Illustration of a car side mirror showing three team members, with a fourth just outside the mirror's view

What Your Team Won’t Tell You: Finding Your CEO Blind Spots

By Bill Goodwin, MBA, Certified Scaling Up Coach · Updated November 2026

Let’s face it. More times than not, your team won’t tell you the critical things that you really should hear due to worrying about ruffling your feathers or a concern that candid feedback may cost them their job. Additionally, the more successful leaders become, the less they tend to hear. Most of us think we are self-aware and can see our own blind spots, but is that true?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich’s research, published in the Harvard Business Review, found that most people believe they’re self-aware, but only 10% to 15% of the people studied actually met the criteria.

The gap gets worse at the top. In a study of more than 3,600 leaders, higher-level leaders overvalued their skills more than lower-level leaders did on 19 of 20 competencies.

Why do CEOs have blind spots?

CEOs have blind spots because they keep progressing in their career and keep having higher levels of success. Subconsciously, we tend to believe that what we’re doing must be working because it keeps advancing us to higher levels. But at some point, that limitation hits.

Marshall Goldsmith’s book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There makes the same point: past success is something that prevents CEOs and executives from growing. Eurich’s research points to a second reason. Senior leaders have fewer people above them who can give candid feedback, and people are less willing to criticize a leader who holds power.

Why won’t your team tell you the truth?

A couple of things hold teams back. Part of it may just be the way someone’s working career has gone so far. Before they got to your company, maybe they had a CEO where you dare not say something negative or challenge their authority. Or maybe they’re afraid of ruffling feathers today because of who the CEO is.

There’s also how we were brought up: We all know the saying “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Most importantly the biggest reason for limited, candid feedback is that people are trying to keep their jobs. As a result, more often than not they withhold feedback that would actually be helpful.

The research lines up with what I see. In a study published in the Journal of Management Studies, 85% of employees interviewed said they had felt unable to raise an important issue at least once. When they explained why, their reasons sounded a lot like what I hear from teams:

  • Fear of being seen as a troublemaker or complainer: 30%
  • Fear of damaging relationships: 27.5%
  • A sense that speaking up would be futile: 25%
  • Fear of retaliation: 22.5%

And the issue they held back most often was a concern about a colleague’s or supervisor’s competence or performance (37.5%). That’s exactly the kind of feedback a CEO needs to hear, and it’s the kind least likely to reach them.

What does a CEO blind spot cost?

When nobody tells you, you find out the hard way. I did.

A company I had was acquired by a public company, and as part of the transition, I took over all the sales and marketing for the organization. They were growing at too low a rate compared to their competitors, and the pressure was on to get growth up fast.

I did get growth up, but I pushed through change too fast. In the quest for the numbers, I didn’t have as good a pulse as I should have on the energy in the sales force, and I lost some good sales reps. Ultimately it was the right decision, but it could have gone a lot better if I had just been more aware that I was pushing change through too fast. That was my blind spot.

How do CEOs find their blind spots?

You can’t wait for the feedback to come to you. You have to go get it, and then react to it so people keep giving it.

Waiting for feedback vs. asking for it

 Waiting for feedbackAsking for feedback
Who starts itThe team has to come to youThe CEO asks
What you hearOnly what feels safe to saySpecific things you can act on
Typical toolsOpen-door policy, annual surveySkip-level lunches, 360s, one direct question
What happens nextNothing changes, so people stop talkingThe CEO reacts, so people keep talking

When I’m coaching a CEO, I come at it from a few different angles. I like to start by getting their thinking going with questions like these:

  • What would the people close to you, outside the office, say is your biggest opportunity for growth in how you communicate?
  • In how you lead?
  • In how you understand data?
  • In how you display emotions?

We usually feel safer answering in relation to our family. Then we ask the same questions about the office: does that translate to your team, and to how the frontline experiences you? It’s a little self-discovery before we get to outside feedback.

From there, we go get the outside feedback. If there’s an opportunity for a 360 review, we do that. I also encourage CEOs to do skip-level lunches and ask questions to get real feedback, and I mean feedback they’re going to listen to and react to.

Asking pays off. In Zenger Folkman’s research on 51,896 executives, leaders in the top 10% for asking for feedback ranked at the 86th percentile in overall leadership effectiveness. Leaders in the bottom 10% ranked at the 15th percentile.

How do CEOs react when they find a blind spot?

It depends on the CEO. A good percentage of CEOs actually want feedback. The ones who are already conditioned to be self-improving will usually pause, take a little time to reflect, and discover how the blind spot is repeatedly showing up. Then the realization hits harder, because it’s not just one thing. They think back through past conversations, past meetings, past emails, and start going, “Ah, okay, I get it.”

There’s a smaller portion of CEOs who get the feedback and either don’t believe it, or it doesn’t matter to them because they’ve been successful. So it just doesn’t land, and when feedback doesn’t land, people stop giving it.

Frequently asked questions about CEO blind spots

Is it the CEO’s fault when the team won’t speak up?

Not entirely. It’s not all on the CEO. People’s experiences in their working life and their upbringing also affect why teams hold back. A past boss who punished pushback, or being raised to say nothing if you don’t have something nice to say, carries into your company.

Why do people stop giving the CEO feedback?

Not all CEOs ask for feedback and then react to it. That’s problematic, because people stop giving feedback. If you ask, you have to show you heard it.

Does a CEO need a coach to find blind spots?

Have a coach, whether it’s me or somebody else, if this is something you want to work on. A coach can ask the questions your team won’t, and help you see how a blind spot is showing up across the business.

What should you do next?

If you want to start this week, start with one question. Pick three people in the company you have an honest relationship with, people you know will give you feedback, and ask each of them: “What’s one thing I could do to make you more successful?”

That question isn’t asking them to tell you what you’re doing wrong. It opens them up. They might say, “Call me instead of sending an email when you’re frustrated,” or, “Give me more context when you ask me to do something, so I understand the why.” Then react to what you hear, so they keep telling you.

If you want more on blind spots and how they impact the business, or want help working on yours, reach out to me.

About the author

Bill Goodwin is a Certified Scaling Up Coach and founder and CEO of Growth Optimized, where he works with CEOs and founders of $5M to $100M companies on strategy, execution and growth. He also leads Complete CEO, an in-person peer group for CEOs in Phoenix and Scottsdale. Before coaching, he was CEO of MeMD, which he scaled and sold to Walmart at 9X revenue.

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