The leader and his focus

In life and especially in leadership we are faced with multiple options, alternatives and choices and it takes wisdom to know what exactly needs attention and what must be ignored or discarded. Things, issues, people and situation are all fighting for our attention.

Many people get stuck and overwhelmed with the multiplicity of what needs their attention. One thing that makes successful people stand out is their ability to know what needs to be done per time . They learn to keep the major things major and put the minor things where they belong. The ability to focus is a critical ingredient to success.

“Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.” —Tony Robbins

A leader must be focused. He must know where to direct his attention to. He must never lose focus of the essence of his leadership.  He must always keep the big picture in mind and keep working towards its accomplishment.

A leader must be careful not to allow his time, effort and resources to be eaten up and wasted by tasks, responsibilities and issues that seem important but have no bearing or last value and significance on his purpose and leadership agenda. He must keep the main things the main things.

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A leader must avoid the pitfall of misdirected attention… majoring on the minors and minoring on the majors.

For there to be focus a leader must have a definite clear of purpose – he must have certain aims or objectives why he is leading people. It is this that he will anchor his attention and focus on. Everything that will be done must revolve round his main purpose, aims and objectives. A leader must have a critical vision which should guide his operations – this vision will determine his boundaries. A leader who is a “general purpose leader” can never be focused. A leader is someone who knows and shows the way and if he unsure of where he is going his leadership will lack focus.

It takes discipline to be focused. Without discipline focus cannot be possible. A leader must be disciplined to have system of rules of doing things. There must be laid down regulations and methods of doing things so focus can be properly channeled. Discipline will help the leader stay with the scope of his vision. Discipline will help him pursue the vision no matter what.  A leader who will be focused and stay focused must consciously acquire, maintain and develop friendships that will encourage, motivate and challenge him to be focused. He must have people in his life who will be bold enough to keep him on track as regards his purpose.

Focus is slippery and if care is not taken it’s easy to veer off into other things. A leader must, therefore, put in place a system to regularly review what he is doing. He must have a means to know if he is still on course or whether he has deviated from the vision.

One of the things that will help in this regards are goals. Goals are landmarks on the way to success. Goals help to monitor progress. Through goals we know our destination, how far we have gone, how long we still have to go and whether we are still on track.

A person with a broken focus shoots himself in the foot and incapacitates himself from being the best he can be.

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