Frantic leaders lack focus.
Nothing meaningful gets done without focus.
Unfocused leaders:
- Allow trivialities to become urgencies. Persistent drama suggests lack of focus.
- Start too much and finish too little.
- Neglect mission and vision.
- Lead without priorities.
- Don’t understand customers.
7 habits that defeat distraction and clarify focus:
- Begin each day with a short list of things that must be done before the day ends. What must be done today?
- Evaluate importance. Do more of what matters most. You aren’t important because you’re doing what’s insignificant. On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is this discuss or project. Ask, who cares and does it matter?
- Say no to good ideas that distract from great ideas. Eliminate at least 70% of the ideas you generate in brainstorming sessions. Unfocused leaders have too many ideas.
- Drive toward execution. End conversations by asking what’s next? Listen for observable behaviors, deadlines, and results.
- Dig into unmentionables. What’s hidden or ignored? Are teams afraid to say what they really think? Is someone violating organizational values and getting away with it?
- Filter thinking. Take a few minutes everyday to filter-out the ugly and jot down the beautiful, admirable, authentic, and compelling.
- Clarify thinking with conversations. Bring outsiders in. Call customers. Go to frontline employees. The same people – sitting around the same table – deliver the same results.
Success comes to those who habitually clarifying focus.
Leadership dictionary “F’s”
- Facilitate
- Fail
- Faithful
- Fallible
- Family
- Fearless/fearful
- Feedback/feedforward
- Fight
- Filter
- Flexible
- Focus
- Follow
- Forecast
- Frank
- Fresh
- Friend
- Fruit/fruitful
- Fun – Leaders who say we work hard and play hard have separated fun from work.
- Future
Thanks to Facebook Fans for their suggestions.
How can leaders defeat distraction and find focus?
What other words that begin with “F” can you add to the list?
**Tomorrow is the “G” installment in the Dictionary for Leaders.