Successful leadership requires precise planning, effective decisions and timely actions, all relying on dependable information. It calls for leaders who are able to spot holes in data, conceive solutions and analyze results. If you want to improve your leadership, improve your clarity.
Clarity begins with self-awareness. If leaders have a vested self-interest they may skew information to support their emotional position. Such motivated blindness alters reality; we see what we want to see (and miss the details we’d rather ignore). For example, a retail-chain founder may believe in his brand and company legacy so passionately that he fails to notice its outdated sales approach, which is turning customers toward more progressive competitors.
To preserve self-esteem, a leader may have a self-serving bias, which causes a false sense of reality. The status quo seems rosy, and problems go unnoticed. These leaders often wonder why those around them seem troubled and continuously point out problems.
Leaders can counteract a self-serving bias by seeking guidance from a trusted colleague, mentor or professional coach. Work on seeing things from others’ perspectives to broaden your views and ensure decisions benefit others first (i.e., how can I best help my people?).
Leaders with too narrow a focus limit their observations to major issues and ignore the minor, yet nonetheless important, ones. Equally problematic is a preoccupation with one specific matter that pulls focus from the big picture. This inattentional blindness often plagues leaders and is caused by distractedness.
Leaders can defeat inattentional blindness if they learn to step back from a situation and deliberately examine secondary and tertiary issues. Know that the most effective solutions are achievable only when problems are attacked holistically, not as a series of disconnected parts.
What do you think? How would improving your clarity impact your leadership? I’d love to hear from you. You can call me at 561-582-6060, let’s talk. And as always, I can be reached here, or on LinkedIn.
