Most leaders and managers would like a team that delivers great results; direct reports who are effective with their time and who can maintain their focus on tasks through to completion. In reality, we can all be challenged by multiple priorities, difficult stakeholders, situations at home and a variety of time and focus stealers. As a leader you can’t fully control your team, however, you can have an enormous impact on their focus and productivity. In my blog, I share a few ideas to consider that can enable your team to achieve better results.
1. Team meetings and 1:1
Depending on the size of your team, your organisation structure and a breakdown of responsibilities you may reflect on the purpose of your team meetings and how to use them to increase the focus of your team. You may ask:
- Do your team meetings only work as a strategic update from the business?
- Do you look at your numbers and KPIs?
- Do you share successes and lessons learned?
- Do you have a topic of interest and dive into it?
All of them seem to be important questions, however, if you are at a time when you need to deliver a challenging project with your team, it is essential to talk about priorities. You can discuss the goal for the week, ask everyone to identify and share the top three things they commit to deliver this week (including yourself). Give your team the opportunity to flag any challenges they face and explore how you or other colleagues can help deal with these blocks. You may decide to split the team’s workload differently, so you can achieve greater success as a team or come to the realisation that some tasks may need to wait a little bit longer, and some stakeholders need to be prepared for that.
During your 1:1s, especially if you have stressed and overwhelmed individuals, struggling with focus, you may need to support them further by helping them to identify their priorities and time stealers. You may want to mentor them (share your experience and what works for you) or even coach them (so they find their own techniques and strategies) on how to be more focused and productive. One of the most important things to remember here is to follow up, ask next time about their success, things that didn’t work out, what they learnt and how to set goals for the future.
2. Methodologies
You may have a direct report who prepares to-do lists and does not prioritise their tasks. They may have a long to-do list with deadlines, emails and navigate between the two. They might be frustrated that they can’t complete everything, they are always busy and may complain that their workload is too high, they may also become stressed or give up because they are not able to complete everything. You can share with them your favourite way of prioritising your workload, together with time-blocking, deep work and tackling similar tasks together to limit focus switches. You may want to share a few useful tools as well:
- Click HERE to explore Eisenhower’s Matrix.
- Click HERE to explore the 4Ds (Do, Drop, Defer and Delegate).
- Click HERE to explore Warren Buffett’s 2 Lists.
- Click HERE to explore RICE.
- Click HERE to explore ABCDE.
- Click HERE to explore MoSCoW (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have and Will Not Have).
3. Become a role model
As a leader, you set an example for your team. Sometimes you need to consciously bring a certain topic for discussion, perhaps share your experience, for example, how to stay focused, your team will see your actions and learn from them. It may come down to a few things:
- They can see in your calendar that there are blocks of time for focused work.
- Your status is ‘busy’ on Slack or Teams, or maybe even not available, because you turn them off while working on an important presentation.
- When you have a 1:1 with them, your phone is in your bag, because you are giving them your full attention and focus.
- They don’t see you multitasking.
- They can see you booking a meeting room or going to a quiet area of the office to focus on a bigger task etc.
Little examples like these speak volumes. If you are also working on improving your focus, share that with them. No one is perfect, your true experience and little successes can inspire them to improve their focus too.
4. Cultural norms in the organisation
Your organisational culture has an impact on you and your team’s focus. Working with coaching clients from different organisations, I have noticed a few norms that can be a real danger for you and your team’s focus.
Firstly, too many meetings and not enough time for actual work. This leads to people multitasking, decreased focus in meetings, working after business hours, sacrificing their free time or not completing their tasks. This point is often linked with the fact that you can receive an invite to a meeting and there is an assumption that you will attend it because ‘it will be good for you to keep informed’.
Secondly, the belief that everything is a priority for the business. If the leader continues to add more tasks to their team’s plate and does not allow them to hire more people or take something off their plate, it can become stressful and overwhelming.
Thirdly, discussing a problem or topic in the meeting, avoiding commitment and do not agree on the next steps for the completion. Or even if there are steps agreed nobody completes them and it takes another three meetings to make something happen.
Finally, the expectation is that you should always be willing and ready to collaborate on additional projects, because they are amazing opportunities for you to grow, show that you are helpful to others and invest in your career.
There might be other unwritten norms in your organisation, what can you do about them as a leader? Can you be a voice to the challenge status quo? What would happen if you acted against the norm? If you need more support regarding the topic of focus, please reach out and let’s discuss how coaching could work for you.