How Leaders Can Overcome Blind Spots with Velma Knowles, Chief Energy Officer

Are you ready to tap into your unique leadership values and overcome hidden blind spots? Join host Natalie Benamou and Velma Knowles, Chief Energy Officer, leadership coach, human behavioral expert and best-selling author of the book ‘The Valuable Leader’ as they talk about how you can leverage your strengths. This interview reveals all the ways you can accelerate your success by understanding your values.

5 Ways To Recognize Your Leadership Blind Spots

1. Use Self-Awareness and Self-Reflection: The first step in discovering our blind spots is to develop a deep understanding of ourselves. This includes recognizing our strengths, understanding how we show up in different situations, and how others perceive ourselves. 
2. Value Your Strengths: Often, we tend to dismiss our strengths because they come naturally to us. Velma emphasizes the importance of recognizing and valuing these strengths. By understanding our unique value, we can increase our confidence and usefulness, thereby becoming more valuable leaders. 
3. Find Your Courage and Authenticity: Discover how courage is not an inherent quality, but something we can cultivate through action. Stepping into courage can mean borrowing a belief in ourselves from others until we develop our own. Authenticity is also critically important; people want to know the real you, not just the professional facade. 
4. Use Continuous Learning: By continuously seeking self-improvement and development, we can start to uncover our blind spots and work on them. Remember, each one of us has blind spots, but it's through the process of self-awareness, courage, and authenticity that we can uncover and address them. As Velma puts it, “forget everything and rise” above these blind spots to uncover the leader within you.
5. Taking Action:The process of uncovering and addressing our blindspots requires us to take action. This could be as simple as asking for feedback or as challenging as stepping out of our comfort zones to do something that scares us. 

Quotes:

“I really believe that if you're not learning, you're not growing, and the more you know about yourself, the more you can impact and be of value to others.” – Velma Knowles

 “If we could accept the fact that we have talents and gifts, we realize that we bring a unique value. Once we understand that and lean into it, we increase our value, we increase our usefulness because we have more confidence.” – Velma Knowles

“Courage happens as you do it. You find courage in whatever challenge, whatever difficulty is.” – Velma Knowles

Don’t miss this episode to hear about the importance of recognizing blind spots, cultivating courage, and embracing authenticity.  During the process of self-reflection, you will grow as a leader and provide value to your team and organization.

This podcast is sponsored by HerCsuite™ personal development programs. Find out which one is best for you and schedule a call with us. We would love to know what success looks like for you!

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Velma Knowles is the bestselling author of The Valuable Leader, a Leadership Coach, Human Behavioral Expert, and host of Your Leadership Chat podcast. Leveraging over 20 years of experience and science-based research, she helps organizations build a value-driven culture of belonging.

Host Natalie Benamou, is a purpose-driven leader helping organizations and women accelerate growth and amplify their impact in advancing women and improving women’s health outcomes.

Thank you Velma Knowles for helping our listeners identify our blind spots.

Resources

• Velma Knowles 9 Blind spots for Leaders
• VelmaKnowles.com 
• Velma Knowles YouTube
• Velma Knowles LinkedIn 
• Velma Knowles Facebook
• Velma Knowles Instagram
• Your Leadership Chat
  HerCsuite™
• HerCsuite.com
• Natalie Benamou LinkedIn
• HerCsuite™ LinkedIn