By The Forbes Business Council, in Forbes, featuring JC Abusaid, CEO/President
Key Takeaways
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Leadership distance creates risk. As senior leaders move further from day-to-day operations, filtered feedback and limited dissent can lead to costly blind spots in strategy and execution.
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Deliberate dissent strengthens decision-making. Practices like pre-mortems, stress-testing decisions, forming debate teams, and actively seeking pushback help surface assumptions before they become problems.
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Feedback systems must be intentional and structured. Open channels, anonymous feedback, advisory councils, coaching, decision journals, and regular “reality checks” create accountability loops that keep leaders grounded in operational and market truth.
Senior leaders are tasked with setting vision, steering strategy and guiding organizations through uncertainty. But as their work moves them further away from day-to-day operations, they can also become insulated from everyday pain points and unfiltered feedback. That distance, combined with higher stakes and fewer candid critics, can lead to costly leadership blind spots.
Team members may hesitate to challenge a leader’s decisions, while peers may assume someone else will speak up. That’s why it’s so important for senior leaders to build deliberate habits that surface dissent, test assumptions and keep them grounded in reality. Below, members of Forbes Business Council detail the practical strategies they rely on to avoid blind spots.
1. Balance Speaking And Listening
A leader who has blind spots is not engaged with their team. Exercising the right balance between being too involved and not involved enough is a fine line that every leader must navigate. An effective leader knows how to be present, mindful and engaged without interfering in their team’s development and performance. Know when to speak and when to listen! – Neil Cadman, Cadman Group
2. Pause Before Reacting
I use two techniques to help me avoid blind spots. I start by pausing before acting or responding based on my initial reaction, and I challenge myself to find a new perspective to consider before proceeding. Then, I form debate teams of internal and external advisors whom I lean on to gain rapid context and increase my confidence in holistic decision-making. – Abigail Buckwalter, Nestlé Health Science U.S.
3. Use Horizon Scanning
I use horizon scanning to anticipate future challenges by monitoring global trends. Insights from international visits and events feed into weekly executive leadership team meetings, ensuring decisions are informed by both global perspectives and local realities. This reduces blind spots and turns insight into strategy. – Martin Jones, Home Instead
4. Conduct Monthly Reality Checks
I run a monthly internal and external reality check. This involves combining customer and sentiment signals with leading indicators like delivery, escalations, quality and sales-cycle friction. We use ChatGPT to synthesize inputs and spot patterns. Each issue gets an owner, a two-week fix and a validation metric. It works because it anchors decisions in market reality and creates an accountable feedback loop. – Ming Zhu, KongfuSEO
5. Empower Managers To Speak Up
Empower your management team to call you out. It can be uncomfortable, but it eliminates blind spots and improves outcomes. Create a process to vet and demonstrate the value of ideas before implementing them, because as your business grows, the impact of changes also grows. Encouraging a certain level of pushback can ensure continued success. – Todd Villeneuve, IFC National Marketing
6. Foster Psychological Safety
The one practice that I recommend utilizing to avoid leadership blind spots is to make sure your staff feel sufficiently secure in their jobs to have honest, transparent conversations with you about any blind spots or problematic issues. Having frank discussions on an ongoing basis with your staff is critical. – Lisa Zeiderman, Miller Zeiderman LLP
7. Model Receptiveness To Feedback
The best leaders tell the truth to themselves first. Modeling this behavior creates safety for others to share their feedback and observations. Rarely do leaders love feedback, but the best ones understand it is nonnegotiable for improving their performance. My advice for delivering feedback is to create a state of readiness for the listener to receive it by asking for permission. For example, ask, “Are you open to some feedback?” – Rysa Pitner, Notion Strategies
8. Practice Transparent Leadership
One practice that helps me avoid leadership blind spots is transparency. I strive to be accessible and genuine, creating an environment where openness is encouraged. Leaders should conduct themselves in a way that removes any sense of intimidation—whether real or perceived—so that people feel comfortable sharing their perspectives. – John Abusaid, Halbert Hargrove
9. Build Open Feedback Channels
Establish open channels of communication and trust within your team. In our organization, we encourage honest, anonymous feedback through HR and hold regular town hall meetings where employees’ questions are addressed directly. This fosters transparency, builds trust and ensures you stay connected to your team’s concerns, creating a healthier, more effective leadership dynamic. – Michael Podolsky, PissedConsumer.com
10. Actively Seek Dissent
At the senior level, silence can be misleading. I actively seek dissent by asking for structured, honest feedback from the people who are closest to execution. It works because it surfaces reality early, challenges assumptions and keeps leadership grounded in facts rather than hierarchy. – Ashwini Kumar, CliniExperts Services Pvt. Ltd.
11. Lead With Clear Values
Practicing transparent, values-based leadership will help you avoid blind spots. This strategy involves clearly communicating the values that will act as your North Star for decision-making and then leading by example. This clarity ensures that you remain accountable while allowing other leaders to appropriately align their priorities based on the established values and expectations. – Tim Brackney, Springline Advisory
12. Stay Close To The Front Lines
The goal isn’t necessarily to eliminate all blind spots, but to instead proactively decide which types of blind spots to shine a light on at any given time. I happen to love working in the office, and I visit a different Industrious location almost every day to catch up with my team there, talk with our members, and observe up close where we’re crushing it and where we could be better. – Anna Squires Levine, Industrious
13. Run Pre-Mortems Before Big Decisions
I run a pre-mortem circle before big calls. I start by giving three people who disagree with me by default 15 minutes to predict how my decision will fail and what signals we missed. It works because it rewards dissent, surfaces quiet data and turns ego into a testable hypothesis instead of a defense mechanism. – Arpit Jain, SEO Sets
14. Share Mistakes And Uncertainty
I stay honest with my team about my own mistakes and uncertainties, which encourages them to be equally honest with me in return. When leaders show vulnerability first, it removes the fear that stops people from speaking up. Real problems surface quickly when the team sees that honesty is valued more than appearing perfect. – Vikrant Shaurya, Authority On Demand
15. Build A Diverse Advisory Council
I built a diverse advisory council of academics, including a marketing founder, a distribution expert and a tech implementation expert. For example, if I need AI coding help, I’ll go to the Stanford professor who pioneered it. This catches blind spots before they become problems. Advisors provide the unfiltered perspectives of experts who can see what you can’t. – Tyler Hochman, Fore Enterprise
16. Work With A Coach And Sponsor
Coaching beats mentoring at the senior level because advice isn’t the gap; pattern change is. This is the most critical way to avoid your blind spots. Sponsors are essential because they combine access with truth. The best ones will tell you how you’re really landing, what’s holding you back, and what to fix before the next leap. Mentors inform, coaches transform and sponsors move you. – Julia Rafal-Baer, ILO Group
17. Read The Room After Big Decisions
I treat emotional intelligence as part of my data. After a big decision, I watch how people act, not just what they say in meetings. If the room gets quieter or tension rises, I assume I missed something and ask direct questions. This simple habit keeps most blind spots small. – Nathan Levinson, Royal York Property Management
18. Stress-Test Major Decisions
One practice I rely on is intentionally stress-testing decisions with people who have no incentive to agree with me, which is often those closest to execution or customers. It works because blind spots as a senior leader come not from a lack of experience but from distance from operational reality and filtered feedback. – Francesco Caterina, MoliseFood Group
19. Filter Feedback Strategically
At the senior level, one of the biggest blind spots is listening to too much feedback. I only seek input on areas I know I’m weak in and only from people who have actually done that job well. This filters noise from signals. Feedback is most effective when it’s targeted, experience-based and tied to a specific constraint you’re trying to fix. – Sima Mosbacher, HIGHSCALE AI
20. Keep A Decision Journal
I keep a decision journal. For any big call, I write down the assumptions, the signals I’m trusting, and what would prove me wrong. Then, I schedule a short check-in 30 to 60 days later to compare notes with reality. It’s effective because it turns hindsight into a system, and patterns show up fast. – Michael Shribman, IMM Fund
