Is Perspective Limiting Your View

Each of us views the world through a unique lens, crafted and polished by our personal experiences, our upbringing, our education, our successes, and our failures all contribute to how we interpret situations and solve problems. This personal viewpoint is invaluable and acts as a place of both reason and wisdom within our own minds. The challenge is when our perspective is the only place of consultation, our view closes in, and our ability to succeed and grow is capped by the limits of our own experience.

If you are a leader who achieved greatness by consistently working late and putting your hand up for additional work or projects, experience taught you that success only comes when you do more than is expected. Your perspective is shaped by your own journey and may prevent you from seeing that there is another way.

This is where the true value of leadership education shines. Stopping to ask yourself, "What am I not seeing?", encourages you to actively seek out and explore the ideas of others, especially those who see the world differently. Leadership education, when targeted, provides leaders with the forgiveness and tools to not be right all the time.

Leadership is not about having all the answers. It’s about having the humility to know you don’t and the curiosity to find them in the minds of others. One powerful way to break free from the confines of our own perspective is by fostering a culture of design thinking within our organisations.

When you lead the same team for a considerable number of years, you are likely to close your perspective in even further as you all start to think alike. One way of challenging your approach is to consider investing in Design Thinking as a way of seeing the blue-sky opportunities around you.

Design Thinking places empathy at its core, challenging us to deeply understand the needs, experiences, and viewpoints of others before leaping to solutions. It thrives on collaboration across roles and specialties, inviting contributions from every team member, regardless of perceptions or hierarchy. Through iterative problem-solving, where ideas are prototyped, tested, and refined together, design thinking encourages ongoing learning and adaptation. As leaders, when we embrace this mindset, we actively create environments where differing perspectives are not just accepted but celebrated as sources of insight.

By adopting a design thinking culture, we help our teams uncover innovative solutions that may otherwise be missed and continually broaden our collective viewpoints. This approach doesn’t just result in better products or services; it builds stronger, more open-minded leaders and teams capable of meeting complex challenges from new and unexpected angles. By embracing diverse perspectives in this practical, structured way, we move beyond the limitations of our own history and lead from a place of broader understanding and greater effectiveness.

If challenging perspective and exploring opportunities are on your radar in 2026, join us for our Design Thinking SkillBOX course and steer the boat a little.