Identify and address your blind spots

- This is an audio course. Thank you for listening. - Well, so your book, "Growing Influence," is a business fable and it speaks to a lot of people in a lot of situations, but one issue that you cover is, why is it that some people get passed up for promotions, what's sort of the top driver and what can be done about that? - Yeah and of course, there are probably a lot of different reasons that somebody could get passed up. Some of them are external, some of them they might not have any control over. It may be something to do with a culture, unconscious biases that exist inside the organization and sometimes those need to be addressed. But there can also be internal reasons why somebody gets passed up. I like to think that if a person is really working consistently on being the best version of themself, and they're doing that in the way that they develop their character and they're doing that in the way that they develop their expertise, that in a healthy environment, the positions, the promotions will come find them. Because most of us who've been in leadership roles, when we're looking at promoting people, we've got a lot of self interest, we want to promote somebody who can perform, somebody who can get the work done, somebody who gets along well with others, somebody who has intelligence that they bring to their work. And if you bring all those things and you don't throw up a lot of obstacles, you make it a lot easier to get promoted. So, sometimes people Don get promoted because of something that's happening in the culture that needs to be addressed, and other times they don't get promoted because they don't realize that they're their own worst enemy in some ways. My wife and I were out on a fall walk earlier today, and we laughed about this statement that I find myself making over and over and over again. And that is the darnedest thing about blind spots is that you can't see them. - Yeah, makes sense. - And sometimes people don't get promoted because they don't recognize how they're being perceived by others it's a blind spot to them. And if they understood that and adapted themselves accordingly, they make themselves much more promotable.