I was working with a new leader recently who said, “I know I’m missing something, but I can’t tell what it is.”

She wasn’t lacking skill.

She was bumping up against the part of leadership nobody likes to admit.

Our brain fills in missing pieces without asking permission.

That’s a blind spot.

Not the thing you didn’t notice, but the meaning you assigned without realizing it.

This is exactly where Cultures of Thinking shows up in real leadership work.

Ron Ritchhart talks about creating a culture where people examine their own thinking, question their interpretations, and stay open to multiple perspectives.

But leaders rarely do this for themselves.

They are too busy moving on to the next thing.

Here’s the good news.

You don’t need an AI note taker or a perfect transcript to start seeing your blind spots.

You just need a way to challenge your own first read of a situation.

Here’s what I showed her.

After a meeting that felt heavy, instead of replaying every detail, I asked her to write a few sentences about what she thought happened.

Not the whole moment.

Just her interpretation.

Then I had her ask AI:

“What’s another possible interpretation of this situation?”

That’s it.

No magic.

No pretending AI “knows” the meeting better than she does.

AI simply widened her lens.

It offered alternatives she hadn’t considered:

“Maybe the questions showed engagement, not doubt.”

“Maybe the tension was about workload, not your leadership.”

“Maybe the silence meant processing, not disagreement.”

She looked at the screen and said, “I didn’t even think of that.”

And that moment is the core of a Culture of Thinking.

Not the right answer.

Not the perfect insight.

Just the willingness to look at your own thinking and stretch it a little.

Blind spots aren’t signs of weakness.

They’re signs that our assumptions are running ahead of us.

AI helps you pause long enough to ask,

“What else could be true?”

If you’ve ever walked away from a meeting feeling uneasy but unsure why, this kind of thinking might give you the clarity you didn’t realize you were missing.