Turning Blind Spots into Bright Spots: Learning and Sharing for Personal Growth - 200

Ever wondered how the missteps of others could be your stepping stones to success? This episode sheds light on mining the gold in others' blind spots for your personal development adventure. We navigate the nuances of learning from the actions, both laudable and lamentable, of those around us, transforming observation into self-improvement. It's not about finger-pointing; it's about recognizing the pressures that shape decisions and how they mirror our own. By finding parallels in our lives, we're equipped to identify areas ripe for enhancement and to elevate our performance and behaviors.

As we unpack these insights, we also delve into the art of knowledge exchange and the pursuit of novel ideas. Your journey of growth is also about the paths you illuminate for others. By sharing these nuggets of wisdom, we create a tapestry of growth that extends beyond our individual reach. There's no obligation to leap into action with every new idea you encounter, but the act of sharing keeps our collective dialogue vibrant and ensures that we all venture forth, not in isolation, but as a community enriching one another. Join us for this episode, where we celebrate the potential for transformation that lies in the sharing of our human experiences.

Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high-performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. Howdy, hopefully your day has been treating you well and, as always, thank you so much for joining us on this show Today. I wanted to do a real quick, kind of down and dirty episode on learning from other people's blind spots. Now, often in my coaching sessions with clients, we draw on examples set by others. Now, there are instances where the examples that we are analyzing reflect positively on the person, and where is it that we are inspired or motivated by somebody and the example that they are setting and ways in which we want to emulate that? But then there are also oftentimes where we're analyzing examples that are not so flattering for the person that we're analyzing or observing that we're analyzing, we're observing. Now, to be abundantly clear, this is not an attempt to criticize the other person. This is not an attempt to say that I am holier than they are what it really is about, and the reason that I think learning from other people's blind spots can be such a useful tool for our own development, and this is definitely something that I am continually doing for myself. I'm in the fortunate position to be able to work with really, really amazing people who still fall down and who still act in ways, oftentimes because of the pressures that they put on themselves, that they are not particularly proud of or that are not a reflection of what their higher self would potentially call for, and so, in my own development, I have the opportunity to be able to learn from my client's blind spots, and so it's such a useful tool and it's something that I engage in every week, no-transcript. Now, why is learning from another person's blind spot so useful?

Speaker 1: 3:10

Well, from what I've observed over the years and from what people have told me in their own experience, when we are attempting to find a blind spot, it is, de facto, so much easier to do it when you are looking at somebody else. So much easier to do it when you are looking at somebody else, you know, if you think about it from a physical perspective, right, if we're actually going to translate this into the sort of physical world. You can't see the back of your own head without a mirror or a camera of some sort or something that can sort of reflect the image back to you. And blind spots, yeah, I mean we talk about them in sort of more esoteric terms, but if we think about it from that physical perspective, it is a spot that is out of our field of view. And how much easier is it to observe the back of somebody else's head, again, if we're sticking with this very simple physical example? So it's so much easier for us to be able to recognize or to study, if you will although this kind of seems a little bit weird that why would you study the back of somebody's head? But hey, let's just go with it for a second but it's so much easier to observe or analyze or evaluate somebody else's blind spot.

Speaker 1: 4:34

Now, the benefit of being able to see a pattern in someone else's behavior is not just so that you can walk up to them and then say, oh, you know, hey, I hope you don't mind, but I made this observation about your behavior and you might want to correct a few things. Right, that's generally a great way to especially if it's unsolicited to strain your relationship with that person. No, the deeper benefit is being able to recognize, okay, what is the environment in which that person is operating, what are the conditions that are present in that environment and what patterns have been coming forward. That's the first segment, if you will. Then the second segment is to what extent am I in the same environment, facing similar criteria or constraints or parameters? And then where am I doing the same thing that I'm watching that person do? And I encourage folks to look at it from all angles the things that would most likely inspire others. And then also the areas and perhaps more poignantly, the areas where we are not showing up in a way that our higher self would advocate, way that our higher self would advocate. We're not showing up in a way that perhaps our sense of pride and I don't mean it in terms of being prideful, but more just, yeah, I'm proud of the way that I showed up there. I feel like I I don't know I really listened to that person instead of allowing my emotional judgments to get the better of me, or I was patient when I could have been snappy and reactive because I hadn't slept well, or whatever the conditions are.

Speaker 1: 6:41

So it's, first and foremost, being able to identify that a pattern exists, that there are certain constraints on a person and that those constraints or those pressures, whether they are external or internally, created. And, like I said for most of my clients, yeah, they live high-pressure lives. Yeah, they live high-pressure lives. They're very busy executives for the most part. Some of them are military special operations, combat veterans and they have their own set of stressors that come as part of their past experience. But for the most part, I'm working with executives whether that's in a startup or whether that's in a more established publicly traded company doesn't really matter. Established publicly traded company doesn't really matter. The stressors are often present in the environment and then magnified or multiplied by the pressures that the person or the narratives that that client has inside of them. And so, looking at that and recognizing, oh huh, I find myself in the exact same environment and I also consider myself to be a high achiever, high performer, and quite likely I am putting some of the same pressure narratives on myself, even though I can't currently put my finger on them.

Speaker 1: 8:09

You know, and this is where it's, you know, having a coach, self-serving, having a coach or a therapist or, I don't know, a really wise friend, whatever can be very helpful Because, again, they're on the outside, they are able to see, notionally, the back of your head, your blind spots. They're able to help you perceive patterns. But if, for whatever reason, you don't have one of those in your life or you don't want one of those in your life, this is, in certain ways, kind of I guess, the next best thing. This is, in certain ways, kind of I guess the next best thing. How is it that we recognize that? Okay, I think I'm pretty much the same as this other person that I'm observing, because we're colleagues or we have the same social circles, or whatever the criteria are that make you feel like they are similar to you.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Maybe they also have some of the same psychological characteristics in terms of, you know, are they high strung or, let's see, because here's another potential blind spot. Maybe you don't think that you're high strung, and so there's another aspect of this learning from other people's blind spots that can be useful, and that is to have people tell you their opinion about you, the observed subject, and so I don't know, let's just say Bob. So let's say that you're observing Bob and you think that Bob has some similarities to you, or you have some similarities to Bob, but you're not quite sure and you don't think that you share all the similarities. So maybe you could ask a third person who knows Bob and yourself hey, you know, in this particular way, how much like Bob do you think I am? And then obviously repeat that for as many qualities as you're trying to evaluate. And so oftentimes you know, people external to ourselves can see us in sometimes more objective ways than we see ourself, because of the fact that we, interestingly enough, are typically either trying to make ourself the hero of the story or the villain.

Speaker 1: 10:18

It's very rare that I've noticed folks in their own accounting of interactions. It's rare that they make themselves sort of a neutral party in their story. They're either really really good at what they're doing or, oh God, I'm just so terrible. And there's different reasons for that that I won't get into today. But ultimately, being able to ask somebody who knows you, and in this example, bob, to say, hey, you know, are we both? Do you consider both of us to be, you know, kind of high strung or intense, or phrase it however you want, that will make you think that you will get an honest answer from that person. And if they say yes or yeah, pretty close, then okay, then that can help your analysis and your assessment of oh okay, well, if these people think that actually, yeah, I am pretty similar to Bob, then you can continue to observe Bob and have greater assurance that, yeah, maybe I'm doing some of the same stuff, maybe just as different. Examples from my coaching experience.

Speaker 1: 11:25

Maybe I'm micromanaging, and really that's a symptom of overly controlling one's environment, but it doesn't necessarily have to show up as micromanagement per se. There are other ways. Overpreparation is another one. Or maybe you're really afraid of conflict, and there are ways in which that unwillingness to defend boundaries or to at least have clarifying conversations because sometimes even a clarifying conversation can feel confronting and this is the interesting thing that I've noticed in working with teams is that people so frequently just kind of cruise along.

Speaker 1: 12:09

Even though they have a fair amount of confusion, they don't clarify it, and oftentimes it's because there's a perception of, oh, I don't want to look stupid, I don't want to look like I'm the only one who didn't understand, or there's a sense of not wanting the boss or the manager to feel like they didn't explain themselves clearly. And that actually goes both ways, because sometimes bosses or managers don't want to even ask whether they were clear, and they just, you know people are nodding their heads and making the sounds, and so then the boss, manager, leader, whatever you want to call it is often then the boss, manager, leader, whatever you want to call it is often satisfying themselves with okay, yeah, I guess everybody got it. And then oftentimes, especially in more complicated, complex projects, sometimes weeks go by before the boss actually learns that things are off track, and they're off track because people didn't really understand. So, anyway, to get back to this idea of learning from blind spots, you know, if you recognize that you are very similar to the person that you're observing, then it behooves you to start to ask where am I doing that? In the vein of the example, if Bob is micromanaging, or Bob is avoiding confrontation or whatever behavior is showing up, and obviously, again, I encourage you to look at the positive side of the spectrum as well. Where is he rallying the team, or where is he inspiring, or where is he ensuring that people you know people are feeling emotionally cared for, even though there's a lot of work to get done? You know, there's all kinds of positive things out there, and so I would encourage folks to look at both ends of that spectrum Now.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Ultimately, I found that people have an easier time identifying where they're doing things well, typically because others have told them. You know, criticism tends to be further apart and with fewer examples, again, because of that fear around confrontation and some of the ancestral reasons why confrontation is not readily engaged in, even when it's meant well. But when you think about Bob, okay, and you say, well, bob has this issue in this particular behavior and it shows up under these circumstances. And if you and Bob are similar, you can start to look at the times when you face similar circumstances. They may not be identical, right? So we're going to have to kind of learn by analogy here. Right, it's not going to be a carbon copy, but where is it that you can recognize that? Yeah, okay, some of this stuff is very much similar. And how am I avoiding behaving like Bob if I am so much like Bob in many respects, and it's possible that you actually are avoiding the behavior that seems to be less effective for Bob? Or, and this is what I found to be more likely is that you haven't yet looked deep enough. And it's really in looking deeper and looking at our behavior, especially if you are in charge. If you are in charge, you have to recognize I guess you don't have to, but it would benefit you to recognize that Most and especially if you're a CEO.

Speaker 1: 16:01

All of my CEO clients have faced this phenomenon. They get extremely little pushback in their life. Oftentimes even their life partners don't push back on them that much because they tend to be very assertive personality types. Now, interestingly enough, a couple of clients that I'm thinking of right now they have partners who very much push back and that's kind of an interesting dynamic. But oftentimes when you have someone that is a very assertive, very, in some cases, aggressive personality and a lot of aggressive personalities have risen to the top of their respective organizations or started their own they often have people that are unwilling to go toe-to-toe with them.

Speaker 1: 16:46

So you know, if you have recognized that you are potentially similar to somebody and that you're seeing some, let's just say, negative attributes, I guess, or less productive attributes coming to the foreground for that other person and you can't think of any way that that's showing up for you, even though you face similar conditions, et cetera, et cetera, then there's a really, really good chance that you haven't received honest feedback yet and that you haven't really truly looked for it. So hopefully this episode was helpful for you. It's nice and short and punchy and ultimately you know. Whether you choose to engage in or not is up to you, but I think it could help improve the way that you show up. Whether that's at home or at work or both doesn't really matter. So if you've been enjoying this episode or the show in general, it would be amazing, absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1: 17:46

If you would like subscribe, share, follow, etc. Etc. But really I think most importantly sharing it, sharing it with someone that you think would benefit from it. Whether you think they're going to take action or not is less relevant at this juncture. It's really about getting ourselves exposed to new concepts that we can then, over time, incorporate and put into action or don't. It's totally up to you. Until next time, take care of each other.