Insights · 19 February 2013
Personal, leadership and organisational blind spots
When we as human beings want to change something, it starts with ourselves: how we see the world and ourselves through the glasses each of us carries around. But however sharp the glasses, there are almost always blind spots.
Blind spots can lock us into hard-to-change and very fundamental assumptions about how things are rightly connected. Why is that? Perhaps because we fear the unknown alternative. Or because we do not dare ask ourselves the question: what would it give you if you escaped the dynamic standstill that conveniently protects you and makes you immune to change?
You cannot see your own glasses
I have spent 20 years understanding these mechanisms in people and in the organisations they are part of — including myself, although I found enough humility relatively late to take an interest in whether I might also have some blind spots. I probably do. But which ones, and when do they appear?
The point is that it is very hard to see without help, precisely because you keep seeing yourself through the existing glasses. That is why feedback, coaching and a buddy system are not a luxury in a leadership programme. They are the very mechanism that makes development possible.
Hidden commitments in organisations
The same applies to organisations. There are often hidden commitments to the way we have always done things, pulling in the opposite direction of what management has officially decided. You cannot argue them away. They must be brought into the light, put into words and turned into something the group can take a position on.
Written by Mads Cronquist. Originally published in Danish on cronquist.dk (19 February 2013) under the title “Om personlige, ledelsesmæssige og organisatoriske blind spots” — here in an edited English version.