The 3 Most Common BlindSpots I see in Senior Executives - and How to Solve Them

1. Avoiding the conversations that matter most

Most senior executives I work with are confident, articulate and persuasive. And yet, when it comes to the conversation they know they need to have, with the underperforming director, the difficult peer, the board member whose behaviour is affecting the team, something stops them.

It’s rarely fear. More often, it’s empathy. They don’t want to damage a relationship. They’re not sure they’ll say it well. They tell themselves they’ll wait for the right moment.

But here’s what I’ve seen, time and again: the conversation you’re avoiding is almost always the one your team most needs you to have. The longer it waits, the heavier it gets, for you, for them and for everyone caught in the cross-fire.

But the truth is, a well-held difficult conversation is one of the greatest acts of respect you can offer another person. It sends the message: I take you seriously enough to be honest with you.

The question to ask yourself: What conversation have you been deferring — and what is that silence costing you and your team?

2. Underestimating the power of relationships

In a world obsessed with strategy, data, and delivery, relationships can feel like the soft bits. Nice to have, but not the most important thing on the agenda.

I’d argue the opposite: relationships are everything. Every transformational leader I’ve worked with has understood, at a deep level, that their ability to create change depends almost entirely on the quality of their human connections, with peers, with their team, with stakeholders, even with people many levels below them who they have never formally met. And every coach I know has seen the same thing in their clients.

In practice, this blindspot often looks like: a leader who is highly effective within their own function but who has underinvested in the cross-organisational relationships that would give them real influence. Or someone so focused on outcomes that they forget to make the people around them feel genuinely seen.

The leaders who create lasting impact aren’t just technically excellent. They make people feel something. They build trust that outlasts any single project or role.

The question to ask yourself: Who in your organisation have you been meaning to invest in — and what small action could you take this week?

3. Getting buried in the work instead of leading the work

This one is perhaps the most universal. You got to where you are because you were exceptional at doing things. You solved problems, delivered results, went deep. That capability is real and it is what brought you here.

But leadership at the senior level asks something different of you. It asks you to step back from the doing and invest yourself in the thinking: in strategy, in culture, in developing the people around you, in asking the questions no one else is positioned to ask.

I recently worked with a COO at a fast-growing business. Like many of my clients, she was brilliant, extraordinarily capable and completely exhausted. In our first session, she walked me through her week in detail. She was across every operational decision, reviewing work her direct reports could have owned, firefighting issues that should never have reached her desk. Her diary was a monument to doing. When I asked her how much time she had spent on the strategic priorities her board had set for the year, she went quiet. Her answer? “Almost none.”

The problem was not her commitment or her capability. It was that she had never fully made the transition in her own mind from operator to leader. Her identity was still tied to being the person who got things done. Letting go of that felt, at some level, like losing a part of herself, the part that had always made her valuable in the organisation.

Over the following months, we worked on exactly that shift. She restructured how she delegated, protected time for strategic thinking, and started showing up to her board with a clarity and confidence that changed how she was perceived at the most senior level. Her team grew visibly in her wake.

When leaders stay too close to the detail of their own work, their teams don’t grow because there is no space for them to step up. Strategic opportunities get missed because the leader’s attention is elsewhere. And the leader themselves often burns out, wondering why the role feels harder than it should.

The shift is a genuine identity transition, from expert to architect. It can feel uncomfortable and even vulnerable at first. But it is where the most powerful leadership lives.

The question to ask yourself: In the past month, how much of your time has been spent doing versus leading? What would change if you recalibrated that ratio?

The common thread

What connects all three of these blind spots is this: they are each, in their own way, a form of staying in the familiar. Avoiding a hard conversation keeps things comfortable. Underinvesting in relationships allows us to stay in our lane. Staying in the weeds keeps us doing what we know we’re good at.

Real growth requires stepping into what’s unfamiliar. It requires a willingness to be seen, to be vulnerable, and to lead in ways that feel new.

That’s not always easy. But in my experience, it’s where the most extraordinary leaders are made.

At Phanella Fine Associates, we work with senior executives and leadership teams who are ready to lead at their best. If any of this resonated, I’d love to hear what you’re seeing in your own leadership — or the organisations you work in. Contact us here.