#167 - Uncovering Blind Spots: How Great Leaders Unleash Great Performance - Marisa Murray

[00:01:11] Introduction

Henry Suryawirawan: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another new episode of the Tech Lead Journal podcast. I have Marisa Murray here, so Amazon bestselling authors, including her latest book, Blind Spots. So today, we are going to cover a lot about blind spots. I think if you’re into personal growth or things like improving yourself, blind spot is always the most problematic one. Because sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. And I think this blind spot is something that a leader should be able to overcome in order to grow much better. So Marisa, thank you so much for your time. Looking forward for our discussion today.

Marisa Murray: Yeah. Thank you so much, Henry. Me too.

[00:01:46] Career Journey

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. Marisa, maybe in the beginning I’ll ask for you to share a little bit about yourself.

Maybe if you can mention any highlights or turning points that we all can learn from.

Marisa Murray: Yeah, absolutely. So my background originally began in engineering. I did my engineering undergrad, worked as an engineer, process engineer for a number of years. Then I did my MBA, and then I joined Anderson Consulting at the time that became Accenture. And I was at Accenture for about 15 years all the way from what they called an experienced analyst at the time, all the way to partner. And so that was a pretty exciting journey. And during that time I worked with a lot of heavy industrial customers and utilities, and also I was the client lead for the aerospace practice. So I had a lot of amazing aerospace clients. And so, yeah, it was the typical Accenture career where I got to do a lot of things, a lot of technical implementations, a lot of transformation, and worked with some amazing clients.

And I got a little bit road weary as consultants do after a while. So after about 15 years, I decided that I would move away to more of a local role. And I joined as a Vice President of Bell Canada, which was a telecom locally. And it was really actually a difficult shift for me. I missed just this culture, the feeling, the norm, you know, the consultant energy. And I found that I moved into an organization that was very operationally focused and I was like wired to the client. So I had a really, I had so many blind spots during this particular tenure, and I ended up leaving without a plan just because I was not happy, and my husband was daring me to quit, because he was basically saying, you’re miserable and you should do something else. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do, you know, and I didn’t think that quitting was an option.

But anyway, this is not a best practice, but I quit without a plan. And went through a lot of reflection around what are the things that I really loved, what are the things I excelled. I actually interviewed a lot of people too. I interviewed like former clients and former people that worked for me and people on my team and tried to sort of figure out like, what do I wanna bring to the world at this stage? And I decided and what resonated a lot was, obviously, by client centricity, I realized that I wanted to be closer with clients again.

I think as you get very senior in firms, you’re more internally focused and when you see clients, sometimes it’s just for escalations. You know, it’s not necessarily to kind of do cool work together. And so that was one kind of heartbeat. And then the second one was people development. And I didn’t even realize, cause I was like, I was an engineer and I was kind of like, of course, you get good at consulting and forming teams together, or even like in technology implementations, right? You gotta pull teams together and you gotta do really great work together and then you know, you dissolve the team or all this kind of stuff and you have to be very conscious of skill development and all these kinds of things. But I didn’t really realize how much of that was sort of my primary skillset. It was always sort of the thing that I found secondary or didn’t pay attention to, or didn’t pride myself on, right?

And when that just kept coming back, I was like, wow. I just, I’m curious about leadership development, in general. I had had opportunities to do some amazing leadership development. I’d also had some amazing executive coaches, but I always kind of felt like they didn’t understand my world and I was always trying to translate what they were saying into my world. And I was kind of in my own way cause I was skeptical that they had never sort of done my job, you know what I mean? So I decided to do some certifications myself. I got my executive coaching certification. And all of a sudden this world opened up to me where I was like, oh my goodness. Like, this is what people have been trying to teach me and tell me and make more valuable, and yet wasn’t able to reach me.

And so I just started this incredible passion unleashed in me to kind of bring these concepts to technically minded people, to people of substance, doers, people that make things in the world. And I include in that, I serve a lot of just sort of analytical type people, finance people, but also engineering people, and a lot of technology type firms. Because I think there’s that combination of like, we’ve gotta get the thing done, but we’ve gotta get the thing done through people. So that’s what I’ve been focused on for the last nine years now. My company’s called Leaderley and it’s called Leaderley because I believe that the highest compliment is to be leaderly. Like, I think that is sort of, that is the game. So it really shifted, my career kind of shifted. I got the memo late that people are sort of the most important thing.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thank you so much for sharing your story. During my research about you as well, right? Reading the book and also watching your TED Talk. You kind of like opened up as well, like some of your past vulnerabilities, you know, your career struggle, and things like that. Always appreciate that kind of story. Which I believe is also one of the strengths for you to become a coach, right?

[00:07:05] Writing “Blind Spots”

Henry Suryawirawan: And I think you also wrote a few books, including this “Blind Spots”. Maybe in the first place, could you tell us your background, like why did you have interest in writing about this blind spot?

Marisa Murray: Yeah, absolutely! Well, the first question is why did I try to write, period? Because writing a book was not even in my realm of ideas. And I started writing my books. I wrote my first book three years after I started my company. My first book’s called Work Smart, and that was to try to organize like everything that I was learning and working on my clients with. And I wanted to sort of like nail down my perspective of what are the key things that leaders need to get right. So Work Smart was like, it’s an acronym, it’s nine areas, and it was like, I just want the formula, like what’s the formula? So I started writing really to understand my own perspective on like, what is this thing, in my own words? I mean, there’s tons of incredible leadership development resources around, but in my own words like what is core?

And I realized through the process of writing that it forces you to really sharpen your thinking. Like, what do you really think? And so I do it mostly for my learning. So my second book is called Iterate, and it’s about this, it’s really a longer version of my TED Talk. Because my TED Talk, I had 14 minutes. I was like that wasn’t long enough to explain what I wanna say. And it’s about this idea of being much more Agile in your leadership style. I invented a word called iteractive, which is like not being reactive or proactive, but being iteractive, which is this idea of iterating your way. Because we live in a fast changing world, and I think that the reality is we just have to. We most often can’t be proactive, and, unfortunately, if we only think we can be reactive, then we have a really tough life. Like, it’s just a really, really hard thing. So how do you get comfortable with that, that modulation?

And then, you know, I promised my husband I would never write another book, and my children, because they were kind of like, when you write a book, you’re like obsessed. But three years later, just this like starting a bit about, well 18 months ago or two years, I guess when I first started to conceive of it, I just again started to notice these patterns and I wanted to figure this pattern out. And the pattern this time was what are the breakthroughs that come from blind spots with the leaders I’ve been working with. And what are the categories of blind spots that just seem to be coming back?

I have the great fortune of working with a bunch of leaders simultaneously, so it kind of gives me this really interesting lens on how is this world challenging leaders and how is this environment challenging leaders and what are the kinds of things that leaders are facing and overcoming and sort of. So I wanted to tell stories. This one is really, it’s 21 client stories: hero’s journeys stories of how they identified blind spots. And really, it led to a significant breakthrough for them. And it’s my attempt to kind of organize. Cause I think blind spot we all understand. It’s like the thing you don’t know you don’t know. And we understand conceptually, but I was like, what does this really mean? And what does it look like in real life when you actually find one and work through it?

[00:10:08] Blind Spot

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, so maybe let’s start with the definition of the blind spot itself. I think when I read your definition in your book, I think that really clicks and very insightful. Maybe if you can define what is blind spot for all of us.

Marisa Murray: Yeah, I define a blind spot as the gap between your intention and your impact. And I use an analogy of like black holes. They find black holes not by finding a black hole. They find a black hole by finding matter disappearing, right? And blind spots are a little bit like that. You find a blind spot by realizing that your effectiveness is disappearing. It’s eroding. It’s like it’s not there. It’s almost like you know, the intention, the powerful passion and intellect and vision. You’ve got like all of this like power, and then it lands in other people and in the world in a way that’s just diminished. Or misinterpreted or it just in a totally different angle and direction. And so that’s a sign that it’s like there’s a blind spot here. There’s something that I’m not seeing because my impact is not in line with my intention.

And I feel like when we define it and when we think about it that way, what’s powerful about that is we realize it’s kind of normal. It’s kind of normal that our impact is not gonna be completely aligned with our intention, right? And so I think if you can kind of normalize it and sort of it’s to be expected. And yet I believe the leaders with the smallest blind spots actually win, you know, are more successful and drive more performance. Because it’s almost like an engine that you’re revving really high and just not getting the forward movement with, right? And so the more you can narrow the gap between intention and impact, the more you’re going to be able to be effective in your role.

[00:11:51] Intention and Impact

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, I really love it, the gap between intention and impact. So I think that’s really a great definition. And one of the common thing that I see in the industry, like not many companies actually consciously, you know, focus on figuring out blind spots either for individuals, for leaders, or even for the organization itself. Maybe could you tell us a little bit about like why companies doesn’t seem to consciously focus on this, maybe they’re focusing more on, you know, improving skillset or maybe doing some process management and things like that. So maybe from your experience why probably this blind spot is like really a blind spot, right?

Marisa Murray: Mm-Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think we are all really very focused on our intention. We get so excited and we have so much clarity in our own minds. And so we keep doubling down on what we have. We have hypothesis that if we do more things, then somehow that intention is going to come to life even more, and we’re not curious about sort of that impact thing. And impact is interesting. When I collect feedback, I like talking about it and thinking about it as impact. And you can do this on the customer side too. Like if you think about we want customer feedback. Well, we kind of do, but we kind of don’t, right? Or even like, you know, development feedback. We kind of want it, but we kind of don’t, right?

Because when we get feedback and we feel like it’s not in line with our intention, then somehow we start to feel like we’ve done something wrong or something’s wrong or it’s frustrating or other people are frustrating. Like especially if the feedback of the customer is so far from the intention of the brand, then you’re just, you’re mad at the execution and all these kinds of things. And so I think depersonalizing feedback is one of the most important things you can do and realize that it actually isn’t personal. It’s not a judgment of your intention, it’s personal to the other person in terms of the impact that they receive. And it goes through the filter of a brain and a filter of an experience, and a filter of all those kind of things. So I think that companies are fairly good at looking at results, which is an impact.

But I think there’s also different types of, there’s like the subtleties around impact that we could be more curious about. And I think when you are more curious about them and you realize that they are just the impact, you’ll start to find creative ways to… because between your intention, I would sort of draw glass with my hands, but between your intention and your impact, if you think about an angle in between, if you imagine an angle. What changes that angle to narrow the gap between intention and impact are small, deliberate actions. There are small, deliberate actions. In all the client stories in my book, they are such small things. It’s just this new awareness around how your leadership in this case is impacting people that makes you tweak your actions. And it can be true at the company level, at the team level, and at the individual level.

[00:14:48] Strengths and Blind Spots

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, so I think the key here is not like figuring out the big things that we can do to uncover all the blind spots. But it’s a small little things that we can do, right? And I think when you mentioned about we all maybe focus a lot more on intention, right? Probably it’s also something related to our strengths. So in your book you say that a lot of blind spots actually is kind of like an effect of us focusing too much on our strengths. So maybe elaborate a little bit more on this.

Marisa Murray: Yeah, absolutely. We found this, you know, and I think people intuitively know this. A lot of times there’s like our strengths, there’s like a shadow side to our strengths where the strength is over exhibited. I think people are kind of aware. And this is a similar idea, although I think that it’s a little nuanced in that I think your blind spots often hide in your strengths.

So, you know, it’s not that the strength is being over exhibited. It’s your exhibiting the strength really beautifully. But the byproduct of you exhibiting that strength really beautifully is that you’re not as attuned to the impact that you’re having. You know, when people are just doing their thing and it’s beautiful to watch. I feel like sometimes the spotlight on the impact on different people. And also on maybe smaller groups of people, right? Like it’s maybe 80% of the people just love your leadership style and eat it up for breakfast, right?

But then you have these groups of people, like I remember from my experience. Sometimes I would have some deeply technical people that I needed to keep and I needed to engage, but kind of secretly drove me crazy and didn’t really buy into my way of thinking and all those kinds of things. And as a leader, I had to figure out a way to understand what is the impact of my style on that group of people. And how do I nuance my style for that? So I think sometimes we don’t get the feedback on those things because people don’t wanna wreck us, right? They don’t wanna wreck the strength. They’re like, you know, they’re afraid that they’re gonna wreck the strength.

And what I’ve discovered is that if you’re just sort of a little logical about like, okay, I’m really, really good. I’ll just give you an example of David, the difference maker. David the difference maker is one of my unbelievably amazing, talented clients who runs as a partner at a large technology company, sells a lot of works, amazing sales guy, creates kind intimacy, builds unbelievably strong teams. And he’s the difference maker, right? He’s the difference maker in a deal. So meaning that like if he’s on the deal, the deal sells, right? If he’s on the deal, the deal goes well. And so it is his strength and people say like, yeah, he makes a difference. He’s a difference maker.

Now, the challenge that happened is that he became such the difference maker that he had to be everywhere. And it was only him. And if it wasn’t him and he was spreading himself too thin. And he was getting really grumpy and he was dropping balls because he had kind of overextended himself. And so he was not becoming the difference maker sometimes because of just the sheer volume. And the small tweak, when I collected a bunch of impact statements, people wanted more of his time helping them develop. People wanted him to make them difference makers, his team wanted to elevate. And so he was all of a sudden like, oh, okay, now I have to be the difference maker for my people, which will then be the difference maker for the enterprise, right?

And so it’s the strength that nobody wanted to get rid of. Like, they’re like, you know, they didn’t wanna get rid of this difference maker, but you know, now they’re able to scale and he’s way happier and he’s growing, like, you know, and all those kinds of things. And so I think sometimes people are afraid of wrecking what’s great. But I think sometimes just an ever so slightly, the mind is very interesting. You know, I always think of it as a heat seeking missile. Like it’s just trying to do exactly what you’ve programmed it to do and it’s trying to do that every day as efficiently as it can for you. And as soon as you give it a slightly different coordinate, like just 0.02 different coordinate, it narrows in on that unbelievably and change can happen very, very quickly and quite effortlessly.

[00:18:45] Getting Feedback for Leaders

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah. So I think the interesting thing here is to figure out the angles, right? The different angles that you, your mind is moving towards, right? And you mentioned a few key things which you mentioned in your book as well. The first is about impact statement. Earlier you mentioned about getting feedback as well. I think maybe one of the challenge, especially when you go higher up in the leadership management, right? Leaders may get little feedback. As higher you go, most likely you get little feedback. So tell us how maybe great leaders can actually overcome their blind spots by collecting more feedback or impact statement in this case.

Marisa Murray: Yeah. Yeah, I know. This is the tragedy of leadership, right? You know that you need more and more, the game becomes more and more complicated. And you, somehow, in that you get less and less data. And that’s really difficult. And I mean, personal data on sort of on your style, your impact. And I think part of the reason why coaching in particular has grown so much is because of that sort of lonely vacuum that can happen around leaders where they don’t necessarily have safe spaces to really discuss everything they think to have all that kind of stuff. And also a way to really get the concrete feedback that they need.

And I always explain this to clients. When you have these very senior roles, it creates, I mean, I saw it. I felt it when I made partner. All of a sudden, what I said got repeated. Before that nobody repeated anything I said, right? And then all of a sudden I made partner and people were repeating what I was saying. And I was like, wow, I didn’t even really mean to say what I said, right? So you have to sort of pay more attention as a leader, because your voice just becomes louder because of the title and the role. And a lot of leaders underestimate, because they just feel like the same person. They’re just like, I’m a human. I’m flawed just like anybody else. They feel like the same person. But they’re not really received as the same person. And so ultimately what I find is with my clients, I often go as the investigator for them. So I would love it if we could make everyone brave enough to be able to share feedback really directly.

I also think that 360s and digital surveys and all those kinds of stuff have marginal value. It’s very hard to decipher what is worth, like people are being careful about how they write it so they’re not identified. And you know, there’s just sort of like a lot of stuff behind that. And so what I do is I literally do interviews. I do interviews with the key people that are critical to their success. And I capture themes and I play back themes and we dissect those themes and that’s why most of my clients in this book are clients that I worked with, where it began with a 360 feedback, with collection of impact statements.

First person impact statements where I’m literally probing for them because I’m asking questions that’s hard for you to ask, like, well, how does their impact vision impact you or how does the vision impact you? Or do you have the kind of clarity and direction that you need? Or what could they do more and differently to just enhance the quality of your relationship? Even just your relationship and what’s their impact on the team collaboration? I just keep asking questions and collecting themes. And then when we bring the themes, then I typically work with them in a coaching period where we’re experimenting, because now you have the themes.

But then it’s like, okay, but what’s the little magic tweak in your leadership style that’s gonna have the exponential impact? And that takes time. That takes time to think about one and then experiment and think of like a daily meeting that you’re gonna sort of be different in and then get feedback again and all that kind of stuff. So you know, it’s a little bit of an effort. But I do think that, at the top, you have to always imagine at the top, every little millimeter you move or inch you move, you’re basically impacting the levers. You have such a large lever on the organization and the people.

Henry Suryawirawan: Really interesting technique. I wish like many leaders would have this opportunity to actually have someone investigate their impact statements with their people, you know, their key stakeholders. So I think no matter what, everyone will have their blind spots, right? Maybe some strong leaders will think they have little blind spots, but that may not be true, right? So maybe the great leaders also have to think about what blind spots that really they do not aware of. Maybe these impact statements that you collect from stakeholders will be one of the greatest inputs for you to figure out, and most likely, create a breakthrough, right? Because you mentioned by moving past your blind spots, you can actually create a change and a breakthrough through yourself.

[00:23:07] 7 Blind Spots

Henry Suryawirawan: So let’s, go maybe to the seven blind spots that you mentioned. Maybe a little bit of overview what are those blind spots? And maybe we’ll dive deep into some of them.

Marisa Murray: Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. So the first one is called false assumptions, which is a pretty accessible language. I mean, it’s obvious that we have false assumptions. And false assumptions are, you know, we are operating on a belief or on a thought that turns out to not be true. And as an example, I talked about David the difference maker. He’s an example of where he was running on a thought that being the difference maker meant he had to be the one that made the difference. And that’s a false assumption. The truth was he could be the difference maker by empowering his people more. And so that’s an example of a false assumption that was just kind of running the way.

The second one in the book that I highlighted is called unhealthy detachment. Unhealthy detachment is when you are aware of something that’s important to others, but you don’t really care. You have an unhealthy detachment to something that is important to others. And that thing because you’re like, yeah, yeah, they want that, but it doesn’t really matter. Or they feel that way, or that’s their culture, but it doesn’t really matter. And what happens with that is you’re gonna have some really significant blind spots around things that will come to bite you in the future.

I mean, there is only one story in the book that does not have a happy ending, and that is in unhealthy detachment. And in this particular case is a very talented CEO who was getting specific feedback from the board. And in my impact statements, I collected very specific feedback from the board around things they were attached to that they wanted this person to do. And that this person just felt was less important that they were gonna get there a different way. And ultimately they ignored that noise, that little noise, for so long that there was, you know, the board replaced them, didn’t wanna deal with it anymore. And so that’s the one sad story.

There’s also a ton of, you know, amazing stories where people just noticed that, like I’ll just give you an example of one leader who his unhealthy detachment was, he always wanted to really protect people and make sure that they weren’t overstretched. He was like really kind to his people and his people wanted more visibility and exposure, and he kept saying, you don’t really want that. You think you want that, right? But as soon as you get in, as soon as you start taking on these things, they’re gonna get in your kitchen.

You know, like he sort of had this bias. And he kept ignoring that his people wanted to have more visibility, more stretch assignments, more engagement to the point where he was running up a very high attrition rate. And people were like, I loved it but I couldn’t grow, right? And so he was aware of that, but he had a really unhealthy detachment to what his people wanted from him. Because he was from coming from a good place. His strength was that he built an incredible team around him that knew that he really cared for them. So there’s another example.

Different views of success is the third blind spot I talk about in the review. And that is where like your version of success is different, significantly different enough than other important stakeholders. And that can show up in a leadership style, like your view of success is… I used to, I’m actually with my coach when I was debriefing some 360 feedback that I had received. I realized that my view of a success of a good meeting was completely out of line with the view of success of a good meeting of my team. So my view of success of good meeting is we get in there, we cover it fast, and we’re out of there, you know, and we handle issues and we’re out of there. Like that was my idea of a good meeting.

And my team was finding me unapproachable, rushed, impatient, impersonal. And their view of a good meeting was like, we’re together as a team. Can we say hi to each other? Like, can we like, you know. And I was like, oh my goodness. Like the views of success of my team in a simple meeting versus my view of success was outta line. And I just had to add tiny, tiny, tiny things to honor that. I’d heard that people hated my meetings. Like that’s a horrible thing as a leader to say, like, they hate your meetings. So differing views of success in big and small ways.

I also talk about outdated core beliefs. That’s where we’ve just been running a belief. And, you know, we think it’s normal and it ultimately bites us in some ways. One of the examples in the book Is Erica, whose military background has certain ideas about how hierarchies should work, how staff should work, you know, and so that’s a core belief but it’s outdated because we’re no longer in the military and now we’re working with different types of stakeholders, right? And so it’s just kind of, those can be blind spots.

Unconscious habits is number five, which is, again, like the things you do that you don’t know, annoy people. And they can be small or little. I mean, one of the examples that Tessa the teacher is what we nicknamed her. She was an incredible CFO, incredible like finance leader, but she would talk about operations and try to teach operations about operations. She would get out, she always wanted to add value. So she had this unconscious habit of always weighing in on everybody else’s instead of letting them speak. And so that was just an unconscious habit that she had to stop because it was eroding the quality of her relationships.

Triggers from past pain is number six, and that’s where we really, our brain remembers us making a mistake in the past that it does not want to repeat, and so we don’t go places. You know, feedback is in a good example of that. Like we don’t dig on feedback because feedback hurt before. So we create blind spots for ourselves because we are trying to avoid, we have triggers from past pain. And the trick with that is to deactivate the trigger to be like, I’m not that person anymore. We need to kind of walk courageously through our current environment.

And finally, mismatched mindsets, which is a really interesting one because I think we all know as leaders that our mindset matters and our mindset shifts over our career. Our mindset begins as much more of an individual performer. Our mindset then moves to much more of a team player. Our mindset moves again to be a leader of a team. And then our mindset needs to shift again as we’re starting to lead change or lead the enterprise where we’re having to be much more future focused and much more long term and all those kinds of things. So there’s all these shifts associated with these mindsets. And unless we tell our brain we need a new mindset like it doesn’t know, right? It doesn’t know. It doesn’t know that we’re like, okay, now the game has changed. So blind spots are created when we’re operating in a mindset that’s incongruent with the role that we’re in. That was lot. I hope that was okay. Henry.

[00:29:43] Bias and Blind Spot

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, I mean completely, uh, fine actually. So when I listen your, you know, elaboration of all these blind spots. I kind of like laugh a little bit because I most likely have almost all of them. I think all of us have some variations of all of them, right? So I think our job as a leader is to actually really recognize. I think one thing before maybe we go into some of them, you mentioned about bias. And bias is also covered a lot. What is the difference between bias and actually blind spots? Are they the same or are they kind of different?

Marisa Murray: Oh, that’s a very interesting question. I think a bias plays into a lot of the different blind spots. I think of bias as just and again, like, ‘cause I’m kind of a technical mind, so I always think about my brain as basically a computer program. And I think of bias as just code that was in there. And that was maybe not fully scrutinized. In terms of all the different ways in which that code would get called upon and executed and the impact that it would have. And so I do think that biases too can play into it and do play into it. But I think that some of the blind spots, let me just think through that a little bit.

Like I don’t think a false assumption is always a bias. It might be actually something that was like actually developed through concrete data. And, you know, biases oftentimes are unbalanced in terms of their point of view. A false assumption could have been very, very right at some point. And that’s, I think, what’s kind of hard. And so what happens is over time it’s like maybe new information is not being updated in the code, in the biased code. And the context has changed. So it’s an interesting reflection. I’ll do more reflection on it as well.

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. Thanks for your explanation. So maybe, yeah, let’s touch on a little bit on some of those blind spots. Maybe for some of us we want to learn, after identifying the blind spot, maybe we want to learn how can we actually change, how can we actually avoid having that blind spot.

[00:31:41] False Assumptions

Henry Suryawirawan: Let’s start with the false assumption, right? Because I believe almost everyone would make a false assumption. So for example, in technical engineering, things that have worked in the past, right? Most likely they will use that as kind of like examples that it’ll work again for a new situation. So how can we actually avoid these kind of false assumptions that we have?

Marisa Murray: Yeah. Well, the trick with all false assumptions is to actually identify your assumptions. And we don’t identify our assumptions very well, right? And it’s not possible. I mean, we might try to document all of our assumptions, right? It’s, it would be an enormous effort. But it is an interesting thing if you develop the habit within your team to think about what assumption is leading to this. Like what ideas are leading to this decision or what ideas are leading to this position.

And what you’ll find if you keep asking that question, if somebody says like, we have to do it, you know, exactly this way, right? The only way we can do this is a waterfall approach. The only way we can implement this software is with a waterfall approach, right? And then asking the question, okay, what are the ideas that support that assumption? You know what? And if you start to ask yourself like, well, there’s this project for… Like the people will have data, but they won’t actually know what they’re sourcing, right? It’s almost like you have to imagine the mind is like an automatic librarian. And it’s telling you the answer. It’s like here’s the book you need. And yet you haven’t checked its sources, it’s just gone back and found a bunch of stuff and handed you the book. And so by asking the question, okay, so what are the ideas or projects that are leading you to that conclusion?

And it’s a different question than why do you think that? Because why do you think that, it’s gonna give you a bunch of reasons for the assumption. And the reasons for the assumption are less interesting because they probably sound quite logical. But when you ask what are the experiences or projects or what’s the history behind that, what you uncover is how much sometimes those things are actually irrelevant now. Maybe we had a hardware issue at that time, or maybe we had this issue at that time, or maybe we had all kinds of other constraints that existed at that time. And it’s only by revealing the sources that you can actually take a look and say, okay, well, wait a second. Like all, a bunch of the reasons are actually no longer relevant.

And so what I try to get people to do is to try when they’re really feeling like this is the way or there’s debate about a certain way. Rather than talking about whys and reasons and rationales, we talk about source examples. And then we look at those and we say, okay, well which of the projects, well actually the best is then you had to look for counter examples. Where was that not true? Where did we do this, and it wasn’t true. And it was great, cause that’s even more powerful. Finding recipes that worked in the past. Our brain always kicks up the ones that were hard, but finding ones that were easy is also very insightful. And then that’s how you kind of unpack, okay, wait a second, here’s why I have this assumption and what are the parameters in that context that are false. And now what becomes possible to refresh as a new assumption.

Henry Suryawirawan: Very interesting, right. To avoid false assumption, you need to define your assumption. So this is also something I learned recently, right? Probably we are always in the problem solving mode. But maybe it’s best for us to actually first problem define, you know, like what is the problem that we are working towards, right? And I think this assumption is really, really important because once you make a false assumption, right? The actions that you take probably is gonna be wrong, and the result hench will be totally wrong as well. So thanks for sharing that, how we can shift our blind spot.

[00:35:28] Unhealthy Detachment

Henry Suryawirawan: Second one is about unhealthy detachment. So you mentioned leaders know that they need to care about something, but somehow they just probably don’t care or maybe they don’t have energy do that. I did that in the past as well, so I think guilty as well. So how can leaders have a more healthy attachment probably. Or maybe healthy detachment. In your book, you actually mentioned four different quadrants, right? Healthy attachment, unhealthy attachment and things like that. So maybe a little bit on this part.

Marisa Murray: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. It felt unnatural to just talk about unhealthy detachment when there’s actually four different versions of this, right? There’s unhealthy detachment and there’s unhealthy attachment, right? And then arguably, we wanna all be in healthy attachment and healthy detachment. And all those quadrants are really important. And as leaders we need to kind of dance around them sometimes. So for example, sometimes we have an unhealthy attachment to our opinion or to our way of being and all those kinds of things. And if we have an unhealthy attachment to our way, then we close our doors in terms of understanding what our people need from us.

And the real shift as a leader is that you have to realize that your effectiveness driven by your preferences, right? So your effectiveness is probably quite linked to your preferences, is like a fraction of what’s possible when you’re in a leadership role. Because it’s not about your individual effectiveness, it’s about your effectiveness of the collective. And so if I have an unhealthy attachment to my way of doing something and I’m ignoring the beautiful wisdom of this collective, then I’m probably optimizing my performance at the expense of like 900 people at some point, right? And so that’s where it’s like, okay, so I need to have a healthy detachment to my preferences because I have to realize that I am the tip of the spear but I’m navigating for everyone. So I have to have a healthy detachment to my preferences and a healthy attachment to the things that are going to move the needle for all of our people. And the things that people are saying are really important.

And it’s not always easy, because we are probably in our unhealthy attachment. I mean, right now there’s all kinds of unhealthy attachments on both sides around whether we should be in the office or not, right? There’s unhealthy attachment from the leadership. There’s unhealthy attachment from people in terms of what lifestyles they want. And so when we’re there, you see that there’s just a whole lot of uncertainty that’s going on. We’re not really looking at the whole picture. We’re living in our own attachments, right? So the important thing here is to realize that we all wanna be healthy. We wanna be in healthy attachment or healthy detachment.

And sometimes we have to be in healthy detachment because there’s something very important that the organization needs to do. For instance, we absolutely need to restructure the organization, and so sometimes we have to have a healthy detachment from the fact that that’s gonna create a whole lot of pain. Not full detachment, but a healthy detachment, just enough so that we can execute difficult things. So as leaders, sometimes we have to have a little bit of detachment.

But sometimes when things continue, right? So you know, you do one restructuring, but then you didn’t even get it right and now you have to do another restructuring and you didn’t get it right and you’re not getting it right. So what are you not facing, right? What is wrong with the value proposition, the culture of your organization? Like what is the perpetual problem? And there’s often data. It’s just that we’re not, we have a healthy detachment to that data. So it is figuring out what am I attached to? How do I detach? I always think about like we’re moving along the spectrum, right? How do I detach enough, have a healthy detachment to what I believe so that I open up my listening? And oftentimes you’ll get people that are probably unhealthily attached to their point of view, but that’s kind of fascinating. The only way you’re gonna move them is if you bring them into healthy attachment to the pieces of the puzzle that are important and the pieces that are difficult.

So if I could replay, for instance, which I cannot do my job at Bell, for instance. I know that I had a very unhealthy attachment to client centricity. I thought that was the only way you could deliver services was if you bent over and did whatever you had to do for the client, right? And I had an unhealthy attachment to operational excellence, which is what they did. So their whole mindset was we build incredibly strong operations rigor and we’re really, really strict about it. And because we’re so strict about it, our quality is really good. And so our clients are happy, because our quality is consistent and good. And all I could see was that makes you inflexible, that makes you hard to do business with. I couldn’t see that.

So if I could replay it, I would’ve said, okay, the engine and the passion and the drive of this workforce that I’m now trying to lead is driven around this really important value that’s been around for a hundred years. I am not going to change that beautiful value. It is a good value, right? Values are all by nature good. It’s just that it’s different than mine. And so how do I harness that? How do I buy into it? How do I try it on? How do I put that outfit on and then figure out the result I’m trying to achieve? And then how do I take, I get that result through what people are already attached to. Because if a leader ignores this stuff, it’s like you’re ignoring fuel. Everyone has fuel for your engine. And you’re basically telling them like, I don’t want that. We’ll just make our own over here. Or you only put mine in or I’ll only put people in that have this kind of fuel. You know, it’s sort of silly.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thank you for such an elaborate explanation about this attachment and detachment, right? So the key insight for me is to shift the, so-called the focus from you, yourself, right? The leader, you, yourself, to more people, right? To the team, the collective intelligence of everyone so that you can play around between the spectrum of attachment and detachment.

[00:41:34] Mismatched Mindsets

Henry Suryawirawan: So let’s move on to the next one which I think for many leaders who are aspiring to be great leaders, right? There’s always this mismatched mindsets. Because when you step up the leadership ladder, right? You will always have something that you haven’t experienced before and hence you have to probably change your mindset or learn new skills, right? So tell us a little bit about this. How can we actually avoid mismatched mindsets?

Marisa Murray: Yeah. Absolutely. I think the consciousness or the awareness for mindsets is it’s the process of reflecting. So mindsets, I think about mindsets as kind of like your operating platform, right? Like it’s like your operating system. And what is the orientation of that operating system? And with Leaderley, there’s kind of three areas of leadership we talk about. Leading self, leading others, and leading change. And it is a little bit of you’re always doing all three. And they’re kind of foundational. Like if you can’t lead yourself, it’s hard to lead others. And if you can’t lead others, you’re not gonna lead change on any kind of scale, right? So it is a little bit incremental, but they’re all fundamental.

And so what I found with, in the case studies that I describe in mismatched mindsets, is it’s kind of fascinating. It’s not like you just have to be in one. You have to be in one that’s also in mastery of the others, right? So it’s not as simple as saying like, okay, I’m new in my job, so all I do is think about myself and I don’t build any relationships and I don’t, you know what I mean? Like it’s not as simple as that. But it is an orientation and it is an operating system where it’s like, where am I? Where’s the dominant thinking of my day? And do I have enough energy reserve for me?

So I’ll just give you an example. In the book I talk about people who have mismatched mindsets that maybe are operating at the right mindset. Example: so there was Chelsea. Basically, absolutely in the right mindset around leading change. Like absolutely in the right mindset about the role, like the lead role that she was in and how she had to drive change, drive the business, grow the business, all those kinds of things, right? But was so obsessed with this, that was really depleting herself. Really depleting herself, not taking good care of herself, getting very forceful, getting very aggressive, all this kinda stuff.

So on the one hand, she had the right mindset around like her role, but on the other hand, she had sort of neglected her leading self. Like neglected sort of her fundamental pieces. And because she was so focused on leading change, she was alienating people because she wasn’t charismatic and light. And, you know, she wasn’t a leader that people wanted to follow. And she was so focused on winning that it was like taking away the shared wins that were possible for everybody and sort of the journey for everybody.

And so with mismatched mindsets, it’s this idea of what are the pieces like, how do I keep the whole pie together? What’s my orientation with my role? What’s my orientation with my team? And what’s my orientation with myself?

Henry Suryawirawan: I think it’s a very interesting three different areas, right? As you go up the career ladder or leadership ladder. Always have three aspects, right? Leading yourself, leading others, and leading change. So the spectrum could change, right, depending on the context. So probably something very, very insightful for all of us to learn from.

There are plenty more blind spots in the book, so I really encourage people to look at the book. So Marisa, as she explained as well, right, uses a lot of examples from her clients so that you can relate better. Because some of those case studies, probably something that you experience yourself as well.

[00:45:05] Uncovering Our Blind Spots

Henry Suryawirawan: So uncovering blind spot probably is not something that people would really be open to sometimes. Not something that they are encouraged as well. So how can we create this culture maybe in organization or in teams such that people are okay to talk about blind spots or even receiving feedback about blind spots from others?

Marisa Murray: Yeah. You know, I think it’s so powerful when people really internalize that idea of intention versus impact. So when people are really very respectful of the fact that they assume positive intent. I worked with an executive team yesterday. And so much of this, the starting point for teams to be courageous with each other and to be frank with each other, is that we need to assume positive intent. So when somebody does something that is suboptimal, we first and foremost realized that they had a positive intent. And so we acknowledge that positive intent. We say, you know I recognize that your intention was probably to X. We call it out if we were pretty sure what it was, right? Your intention was probably to kick this off and generate a ton of energy and make sure you had credibility to do this, and I really value that intention. So let’s value the intention.

The impact was we made maybe certain sections of the organization feel less important. We made sort of feel like if you’re on this team, then like, something’s amazing, and then if you’re not on this team, you’re chopped liver or whatever the case may be, right? And so we have to make sure that we anchor in the intention so that the person can hear the impact without feeling like completely blindsided or beat up over trying to do a good thing, because their mind was focused on the intention. So the more teams can call out positive intention before they give feedback, and make sure that they’re saying, I understand you had a positive intention.

And if you don’t know the positive intention, like you can ask. You can say can tell me more about your intention before you, like when you were doing that. And then you’ll hear it and they’ll tell you and you’ll be like, oh my goodness, that is beautiful. And I can see how you were trying to do that. And then usually what you see is that the positive intention is so much bigger than the impact. It’s really bigger. It’s just that the impact needs a little course correction, and there’s action that can be taken about that.

So I think the way that people get more and more courageous is they make this normal. It’s normal that you’re focused on your intention, it’s the way we’re all wired. It’s normal that you can’t know your impact all the time, that’s why we have to ask. And it’s normal that sometimes we have to course correct a tiny bit on our intention to be able to maximize its alignment with our impact.

And I find that when we can do that in environment where we’ve built trust, where we’ve practiced this, where we’ve gotten rid of the very quick judgment. I mean, I think that curiosity, I read somewhere that curiosity is the opposite of judgment. You know, where we’re living in curiosity, like what was your intention? And let me help you lean into that intention. And then here’s some impact that we might wanna calibrate to even further bolster your positive intention, right?

[00:48:12] The 3As of an Iteractive Leader

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. I think it’s really beautiful, right? So trying to understand the positive intent from the other person, right? Maybe also call it out, frame it, and also tell them the impact that actually is kind of like mismatched from the intention. I think if I remember correctly, in your TED talk as well about the iteractive, right? You mentioned about these Three As, right. I that’s kind of like a good framework as well to tell the other person. Even though you’re frustrated, right? Acknowledge about the positive intent and explain about the impact.

Marisa Murray: Yeah. The 3As are Appreciate, Align, and Augment. So you start by Appreciating the something. The other person, their intention, their whatever. Align, you show like you’re in alignment with that, right? And then the third is Augment. Then you add this data. And the reason why the two, it’s really important for the brain to have sort of two alignment statements before you try to nudge somebody somewhere. Because ultimately they need to feel stable. Like the two first ones you stabilize where you are, what’s already great. And then on this very strong platform of appreciation and alignment, then you can nudge each other to be even greater.

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. So I think for people who are interested in these Three A, make sure you do check out Marisa TED Talk, right? So I think she has it on the LinkedIn or her website as well. So I’ll put in the show notes as well.

[00:49:33] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom

Henry Suryawirawan: So Marisa, I think it’s a really beautiful conversation. Unfortunately, we have to wrap up. But before I let-you go, I have one last question I always ask from my guests, which I call three technical leadership wisdom. So you can also do, you know, like leadership wisdom. Basically it’s like an advice for us to learn from you. So maybe if you can share your version of three technical leadership wisdom.

Marisa Murray: Absolutely. Well, I guess the first in my mind would always be your journey to your highest success, highest fulfillment, highest life enjoyment, is your journey to your best leader. So it’s all about leadership. It starts with that fascination and joy of the unfolding, of becoming the most beautiful leader possible. So I, I encourage tech leaders to just think about that. Because I think intuitively we all know there’s more in us if we focus on our own development and leadership development.

The second I would say is your blind spot is your breakthrough. And that is really get curious, be bold, understand that there’s more upside, there’s more ease, there’s more flow.

And I guess the final thing that I would say is your best years are never your hardest. And so figure out your recipes. It’s always interesting how we think that somehow it’s an effort based approach. But there’s magic in ease and flow. Look at your best years, look at your best projects. See how, and then look at what you did and how you did it. And oftentimes those are other shortcuts to creating, you know, your best years. Divorce that idea that hard is better.

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. Wow. I think that’s pretty interesting, right? So figure out your recipe, right? That could also be a good reflection point. We are at the start of the year, don’t forget. So maybe for those of you who haven’t done your reflection, find your recipe for success.

So Marisa, for people who love this conversation, they wanna connect with you online or ask more questions. Is there a place where they can find you online?

Marisa Murray: Yes, absolutely. So online social media, I’m on all the platforms but I’m mostly on LinkedIn, so please connect with me on LinkedIn and message me there. My website is leaderley.com, which is an L E Y. And there’s a way to contact me there. And yeah, absolutely. I love this discussion. I love your podcast. I feel so connected to your listeners, so it’s been such a pleasure to be with you, Henry. Thank you so much.

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. Thank you so much as well. So Marisa, I hope people get to know their blind spots from this conversation, right? And they get to work out all those blind spots so that we can become a better leader.

Marisa Murray: Amazing!

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