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The Blind Spots That Derail Leaders 37

where people learned how to operate in silos, defend their interests, and
engage in unhealthy competition. In all of this, the enterprise perspective
was lost and performance suffered.
Many of our clients documented time and money that was lost due to
people and groups not working effectively together. They identified sig-
nificant and quantifiable losses in retention of talent, productivity, perfor-
mance, and product innovation. They also used other indicators such as
third-party measures of employee engagement and culture to examine the
impact of leadership behavior. What they found was a direct path from
how leaders behave to how the organization performs.
We wanted to provide our clients with an easy way to identify and trans-
form unproductive behavior into extraordinary behavior in order to build
a constructive performance culture. Our starting place was helping our
clients understand and talk about blind spots openly so they could be
resolved. We systematically identified the persistent and predictable blind
spots that occur in leaders and teams. Exhibit 2-1 is a list of the 10 most
common blind spots that derail leaders.

THE 10 BLIND SPOTS THAT DERAIL LEADERS

1. Going it alone
2. Being insensitive to your impact on others

3. Having an “I know” attitude
4. Avoiding difficult conversations

5. Blaming others or circumstances
6. Treating commitments casually
7. Conspiring against others

8. Withholding emotional commitment
9. Not taking a stand

10. Tolerating “good enough”

EXHIBIT 2-1: The Blind Spots That Derail Leaders