Laurie Baedke (00:16.92)
Welcome to another episode of the Growth Edge Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Laurie Baedke and I am excited for today's episode because it's a little bit special. Today, July 20th, is this podcast's eighth birthday. Eight years ago today, I sat down, I plugged in a microphone in front of my computer and recorded the very first episode. And I honestly had no idea where it would lead. And since then, we've released
Hundred and eighty-four episodes. We've welcomed extraordinary guests from healthcare and higher education and business and beyond, and surpassed a hundred thousand downloads, and perhaps most importantly, built an incredible learning community. And I'll tell you something. If the only benefit that I'd ever received over the last eight years had been my own growth, I would still call it a success.
Every conversation has stretched me, every guest has challenged me, every episode has required me to think more deeply and ask better questions and become a better leader. And perhaps that's the greatest hidden gift of teaching and leading and coaching. If you do it well, the first person if you do it well, the first person who changes is you. But the real gift has been hearing from you.
The emails, the LinkedIn messages, the DMs, and the moments where someone says, my goodness, Laurie, I listened to your episode on my drive to work and it changed the way I approached a conversation with my team, or it gave me exactly what I needed to share in my morning huddle. And that absolutely never gets old. So today seemed like an appropriate day for a coaching conversation. No guest and just you and me, listener.
Because there's one topic that I speak about and coach on super frequently, and that is blind spots. When it comes to blind spots, let me be crystal clear. Ignorance is not bliss. It's a liability. But every leader has blind spots. Every single one of us. The question isn't whether we have them, the question is whether you're willing to discover them before they cost you something.
Laurie Baedke (02:33.574)
And here's what I know after coaching hundreds, if not perhaps thousands of leaders at this point. I have never met someone whose leadership plateaued because they lacked intelligence. I've rarely seen someone fail because they weren't technically competent in any profession or discipline. More often, though, they simply couldn't see the thing that everyone else could.
Sometimes it's the executive who believes they're an exceptional communicator while their team walks away confused after every meeting. And sometimes it's the brilliant physician leader whose conflict avoidance is creating suffocating demoralization in their section. Sometimes it's the go-getter, gunner manager whose greatest strengths, like decisiveness and discipline and responsibility and strategic thinking have
Quietly become overused to the point that they're limiting the very people that they're trying to lead. And that's the super tricky thing about blind spots. They're called blind spots for a reason. You don't see them. Everyone else often does. And I know what some of you might be thinking, but Laurie, I ask for feedback, or I have a coach even. That's wonderful.
But let me ask a follow-up question. Do you ask for feedback or do you ask for affirmation? Because those things are very, very different. It's remarkably easy to surround ourselves with people who make us feel good, people who tell us we're doing great, people who don't want to disappoint us. And people who are influenced, consciously or unconsciously.
By our title, our authority, or our tenure. And growth doesn't happen there. Growth happens when someone who cares about your success loves you enough to tell you the unvarnished truth. One of my greatest gifts in my own career came very early. A mentor challenged me to serve on a board. And at the time, I thought they were simply encouraging me to expand my network. So I eagerly dug in.
Laurie Baedke (04:59.074)
And what I didn't realize was that they were placing me in an environment where I would see leadership through very different lenses, different industries, different perspectives, different expectations and lived experiences. And those experiences exposed assumptions, I didn't even know that I was carrying. They expanded me and they humbled me.
And that's what healthy feedback does. It expands us. And that expansion isn't always pleasant. But
Laurie Baedke (05:48.216)
Those experiences exposed assumptions I didn't even know that I was carrying. They expanded me. And that's what healthy feedback does. It expands us. Not because it's always pleasant, but because it's accurate.
Now here's another reality I've observed. Many leaders think self-awareness comes naturally with experience. It doesn't. Experience doesn't automatically produce wisdom or awareness. Sometimes experience simply reinforces our habits. Some are healthy and some not. I have met leaders with 30 years of experience.
And I've met leaders with one year of experience repeated thirty times. The difference isn't time, the difference is reflection. It's curiosity. It's coachability.
The leaders who continue growing are the ones who keep asking questions. What am I missing? Where might I be wrong? How am I experienced by others? What impact am I having that differs from my intention? Those are really courageous questions. Because sometimes the answers sting. And that's okay. Growth
usually does. In fact, one of the phrases I say most often to coaching clients is this your intention does not negate your impact. You may intend to be approachable, but your team may experience you as intimidating and intense. You may intend to be efficient, others may experience you as impatient. You may intend to empower
Laurie Baedke (07:48.054)
Others may experience micromanagement. Our intent matters, but our impact matters more. And if we only defend our intentions, we may never improve our impact. So how do we begin uncovering our blind spots? I think it starts with three commitments. The first is to humility.
Humility isn't thinking less of ourselves, it's thinking more accurately about ourselves. It's being willing to acknowledge both our extraordinary strengths and our very real limitations. And confident leaders aren't threatened by growth, they're energized by it. Second, actively pursue feedback, not once a year during an annual review, continuously, every single day. Ask your peers.
Ask your team, ask your mentors, ask your coach, find trusted colleagues who will shoot you straight. And when someone offers difficult feedback, don't immediately explain it away. Get curious before you get defensive. Sometimes the first version of feedback isn't perfectly delivered, but that doesn't mean there isn't any truth buried inside of it. And then third, do something with what you learn.
Awareness alone doesn't change anything. It's the first step, but insight without but insight without action is just interesting. Leadership growth requires practice. Try on new habits. Practice new conversations. Try out new ways of showing up. Because here's the reality: none of us graduates from self-awareness. Not me.
Not you, not the leaders we admire the very most. In fact, I would argue that the higher someone rises in leadership, the more intentional that they have to become about creating opportunities for honest feedback. Because titles have a really funny way of insulating us from truth. People become more cautious, more filtered, more agreeable, and that's dangerous.
Laurie Baedke (10:08.482)
The best leaders I know intentionally build relationships with people who have permission to tell them hard things, not because they enjoy criticism, but because they value growth more than they value comfort. So let me leave you with one question today. Who has permission to tell you something you don't want to hear?
Laurie Baedke (10:36.588)
Not who reports to you, not who admires you, who has earned the right and been given the invitation to hold up a mirror and tell you the truth. Kevin Wilde, the author of the book Amazing, amazing book Coachability, the Leadership Superpower, joined us on episode eight in season nine and shared with us that he calls those amazing humans truth tellers, T2s for short.
If you can't immediately think of someone who's a T2 for you, that may be your biggest blind spot of all. So think about self-awareness like showering or brushing your teeth. It's essential daily, perhaps even more frequently sometimes, so that we do not stink. Here's pro here's to pursuing self-awareness consistently and courageously, my friends.
I will be right there next to you, humbly seeking it too. And thanks so much for spending part of your day with me. And thank you to those of you who have been listening for a few months or a few years, or maybe a couple of you who have been along since that very first episode eight years ago. I am incredibly grateful. And as always, I'm rooting for you, my friend.
