How Big is Your Blind Spot?

Who will tell you as it actually is?

Our news and social media streams are filled with people in politics and business whose integrity and character are less than stellar.

One question that comes to mind when I see the newly fallen at the podium is: “What’s changed?”

By “What’s changed?” I mean, why is the person apologizing now?

Why is it that only after they’ve been exposed, do they apparently have regret or view their actions as inappropriate? (Although some would argue that, in fact, they don’t, and the regrets and apologies are just as insincere as the original misconduct.)

Whose Opinion Matters Most?

Now I’m not arguing for illegal or immoral behavior, but, in general, if you truly believe something is worth doing, why do you stop doing it once others learn of it?

Bottom-line: Whose opinion of yourself and your conduct matters more, yours or others?

If I’m about to do something immoral or illegal, shouldn’t my own awareness of that fact be sufficient to stop me? In general, why do we need others to let us know we messed up, when we knew that before we started?

Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham: The Johari Window

In 1955, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham created a simple, useful tool called the Johari Window to help us better understand how we communicate and how we handle our relationships with others.

In part, Luft and Ingham noted that:
There are things about ourselves that we know and that we don’t know, and
There are things about ourselves that others know and don’t know.

Those things about ourselves that others know, but we don’t know: those are our blind spots.

The Value of Having a Truth-teller

The question I’d like answered then is this: If their own opinion of their conduct was insufficient to stop them, did they at any time receive unsolicited advice from anyone alerting them to their conduct? And did that have any impact?

We all have blind spots to a certain degree. For many, they’re not as serious as those featured as the leading news story. Nonetheless, we can be ignorant to what we should know about ourselves. Ask your spouse, significant other, or very good friend, and if they have the courage (some, though, don’t even need that), they’ll tell you what you don’t know.

And that is invaluable, to have someone who’s willing to tell us what we should know, when we can’t or don’t want to know it.

And that may save some of us from having to make the trip to the podium.