Exposing the Emotional Blindspots that are Sabotaging Your Results

All too often as leaders, we demonstrate mindsets and behaviours that are sabotaging our own results and those of our organisation. To be truly successful as a leader, we all need to learn how to recognise our blind spots and then take action to overcome them.

Let’s be honest here. We all have blind spots. Those frustrating idiosyncrasies that are totally invisible to us, but excruciatingly obvious to everyone around us. They become roadblocks in every area of our performance, at work and at home. That was certainly the case for me in my military and corporate careers.

In the normal day to day our blind spots can be annoying and frustrating. In some environments they can be toxic and wind up being lethal. One of the most harmful areas to harbour undetected blind spots are in our emotions.

When we are not aware of our emotions; what we are feeling and why, we can react to people and situations in a way that is harmful for all concerned. The path to exposing these emotional blind spots is called “Emotional Self Awareness”

Emotional Self Awareness is noticing and being able to label your feelings, emotions, “gut-level” instincts or reactions; being able to connect these to their source; recognising their effects on your mind and your body; using your feelings as a valuable source of insight and information about yourself,
others and the situations around you.

People who lack emotional self awareness may exhibit the following:

• Failing to gain insight and information from what their bodies might be trying to tell them
• Get irritated, frustrated or angry easily, causing them to treat people in an abrasive manner
• Fail to see that waht they are doing might not be aligned to their personal goals and values
• Are often overwhelmed, stressed and out of balance in every area of life

The good news is that Emotional Self Awareness is something we can all develop.

The benefits of doing so include the following:

• Knowing which emotions you are feeling and why
• Realising, in the moment, the links between your feelings and what you think, say and do
• Recognise how your feelings are effecting your performance
• Ability to articulate your feelings and express them in an appropriate way

Ask yourself these 3 questions
1. Are my emotional blindspots draining my energy every day?
2. What could I gain by exposing and overcoming them?
3. When will I start the journey towards emotional self awareness?

If the answer to question 3 is “Now”, here is a great place to start.

To develop your Emotional Self Awareness, you need to regularly invest the time to “check in” on your feelings, looking for signs and signals in your thought patterns and physiology. Ask yourself “What am I feeling and why?”
You must learn how to “name and claim” your emotions, in any given moment, then implement strategies to keep them on the healthy side of the ledger. It all starts with awareness and you can start today.

Leave me your thoughts in the comments section below and if you need some help in getting your emotional life in check, give me a shout.

Have an amazing week…you deserve it!

Cheers Grant