How To See What’s Holding You Back As A Leader

What you don't see about yourself can hold you back as a leader. That's typical for many leaders. What we don't see is what we can't see: we have blindspots. Your blindspots prevent you from achieving your greatest success. 

“It turns out that we're often not great judges of ourselves, even when we think we are. Sometimes we're simply unaware of a behavior or trait that's causing problems,” explains Martin Dubin, author of the new book, Blindspotting: How To See What’s Holding You Back As A Leader. “Bottom line: until we uncover these blindspots, we can't move forward. The good news is that you can learn to do your own blindspotting.” 

“Most of us understand the idea of blindspots in a general sense—areas we can’t see, to take the term most literally, or places we have gaps that we may not even realize, to be a little more abstract,” says Dubin. 

“But in the context of this book, I’m defining blindspots quite specifically: They are the particulars of who we are—our behaviors, our emotions, our intellect, our inborn traits, our core motives, and the identities we embody—that we are unable to see, and thus unable to take action to address.” 

As you read the book, you’ll learn about the six types of blindspots and you’ll learn the practical guidance you need to identify and manage these same blindspots. Each of the six blindspots are common terms and are distinct from each other. 

Dubin writes the following about each of the six types of blindspots: 

1. Identity Blindspot: This involves how you see yourself and whether your self-perception aligns with your role. ​It includes personal and professional identities that may not fit your current or desired roles.  

Identity is the nametag you wear as you make your way in the world. This is where we have the most opportunity to effect change. Once we recognize an identity blindspot, it is relatively easy to adjust and improve.

2. Motive Blindspot: This concerns the core drivers behind your actions. ​It includes universal business motives like achievement, affiliation, and power, as well as personal motives, such as the need for approval or to prove significance.

If we can gain greater awareness of our core motives, we can see how they inform almost everything about how we present ourselves to the world. With that awareness, we may not be able to alter our motives, but we can certainly implement tools and systems to move us from instinctual responses to more conscious and considered alternatives. We can be more in control of how our motives show up in our behavior, and thus more in control of our business career.

3. Trait Blindspot: This relates to your personality traits, particularly those that are overused or extreme. ​It includes traits from the Big Five (extroversion, openness, accommodation, conscientiousness, neuroticism) and other leadership traits like resilience, perseverance, and confidence.​

Our traits can feel so intimately connected to who we are—extrovert versus introvert, flexible versus rigid, etc.—that we often don’t see when they block our success. 

4. Emotion Blindspot: This involves your awareness and regulation of emotions, both your own and others'. ​It includes emotional bandwidth, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and awareness of the downstream impact of emotions. 

Some executives act as if they believe a good leader should never show emotion, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Beyond the fact that experiencing emotion is unavoidable, a true leader recognizes that emotions are data—and there is potential for this data to be effectively deployed for maximum impact. Being emotionally facile—and recognizing and addressing your emotional blindspots—is critical to success. 

5. Intellect Blindspot: This concerns the different types of intelligence you possess, such as horsepower (IQ), processing speed, creativity, and street smarts. ​It also includes your ability to acquire knowledge and recognize what you don't know. ​ 

The general wisdom from the business world—and to an even greater extent in the business coaching world—is that the smarter the executive the better. But smart can mean many things, and being the “smartest person in the room” is neither a meaningful thing by itself nor an excuse to ignore the other facets of good leadership. When we fall into the trap of thinking our intellect will compensate for weakness elsewhere, and fail to see that it can’t, we are succumbing to one of the most common blindspots there is. 

6. Behavior Blindspot: This involves how you communicate, influence others, and prioritize your time. ​It includes being aware of your communication style, using different influence strategies, and ensuring your priorities align with your role's demands. 

Like identity, behavior can be more straightforward to change than the blindspots that emerge from deeper within us—but still, of course, it requires deliberate sustained awareness. In a sense, our behavior is everything that others experience from us. 

Behavior comes last in my book because it is in many ways the “output” of the other five blindspots. Our emotions, our intellect, our motives, our traits, and our identity all inform our behavior, so it can be challenging at times to isolate this element. But focusing on how we show up in the world—our behavior—can often make the biggest difference in our success. 

“As you’ll see in the stories throughout the book, the six blindspots line up with nine the areas I have seen hundreds of high-performing executives struggle with throughout my career," adds Dubin. "Together, they form an awareness model that can help us each to understand our personality and provide a pathway for using that understanding to create change."

Furthermore, explains Dubin, “We can’t avoid blindspots; we can only become aware of them, and then adjust. And to be clear, there is not one type of leader, or one set of attributes. There are many combinations of identities, motivations, traits, intellectual abilities, emotional sensitivities, and behavioral characteristics that can result in success or failure.” 

He adds, “The lesson of the book isn’t about becoming someone other than who you are; it’s about becoming the best, most self-aware, most flexible and adaptable leader you can be, without hampering the magic that led you to be able to get where you’ve gotten in the first place. It’s really all about being conscious and strategic with what is within your power to adjust. And you can adjust, make no mistake. People can change.” 

Martin Dubin

Dubin Shares Suggestions for How to Read the Book:

You can approach your reading in multiple ways: 

You can jump right in and, as you read, notice what stories resonate for you, highlighting them. Then, once you get to the appendix, look at those potential blindspots that you noted, and go back to the exercises at the ends of those particular chapters. 

Or you can stop along the way, reflect on what is speaking to you, and pause to dive into the exercises. 

“For me, especially since the six blindspots are so interconnected, I would find it most natural to read the whole book first and give myself a complete picture before doing the work of self-reflection. But you may find it useful to be a more active reader throughout,” advises Dubin.

Finally, Dubin offers these additional insights for us:

Question: Of the six blindspots, which one is most "blind" to many leaders? And why?  

Dubin: Trait blindspots are difficult to see, because they are counterintuitive. Traits are the adjectives we use to describe ourselves, and some of these traits are our super strengths.  But our gifts can turn into our liabilities. We rely on our strengths; they have served us well. They are our default responses to situations and problems. But we are “blind” to when these very strengths become over-used and hinder our judgment and problem solving. 

Being “too” decisive when the situation calls for quiet reflection; being “too” curious when the situation calls for decisive action; being “too” confident when the situation calls for naïve curiosity, are all examples of being unaware of when strengths tip over and are counter to our achieving our objectives. 

Question: Why did you choose to use storytelling to convey your teachings in the book? 

 

Dubin: After a 40-year career as a Psychologist I have lots of stories. Stories are “sticky” we remember them because they trigger our senses, are rich in content, emotion, and memory, and the neural connections are stored in many parts of the brain. Concepts and ideas are precise.  So, the combination of here’s the concept, now read the story and listen for the concept with all the “color,” enhances our ability to understand and recall.  And stories about people allow us to put ourselves in the position of the protagonist and “feel” the concepts, make the story, our story, again creating a memory for us to recall and integrate into our personal narrative. 

 

Question: What do you say to the reader who believes it's going to take "too much work" to identify his/her blindspots and commit to change? 

 

Dubin: The “commitment” is to be curious about yourself. If you are curious, then it won’t feel like work. It will be interesting and engaging, with hope and optimism for a more successful life. Simply by reading the book and taking the accompanying Blindspotting Assessment (see blindspotting.com), that curiosity about yourself will put you on the journey to find your unique blindspots.  

Committing to change is some work, but it is not about changing who you are; your personality is well fixed, and if you have been successful, you don’t want to change who you are.  The change is about small tweaks in the right places that can have huge impact. Like the golf coach telling you to move your grip on the club ¼ of an inch and you find that you get 20 more yards on your drive; or your skiing coach telling you to lean forward and bend your knees a slight bit more and suddenly your turns are smooth and effortless. 

Question: What is the primary takeaway you hope readers will have after reading your book?

 

Dubin: Everything we know about being a leader is expressed through our unique personalities, but we aren’t as aware of ourselves as we think. We all have blindspots. With greater self-awareness we can be more deliberate about how we show up. We can be more strategic and effective in how we apply the lessons in leadership to our unique personalities. The book gives you a way to find where you are at-risk for blindspots and how to mitigate those risks. 

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Dubin is a clinical psychologist, serial entrepreneur, business coach, and adviser to C-suite executives and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. As a former partner at talent firm RHR International, he has worked directly with hundreds of C-suite senior executives from Fortune 500 companies and Silicon Valley venture capital firms and their portfolio companies.  

Dubin's work as a clinical psychologist taught him to think deeply about why people do what they do. Combined with his business experience, he has been able to provide coaching clients with actionable advice directed at both personal and professional success. 

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.