In previous articles, we have talked about the importance of truly coming together to form an authentic village of trusted fellow entrepreneurs and tap into a deep level of entrepreneurial synergies. The greater the challenges, the bigger and the higher quality of support you need.
But why should you really do that? More specifically, how can you get a higher level of impact and performance, accelerated growth, and change by diving into the wisdom of a village of entrepreneurs?
The truth is that collective entrepreneurial intelligence will help illuminate your blind spots, that is, the places and the spaces you are operating from but are unaware of.
Why is it important to become aware of your blind spot?
Bill O’Brien, CEO of Hanover Insurance said: “The success of an intervention depends on the inner conditions of the intervener”. This place, your inner condition, is the key, as it determines your actions. Furthermore, it determines the success of your actions and your successful (or not) outcomes.
In that place, in the source of how you think and feel, lies also your key potential to overcome and transform obstacles.
But how is your blind spot connected to the obstacles you encounter?
Well, the inner space from where you operate is always a filter of reality, is always related to a perceptual position, to a point of view, to a specific perspective, a view of the world. Most often the obstacle challenges that point of view, revealing the limitation of the view. Therefore you may lack the resources to deal with it, solve it, or transform it unless you expand your horizon, embracing a much larger perspective.
To clarify this point, let’s take the example of your blind spot as a driver. One of the first things they teach you when you are learning to drive is the existence of the blind spot. When you drive, and you need to look in the rear-view mirror, you must be aware that you do not have complete vision. You know that you have to move and change your position or look into the other rear-view mirrors in your car, in order to see outside the blind spot.
The fact is that the rear-view mirror is a small angled mirror, although you have the impression that you see everything when looking through it.
This may happen also to your source of thinking and feeling. For certain obstacles and specific challenges, your view may have got a small angle and needs to be enlarged to be able to overcome them.
Becoming aware that you do have a blind spot in your leadership is essential.
When you are stuck in front of a challenge, you may often tend to insist on keeping your position, sticking to the same perspective, trying harder, and actually doing more of the same. As you simply don’t see, you may even tend to deny that something else exists outside what you see and perceive.
Being conscious of your blind spot as a leader and entrepreneur is therefore a primary knowledge and awareness. It keeps you alert in the first place to the fact that you may need to look for an enlarged horizon in front of your challenges. It reminds your attention to move out of your habitual angle and search in order to see what you don’t see.
Most often than not, the place you don’t see holds the resources you need to overcome your obstacles.
Interestingly and curiously enough, the resources, the answers, and a fresh way toward your challenges may come from the place outside your blind spot. Often the obstacles you encounter are an explicit invitation to search outside your blind spot, a true call to expand your view, and even your identity as a leader and entrepreneur.
The presence of other perspectives and perceptions on the same problem immediately opens up your vision, enlarges your horizon, and allows you to envision a new, unexpected way forward.
Therefore a group of trusted fellow entrepreneurs, what we call “a village of entrepreneurs” is a way to help illuminate your blind spot. A collective entrepreneurial intelligence offers indeed a vast span of different perspectives, experiences, and wisdom in a way that can wisely stretch the “small view angle” you may unconsciously have when facing your own challenges.
Basically, you are moved to or invited to another position by the others, the effect being the same as when you move position as a driver to see outside the blind spot or look in another roar-view mirror with a different angle.
A village of entrepreneurs is capable of enlarging the space of a problem in such a powerful way that reconnects you to the needed resources to solve it. By helping identify the core of the filters that do not serve you in dealing with your burning challenge.
In this way, collective entrepreneurial intelligence allows you to move in a much faster, substantially unimagined way toward a solution or a transformation of your obstacles.
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