One of the interesting things about blind spots is that most of us are quite good at spotting them in other people.

We notice the leader who says they want challenge but becomes defensive whenever anyone disagrees with them. We hear the coach who believes they are following the client while repeatedly steering the conversation towards what they think is important. We see the colleague who describes themselves as a great listener but somehow manages to do most of the talking.

Our own blind spots are much harder to see, which is rather the point. They don’t usually feel like blind spots. They feel like experience, good judgement, intuition or simply knowing what works.

Where do blind spots come from?

They can show up almost anywhere because they grow out of our assumptions, habits, experiences and beliefs about ourselves and other people.

For a leader, it might be assuming that because nobody is raising concerns, everything must be fine, or believing that being available is the same as being approachable. Previous success can create blind spots too. The way you led a team successfully five years ago may have become so much part of how you operate that you no longer question whether it still works.

Imagine a leader who genuinely believes they welcome challenge. In team meetings they regularly say things like, “I want you to tell me if you disagree” and “I don’t want a room full of people who just say yes.”

Then someone does disagree.

The leader immediately explains why the suggestion won’t work. They interrupt with additional information the other person doesn’t have. They start defending the decision and, because they know the background, can produce several convincing reasons why their original approach is the right one.

Nothing dramatic happens. Nobody is shouted down and the meeting carries on.

At the next meeting, somebody raises a concern and gets a similar response. A few meetings later, people start having the conversations in the corridor afterwards instead. Eventually, the leader puts an idea on the table and asks, “Any concerns?” Nobody says anything.

The leader leaves the meeting believing everyone agrees and the team leaves knowing there wasn’t much point saying otherwise.

That’s how a blind spot can start affecting more than one leader’s behaviour. It begins to shape the behaviour of everyone around them.

Other leadership blind spots can be equally difficult to see. The leader who prides themselves on being supportive may be stepping in so frequently that their team stops solving problems for themselves. The leader who has an open-door policy may assume they’re approachable without noticing that people only bring them good news. The leader who values high standards may believe they’re encouraging excellence while their team has become reluctant to take risks because mistakes are remembered.

Often there’s a gap between our intention and other people’s experience of us, and that gap can be fertile ground for blind spots.

Coaches have blind spots too

For coaches, blind spots are particularly interesting because we spend so much time developing our self-awareness that it can be tempting to assume we’re already pretty self-aware.

We might have favourite questions, approaches or models that we unconsciously reach for. We may avoid challenging certain clients because we like them, or challenge others more readily because something about them triggers a response in us. We can become so interested in a particular thread that we don’t notice the client has moved somewhere else.

Sometimes our greatest strengths create the blind spot. Being supportive can become rescuing and being highly intuitive can lead us to trust our interpretation too quickly.

I remember listening to a coaching recording where the client mentioned early in the conversation that they were considering leaving their job. The coach picked up on this and began exploring what wasn’t working, what the client might want instead and what was stopping them from making a change.

They were perfectly reasonable coaching questions. The interesting part was that the client kept returning to their relationship with their manager. Each time they did, the coach acknowledged it and then gradually moved the conversation back towards the possibility of leaving.

When we explored the recording afterwards, the coach realised they had made an assumption very early on about what the conversation was really about. Once that assumption had taken hold, it influenced what they heard and therefore the questions they asked.

That’s what makes blind spots in coaching so difficult to recognise. The conversation can still look and sound like good coaching while the coach’s assumptions are quietly shaping where it goes.

So how do we find something we can’t see?

This is where feedback, reflection, mentoring and supervision become so valuable because we need perspectives other than our own.

Ask people what they experience of you rather than simply asking whether they think you’re doing a good job.

For coaches, listen back to recordings and notice recurring patterns, including the questions you tend to ask, the things you pick up on and the things you seem to miss.

Pay particular attention to the people who irritate you more than you think they should, the client you desperately want to help, the feedback you immediately want to explain away and those moments when you find yourself absolutely certain that you know what’s going on.

And when someone tells you something about yourself that you immediately want to reject, it might be worth getting curious before deciding they’re wrong.

I’m not sure the aim is ever to eliminate our blind spots completely. It’s to keep creating opportunities for them to become visible.

What might other people be able to see about you that you can’t yet see for yourself?

Until next time

Cath

x

P.S. If this has made you wonder about your own blind spots, that’s often where some of the most interesting coaching conversations begin. If you’d like to explore what you might not currently be seeing, get in touch.