Field Notes #18
My Leadership Blind Spots
Alongside this Field Note is my own My Leadership Snapshot, walked line by line. The Snapshot shows you the five answers. It does not show you which of the five I practice the most, and no program video teaches that. This one does.
THE RED LINE AND THE SHRUG
A blind spot is what a driver misses when changing lanes. You are looking ahead, focused on your own thing, and you swoop across. The check is over the shoulder, and it happens before the switch — not while you are cruising. So which of your five would you turn and look for?
Five, in Kill Chain Order
The cover is me in a field with my wife and son, pointing at something. These are mine, not yours. Watch what I do with five, not which five I have.
Goal — checked, not deadly. I step into leadership vacuums effortlessly and often with regret, because my default question is what will we do about this? So I end up on the field playing when I should be a spectator, and people are perfectly happy to let me, because they did not want to lead either. The correction I have practiced is to ask What do we think about this? And give the actual leader a moment to step forward.
Bias — checked, not deadly. Vision and provision. I do not understand people without a metanarrative bigger than themselves. Who do you belong to? I am Martha's Robert, Johnny Gray's son, one of fifty-four first cousins. And a working-class thumb on the scale for hard work, which means I don’t understand people who don’t love work.
Decision — THE RED LINE. When I reach the end of my rope, and I am not prepared or flexible enough to decide well, I start guessing. Free-soloing. Because of trauma and a push-through mentality, I will not notice I have got there. I take a lot of people down with me. So at every decision: how prepared am I, how flexible do I feel? If the answer is not enough, I call friends, and I sleep on it — which alarms people, because I normally decide fast.
Action — a check, not a shrug. I check your need for comfort, because what a Sherpa does leads to discomfort. The exploratory call is deliberately uncomfortable for exactly this reason.
Stress — checked, not deadly. I check for impact. If I cannot tell where the negative impact in a room is coming from, it is coming from me.
"I threw the dice and guessed. And while I'm lucky, that's a terrible way to lead people. There is a red line in everyone's snapshot." — Robert (Sherpa) Millar
By the end of this, you will have a job to do with your own five. Sort them. One is the red line — the one that takes people down with you, and the one you practice most. Repetition, repetition, repetition. If you are bored with me repeating things, you are in the wrong business.
————————————————
Field Note Card: Just over ten minutes, one take, black and white. First of the eleven Snapshot deep-dives, and the video that introduces the wing mirror, the red line, and the shrug. Attached to the My Leadership Snapshot on the Blind Spots page. Not prescribed as a primer — this is where you come after the program, with a Snapshot in your hand.
To continue through the library, click Field Notes #19 below.
To return to the library, click here: Field Notes — Just Now
To schedule an Exploratory call, please go to Contact at the top of the screen.
Watch this one after you have five of your own. It will do very little for you before that.
– Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Just Now
