If you feel you’re not meeting your own or others’ expectations in your career, it may not be down to a lack of talent, but a lack of focus. And let’s face it, with so many distractions ranging from social media to the latest organisational crisis, it can be easy to take your eye off the ball.
When we lose focus, we procrastinate, do the wrong things, lose clarity in how we lead others, and are unable to listen and pay attention to the people and challenges around us.
Ultimately, this leads to decreased productivity, subpar performance and a team that doesn’t know which direction they’re heading.
So how can you reclaim your focus at work?
Determine your priorities. If you don’t know them, ask, or if you have autonomy over how you work, create them based on your job description and your team and organisational objectives. Agree with others if needed, then write them down. Having a daily reminder of what you are working towards will help you stay focused, and seeing progress on these priorities will give you more motivation. Your priorities should involve things you can control or at least influence.
Consistency and habits. We’ve all heard the saying “How do you eat an elephant - one bite at a time!” Being consistent in how you focus is more important than doing a “big push” every now and then, which can feel daunting. For each of your priorities, work out the tasks that need to be completed and make a start on them. Breaking things down and spending some time every day or a couple of days on your priorities will help you to make progress.
Put focused time aside. On average, workers can concentrate for only 6 minutes before being distracted. Set aside time for focused work - for me, this is first thing in the morning, but find out what time works for you. Start with 30 mins each day, switch off any notifications and put your phone on silent (and ideally in another room). Over time, build up to an hour a day or even better, two hours 2-3 times a week. This will only work if you’re not spending the first 15 minutes thinking about how best to use your time, so plan this before you get going.
Of course, if you’re feeling distracted, then your team may be too, and when a team loses collective focus, the results are even more damaging to the business.
Use the lessons from reclaiming your focus at work to help your team:
Explain priorities. Teams need to understand their overall objectives, which should align with organisational goals. Help them to articulate and buy into them; doing this each quarter is a good time frame. Break priorities down further for subteams and individuals. Everyone should know the part they need to play. One danger I’ve seen with some leaders, particularly the big-thinking ones, is bamboozling their teams by throwing out ideas rather than tasks - be clear about what you want people to do, and which concepts are just you verbalising your thoughts.
Set strategic milestones and KPIs. Once you know the team's priorities, you can break this down into more manageable strategic milestones that give people something to focus on in the medium term. KPIs and other metrics help people know whether they’re on track and provide a point of reference. Three things to watch out for: ensure they’re meaningful in relation to the priorities, not forgotten about and try to find a creative way to display or measure them; otherwise, they can become like wallpaper.
Rethink meetings. Most teams spend inordinate amounts of time in meetings that add little value. This is particularly true for recurring team meetings. Set and circulate agendas in advance, together with status updates. Then people just need to do a little pre-reading and come together if there is anything to discuss. Experiment with cutting the meeting time in half and, if in person, have everyone stand. With half the time, what do you need to do to ensure that your collective meeting objectives are met? For more tips, you can download my Meeting Impact Checklist.
Focus is a finite resource, but it can be trained and it can be renewed. Once you learn how to reclaim your focus at work and sustain it, you’ll find that you are happier at work, performing better, and motivated to take the next step in your career.
If you’re finding you need to redeem your focus, or that of your team, and don’t know where to start, get in touch to see how an executive coaching programme with me could help.