Page 25 - Fearless Leadership

12 FEARLESS LEADERSHIP

The challenge with blind spots is that you can readily see them in oth-
ers, but you cannot see them in yourself. When you are blind to blind
spots, you are left with poor choices such as working around people, tol-
erating ineffectiveness, and putting up with recurring problems.
The fastest way to cause morale to plummet is to deny that blind spots
exist or ignore them and hope they go away. Either way, people become
resigned when leaders do not take accountability for their impact on oth-
ers. Then the inevitable happens: people give up believing that real
change can take place.
When leaders are blind to their blind spots, they unintentionally cre-
ate havoc in the organization, as revealed in the story below.

One Leader’s Unrewarding Search for “New Dogs”

Aileen, the CEO of an international insurance company, saw the
need for transformational change but she constantly focused on
the deficiencies of others and ignored her role in leading change.

What Happened. Disgusted with the lack of leadership alignment,
she threatened her senior team: “If something doesn’t change around
here, I’m going to get new dogs to pull the sled.” Aileen’s warning did
not change behavior in a positive direction.
Exasperated, she fired her COO, reassigned an executive to
another department, and brought in replacements. But even with
“new dogs,” the same problems remained. After the honeymoon
period, leaders were still not aligned and execution continued to
suffer.

The Impact. Aileen’s new dog solution failed because there was still
an old dog leading the pack: her. Her unwillingness to examine her
impact as a leader was crippling to the group. Three other execu-
tives left the company, and Aileen struggled with a team that was
not aligned but merely tolerated her leadership. Employees, dis-
gruntled with mixed messages, divided into camps and backed the
leader of their choice. The company lost major contracts, experi-
enced a high turnover, and was unable to retain top talent. The sen-
ior group went from bad to worse, and in the end, the Board asked
Aileen to resign.