In an attempt to get the professionals on her staff to stop wasting time, one novice manager instituted a policy which required staff members to fill out time sheets in which they accounted for how they used every hour of every day. The manager was both shocked and angered when these sheets were turned in at the end of the week. Several individuals had simply scrawled the same two phrases — “field work” or “office” — over the rows of tiny boxes that she’d meticulously provided to document each hour.

This manager was surprised by the rebellion, but many seasoned supervisors could have predicted it. They could also have predicted the subsequent rising animosity in that department, as both Ms. Toe the Line Manager and staff became increasingly frustrated with one another. Ms. Toe the Line posted a set of instructions beginning “A good professional …” followed by a number of items, such as “arrives at work on time,” and “is a team player.” Her staff rolled their eyes in response.

Ms. Toe the Line instituted a point system in which staff members could gain and lose points. For example, you lost points if you arrived late for a team meeting; you gained them if you contributed a good idea to the discussion. At the end of the month, whoever had accumulated the most points would win a prize, dinner for two at a local restaurant. In response, staff instituted their own system, a secret pool that rewarded whoever had scored the least number of points according to their manager’s incentive system.

To more experienced people, it would be obvious that Ms. Toe the Line’s approach would insult the professionals in her department and ultimately backfire. You can imagine the head-shaking comments you might have overheard when the stories of her management style got around: “Boy, that was a dumb move!” and “How could she have done that?”

Well, how could she have done that? Often more than one blind spot plays a role in creating managerial problems. Ms. Toe the Line illustrates the blind spot of “my-side bias.” She was blind-sided by the reaction of her staff because she never saw how these professionals would be likely to view her demands. But there was a second blind spot that also contributed to her regrettable decisions. This was the blind spot of not seeing herself, and in particular, not seeing how her own history and background were affecting her behavior in her current situation.

It didn’t surprise me to learn that this manager had been a middle-school teacher prior to entering her present field. As she talked about her struggles with her new supervisory position, it was clear to me that she was applying a school metaphor to her new place of employment. Remember those time sheets she demanded? Aren’t they very much like the lesson plans that teachers are required to prepare, plans that itemize what the teacher and class will be doing in hourly and even 15-minute segments? And the poster of how a good professional should behave echoed the “Classroom Rules” this manager had routinely posted as a teacher — along with a point system to reward good behavior and punish bad. When she expressed astonishment that some people would come to work ten minutes late, Ms. Toe the Line commented, “teachers would never do that, they’d never leave 30 children out in the school yard milling around waiting for them to arrive.”

This manager was, in fact, her own worst enemy, unable to see how much like a teacher she was acting. As soon as she became aware of how her background was influencing her, she was able to ask a crucial question: “How applicable is the student-teacher metaphor to the supervisor-staff situation in a department of professionals?” No longer wearing blinders to the metaphor she was inadvertently allowing to govern her style, she could clearly see that it didn’t fit her new circumstances.

This example is an extreme one, but — as cognitive psychologist George Lakoff points out in Moral Politics – it illustrates how we may be operating from unconscious metaphors, metaphors that make what we’re doing or what we believe seem to be “common sense” to us, while appearing utterly ridiculous and self-defeating to others. In fact, the staff members being supervised fell into the same metaphor their supervisor was using. Treated like naughty children, they began to act like naughty children when they created their own pool to counteract the manager’s point system. When we become aware of the metaphors that are guiding us personally, or guiding our profession or industry, we can then question those metaphors.

For example, for decades the accepted metaphor in the medical profession characterized the appropriate relationship between doctor and patient as a parent-child relationship. No one said explicitly that patients should behave like good children, trusting their physicians unquestioningly and obedient to their doctor’s orders. But this was the underlying metaphor that guided the behavior of both patients and doctors. Only when patients and physicians became aware of this metaphor could they come to question it and ultimately reject it in favor of a more equal partnership.

All this suggests that one way to overcome blind spots is to explore what hidden metaphors might be influencing us. To do this, we can ask ourselves what something is “like.” For example, you might try to complete stems like these:

In our company, the relationship between sales and production is like …

The way I relate to other members of my team is like …

The policy which our organization is considering adopting to me would create a situation like …

The ideas you come up with might just reveal an underlying metaphor — one that you can then think about more carefully, and evaluate with a critical eye. For example, one man reported that his team members affectionately called him “Mom.” This certainly suggests how he was relating to them! You can then ask yourself: Is this a useful way to relate? How well does it fit the situation? Does it suggest changes that need to be made? The answers to questions like these can help us overcome our blind spots and make choices with our eyes open about what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it.