What's your Blind Spot?

For almost four years, I’ve been guided by my friend and spiritual counselor Tricia Barrett, who I first met when she was running the green juice detox cleanse at the integrative medicine practice where I worked. With a boatload of life experience, hard earned wisdom, and a masters in intuitive medicine, Tricia has gently and relentlessly refused to let me stay blind to how I create and recreate my own suffering.

You know those scenarios you repeat in your life? The same abusive, alcoholic boyfriends who take all you have to give, give little in return, and then walk out on you? The same co-workers who steal your brilliant ideas without crediting you and then get the promotion you deserve? The same way you attract mentors who help out, and then when you succeed, reject you and break your heart? The same way you set a goal, get excited about achieving it, start going after it, and then give up before you go there?

You get the picture.

Meet Your Blind Spot

Any time something happens repetitively, chronically, over and over again, you can bet there’s a blind spot underneath it. You may be tempted to fall into victim mode. (“There he goes again – another asshole who just uses people!” “There they go again, my lying, cheating, stealing co-workers who lack integrity!” “There it is, happening again, those mentors who get so jealous of my success that they can’t be excited and then have to reject me.”)

You may blame everyone else and think “Poor me! Why do all these crappy things keep happening to me?”

But the only thing those scenarios all have in common… is YOU and something you don’t see – your blind spot.

My Separation Story

One of my own blind spots revolved around a story I had recreated in my life over and over and over again. In fact, I’ve blogged a lot about it, because it taps into one of my core childhood wounds, the feeling of being rejected because I was “too smart,” “too pretty,” “too whatever.” (You can read about the loneliness of leadership and the poem dedicated to the outsiders that I wrote when I was 14.)

Over and over in my life, I have played out the same story. I get shut out when I succeed. Others got jealous if I make straight A’s, got the guy, won the award. Then in med school, I got chastised for being too vigilant with the care of my patients and making the med students look bad. (They have a term for it – “gunner”- which always hurt my feelings because I never set out to make someone else look bad, only to do a good job and care for the patients.)

The pattern continued until I played this separation story in my mind like a record. If you want anything done right, you have to do it yourself. Nobody else cares about doing exceptional work as much as I do.  And most painfully – unless I dim my light and dumb myself down, I’ll wind up rejected.

Sheesh! OLD STORY!

How We Create Our Own Suffering

With Tricia’s guidance, I was able to finally see how this story is only true because I keep calling in evidence to prove my separation story right. The truth is that I’m surrounded by bright, sparkly lights that are unapologetically radiating and attracting people like moths to the flame. My tribe is full of people who don’t have a jealous bone in their body and want nothing more than for me and everyone else to succeed.

The separation story is a figment of my ego, who I lovingly call Victoria Rochester and who you can read about here.  Victoria likes to make herself superior, convince herself that nobody can do as good a job as she can, and assert that she can’t shine her light around others because they can’t be trusted. Because of Victoria’s often unconscious behaviors, she recreates her own suffering, since those who feel like they’re inferior to her have no interest in sticking around! Rejection follows, and BOOM. She’s just proven the story right – again.

The Solution Is Simple

The minute you see the blind spot, it’s like this glaring, gaping wound, red and raw and impossible to miss. But until you see it, it festers, inflaming your life and creating repetitive suffering. Once the blind spot is illuminated, you can’t help but to change your behavior. You realize the stories you’ve been telling yourself simply aren’t true. You’re no longer the victim, but rather the creator of your life. It’s all about taking personal responsibility for what happens to you, rather than blaming everybody else.

Ever since I saw mine, evidence that my separation story was true disappeared. Beautiful new people appeared in the void it left behind. I am surrounded by people I admire, who are happy to teach me, as we share space as equal sparks of divinity walking around in flawed human bodies. I have eased my own suffering because my dear friend Tricia showed me a blind spot.

What’s Your Blind Spot?

What is repetitive, chronic, and hurtful in your life? What keeps happening – over and over and over? Do you keep attracting the same screwed up relationship patterns? Do you continue to overgive and wind up feeling like a victim? Do you keep making yourself less than or better than?  Do you continue to get passed over for promotions at work?

Here comes the part that requires fearless living. What might you be doing to create your own suffering? If you step out of victim mode, what’s your part in creating these stories? Are you brave enough to illuminate your blind spot and take ownership of it?

Please, my dear, be so brave. While it may feel painful to have your blind spots illuminated, the freedom you feel coming out the end is worth every zinger.

Here with a flashlight,

Lissa

5 Ways to Find Out What You're Doing Wrong

5 Ways to Find Out What You're Doing Wrong BY LES MCKEOWN

Are you giving away profit because of habits, attitudes, policies or procedures that irritate and alienate your customers or clients? Here's how to find out.

Questionable fashion choices, braying laughter, supporting the Mets-- we all have our blind spots, right? There are things we just can't see for ourselves, even if the world is telling us otherwise. 

Businesses are exactly the same. Every business has its own blind spots: The effective or inefficient activities which, unlike personal blind spots, cost money. In fact, I've yet to work with a single organization that wasn't giving away profit because of habits, attitudes, policies or procedures that irritated and alienated its employers, customers or clients. 

Of course the conundrum is, how to you "see" a blind spot? As a leader, how can you know what you don't know?

The trick is in reframing your perspective. Catching a glimpse of your business from a new perspective can reveal wrinkles and blemishes.

Here are the five most effective ways to see your business in ways you've never seen it before:

1. Play musical chairs. Pair up your senior leadership team (including yourself) and have them each swap jobs for two days. If you're up for it, have everyone swap at the same time. Then watch and learn. (If you're a little queasy at the thought of what might go wrong, only swap one pair of executives at a time.) There is no single activity that will yield more insight into your organizational blind spots than pulling everyone out of their comfort zone and having them run a part of the business from a different perspective.

2. Talk to your supply chain. No one sees your blind spots better than the organizations in your supply chain. They interact with you all day, every day. So why not get their perspective? Don't waste your time with questionnaires. After all, you're dealing with blind spots, so you won't know what questions to ask. instead, identify your largest supplier and your smallest customer (they're who you probably struggle most to please), and invite them in for a day. Give them a tour, set up meetings with key personnel, and ask them what you can do better. Then listen. Hard. 

3. Visit same-size companies in other industries. Most organizational blind spots are size-related, not industry-specific. In other words, your blind spots will have more in common with other businesses of a similar size and age than they will with other businesses in the same industry.

Find a willing, non-competing business that's approximately the same size and set time aside to get to know each other in more depth. Act as peer coaches. Reflect back what you see in each other's businesses that's good, bad and indifferent. Watch for dramatically different attitudes and practices from yours, and cherry pick those that will benefit your business.

4. Become a case study. Business schools are full of bright, enthusiastic individuals-- both the faculty and the students-- who can bring a wholly different perspective to your business. Why not volunteer to be a live case study for a semester at your local university or college? If you baulk at the idea of untested students giving you advice on your business, talk to the executive education department. They work with seasoned executives who attend shorter summer courses.

5. Take a sabbatical. There's no better pair of fresh eyes on the business than your own. The catch, of course, is achieving the fresh part. The easiest way to refresh your view is to take a sabbatical. This doesn't have to mean months away from the business (a non-starter for most business leaders). Your annual vacation can, if you plan it correctly, reframe your perspective substantially.

Most executives I know lose the potential benefit of their vacation by remaining closely in touch with the business. They use the time to catch up with business-related reading or research, returning in much the same frame of mind as they left.

Try this instead: Vacation as a complete break. Do things you wouldn't normally do, and let your brain rest entirely from work. (I know, I know, easier said than done, but no one said reframing is easy.) 

Don't think of your no-work vacation as ducking your responsibilities. Instead, see it for what it is: An opportunity to reframe, a vital element in your leadership toolkit. 

3 of the Biggest Hiring Mistakes Employers Make

The wrong hire can set your business back years. Choose the right candidate by avoiding these three common hiring mistakes.

APRIL 03, 2013 

When new hires don't work out, they end up costing companies a lot of money. This can be especially hurtful in a small-business environment. Making a bad hiring decision not only hurts your business's bottom line, it has a negative impact on your employees and your company's culture.

But how do you know which candidate is a good fit for your business? Matthew Bellows, CEO of Yesware, a software firm that provides cloud-based email analytics for salespeople, says you should look past the resume and interview process and imagine people working at your firm. Will they get along with other employees? If they don't have a certain skill, are they smart enough to learn as they go?

Bellows, who has worked at six different startups, shares the three biggest mistakes he has seen employers make when hiring workers:

1. Ignoring culture fit. Too often, hiring managers will choose candidates because they have the right skills and experience, but Bellows says there should be a higher standard placed on personality fit.

"[Small-business candidates] don't get denied because they lack a technical skill. If they're smart enough, they'll figure out the skill sets they need," Bellows says. "However, we spend so much time with one another, especially in a small-business environment, that if they don't get along with others, it's a big deal." 

In a startup culture, a potential hire needs to be able to handle what Bellows calls "constant inevitable chaos." One example is changing a meeting location at the last minute because of an office renovation. A good employee has to be able to handle the chaos.

RELATED: Two Incredibly Useful Questions to Ask in a Job Interview

2. Hiring people because they’re well-known. The problem with the “rock star” hire is that you think since they’ve already succeeded in the past, they’ll automatically succeed with you, Bellows says. But this isn’t always the case, especially if their personality doesn’t fit with your company's culture.

“These rock stars think they’ll be running the company and you’ll end up having to bend the rules just for them. These people are expensive and have high expectations, and that isn’t always a good thing for your company.” Before you decide to commit to an expensive hire, consider the people as well as the skills they will bring to the position. Would you hire them if they didn't have the well-known name? If not, think twice whether their "name" is enough of a reason to bring them on board.

RELATED: Hire People With a Sense of Humor

3. Hiring the sales team before you’re ready. Bellows tells us “this is a very common error, because small businesses will look around and think that what they need to succeed is customers,” and the solution to getting customers is hiring salespeople. Although this may seem rational, when you hire salespeople before your product is scalable, you’ll run into major issues, he says.

So how do you know if your product is ready? Bellows tells us it all comes down to product development.

“Declining are the days where you can have a great sales and marketing team to make up for a mediocre product,” he tells us. “If one person on the founding team can’t bring in 10 customers on their own, then the product isn’t ready.” Basically, the product needs to be able to sell itself and you hire the sales team to manage the process—not to convince the public that your product is ready.

8 Ways to Conquer Your Leadership Blind Spots

You don't know this, but there are some serious blind spots in your leadership skills. These 8 tips will help you see them clearly, and conquer them for good.

APRIL 09, 2013

To be a successful leader or entrepreneur, we need to become intimate not only with our strengths but also with our blind spots, those aspects of our personality that can derail us. John C. Maxwell defines a blind spot as "an area in the lives of people in which they continually do not see themselves or their situation realistically."

All of us have blind spots. A Hay Group study shows that the senior leaders in an organization are more likely to overrate themselves and to develop blind spots that can hinder their effectiveness as leaders. Another study by Development Dimensions International Inc. found that 89 percent of front-line leaders have at least one blind spot in their leadership skills.

When we're in a leadership position, our blind spots can cause a great deal of damage, not only to our career but to the people who depend on us. How can you avoid this potential pitfall for yourself and your business? These eight tips can help.

1. Raise your awareness of the top blind spots. This Executive White Papershows the 10 blind spots that are most risky to personal and organizational success. The top three are: under-communicating strategic direction and priorities, poorly communicating expectations, and waiting for poor performance to improve.

Leaders are often surprised when stakeholders complain that there isn't enough communication about the business's vision and strategy. There is a communication gap between what leaders think is enough and what stakeholders need. Communication also extends to one-on-one leadership conversations. Leaders often fail to see the harm that is done to the organization when they consistently avoid having the difficult conversation with a non-performer, hoping the issue will resolve itself.

2. Don't hire in your own image. In the Top Ten Mistakes that Entrepreneurs Make, Guy Kawasaki includes one of the most pervasive blind spots that leaders often have: Hiring people who are like them instead of hiring individuals who have complementary skills. Hiring people who are similar results in organizational weaknesses. As Kawasaki puts it, "You need to balance off all the talents in a company."

RELATED: 3 Biggest Hiring Mistakes to Avoid

3. Establish a peer coaching arrangement. Every leader can benefit from peer coaching with leaders in other organizations. As a business owner, consider peer coaching with a noncompeting business that's the same size. In Five Ways To Find Out What You're Doing Wrong, Les McKeown says, "Most organizational blind spots are size-related, not industry-specific. In other words, your blind spots will have more in common with other businesses of a similar size and age than they will with other businesses in the same industry."

4. Examine your past history. To gain insight into behaviors that may not serve you well, think back on your past successes and failures as a leader. This kind of introspective inventory can yield some powerful insights. What do you need to stop doing? What do you need to do more of? What do you need to start doing?

5. Understand your habits. Blind spots are not necessarily weaknesses—they can also be habits or instinctive reactions to situations. For example, do your workload and stress cause you to interrupt people in meetings in order to speed up things? As Tom Peters shows in this video, most managers are 18-second listeners. If this describes you, work on developing more patience. It will enhance your interpersonal skills and improve your leadership effectiveness.

RELATED: 8 Ways to Change Your Bad Habits for Good

6. Place a high priority on relational skills. In Winning With People: Discover The People Principles That Work For You Every Time, John C. Maxwell states a simple, but powerful truth: People can usually trace their successes and failures to relationships in their lives. Every time something good or something difficult has happened to you, you can most likely point it back to some relationship you had. Studies show that only 15 percent of a person's success is determined by job knowledge and technical skills, and 85 percent is determined by an individual's attitude and ability to relate to other people. As Maxwell observes, many leaders have big relational blind spots. For example, some individuals may come across as arrogant, stomping on people in their quest to achieve results. They may not be aware of the need to curb their arrogance until it's too late. Others may not show much warmth and fail to pick up on the emotional clues that others give them. Make it a priority to develop healthy interpersonal skills.

7. Consider the downside of your strengths. It's a known fact that our gifts, taken to the extreme, can be liabilities. For example, one of your strengths might be that you are prudent in your decision-making. But what you view as caution, taken to the extreme, might result in fear of risk taking. In the long run, this can work against you. You may pride yourself in being a visionary, but taken to the extreme, you may bounce off in too many directions, frustrating others on the team by switching gears too often. List all your strengths, and reflect on how they manifest themselves in your leadership style. If you need help in this area, work with a mentor or coach. Consider asking your constituents for feedback. We rise as a leader when we have the courage to ask, "How are my actions affecting performance?"

8. Take an assessment to identify your blind spots. The Reiss Motivation Profile is a comprehensive, psychological assessment of what motivates us. It identifies 16 basic desires that will give you insight on why you do what you do and will help you identify your blind spots. For example, the desire for independence can end up being a blind spot when a leader refuses to admit that he can't do it all by himself. A quick, online assessment can be accessed at Find Your Blind Spot Now.

The Reiss Motivation Profile

The Reiss Motivation Profile® –
Business Version
The Reiss Motivation Profile® (RMP) is a standardized, comprehensive assessment of a person's needs, interests, motives, and life goals. The business version is used in coaching, team building, and leadership training.Ages: The RMP can be used with adults of every age.Length: This is 128-item self-report questionnaire.Administration: A client can complete the questionnaire online from any computer that is connected to the Internet, but the report is always emailed just to you. You then decide how best to share the findings with the client. Administration time is about 15 minutes. The results are immediate.Results: You receive a two-five page, plain language report and what this means for job performance, leadership, team/company loyalty, competitive spirit, risk taking, and numerous other business-relevant behavior.  The 16 needs are:

Acceptance, the need for approvalBeauty, the need for aesthetically-appealing environmentCuriosity, the need to understand Eating, strength of interest in foodExpedience, motivation to take practical advantage of opportunitiesFamily, the need to spend time with familyIdealism, the need to improve societyInterdependence, motivation to rely on othersOrder, the need to be organizedPhysical Activity, the need for exercisePower, the need to leadSaving, the need to collectSocial Contact, the need for friendsStatus, the need for prestige Tranquility, the need to play it safeVengeance, strength of competitive spirit

Norms: The normative database today includes more than 40,000 people from North America, Europe, and Asia.Validation: Steven Reiss, Ph.D., conducted scientific surveys and then used factor analytic methods to delineate 16 human needs. He and independent researchers, notably Ken Olson, Ph.D., then validated each of the 16 needs against personality measures (e.g., Big 5 scales, motivation scales, Anxiety Sensitivity Index, romance scales) as an indicator of behavior (e.g., interest in college major, club memberships, television viewing habits, participation in sports, participation in humanitarian causes, etc.). Reiss reported this work in 17 scientific journal articles -- three published in prestigious APA journals -- and three books. Since then, others have published books on the RMP. The instrument is gaining wide use. Practitioners usually can "see" the validity of the tool (meaning that the validity is apparent and not limited to statistics). 

8 Gender 'Blind Spots' That Could Derail Your Career

By Drew Anne Scarantino

Have you ever looked at your co-workers and wondered, “What are they thinking?”

Well, a new book may just shed some light.

John Gray, author of the best-selling “Men Are From Mars , Women Are From Venus,” and Barbara Annis, an expert on gender issues in the workplace, teamed up to write ”Work with Me: The 8 Blind Spots Between Men and Women in Business.” Their goal? Teach all of us about the gender differences that can lead to misunderstandings on the job.

In spite of company quotas and initiatives to create greater gender equality in the workplace, relations between men and women remain tricky (see: male executives who refuse to mentor younger women because of “how it might look”).

Gray and Annis use personal stories, science and the findings from more than 100,000 interviews to narrow down the key pain points—and suggest solutions that could help break down communication barriers. So LearnVest spoke with the duo to dig deeper into how “gender blind spots” could hinder your career climb.

LearnVest: What inspired you to collaborate on this book?

John Gray: I’ve been teaching about gender differences in the home for over 30 years. But, nowadays, people spend most of their lives in the workplace—and that’s where we need to look at the effects of gender differences the most.

Barbara Annis: I’ve been working on gender intelligence for almost 30 years too, although my previous books were very business-focused. So even though John and I are on separate tracks, this book was a nice way to bring our expertise together.

So what are gender blind spots, anyway?

Annis: They are the things we don’t actually know that we don’t know. It’s like when you’re driving a car, and you have blind spots—that’s why we have to use mirrors and turn our heads.

Gray: Men don’t see certain things about women, and women don’t see certain things about men.

Related: A Guy Confides: I Get Paid More Than My Female Coworker

And gender equality versus gender intelligence? How do they differ?

Annis: When we think about gender equality, we tend to focus on equality for just women. Corporations around the world are still playing the numbers game, enforcing quotas to create balance at the top. But they’re going about it in the wrong way.

Gray: Gender intelligence allows us to not only acknowledge our differences in a positive light but appreciate them as well. With gender intelligence as a foundation, we can achieve gender equality—without denying our differences.

Less than 20% of execs in the U.S. are women, and only 3% of C.E.O.s—stats that haven’t really budged since 1996. What gives?

Annis: We’ve made the wrong assumption about why women are leaving the workplace. Society thinks it’s because of work-life balance, but our research shows that’s not the case.

Related: Does Work-Life Balance Actually Exist?

Gray: In fact, our surveys with women found that they’re leaving because they don’t feel valued—they feel excluded.

So how do you propose we change the workplace?

Annis: Whether we like it or not, there’s a hierarchy in any work environment. The bottom line is that a cultural transformation has to start at the top. But what’s great about this conversation is that it opens people up. Men think, “We can talk about this?” And women finally feel more valued. It’s time to really understand that there’s a huge competitive advantage to acknowledging the differences between men and women, the strengths each gender brings—and how they can complement each other.

You identify eight blind spots in the book. Can you name a few?

Annis: In our surveys, we asked men if they appreciate women. The men said, “Of course!” But the women said no. We found that’s because men and women look for different types of recognition: Women want more feedback and transparency in communication during the course of a project, whereas men just want acknowledgement for the results.

Gray: Without this extra insight, men miss opportunities to give messages of appreciation to women, and women misinterpret men’s lack of communication as a lack of appreciation.

Another blind spot occurs when men engage in conversations: If they have something to say, they say it, whereas women wait to be invited in. For this reason, men tend to dominate conversations, leaving women feeling excluded and thinking that a male colleague doesn’t want to hear what she has to say. And men think that if a woman isn’t speaking up, she must have nothing to say—yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Related: 6 Coworkers Who Could Sabotage Your Career

What was the most surprising thing that you learned while working on this book?

Annis: The one thing that surprised me along the way is that men truly do care. I always thought, “Why would they care if it doesn’t relate to their top strategic priorities? It seems like men are always about the bottom line.” But I met so many men who actually want women to advance. My “aha!” moment was learning about the incongruence between their intentions and their behaviors.

What do you hope that your book will teach readers?

Annis: We only picked the top eight blind spots for our book! So I hope that it will start a dialogue—and remove even more blind spots. If this book starts a journey of understanding that gender differences are hardwired, I think it could eventually change how we parent our children, how we teach our kids in school, and how we relate to one another in everyday life.

Gray: Another benefit that I hope people will take away from this book is an awareness of how other people are affected by our own behaviors. Awareness alone can help us make small shifts to adjust our behaviors compassionately—and truly appreciate each other’s offerings.

Seeing Your Emotional Blind Spots

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Most of us have such psychological “blind spots,” aspects of our personalities that are obvious to everyone but ourselves. There’s the mother who complains, “I don’t know why little Horace is so violent—I’ve smacked him for it a thousand times.” Or your gorgeous friend who believes she has all the seductive allure of a dung beetle. Or the coworker who complains that, mysteriously, every single person he’s ever worked for develops the identical delusion that he’s shiftless and incompetent. As we roll our eyes at such obliviousness, some of us might think, What about me? Do I have blind spots, and if so, what are they?

You can find the answers if you care to—or more accurately, if you dare to. This is the roughest mission you can undertake: a direct seek-and-destroy attack on your own pockets of denial. Denial is far trickier than simple ignorance. It isn’t the inability to perceive information but the astonishing ability to perceive information while automatically refusing to allow it into consciousness. Our minds don’t perform this magical trick without reason. We only “go blind” to information that is so troubling, so frightening, or so opposed to what we believe that to absorb it would shatter our view of ourselves and the world. On the other hand, becoming fully conscious of our perceptions—simply feeling what we feel and knowing what we know—is the very definition of awakening. It creates a virtually indestructible foundation for lasting relationships, successful endeavors, and inner peace. Hunting down your blind spots is a bumpy adventure, but it can lead to sublime destinations.

Identifying your own blind spots is an exercise in paradox, because if you’re aware of a problem, it doesn’t count. It’s like tracking the wind: You can’t observe the thing itself, only its effects. The tracks that a blind spot leaves are repetitive experiences that seem inexplicable, the things that make you exclaim, Why does this always happen to me? For example:

1. You keep having the same relationship with different people.
All of Macy’s friends are “takers,” emotional parasites who drain her and give nothing back. Steve’s three ex-wives all had extramarital affairs. No one in Corrine’s life—her children, her coworkers, her mother—ever responds to her feelings.

These people don’t know that they carefully choose friends and lovers who match certain psychological profiles or that their behavior elicits similar reactions from almost everyone they encounter. It would take you about five minutes with Macy to see that she’s so self-effacing she actually resists normal friendships, gravitating only toward takers. Steve’s friends will tell you he falls for women who remind him of his mother, an enthusiastic practitioner of promiscuous sex. Corrine is so reserved that even the most intuitive people can’t read her moods. All three have gone through life blaming their relationship patterns on other people’s shortcomings.

2. Your luck never changes.
Over years of life-coaching, I’ve become more and more convinced that we create our own “luck.” I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as blind fate, but I am saying that choice is far more powerful than chance in determining the pattern of our failures and successes over time.

Many of my clients have lost jobs in the recent economic downturn, but those who were previously doing well in their careers are finding ways to learn from their experience and bounce back. Those who complained of relentless bad luck before being laid off have slid further downhill. A client I’ll call Shirley recently complained, “When my sister was fired, I thought we’d bond because we both had the same bad luck. But then she started her own business, so it turns out that for her getting fired was good luck. Just like always, she gets all the breaks.” As I punted Shirley to a psychotherapist, I wondered if they train Seeing Eye dogs for people with her kind of blindness. If so, Shirley will almost certainly develop a dog allergy.

3. People consistently describe you in a way that doesn’t fit your self-image. 
If tracking patterns in love and luck isn’t enough to reveal your blind spots, there’s another way to go after them. You just have to notice what people tell you about yourself—the things you have always cleverly ignored or routinely discounted. Complete the following sentences as accurately as you can, and you might be closing in on a truth you haven’t fully acknowledged.

• “People are always telling me that I’m…”
• “I get a lot of compliments about…”
• “When my friends or family members are angry with me, they say that…”
• “People often thank me for…”

If you heartily agree with all the information that pops up in response to these phrases, you’ve simply reinforced an accurate self-concept by recalling times when others have validated your perceptions. But if any of the descriptions seem strange, incongruous, or flat-out false, consider the possibility that your image of yourself may not be accurate—and almost certainly doesn’t correspond to what other people perceive. By the way, you may well discover that you’re blind to your positive characteristics as well as negative ones. Some people (especially women) may be so biased against being arrogant that they overlook or dismiss their own best qualities.

Getting Rid of Your Blind Spots

If the evidence suggests that you have blind spots, you can try to eliminate them with a simple mindfulness exercise. You already know what’s in your blind spot; it’s just that looking at it makes you extremely uncomfortable. Only by being very gentle with yourself will you become able to tolerate more awareness. So as kindly as you can, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What am I afraid to know?
2. What’s the one thing I least want to accept?
3. What do I sense without knowing?

Whatever comes into your mind, do nothing about it. Not yet. If you feel even a hint of some new realization, you’ve taken a huge step. More insights will arrive soon, and the kinder you are to yourself over time, the more likely you are to experience major breakthroughs.

Hunting for your own blind spots, like trying to examine the back of your own head, is much less efficient than soliciting feedback from others. This process combines the attractions of strip-dancing and skydiving, making you feel completely exposed yet energized by the sense that you could be catastrophically injured. I known how valuable honest feedback can be, how much precious time it can save in my struggle to awaken. I still have to force myself to go looking for it, but when I do I almost always benefit.

Try this: For a week, ask for blind-spot feedback from one person a day, never asking the same person twice. Just say it: “Is there anything about me that I don’t seem to see but is obvious to you?” You’ll probably want to start with your nearest and dearest, but don’t stop there. Surprisingly, a group of relative strangers is often the best mirror you can find. I’ve worked with many groups of people who, just minutes after meeting, could offer one another powerful insights. Like the emperor in his new clothes, we often believe that our illusions are confirmed by the silence of people who are simply too polite to mention the obvious. Breaking the courtesy barrier by asking for the truth can change your life faster than anything else I’ve ever experienced.
Handling Feedback

Any feedback is scary. The kind that addresses topics so uncomfortable you’ve stuffed them into a blind spot can be almost intolerable. That’s why, before you even ask for an honest appraisal, you have to have a strategy in place for processing it.

1. Just say thanks.
When others discuss your blind spots, you may have a violent emotional reaction. Remember: All of the upheaval is a product of your own mind. You do not have to dissuade or contradict the other person in order to feel calm. Instead of launching into an argument, just say thanks. Then imagine yourself tucking away the other person’s comments in a box. You can take them out later, examine them, decide whether or not they’re useful.

2. Dismiss useless feedback. 
There’s real feedback, and then there’s the slop that’s merely a reflection of the speaker’s dysfunction. Fortunately, you can tell these things apart because they feel very different. Useless feedback is nonspecific and vague, and has no action implication. It demotivates, locking us in confusion and shame. Useful feedback is specific and focused. It can sting like the dickens, but it leads to a clear course of action; when you hear it you feel a tiny lightbulb going on upstairs.

“No one could ever love you” is useless feedback. “You project a lot of hostility, and it scares people” gives you information that you need to make healthy changes. It’s safe to assume that useless feedback is coming from people who are themselves shame-bound and blind. The best thing to do with it is dismiss it and focus on the information your gut tells you is valuable.

3. Absorb the truth.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote about a man who, virtually blind from early childhood, had an operation that restored his sight when he was middle-aged. Though the man’s eyes now took in visual information, his brain wasn’t used to making sense of it. He couldn’t differentiate between a man and a gorilla until he touched a nearby statue of a gorilla; then the difference became immediately clear.

This confused state is similar to what you’ll feel when you’ve accepted feedback about what lies in your blind spots. You’re not used to this new set of eyes, this novel image of self. After my first revelation of how I can be very dominant, I felt incredibly clumsy. I felt a little as if I were talking while listening to headphones: I couldn’t correctly gauge how I was coming across to others. Slowly, asking repeatedly for feedback, I began to see my own behavior more clearly. My false image of self gave way to a more accurate model, and I learned to avoid accidentally stomping on people with my conversational style.

Deliberately, methodically eliminating your blind spots simply intensifies the natural process we all endure as life teaches us its rough-and-tumble lessons. If you undertake this accelerated journey, you will learn much more in much less time (albeit with a few more scrapes and bruises) and achieve a deeper level of self-knowledge than you otherwise would have.

Just observing the truth about yourself without judgment or spin will begin to change you. It’s well-nigh impossible to see yourself more and more clearly while continuing to act without integrity, or in contradiction to your life’s real purpose. Eventually you may come to see what Marianne Williamson meant when she said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” To see your truest nature is to recognize that you have a capacity for goodness far greater than you ever dreamed, with all the awesome responsibility that entails. It’s a difficult proposition, but in the end the view makes it all worthwhile.

http://marthabeck.com/2011/11/seeing-your-emotional-blind-spots/

blind spots

Have You Checked Your Blind Spots Lately

By: Sara Canaday 
Last updated 5/15/2012

“Reputation” is not a line item on a corporate income statement, but it should be. Instead, it lurks pervasively below the surface of carefully calculated revenues and expenses. The accountants can’t assign a specific number to it.  Think about that for a moment. Companies can leverage the incalculable perceptions of a great reputation into bottom-line success and a very real corporate advantage.  Sadly, there’s also the flip side: a negative reputation can cause them to crash and burn— despite solid product offerings. 

Perceptions may be unquantifiable, but they are powerful. And, as we’ve all heard, perception is reality. Having the best of intentions isn’t enough to get us the new job, the big raise, or the highly coveted promotion. Our professional reputations are defined through the perceptual lens of our colleagues, co-workers, and clients— and those reputations determine the path and the pace of our careers (for better or worse). 

We all have blind spots in some area. Here are a few examples that you may have noticed in yourself or others:

People who feel they are:	But others perceive them as:
Highly productive and innovative	Rebellious and uncooperative
Intelligent and well-qualified	Condescending and elitist
Decisive and candid	Abrupt and insensitive
Extremely energetic and driven	Relentless and unrealistic
Composed and steady	Robotic and indifferent
Remarkably reliable and high performing	One-dimensional and over-functioning
Spirited and passionate	Intense and overzealous
Methodical and compliant	Inflexible and overly cautious
Assertive and enthusiastic	Self-serving and inappropriate

No one is so perfectly self-aware that he or she can eliminate every potential perception disconnect before it occurs. Those who are most successful have learned how to read the diverse people and situations they encounter and respond appropriately. Sure, they are savvy enough to avoid the obvious perception landmines. But they have also mastered a skill that could be even more important:  recognizing an inadvertent “hit” and diving in quickly for effective damage control.   

Insight to ActionThe world’s strongest leaders know how to take insight to action, to effectively manage the perception gaps that are inevitable in our fast-paced, technology-fueled, global business environment. Here are some suggested steps that I’ve found valuable:

1. Increase your self-awareness.

Before you can determine whether other people define your professional reputation in the manner you’d prefer, you need to understand your own goals and intentions.  How would you like to be perceived?  What is your ideal reputation?  To find those answers, you’ll need to increase your own self-awareness. Seriously consider the following questions and jot down your thoughts for reference:  

• What are your strongest and most developed skills?
• How do people benefit from working with you?
• What are the results of your communications and interactions with others?
• How do you make others feel?
• How would you ideally like to be described by the people who work with you?
• Is your ideal reputation realistic and attainable?
• How could that reputation impact your opportunities for advancement?

2. Seek out candid feedback.

Regardless of your goals and ideals, what is your actual reputation in the workplace? Uncomfortable or not, you need to know how you’re perceived. And that means you have to ask!  While this conclusion might seem obvious, many people think that making an educated guess is good enough. Not true. To get an accurate picture of our blind spots, we must gather feedback from those who have experience interacting with us. Ideally, you’ll want to get input from people who have observed your behaviors and communication styles for a minimum of six months. 

• Managers, directors, supervisors and bosses (current and former)
• Peers, co-workers, and colleagues  (across departments and teams)
• Staff, subordinates, and employees
• Members of common committees or organizations (professional or civic/community)
• Advisors and friends
• Family members

Choose people you respect and whom you feel confident have your best interests in mind. Select people you trust to give you candid and specific information. A glowing review with exclusively positive remarks might warm your heart, but it won’t help you get an accurate picture of any lurking perception gaps. Sometimes the best person to approach is one with whom you have experienced some difficulties in the past. They are likely to shed light on a few issues you have trouble recognizing, which is precisely the goal of the exercise.

Once you figure out which people to approach, you can determine how to start the process.  Luckily, there are plenty of options to make that happen:

• Official 360-degree assessments and evaluations (available from many leadership and industrial/organizational psychology institutes)
• Self-designed questionnaires distributed in person or online with sites like Survey Monkey
• Formal performance reviews from supervisors
• Candid conversations with mentors or advisors
• Informal dialog with trusted colleagues
• Casual comments from co-workers (sometimes disguised as humor)

The Power of Applied Self-AwarenessTMSimply knowing that a problem exists doesn’t fix it. Likewise, becoming aware of our reputations is only useful if we do something to make improvements. While the term “self-awareness” seems to imply a passive state of knowledge, I prefer to focus on the process of applied self-awareness TM, an active, ongoing brand of perception management that is truly the heart and soul of a stellar reputation. You have to change your behavior to change the end result for yourself and to help drive better results for the people around you.

Applied self-awareness moves us from insight to action.  In its very simplest form, successfully managing our reputations involves a strategic approach with two basic steps:

1. Self-Awareness: Identifying the gaps between how our words and actions are perceived, versus how we intended them.
2. Applied Self-Awareness: Using that information to adjust our behavior and close the gaps.

When we deliberately change our behavior in a way that allows our words and actions to be perceived precisely as we intended them, we can then achieve the reputation and the results that we want.