The Blind Spot Every Leader Has (And How to Find Yours)

CRAFTED BY KRISTEN

Leadership Insight — Core Article #2

The Blind Spot Every Leader Has (And How to Find Yours)

Hint: it's not a flaw. It's a feature, running on the wrong setting.

Nobody told her she was doing it.

She was a high-C leader, detail-oriented, thorough, deeply committed to getting things right. Her team trusted her expertise. Her work was impeccable. But meetings kept running long, decisions kept getting delayed, and her team had quietly stopped bringing her new ideas.

She thought she was being diligent. Her team experienced it as a bottleneck.

That gap — between how we see ourselves leading and how others experience our leadership — is the blind spot. And every single leader has one.

Your Strength Is Also Your Shadow

Here's what makes blind spots so sneaky: they're not weaknesses. They're strengths, just overused, or applied at the wrong moment.

Your DISC style gives you tremendous gifts. But every gift, when it runs unchecked, creates a shadow:

Style	The Gift	The Shadow (the blind spot)
D	Drives results with speed and decisiveness	Can bulldoze input, rush decisions, and leave people behind
I	Energizes rooms and builds instant connection	Can overpromise, underdeliver, and mistake enthusiasm for execution
S	Holds the team steady and creates psychological safety	Can avoid necessary conflict, stay silent, and absorb too much
C	Ensures quality, accuracy, and thoroughness	Can over-analyze, delay action, and create bottlenecks with perfectionism

The goal isn't to eliminate the gift. It's to learn when your default setting is helping, and when it's costing you.

How to Find Your Blind Spot

Three honest ways:

1. Take a DISC assessment, and actually sit in the debrief.

The assessment shows you your profile. The debrief is where the blind spots surface. When a trained consultant reflects your patterns back to you, something lands that reading a report alone never quite does.

2. Ask someone who will tell you the truth.

Not someone who will be kind. Someone who cares enough to be honest. Ask: "What do I do that gets in the way — that I probably don't see?" Then don't defend. Just listen.

3. Play the Maxwell Leadership Game with your team.

This is the one I recommend most. The game creates a low-stakes, high-truth environment where your natural leadership patterns show up immediately — and so do everyone else's. It's one of the fastest mirrors I know.

The Leader Who Found Her Blind Spot

Back to the high-C leader I mentioned. After her DISC debrief, she sat quietly for a moment. Then she said: "I thought I was protecting the quality. I didn't realize I was also protecting myself from being wrong."

That was the moment. Not when she changed everything, but when she saw clearly for the first time.

Awareness is not the destination. But it is always the starting line.

Curious about your blind spot?

A DISC assessment and debrief session with Kristen will show you exactly what your leadership profile reveals, gifts, blind spots, growth edges, and all.

craftedbykristen.com

Kristen is a John Maxwell Certified Teacher, Coach, and Speaker; a certified DISC Consultant; and the founder of Crafted by Kristen, serving women and small businesses in Wichita, Kansas.