Having worked as a career coach to executives for a number of years, I’ve developed something of a knack for identifying and addressing blind spots—those hidden areas of a client’s professional life that are often overlooked or unspoken whilst in a role but suddenly become quite crucial when applying for a role outside of one’s current organisation.
When discussing these areas with a client, I often employ the Johari Window model, a psychological framework that helps individuals understand their relationship with themselves and others. It includes four quadrants:
- Open quadrant: Things known to self and others.
- Hidden quadrant: Things known to self, unknown to others.
- Unknown quadrant: Things unknown to self and others.
- Blind quadrant:Things unknown to self, known to others.
When it comes to executives, this last quadrant – the Blind quadrant – is usually occupied by facts and beliefs pertaining, not to their performance as a manager, but to their impact on the people around them.
This isn’t because – as some people might mistakenly think – executives are callous, calculating or “hard” people. Quite the contrary. Those who succeed within well-functioning organisations are usually quite practised at assigning success to the group, and failures to themselves. Making it doubly difficult to discuss is the simple fact that, unlike financial performance, leadership skills lack common metrics and are often intangible, making them harder to measure, let alone discuss.
The result is that, whilst an organisation will know and understand an executive’s leadership qualities, the executive themself is somewhat in the dark: an area unknown to the self, but known to others.
To help executives explore this blind spot, I offer various leadership frameworks. (The best fitting is simply a matter of personal preference.) One effective model is the Situational Leadership Theory, created by Dr. Paul Hersey and Dr. Ken Blanchard to help articulate the level of support and direction a subordinate may require for the full range of tasks that they are accountable for, thus providing the framework’s user with a means to charting their team’s development.
So a great deal of my work with executives involves remembering, understanding, and then articulating examples of their positive impact on the people around them. This is just one way to do so.
More than just an effective way to prepare for job interviews or negotiating for promotion, regularly thinking about and documenting how you have guided your teams through different stages of their careers improves your leadership abilities in the present. Where once you had a blind spot, you now have the vocabulary to foster a more fully developed executive cadre, which will of course lead to improved organisational outcomes, leading of course to greater levels of employability and promotion potential.
For HR managers, recognising and addressing blind spots in your executives is crucial. Helping them to articulate their leadership impact – before it’s required – ensures the leadership potential of all within your organisation can be fully realised.
David Nicolson has over 30 years of executive experience in corporate and consulting roles with organizations like BP, World Bank, and Shell. David has been part of the Directioneering Senior Executive Coaching Team for over 13 years.
