Even the most well-intentioned and competent leaders can be led astray by seemingly benign assumptions that can ultimately harm or derail the enterprise.

Authors Jim Haudan and Rich Berens refer to these old ways of thinking as "blind spots." By identifying and overcoming blind spots identified in the book, leaders can learn to welcome and adopt new and forward-thinking practices that will propel their organizations towards growth.

This book does a wonderful presentation of the blind spots that many of our leaders encounter every day. Starting with surprising advertisements on how what we accept as normal before turned out to be totally ridiculous ideas today, the authors successfully derived an analogy on how these common leadership blind spots are commonly accepted by many people.

The book will not just provide you with ideas but more importantly, asks you to do some exercises that will help you in making the most practical applications of what you read.

I am very excited to let you know that this book will help you put things into perspective when you lead your organization.

In “What Are Your Blindspots”, Jim Haudan and Rich Berens describe and provide solutions for five misconceptions that hold leaders back. They address misconceptions related to purpose, story, engagement, trust, and truth. Hauden and Berens describe them as leadership blindspots, however, this book provides tools that are for anyone at any level in a stuck organization.

I enjoyed their hardlines (areas where there is one organizational way of doing things), guidelines (firm boundaries are defined but with ‘guardrails’), and no lines (allowing people to accomplish goals as they see fit) framework discussion [pgs 90-94]. Allowing your people more freedom to be creative in resolving problems and accomplishing goals encourages engagement.

Chapter 6 provides an assessment tool to help identify where your organization stands regarding the five blindspots. The chapter also includes a lessons learned section which serves as an excellent overall summary of the book’s key content.

I found the overall content excellent. The reason for making this a 4-star review is that the graphics do not render very well on my Kindle reader.

I thought this was a very good leadership book. I've spent a lot of time studying leadership development and I think the practical exercises in this book can be used in any organization. Haudan and Berens outline the blind spots leaders can have around purpose, story, engagement, trust, and truth. The stories used to explain the five areas are clear and meaningful. And then the exercises described in detail are some of the best I've seen in all the years of my studies.

I highly recommend this book to any leader who wants to take his or her organization to a higher level where employees can do their best work.

I enjoyed this book about identifying your personal blind spots in life. I think it's applicable to anyone from any walk of life.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for our ARC. All opinions are my own.