Leadership Blind Spots: Seeing Beyond the Surface

Some people, companies, and opportunities look impressive at first glance but don't hold up under closer inspection. In this episode, Jill Griffin explores why even experienced leaders get drawn to polish over substance and how to sharpen your ability to tell the difference before you commit your time, energy, or reputation.

In this episode:

• Why we're naturally drawn to confidence, polish, and compelling stories, even when substance is missing

• The questions that help you distinguish real capability from a good presentation

• How to make better decisions about people, partnerships, and opportunities by looking beyond first impressions

• Why this skill matters even more in an AI world, where separating what's real from what's manufactured takes more mental energy than ever

Show Notes

The Gray Area podcast, The end of the human internet 

Transcript

The Hidden Cost Of Shiny

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, I'm Jill Griffin, the host of the Career Refresh. And today we are talking about the blind spots that leaders fall into, especially when something is bright and shiny. It's discernment. It is some of the most expensive career mistakes that happen when we confuse that bright and shiny thing for something that is substantial and solid. I have fallen into it too, and I'm going to share some of those experiences today. How we evaluate the person, the partnership, the opportunities that we are really clear if this is an area that we should be committing our time, our energy, our overall career to, that's the work that we're doing. So let's dig in. Okay, there's a moment that I know most of us have had when something really flashy or interesting catches your eye. You might feel your heart rate increase. You're thinking, oh my God, this is it. This is the opportunity. If we are unemployed or looking for work or looking for our next opportunity, I find that this can be really, really seductive and pull us in. This is it. This is the one that I've been waiting for. This is the partnership. This is the person if I'm hiring. This is the person I want on my team. This is the person that's going to solve the thing. And at senior levels, discernment matters more than this opportunity volume. Some of these really expensive career mistakes are because people have misread what they're looking at. It's also happening within a team and business. It shows up not just in hiring, but in the partners or the vendors we choose, the leadership team we may decide to align with, the board that we think has got it all together. And these opportunities where sometimes we chase because everyone there appears to be winning. Everything seems to be doing amazing, and I should be a part of this too. And when we're constantly evaluating people professionally for leadership roles, collaborations, partnerships, again, advisory teams, boards, we have to really go below the surface. And again,

Polish Is Not Substance

SPEAKER_00 1:54

in this conversation, I'm not talking about representative diversity. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the slicked polishness that we want. We want a strong presence. But is there substance underneath that? And what I've seen is often when senior leaders are super highly skilled at presenting themselves, they're they're presenting a crafted version that they want you to see. We all do this. I've done this, right? You want the people you're engaging with to see one side of you. But if we're talking about employment or thinking about partners, either who we want in our team or who we want to work for or with, we really need to make sure that we're meeting people and having different levels of conversation and different types of questioning so that we're able to push past that polishness. Listen, we want polished. We all are attracted to that. But you know what? Sometimes I'm also really attracted to the person who's just simply authentically themselves. And that's what I want us to really pause in a world where there is so much fake from data to news to AI to was that a real media clip? Where do we get the source from? All of that. It's really got to pause and get our discernment stronger. So you know this person, right? They know the language, they understand what's often called executive presence. I personally hate that word. I think it's really toxic. I look at it more as a leadership identity. These people know how to walk into a room, they communicate confidence, they signal credibility really quickly. And this matters. There's no doubt. This, we're not saying this doesn't matter. What I'm saying is if you're on the other side of that conversation, we need to make sure that we don't confuse polish with substance because they're not the same things. I've seen people interview brilliantly and then perform poorly. I've seen leaders who are impeccable with their own leadership and their brand, only to leave a wake of destruction and chaos and in their wake. I've seen people who are really good with optics not be able to sustain it over time. And I've also seen the opposite. I've seen people who were understated, quiet, who may be viewed as less polished, who may have some um uh on your nose in their speech, and you may judge them as less impressive. But over

A Misread Hire That Worked

SPEAKER_00 4:15

time, they're steady, they're capable, their thought leadership is there, they're operationally excellent. One of the best hires I was ever involved in almost didn't happen because of this exact dynamic. My team was really enthusiastic about a candidate. Honestly, I didn't see it at first. There was low enthusiasm in the interview, there was low eye contact, there was a nervous energy, again, polish and substance. Their first role was at a large organization, and uh I misread that nervousness at lack as a lack of readiness. My team pushed me for the higher, and I'm really glad they did. We ultimately made the higher, and that person was invaluable. I'm sharing this because it stayed with me and it helped remind me how easily we often overvalue presentation and undervalue substance. This is an unconscious bias. We all have them and we have to watch. We're either persuaded by it or sucked in by it, or we disregard it based on that initial impression. When I evaluate people professionally, I tend to pay attention to patterns, not just the performance in the room.

Questions That Reveal Patterns

SPEAKER_00 5:29

So this is a great time to grab that notes app or a pen and really think through some of these questions and decide which ones fit you that you may want to ask based on the scenario that you're in. How long has this individual sustained results? What happens around them over time? Do people trust them when things get difficult? Do they create clarity or confusion? What former colleagues would actually say about working with them? Do they consistently build? Do they consistently move on before the consequences catch up? You see this a lot, especially in marketing roles, and it's definitely not a marketing role's individual's fault, but this is where I want you to pull and pull a little bit more data and also push a little bit more questions. Meaning, we see a lot of times people are in these roles for less than a year, and sometimes it's just the nature of the market, and other times it's because they leave before the consequences of their actions catch up. There's also a flip side of this conversation. There may be people in your orbit that you've underestimated because you think they don't package themselves in a way that you feel that they're confident. And they may be, they just haven't been given the chance. Some of the most valuable people within an organization are not necessarily the ones that announce themselves loudly. They may not dominate the room. They may not have the strongest uh professional brand. It, they may not know how to self-promote or navigate within an organization. But again, I often find these people have great judgment, great discernment, they have high integrity, there's consistency, there's a steadiness. And look, I'm not trying to paint a binary that it's an either-or. I just want us to slow down in a world where there's so much being cosplayed and fake that we can be busy and tired or in halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, and miss some of these signals.

Trend Hype And AI Froth

SPEAKER_00 7:35

So I want to talk about when this glitter and this fabulousness starts to show up. It may be one that hits senior leaders particularly hard because it does tie to identity. There's a certain kind of distraction that looks incredibly compelling because everyone around you appears to be succeeding at it. Right now, it's all things AI. Before that, it was startup, it was crypto, it was personal branding at all costs. People are building real businesses in these areas, and those are to be investigated and decide if that's the right fit for you. I'm not saying those areas aren't strong areas to investigate. What I'm saying is that a marketing trend is not a strategy. There was a recent episode of the Gray Area podcast where this host, Sean Illing, talks with Atlantic writer Charlie Wertzo. I love Charlie, and why so much of the internet right now feels artificial, manipulated, or unreal. I'll put the link in the show notes. So definitely it's a good listen, but it's kind of what I'm talking about. When you're infiltrated all the time with things that are artificial and manipulated and unreal, you can understand why you might be in a little bit of exhaustion on strengthening that fatigue of discernment. Some people are really creating meaningful, sustainable work. And others are simply rebranding existing works in whatever language the market is currently rewarding. Others are manipulating algorithms, and still others are basically selling you vaporware in themselves or their company and calling it a resume, a brand, an experience, or an actional organization. We know that these things are not the same and we can get sucked in. And I've learned the hard way.

When Great Branding Hides Chaos

SPEAKER_00 9:41

It was very exciting. And I remember thinking, wow, this might actually be a really great opportunity. And then I got inside, and there were no systems, there were no structures, there was no operational discipline, there was low morale, there was high turnover, and most of the talent was being performance managed out because they were too expensive. So what looked like an opportunity was actually organizational triage. So I wasn't walking into a startup, I was walking into a cleanup, not growth. Now, if that's your jam and your position is fractional and you're gonna come in, fix it, make boatloads of money that you deserve and get out, I would say go for it. But if you think it's a sustainable thing, you really need to check is my personality aligned with this? Is my experience aligned with this? Because this is gonna be a lot of cleanup. What I know about myself, especially working with um large organizations, and also I'm a Gallup strengths coach, right? One of my highest strengths is a maximizer. So I take things that are good and make them excellent. I can start with the basics of the foundation, but that's not my genius. My genius is to partner with someone who's taking a project from zero to three, and I'm gonna take it from three to 10, right? Knowing that about myself is really important. And that's why it's so important for you to understand your strengths and your leadership identity and knowing like, do you wanna sit in that initial stages all the day? Or do you want to come at the series B or C, right? When we're doing funding and startups, things to think about. There was another time I was helping a nonprofit with their strategic planning, and we were weaving the plan into leadership development, right? How are we building a strong bench to make sure that in the various positions we have a team who can fulfill based on, you know, whatever happens? People leave, people get promoted up. Um, whatever happens next, whatever the market needs. The board wanted it. The executive director didn't. And the executive director and the staff kept saying in no uncertain terms that there is no point in building out a strategic plan because they're not gonna follow it. This was the moment where I said to myself, you know what, this is not my circus, this is not my monkey, and I'm out of here because the experiences, I don't need to be in that, right? So getting that super clear, like, yeah, this isn't the right, this is gonna be chaos from day one. So both of these experiences I'm sharing because they completely change the kinds of questions I ask before saying yes to anything significant.

Operational Reality Checks That Matter

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Now I look at the operational reality, not just branding. The questions, again, get that pen, get that notes app that I want you to start thinking through. Who actually makes the decisions here? Is there infrastructure or is everything running on urgency? Or are we building it? And is that your jam? Do you want to build it? Or do you want to make sure that we at least have the utility bills paid and we're not struggling with like the basic things like that in order to be part of a company? Are people growing there or are they just cycling through? Is leadership solving problems or are they actually just narrating them? If there's a board, what role do they play? Is it governance or are they actually managing projects in the staff? Whatever works for each individual organization, but you need to know, especially if you're stepping into that, what role does the board actually play? And do the staff honor and listen to that? Is there tension there? How is that tension being um mediated? How are they working through it? Does the culture reward execution? Or is it about politics? What happens when things go wrong? Is this a culture of blame and finger pointing? Or is it a, hey, let's actually do a deep dive and figure out what's happening here and how are they handling the pressure of all of that? Because you could absolutely deplete yourself chasing something that only looks good on the outside. We often will chase this, especially when we're feeling a little worn down, maybe a little burnt out, maybe a little frazzled, maybe not feeling seen, feeling like, you know what, I'm at capacity and I've got to find another way. These are signals for you to know that we need to look at what's going on with you individually and make a foundation plan so that you know how to approach if you are going to leave your organization or partner with somebody or hire somebody, that you're making the decision both based on facts and also how you feel about it. Your feelings are important here, but they can't be the only things that are important. Right now, everything is AI. And AI is amazing. It is equally a cognitive infrastructure, but it's also a very frothy tool. And when you chase these trends aggressively that start to disconnect you from your own thoughts, experience, your strengths, your actual direction where you want to go. Again, those should be some signals that you might be falling into the blind spot. And then you start to compare. You see things online, you're comparing someone's outside by your insides, and you start seeing people who are winning and going, you know what, I should be going on that path too. Or that's the kind of person we need for our team, or this is the kind of partner we should be partnering with. Because when you're comparing your internal reality to someone else's external presentation, what you're seeing is their title, the announcement, the promotion, the LinkedIn post, their visibility. You're not seeing the trade-off, the pressure, the instability, the office politics, the exhaustion, and whatever else might be going on with the opportunity that may not make it worth it in the end. Listen, don't count other people's money, right? That's their experience. Respect people's success, absolutely. But it doesn't mean that their success should become your blueprint because you don't have their mind, their experiences, and their talent. You have yours. And that's what we're talking about. How to come back to yourself and remember what works for you so that you can be successful. And that's

A Practical Discernment Framework

SPEAKER_00 15:51

how you start to develop discernment. You're not doing it just inspirationally, you're doing it practically. First, to develop discernment. I want you to slow it down before major decisions. This is not a paralysis, this is not forever. It's just really separating the emotional activation from your clear evaluation. I want you to pause and ask you how it feels. Absolutely. But I also want you to look at the data. I want you to see when this looks so exciting, I want to be part of this, but when you sit with it, do you actually feel a little nervous? And I don't mean nervous excitement, let's do it, let's, let's go. I mean nervous excitement where there's something about this that's making me feel unsettled. You're not going to see that if you're moving too quickly. Because excitement and alignment are not the same thing. Second, I want you to look at patterns, not moments. Anyone or most people can perform well temporarily. You can sell a compelling vision in one conversation, whether that's hiring somebody or partnering somebody or somebody trying to sell you on their vision to get you to join their team. The question is, what happens consistently over time? That's the question you need to be thinking through and asking. And then third, I want you to look for operational reality, both within the people, within the organizations, within the opportunities in front of you. What holds up under pressure? What breaks down? What gets avoided? What's actually functioning beneath all the fancy, snazzy website social presence? Is it just the branding or is this a functioning, operationally viable opportunity? Fourth, I want you to know yourself well enough that you stop chasing things purely because others and maybe you are receiving external evaluation. That's the part so many people skip, right? Because knowing who you are professionally is essential. It's an essential skill. It's strategic. You need to know that. It protects you from wasting years of opportunities that really weren't aligned to you in the first place. And then all you have to do is then clean up, right? Because you feel pretty crappy after you come out of one of those experiences. Really pausing protects you from hiring people based purely on charisma. That is an important skill. I don't want you to take this again as a binary conversation, but it's really being able to see through the signal and the noise, right? The glitter and the gold, really being able to see that. You want to make sure that you're not just navigating towards what feels like a shiny object, but that ones that actually feel real and that there's some substance there. So a few questions I want you to continue to think through this week is where is your professional life? Where are you in your professional life? And are you reacting to the shiny thing or is there substance here? Is there something you're underestimating because you didn't have a chance to really sit with the data or sit with the information? Or the people you met with didn't really present it that powerfully and you were kind of mediocre to it. Does that deserve a second look? Is there an opportunity that you're currently chasing because everybody else is chasing it? And if the external validation does disappear, would it still feel meaningful and worth building? Because that answer usually tells you far more about the direction that you want to go in than the shiny object will. And that's the work I love to do, helping leaders and their teams really think clearly about who they are, where they're going, what actually aligns with the vision and the mission of where they want to go and how they build the leadership capacity and the career strategy that they actually want so that they can succeed.

Commit With Clarity And Kindness

SPEAKER_00 19:41

All right, friends, I want you to pause and be intentional before you commit. Look below the surface, learn the difference between what feels frothy and shiny and what actually has intent and substance and will last and always, always, always be kind. Okay, I'll see you soon.