Want to be a better sales leader? Learn to deal with your “Elf”.
My family and I watched a favorite movie this Christmas, “Elf”, and while I knew it would make me laugh I didn’t know I would learn some leadership lessons from it. Here’s lesson number 1:
Denying your blindspots
You may know the plot. Buddy the Elf, played by Will Ferrell, finds out he has a father (James Caan’s character), so Buddy walks from the North Pole to New York City during Christmas to find him. Caan is married, middle-aged, and the father of a 10-year old boy. He’s also a workaholic executive in the children’s book publishing business. Buddy finds him and that’s when Cann learns that Buddy is the outcome of a romantic relationship Cann had when he was much younger.
What’s Caan’s first blindspot behavior when he finds this out? He denies it. A son he didn’t know he had? An elf? Gimme a break, he thinks.
Denying is what makes your blindspots flourish and your leadership weaker. When you deny things that are true about yourself you keep yourself from yourself and prevent yourself from being the leader you could be.
This is a problem. You don’t trust leaders who you think are phony do you? So why should others follow you when you’re not fully true?
Denying sometimes looks like this. Have you ever been asked to volunteer for something and said no because you were too busy or tired? There’s no crime in saying no, but here’s the kicker: did you justify “no” by telling yourself it’s because you were busy, or by telling yourself you preferred busy to volunteering?
Or, have you said no to an invitation from friends to go out, and justified it by working late instead? It looks authentic doesn’t it, being busy, working late, being tired. But how often does this happen? Are these honest reasons every time or are they your built-in excuses that you leverage? Are you being honest with yourself?
Do you have someone on your team who you struggle to lead? Someone you don’t connect with because he or she is very different from you? Does this person not take your coaching? Do you get frustrated and impatient? Maybe you’ve concluded that he’s the problem, not your coaching. Is it possible that you’ve not found the right way to coach and lead him? Are you being honest?
People ask me “how do I uncover my blindspots when I can’t see them?” It seems impossible, but there is a right place to begin. Start by being honest with yourself. Take ownership of your beliefs and the actions that follow. But – and this is critical – don’t judge yourself when you discover an unflattering behavior, or more. If you judge yourself when you’re trying to discover yourself, your ego will come running to the rescue and convince you it’s not your fault. You’re busy! You’re working late! Your coaching is awesome – he just doesn’t get it!
Don’t let your ego win. Instead, be honest. Surrender. Discover. And feel how liberating that is. You’ll change how you see and lead people. And people will notice.
To be a greater coach and leader you’ll have to confront your “Elf”, that is, the thing you are denying that prevents you from getting closer to you.
Good Selling,
Mark Sellers
Author, Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching, and The Funnel Principle: What Every Salesperson Must Know About Selling
Creator of the BuyCycle Funnel customer buying journey sales model, the most time tested, proven customer buying journey model on the market
Buy The Funnel Principle book here
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Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching 