The higher you go, the less anyone tells you the truth. This is not malice. It is mechanical.
Your teams filter, because you decide their careers. Your peers filter, because they have their own trade-offs to defend. Your board filters, because it appointed you and would rather not admit too quickly that it got it wrong. And the people close to you filter, because they see you tired and they are protecting you.
The result: at the exact moment your decisions carry the most weight, the quality of the information reaching you is at its lowest.
The blind spot is not a personal failing
An executive’s blind spot is usually presented as a weakness of character: too much ego, not enough listening. That is a comfortable reading, and generally a false one.
The blind spot is a structural consequence of the position. You can be the humblest leader alive: if no one around you has an interest in contradicting you, you will not be contradicted.
And when your hands are deep in the engine, you stop seeing what is unsound about the direction. You rationalise. You manage. You wear yourself out doing it well.
Three signals that should alert you
Your meetings end too well. If no one leaves annoyed, it is rarely because everyone agreed. It is usually because the disagreement moved into the corridor.
You keep hearing the same analysis. When three different people describe the situation to you in the same terms, be careful: either it is true, or they are all repeating your own frame back to you.
You have stopped being surprised. A living organisation regularly produces information that does not fit your mental model. If nothing surprises you any more, the filter has closed.
What an outside perspective does
My trade is not to give you advice. You already receive plenty, often from very capable people.
My trade is useful lucidity. Putting judgement back where there is nothing left but mental load. Asking the questions the people around you no longer ask. Naming what everyone sees and no one says.
This works on one condition only: that I have no stake in the outcome. No engagement to place afterwards, no team to find work for, no extension to negotiate. That is what makes the confrontation possible - and also what makes it uncomfortable.
Most of the executives I work with do not discover information they did not have. They finally look at something they were avoiding.
Read also - What your non-decisions cost you · AI does not decide for you
Or see the three ways of working together.
Thirty minutes, confidential and without commitment. You set out the situation; I tell you honestly whether I am the right person. Book a 30-minute introductory call →