What's up, guys?

This is your host, Neal, and I am pumped for today's show.

I'm so grateful that you joined us again as we continue to grow together on leadership, business strategy, and personal development.

Today, I'm going to be teaching and talking about a topic around the vision of a leader, or more specifically, eyesight of a leader.

We're going to deal with some specific things today, like tunnel vision, how to grow out of that, and why it's important for the best leaders out there, how the best leaders always develop eyesight or leadership vision that's greater than tunnel vision.

Guys, I'm really fired up for today and I think you're gonna love it.

Get ready.

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What's up, champion?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to the Executive Perspective.

For years, I struggled to answer the question, what do you do for a living?

Why?

Because most people who ask only expect to hear one thing.

I'm an executive with a deep level of understanding of business, operations, leadership, and technology.

I'm also the president and founder of a worldwide ministry and CEO of an executive coaching and consulting firm.

My number one passion is people, and I receive significant gratitude in life from sowing into others and encouraging them as they grow to achieve their fullest potential.

If you're a high performance individual like me, or you're simply ready to take your business leadership or inner potential to the next level, then strap in because I'm locked in and all in.

This is the Executive Perspective.

What's up, champions?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you back to the Executive Perspective.

Today, I'm going to be talking to you about something that's dear to me, but something that I think is critical for every leader as they develop in their Growth.

The topic that we're going to be speaking today is the peripheral vision of a leader.

Again, the topic that we're speaking about today is we're going to be talking about the peripheral vision of a leader.

Now, I'm going to tell you that this is a real important thing.

This is an important subject in leadership, but also just in general growth.

You know, going back to the core of what this podcast is all about, there are three main areas that we focus on within this podcast.

We focus on leadership, business strategy, and personal development.

And just about every topic that we speak about fits in one of those categories.

Well, today is another one that fits really in all three.

I'm going to take it from the standpoint of a leadership, but keep in mind this can be applied to any area of your life.

And I believe that as I speak today, you're going to have some unlocks that if there are things that maybe you've been missing or neglecting or that you just haven't been seeing clearly about, or things that you just have just been avoiding, I think today is going to help you understand exactly how to address that and how to put the right attention on it at the right time.

Now, the first thing I want to jump into is the three different types of vision that a leadership has.

Now, I started to talk about that, the topic was peripheral vision, but there's actually three different types of vision that a leader has.

The first type, and let me rephrase this, these are the types of vision that leaders operate.

By now, when someone thinks I'm talking about vision, I'm not necessarily talking about vision for the future, but that does go into this.

I'm talking about vision like eyesight, for example, if you were talking about your eyesight, and that's what we're going to compare this to today.

There's three different types of eyesight of leadership or vision of a leader.

And these are typically the three that people operate by.

The first one is tunnel vision.

That's the most limited type of leader.

The second kind is peripheral vision.

And then the main kind is 360 degree vision or eyesight.

You know, if you were to look at cameras, especially action cams today compared to action cams Even just 10 years ago, you know what's real common?

You know, you have like for example, the GoPros that came out and the other types of cameras, the action cams like that, but those came out with looking right in front and then eventually they came out with what was known as the fisheye where kind of if you looked at the edges of the screen, it kind of beveled or warped, warped a little bit, or bubbled, I should say, or warped a little bit.

And that's because it was an extremely wide lens that was taking as wide of an area it could to put it in frame.

But now they even have 360 degree cameras which are really multiple cameras connected together, but that are meant to be able to view all the way around.

And as you have those 360 degree cameras, no matter what type of technology they're using to accomplish that, that's something that really, at any time you can see all around you.

You just have to pan the camera around, but it gets a 360 degree look.

Well, in leadership, the leader that you want to aspire to be is the leader who develops 360 degree eyesight or vision within your leadership.

Now I'm going to give you some specific examples and then I'm going to show you why 360 vision is what you want to develop.

The first one we're looking at is the tunnel vision.

And keep in mind this is like someone who looks through this, a set of frames and oftentimes it can even be someone who's looking like, consider them looking through like binoculars.

I will tell you that when I'm working with developers because I have developers that work for me, whether they're web developers or if they're application developers.

But oftentimes when I'm working with a developer, and I noticed this years and years and years ago when I would bring in different companies to come work, you know, long, long before I was doing what I do now, I guess say long before, but early in my IT career, let's put it like that, one of the companies I had the privilege of working with was Dell.

And one of the things that I did was they had a team of engineers who were designing some software for their organization that I was leveraging a specific piece of technology that they had within the organization that I ran.

I ran a very large organization.

And as this team that I was part of, these guys sent their people out to help us build for them what was referred to as an enterprise solution.

In other words, they had a really good product.

I'm not going to mention what the product was, but it was a really good product.

But the management of it wasn't built to manage it on a scale of an enterprise environment, a very large business.

And as I spoke to them, more and more they invested and I appreciated this.

But they invested as an organization by sending their Top developers to come out and work with me.

And we got isolated in a room one on one and worked with each other for a week while I helped them develop and design this tool that they would need to not only benefit the organization I was working with, but it would also turn around and help other companies that they worked with as well.

But one of the things I recognized early on with developers, and it still rings true today, is not all, but many developers, when they're developing some type of a software, they usually view it only through a certain lens that they view it as.

And so they create this software.

And then sometimes when we're going through the testing phases, we'll ask them, what does this button over here do?

Oh, you never touch the button.

Yeah, but if I touch.

You don't touch the button.

But what if I touch the button?

You don't touch the button.

Okay, but what if someone does?

Why would they touch the button?

Because it's a button and they're going to want to know what it does.

And what happens with that type of developer is in their mind, they design the application to where you don't use the button.

Now someone might say, well then why does it develop a button?

Well, that's the real question.

Right?

But anyways, again, I'm not describing all developers, so don't get offended.

I'm only talking about some.

But anyways, the button in the corner, though, maybe it's an application that they inherited and they're having to fix.

But what happens is in their mind, they may think, well, why would anybody touch the button?

That's not how the application is supposed to be used.

However, what you have to unpack is how do you get out of their head the way they designed it to be used across to the end user who's actually going to leverage it.

And so when you're doing an implementation like that, there's two keys to that success.

This is going to help somebody today.

The first key is when you're implementing, how do you convey to your end user base what the developer intended it to be used like?

And then the second key to that implementation is how do you convey to the developer how your end user is going to want to use it?

And that's an earlier step in the SDLC process, but it's something that you got to consider now, as you do that, understand this.

I'm equating this back to leadership.

When you have leaders, oftentimes you'll have leaders who are limited in their leadership ability, not because they're not good at what they do or they don't have the right knowledge.

Sometimes it's not even based on communication or things.

It's simply because of the fact they only pay attention to what is directly in front of them.

And that's what I refer to as tunnel vision.

They're only focused on what's in front of them at that moment.

Now, they may be really good at prioritizing multiple things at once, or they may be good at multitasking where basically what they're doing is they still maintaining the single vision, but they're looking at what's right in front of them.

And then they turn their attention to the next thing and then the next thing and then the next thing.

And maybe they're able to do that rapidly, but they're still only focusing on one thing at a time.

The next level of leader is the leader who has peripheral vision.

So consider this like you, if you're, wherever you're at, if you're standing, sitting, whatever, if you're driving, be careful again, but anyways, you know, whatever you're focused on in front of you, to some degree, you're going to be able to see things come in from the side.

In fact, sometimes when they give eye tests, they're like, all right, tell me when you see my finger.

I see it, I see it.

Well, wherever it is, you know.

But anyways, as you see that finger though, it's because you're talking about the peripheral vision.

But you may have some leaders who have peripheral vision way out here or further.

But you may have some who their peripheral vision is only over here.

As you do that, understand every leader's peripheral vision is different.

Some is very wide, some is not as narrow as the tunnel vision, but maybe it's medium in their peripheral vision, but it's based on how they've trained themselves, their awareness.

And we're going to get into some of these things today.

But that's the peripheral vision.

In other words, that's the person who's able to still focus on what's right in front of them, but they can see what's out on the horizon or what's in the peripheral vision that needs their attention as well.

At the same time, you then have the complete leader.

And as far as vision goes, and the leader with complete vision or eyesight is the leader who has developed 360 degree eyesight or vision within leadership.

Now, this is the way I draw this example up.

And I do this sometimes best when I'm drawing on a page.

I'm obviously not going to do it today.

But let's say, for example, that wherever you're at, whether you're standing or sitting, as long as you're still.

This is how this example works.

If you're standing still or sitting still and picture yourself in a room or whatever, and let's say someone comes in and they draw a circle.

Let's say they're 10ft in front of you and they draw a circle.

That's 10ft.

Or let's go a little further, let's say 20ft.

Let's say they're 20ft away from you, directly in front of you, and they take chalk or they take like some powder, like they'd line a sport field or paint, and they draw a circle, a perfect circle all the way around you that's 20ft in diameter.

And so when I say 20ft in diameter, I should really say 20ft from the center, otherwise I'd be 40ft in diameter.

But anyways, but it's 20ft out from you.

So you're at the very center of the circle.

And no matter which direction you would point, whether it's in front of you to the side behind you, no matter which direction it is, the edge of the circle is always 20ft away from you.

What the really good leaders do is no matter how good their peripheral vision is, they know what's right in front of them.

They know what's in their peripheral vision.

But before making decisions and before making choices, they will pause long enough to turn around and look around behind them to see what else is outside of their view, but still within the circumference of their vision.

I'm going to say that again.

They turn around to see what's outside of their view, but still within their circumference of their vision, of their eyesight.

Meaning that their natural leader eyesight has a limitation on how wide the peripheral vision is.

And the greater leader is trained, the wider that peripheral vision is.

But it still requires them to turn around at times and examine, even for only briefly, the entire circumference of their vision or eyesight, what the total picture looks like.

Now, to do this, we're going to break this down a little bit today to help you understand this a little better.

But if you can gain this key component within your leadership, and it starts with the simple fact of awareness, if you're the tunnel vision leader, be honest with yourself.

You're a tunnel vision leader.

Today you got the epiphany or the revelation.

There's peripheral vision and there's also 360 vision.

And while you may not develop into that overnight, at least having the awareness and the understanding of it, well, now you can actually grow.

You know, there's a biblical principle that's found in scripture that says that all you're getting get understanding.

It also talks about how wisdom being the principle or key thing, and leadership, you're going to grow to new levels and new heights.

As a leader, you always want to be moving forward and upward.

You always want to be moving or growing forward and upward, which means that there's new levels of understanding, there's new levels of wisdom.

It's the principal thing.

And today are either some of those unlocks or some of those helpful but strong reminders to pay attention to the bigger picture.

So here's the second part of what I want to cover with you today or second point is why most leaders miss what's in their peripheral vision.

So now we're going to talk about why they miss it.

So the first one, and this is a big one, it's usually due to overwhelm and information overload.

Man, that's a big one right there.

Oftentimes the reason why leaders, even good leaders who have peripheral vision, and it narrows, narrows, narrows, narrows, narrows, narrows, narrows, until you have tunnel vision.

It's oftentimes because they're just overloaded.

Whether they overloaded themselves or others overloaded them, or maybe they didn't know how to say no to something and it was yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And now they've got too much work, but they've got too much on their plate.

They're overloaded.

Or sometimes it's information overload, where they've got too many details or too much information or too many things that they got to do.

That's a big component of it.

Another reason is poor delegation or lack of trust in their team.

Man, I'm going to tell you, I've seen some of the highest performers I've ever come across in business struggle with this one.

The worst, they don't know how to delegate, or they feel like they can't delegate because they don't have a high level of trust in their team.

Now, if you've been with us on the executive podcast for a while, I did an episode earlier on where I talked about the benefits of teaching your staff to fail forward.

This is an exact reason why you have to give your people the freedom to fail forward, but also teach them how to fail forward.

And just covering real quickly what I said in that podcast.

But you should go listen to it because it's dynamite anyways.

You should go listen to it.

But it's because when someone's walking down a path, if they trip and they fall forward, when they get back up, they should at least had gained ground and been further along down the path.

But if they fall backwards, when they get up, they've lost ground.

This is why we teach people to fell forward.

Meaning your people are going to make mistakes.

That's okay.

Don't create scenarios where they always have to be perfect.

Yeah, there's some cases where they need to cross all the T's and dot all the I's.

I get that.

But that can't be the everyday standard.

You have to give them the ability to grow, and sometimes growth is done through mistakes.

If you give them that ability to grow, what I'm going to tell you is the mistakes will come less and less and less.

And then now you're able to delegate because you've developed trust within these people.

But I will tell you, for most leaders who struggle with delegating and struggle with trust, it actually usually has more to do with the leader and the condition of their heart and their mindset than it does with the staff around them.

Because usually they already have people who are looking to rise right before them who want to help up and grow and be a good part of the team.

And it's not just about being loyal and being a hard worker, but they have skills that are ready to be put to work.

But it's usually the leader and their own blocks their Legos on the floor, so to speak.

Plugging back for another podcast I did, but it's the Legos on the floor that are blocking them in that situation.

And the other one is operating reactively instead of proactively.

The best leaders, in my opinion, train themselves how to be proactive rather than reactive, meaning they try to foresee what's going to happen ahead of time.

And they become proactive rather than being reactionary, where they're always reacting to the current situation or the issue that's popping up.

Another example of this would be what I refer to as a ladder.

Now, for leaders who grow, consider growth in leadership like an A frame ladder.

Okay?

And the A frame ladder.

And let's just say it's a single ladder.

It's not an A frame that folds out.

I mean, it's shaped like an A that you'd lean against the wall well at the bottom.

The first rung or first step you step on, it's real wide, it goes across the bottom.

But the higher you Ascend.

It's kind of shaped kind of like a triangle.

The higher you ascend on the ladder, the narrower those rungs or steps are because you're ascending in your leadership.

When you do that, if you're on the first step and you look around, your peripheral vision see what's beneath you, there's only so much you can see.

But the higher you get up that ladder, when you look down to see the view of what you see, what's going on, you have a greater peripheral or vision because you're able to see more ground because you're simply higher up.

So that's what I refer to as the peripheral vision that most leaders miss.

The next area I want to take you to is the dangers of limited vision.

Now, here's some dangers of having limited vision or leadership.

Eyesight is what I call it blind spots.

Blind spots are key areas like, and these are big ones.

So listen, culture, morale, external threats, those types of things, they can go unnoticed.

If you develop blind spots and if you work at a level where you're always tunnel vision, tunnel vision, tunnel vision.

Only after a while, you're stuck in that rhythm and it creates blind spots.

And that's where you have things, where culture is waning within the environment.

Maybe you're starting to turn some employees and you're trying to figure out what it is.

And for a leader, it's everything else but them.

And it's like, no, that's not the way you look at it.

You always look internal first.

What's the issue?

Starting with you working out.

Then other times you have things like morale, Maybe morale is low.

Or then you can even have external threats which could be really damaging to an organization.

The next thing you have within this that are dangers of limited vision are missed opportunities.

What kind of missed opportunities, Neil?

Missed opportunities for growth, missed opportunities for collaboration or innovation?

This is a really, really, really big deal because missed opportunities always come back around.

I'm going to say that again.

Missed opportunities don't always come back around.

You've got to be able to capitalize.

You got to be able to jump on, and you got to be able to help yourself from missing opportunities so you don't miss out on things like growth, collaboration and innovation that can move you forward.

New ideas and new ways of thinking.

Another thing I want you to understand is that a lack of awareness equals a lack of vision.

I'm going to say that again.

A lack of awareness equals a lack of vision.

There's a biblical principle that I always teach my staff and that I operate on all of the meetings I go into.

You know, one of the things I'm blessed to do with my staff, and I get that you can't do this everywhere with your staff, but you certainly can do it by yourself, even if it's privately.

But I'm able because my staff, they just know who I am and how I am.

Okay, so for the people out there, like, oh, you can't do that.

Well, I do it anyways within the environment I'm in, is what I should say.

I'm also able to do it.

I pray before every meeting.

And I always ask for the wisdom.

This is biblical, biblical principle, the biblical unlock.

Pay attention.

I always ask for the wisdom to see the end from the beginning.

You know, in the Bible it tells us that God is the alpha and the omega, that he always sees the end.

He's the beginning and the end, but he always sees the end from the beginning.

Well, I ask for that same wisdom.

The Bible tells us that he will not withhold wisdom for he who asks wisdom from him.

So I always ask, lord, help me see wisdom to see the end from the beginning of this thing.

So I already see ahead of time what I need to know.

That also helps me being proactive rather than reactive.

But even if you're an environment where like, well, I can't pray with my staff, fair enough.

But you can pray even if it's silently unto yourself, place your hand to that thing.

Lord, help me see the end from the beginning.

Lord, help my staff see the end from the beginning on this thing.

And the fourth area I want to talk to you about is how do you train peripheral vision or peripheral awareness?

Well, the first thing you can do is is learn to develop listening channels across your team or organization.

Another way of saying it is be careful with top down leadership.

What's top down leadership?

Top down leadership.

And maybe we'll have another podcast directed to that.

But top down leadership is basically when all the decisions are made at the very top by a very select few and they're pushed down to everyone else.

If you develop listening channels within your environment, that's where you begin to incorporate your people.

And I'm going to tell you, that's one of the greatest senses of satisfaction for them in working.

When you let them be the experts at what they're passionate about doing and what they're gifted at doing, where you don't have to do it for them.

That's one of the best ways also to combat micromanagement is when you allow and trust your People to be the experts.

But when you do that and you naturally develop listening channels, that means that those people can then bring information back to you and help you with what the company really needs or what the company struggling with or what it is you should be doing.

Man, I'm telling you, this is extremely important.

And I just felt a check in the spirit.

And I had checked in the spirit.

That's not the way to say it, but I felt a prompt in the spirit to say, as parents, this is one of the best things you can do with your children.

Remember I said that.

This podcast talks about leadership, business strategy, and personal development, but it impacts about every area of your life.

You can help lead with your children, too.

And some of you are missing it right now because you're always directing at your children, at your children, at your children, and you're not welcoming communication back from them.

That's not all people, but it's a lot of people.

The next thing I have for you in this on how to train peripheral awareness is feedback.

Regularly requesting feedback.

And who can you request feedback from?

Staff, industry, competitors.

And I say industry.

Other people that are in your same environment but in other sectors.

Competitors, clients, with staff.

It can be one of the most important things or from the people who you work for.

But when you do it with staff, be careful how you welcome it.

You're not welcoming them to critique you because you don't want to break chain of command or authority.

What you're simply doing.

You don't want to bust your leadership structure.

What you're doing, though, is saying, hey, I'd like your feedback on this situation.

Can you tell me how you see this?

Hey, I want to do something, but I feel I can be even better.

Is there a way you can tell me how this impacted the employees?

And I made this decision, hey, is there a way you can give me some feedback on what the.

But anyways, you're asking for feedback, you're soliciting feedback, but be smart about how you do it.

But when you do that and you do it regularly, it also makes you more relatable.

You know, in yesterday's podcast, we were talking about how to lead with influence.

This is a great way to develop influences when you ask for feedback.

And then the other thing I want to take you to are some quick examples of what a 360 degree leader looks like.

So that if you're developing that, you know what your mark is.

One of your marks is that a 360 degree leader, they have the ability to see interdependencies across departments and relationships and strategies.

In other words, they're able to view across organization and they recognize that this department has dependencies on this other department.

They can't operate in silos.

Or maybe it's the relationships, or sometimes it's even the strategies.

It's hard for a communication or marketing department to do everything they want to do if what they do is they have to rely heavily on Mayme finances and so they need the finance or accounting department to help them.

Or maybe they need things built from the technology side so they need the IT group involved or something.

But there's interdependencies, there's inner strategies that relate, there's relationships that matter.

The other thing a 360 degree leader does is they know how to scan for patterns and emerging disruptions.

Remember the talk about we talked about being proactive and not reactive.

They're able to watch the patterns.

Is there a time of the year where the business picks up and picks up and really peaks as there are times of the year where it's a little slower?

If there's times of the year where it's maybe slower or quieter, maybe those are the times to knock out the big projects and not try to knock them out during the really busy times when everybody's already running around stressed or whatever.

Hopefully they're not running around stressed, but you know what I mean about that.

And then the other one is a 360 degree leader makes decisions based on the whole system and not just isolated parts.

In other words, they get all the information they need to make an educated and deformed decision based on the bigger picture, the whole thing, rather than focusing on just little isolated parts.

Now sometimes, yes, you got to make decisions in isolated areas, but you always do it with the whole picture in mind.

Because if you're always making it in isolated areas, that goes back to that tunnel vision and you're going to miss out on how one change can impact an entire organization.

Those are culture killers and those can destroy morale very quickly.

A way of seeing this is like a ball of yarn.

When you pick up the ball of yarn, what's hanging beneath it?

There's all these different sized strings and all different colors.

Some are little, some are big.

But what is that?

And I'll dedicate a podcast directly to this because this is one of the main things I teach to my staff is the ball of yarn analogy.

It's how you connect with the rest of the business.

Because sometimes you may think that little string is a little one, but when you pick it up.

Holy cow.

It's the biggest string there.

In other words, it's recognizing the interdependencies.

As I close today, I want to end today with a challenge for you.

What are the three areas that you haven't been paying attention to because they weren't directly in front of you?

That's a big one right there.

Guys.

I want to remind you to swing by our website@neil Reyes.com where you can find all of our teaching resources.

But in addition to that, I want to thank you for stopping by.

But I want to remind you that I believe in you.

I believe in you.

I believe in your ability, and I want to encourage you to go out and smash it.

Guys, thanks for joining us today.

Have a blessed day.