It’s easy to become blind to the stories and scenarios our people repeatedly shower us with. We all have blind spots and need help seeing what’s hidden.

After writing a posting the other day entitled, The Greatest Salespeople Scams Sales Managers Buy Into, I was hit with a few questions from readers. This particular post must have struck a chord with many people, especially managers and executives. The question was this, “Why do we continually fall into the trap of believing our own stories, fables, and illusions when we know that, from a logical perspective, they make no sense and wind up hurting us in the end?”

My Answer:

Here’s why. Because these S.C.A.M.M.s are blind spots. We’re just so used to them, we become blind to them. And this applies to both our S.C.A.M.M.s and the ones our salespeople run. Although we can more easily see the challenges and S.C.A.M.M.s in others, where they are stuck, what their core issues may be, and what might be an obvious solution for them, we are always the last person to be able to see them in ourselves. This is true regardless of your age, profession, wisdom, or experience.

What further drives the investment we make in our stories and the fables we create about ourselves is that we fall in love with our stories and the things we think are true. We love our stories and S.C.A.M.M.s! The more we tell them, the more engrained they become in our thinking and our being and the more we believe them. And boy, do they do a wonderful job justifying our position, experiences and performance. The problem is that we give our stories way too much power over us. The more we believe our fables, the more factual they seem to us, further adding to the challenge of distinguishing between what is reality and what is not.

Like the rest of the human race, managers need an objective person to peer inside their lives and help them identify and rewrite the stories they tell themselves, the ones that hold them back from greatness, prevent them from living life the way they want, and subsequently inhibit them from becoming a fully self-expressed, masterful executive sales coach. After all, I know many a manager who actually think they’re doing a pretty decent job coaching their team, when the harsh reality of it is, they’re not. And the evidence is in their monthly numbers and level of attrition they’re experiencing both within their sales team and with their customers.

Whether you’re an athlete, a coach, a manager, or a salesperson, you still require a coach on the sidelines to observe you and uncover the confining behavior or thinking that you cannot. There is a tremendous value to having someone on the outside looking in and pointing out the things that you are unable to recognize on your own; especially when you’re in the thick of the game.

Photo Credit: Eduardo M.