You (According to Them)

Uncovering blind spots that impact your reputation and your career

Sara Canaday

Five Misconceptions Every Modern Leader Should Know

We can all look back on the choices we made as leaders and think of things we'd do differently. I could go back, here are a few leadership lessons I’d share with “past Sara”.

Do Less, Lead Better (Really!)

As a leader, you might constantly push yourself to do more to keep up with ever-changing work environments. But the most powerful approach to leadership today isn't about doing.

Common Career Traps of High Performers

If you are a top performer (or a leader who manages one), it’s important to know the common career traps that may be draining confidence and diminishing a sense of achievement.

Cognitive Diversity

What does the concept of cognitive diversity mean? When leaders surround themselves with people who "constantly validate and reflect their own beliefs," it stifles fresh thinking.

Feedback Is a Gift, Give it!

While I’m a huge proponent of self-awareness and proactively seeking feedback, I also believe it is incumbent on us as leaders to tell it like it is (candidly and with compassion). Developing those under your guidance is one of the primary goals of a leader, mentor, or coach.

Emotional Intelligence: Cult or Competitive Advantage?

The reason so many people believe in the validity of EI has nothing to do with being members of a cult, and everything to do with observation in the real world. Sure, data can sometimes overturn the apple cart of “common sense,” but in this case, the other methods of EI measurement are absolutely correlated with greater success both personally and professionally.

How Do Others See and Experience You?

Credentials and years of experience aside, our real career success is driven by how we work with and through other people – how we lead them, collaborate with them, interact with them, and react to them. When we manage that impact and ensure that others experience us in the way we intend, we can accelerate the pace of our professional trajectories.

Go Big or Go Home: What Is Your Approach?

As I’ve worked to grow my own business over the years, I’ve had many opportunities to consider both sides of the equation. I have made some Go Big decisions that worked out great and a few that left me with anxiety and regrets. I’ve also had some Go Home decisions that kept me wondering what opportunities I potentially lost.

Ultra-connected World Leaving You Disconnected?

Increased connections aren't the same thing as productive connections. In fact, the decline in strong, effective business relationships is now taking a measurable toll: more careers seem stalled, more teams are struggling to perform, and more companies are suffering from unproductive workplace behavior. Ironically, all of those digital connections are creating a serious pe

What Keeps You From Giving Candid Feedback?

I believe it is incumbent on us as leaders and coaches to tell it like it is. Developing those under your guidance is one of the primary goals of a leader. This means much more than sending folks to class, handing them the latest business book, or giving them new assignments. The practice of revealing people's “blind spots” is probably the biggest gift a leader can give.

Don't Sell Yourself Short With a Resume

If you doubt the importance of selling your value beyond the resume, just look at the way many Fortune 500 companies are now evaluating employees to determine their readiness for the next-level.

The True Value of Workplace Feedback

Countless studies have documented the significant career benefits of collecting feedback about our business performance and behavior. So why do so many well-intentioned professionals fail to take full advantage of this potential competitive edge and why don't leaders give their employees access to candid insights about their strengths and weaknesses?

The Limitiations Of Living In An Ultra-Connected World

Opting out of the Internet or giving up our mobile phones to restore the integrity of our business relationships is not an option. What we need, is a more proactive strategy to maintain and restore our workplace connections so that we can benefit from the feedback that comes with them.

Driving Our Careers

While companies fully recognize that reaching their goals and being successful is dependent on quality and "ready" leaders, the vast majority of them struggle to make that a priority. So what does this trend mean for professionals at every level who aspire to increase their leadership skills and take on more responsibility?

Your New Competitive Advantage

Today, the most successful leaders don’t necessarily have prestigious degrees and professional certifications. Instead, they tend to have real-world experience or “street smarts.” They have self-awareness and excel under ever-changing conditions.

The High Price of Self-Awareness

Having the spine and self-confidence to accept and even seek out feedback is hard. But your determination to be a better performer, leader or coach will far outweigh the short-term discomfort associated with confronting these hurdles.

Third Quarter: Your Move

The people who are most successful at reaching their goals in business (and in life) instinctively know the importance of transforming valuable insight into strategic action that generates targeted results. If you want to win the game, you can’t quit at half-time.

Sharp-Sophisticated-Successful or Emotionally Intelligent?

When we think of how others perceive us, the tendency is to think about the things we say and whether we appear smart or knowledgeable. However, our perceptions of other people are more rooted in emotion than intellect. So what does that mean for team members and leaders who want to be seen as competent, effective, and high-performing?

Our Seductive Blind Spots

While we may be able to think of people who don’t recognize the impact of their own personality quirks, recognizing subtle blind spots is much harder to pinpoint. Overdoing our own strengths is a seductive blind spot that can sabotage even the most promising careers. So how can we avoid this trap, allowing one of our best assets to silently become a liability?

What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

I sometimes describe blind spots as perception disconnects – when the people around us don’t perceive our words and behaviors in the way we intended. Despite our goals and the impressions we intend to make, our business success is determined by our reputations and the perceptions of us held by our supervisors and colleagues.

Uncovering Your Professional Blind Spots

For those who want a more specific roadmap, I want to leave you with some tools to help you pinpoint and correct your own personal blind spots. The four steps that follow should prove to be quite valuable.

Do You Have the Leadership "X Factor"?

Most of us have watched it happen in the workplace. There’s a go-to person in the organization who gets everything done. Never misses a deadline, never forgets a detail, but never gets promoted into a senior position. Meanwhile, others break through to the next level. Leaders listen to them; subordinates recognize their authority. What do those people have?

When Office Enthusiasm Gets Out of Control

People who have this professional blind spot struggle with finding the proper way to apply their double-barreled enthusiasm. They’ve frequently been rewarded for this attribute in the past, so they don’t always notice when it starts to misfire.

When Self-Promotion Crosses the Line

You might recall that my last blog focused on people who suffer from a professional blind spot called Faulty Volume Control syndrome, specifically having their self-promotion volume far too low. Some people are plagued by the same syndrome but fall on the other end of the spectrum.

Go Ahead, Toot Your Horn, It's OK

That's right: This year, you have permission to toot your own horn! Unless we make a point of gracefully educating decision makers about our capabilities and contributions, we might never receive the recognition we deserve.

Who's On Patrol In Your Office?

Sure, every office needs someone to help them avoid pitfalls and legal liability. But if the rules become the primary focus and innovation is constantly stifled, the perception among colleagues is quite different. People who take this route suffer from a professional blind spot I call Safety Patrol syndrome.

There Is No Crying In Baseball or Work

When it comes to the social side of corporate life, most of us are familiar with certain personality types and behaviors that spell trouble: people who gossip or flirt a lot; people who spend lots of time stirring up drama. But are there any dangers on the other end of the spectrum-- for people who stay out of all that and just focus on completing tasks? Actually, yes.

Pace & Productivity: Higher Isn't Always Better

What's your personal workday pace? Maybe it's slow and steady or blazingly fast. For you, it's normal. Perhaps the bigger question is: what's normal for your team? Especially if you are a manager, it's critical to recognize that everyone in your office isn't working at exactly the same speed.

Shifting Your Route on the Road to Success

Learning to shift your interactive behavior in a subtle yet powerful way, you’ll be better prepared to keep your career on track while navigating the twists and turns of perpetual corporate change.

Is Your Reputation Hungry for Some Humble Pie

People with Intellectual Snob syndrome are the colleagues who subconsciously communicate feelings of self-importance based on their impressive academic achievements or IQs. Sometimes their messages are not so subtle.

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