This presentation is frequently asked question to author, keynote speaker, leadership consultant, and former Vietnam POW, Lee Ellis - Question: “Sometimes, what you don't see, know, or do can hurt you in the workplace and hamper your career prospects. What are some ‘career blindspots’ that can potentially lead to blindsiding and career injuries?”

1. How to Avoid Career BlindSpots

2. Leading with Honor
Question:
“Sometimes, what you don't see, know, or do can
hurt you in the workplace and hamper your
career prospects. What are some ‘career
blindspots’ that can potentially lead to
blindsiding and career injuries?”

3. Leading with Honor
Answer:
As you know, many times it comes from just
being an unhealthy dysfunctional person.
Healthy functional people rarely have
career blind spots and derailing behaviors.
They have them early but learn quickly and
move on.
Here are 6 other blindspots to consider –

4. Leading with Honor
(1)
Insecurities that cause us to get in our own way in
life/work and especially as leaders. When you’re
insecure, you don’t act out of real confidence in
yourself and that never works.
Typical examples are –
• political back stabbing
• self-serving rather than team serving behaviors
• fear driven control (over-control and
micromanaging) rather than servant leadership.

5. Leading with Honor
(2)
Poor emotional intelligence as indicated by or
responding inappropriately in a situation.
An example would be saying the wrong thing
at the wrong time, and not being aware of
what’s really happening in the moment.

6. Leading with Honor
(3)
Character failures—which are more often driven
by fear. Afraid you will not be taken care of,
so you do something unethical. Afraid you will
look bad if the truth is known so you deceive,
lie, etc. to protect your reputation.
This rarely works over the long haul.

7. Leading with Honor
(4)
Baggage from the past especially is one of the
biggest, and it causes unhealthy responses. For
example, problems with authority, inability to
trust, and fear of conflict which causes the inability
to have difficult conversations. These also usually
come back to fear—fear of some pain from the past
that is so strong that it’s still controlling your
behavioral responses.

8. Leading with Honor
(5)
Out of balance between results and relationships
(mission and people). Leaders must be able to do
both to some level.
We are naturally gifted toward one or the other,
but we can’t just focus on one or the other.

9. Leading with Honor
(6)
Incompetence in your field. You see this less often
but it happens, and it’s usually due to a mis-match
between your type of work and your
passion/talents.

10. Lead and
Connect:
Lee Ellis is founder and president of Leadership Freedom® LLC, a leadership and team development consulting
company. He consults with Fortune 500 senior executives in the areas of hiring, teambuilding, leadership and human
performance development, and succession planning. He is also a speaker and the author of the award-winning book,
Leading With Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton, in which he shares his experiences as a Vietnam
POW and highlights leadership lessons learned in the camps. For more information, please visit
www.leadingwithhonor.com.
LeonLeeEllis @LeonLeeEllis Lee Ellis

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