Think about the people you turn to when a hard decision lands. Your closest advisors. The ones who've been with you for years, who get it without you having to explain.
Now here's the uncomfortable part. They're probably the reason you can't see what's about to hit you.
They're not wrong. They just think the way you think. They built their judgment alongside yours. They read situations the way you do. So when you gather them in a room under pressure, everyone is facing the same direction.
Nobody's looking behind you.
I see this constantly in my coaching work. A CEO surrounded by smart, loyal people who quietly agree with each other. It feels like alignment. It feels like a strong team. But a team that never surprises you isn't strong. It's an echo. And an echo will confirm your thinking right up to the edge of the cliff.
There's a reason this happens, and it's not weakness.
It takes you years to build the mental map that makes you successful: the instincts you've earned, the judgment, the way you read a room and know what to do next without checking. That map is the most valuable thing you own. And it works beautifully, right up until the world shifts and it stops matching the ground under your feet.
The dangerous part isn't that your map goes out of date. It's that you can't feel it happen.
You don't drift gently from right to relearning. You go straight from quietly, confidently right to quietly, confidently wrong. Same certainty, same speed, pointed the wrong way, with nothing inside you raising a hand to say so.
And here's what makes it worse. When the pressure rises, you reach for the people you trust most. Your closest advisors. The problem is they built their maps alongside yours. They share your blind spot. So everyone in the room is facing the same direction you are.
I got the sharpest version of this idea from Cornelia Choe on the podcast this week. She co-wrote her new book with Marshall Goldsmith, and she calls the trap perspective blindness. Her example stuck with me.
A few years ago, Serena Williams lost to a player ranked outside the top 100.
Soon after, hitting at a junior club, she got talking to a coach she'd never met. He told her she was off balance. She'd been winning at the top for over a decade. She could have said what most experts say: I've been doing this longer than you've been coaching. She didn't.
She let a man who had never coached a top-ranked player rebuild how she saw her own game. She went on to win more Grand Slam titles than she ever would have by protecting her old map.
Most leaders never make that choice.
They'd rather protect the map that made them than update it, because the map isn't just how they work. It's who they've become. Questioning it feels like questioning themselves.
That's why this is so hard to catch. It doesn't feel like a blind spot. It feels like experience.
So here's the question worth sitting with this week. Look again at your table. Your trusted few.
What am I missing, and who's not at that table?
If everyone there thinks like you, you don't have alignment. You have a blind spot with good manners.
And the only way to see behind you is to invite in someone who isn't already looking where you're looking.
🎧 Full conversation with Cornelia on The World Class Leaders Show
Andrea
One idea a week on how top CEOs lead when the stakes are high, from inside rooms most people never enter. Free, and you can leave any time.