing that tolerance does make the world go around. I mean that as a very pragmatic statement.

How to smell your own blind spot?
With great difficulty.

Here are indications:
—You absolutely know know know know know you are right.

—You use the word 'hate" about a group of people or about a topic

—You avoid talking about certain topics of discussion and will not listen except to placate

—You do talk about your hot topic but only with people who agree with you
already. Then you talk incessantly about it.

—You see certain others as fundamentally wrong.

There is great wrong going on in our world. Acknowledging your blind spot doesn't fix everything. It shows you have the beginning of wisdom and the art and difficulty of leading with your eyes wide open