What are the essential strategies to think, focus and lead? All of us are running faster and faster as technology shreds our attention. We desperately need to take back control by learning to stop, reflect and focus. The discipline of paying attention has an immediate impact on performance and accelerates learning. Over the last 15 years of coaching executives I have found that knowing how and where to focus is critical to learning leadership skills. It is also vital for organizational effectiveness.
We live in an age that requires us to manage information, and there is a flood of it coming from all sides. Continual multitasking seems essential. However, we overestimate our ability to multitask effectively and underestimate its negative impact on our ability to concentrate. Multitasking may be needed in some individual contributor roles that require quick and efficient transactions. But if you are a professional or leader you need to think ahead, facilitate and monitor progress towards goals. To manage information we need to manage ourselves and take control of our attention.
So many things interfere with our ability to stop the action to focus and think:
- Unscheduled interruptions
- Phone calls
- Emails
- Changing organizational priorities and/or crises
- Everyone around you running faster
- Wanting to do/accomplish more
What interferes with your ability to stop the action and focus? What solutions have you found? In future blogs I will describe the tools I have found effective. Is your mind full? Look for Josh’s upcoming book, Mindfull: 10 Strategies to Unload Your Brain so You Can Think, Focus and Lead, due out this Spring from Wharton Business School Press.
Joshua Ehrlich, PhD, is the Dean of the BeamPines/Middlesex University Master’s Program in Executive Coaching . Josh advises CEOs and senior leaders on complex organizational challenges. He is an executive coach, supervisor and accreditor of coaches at BeamPines, a talent management consulting firm based in NYC. Josh speaks to a variety of audiences about international coaching standards and brings together coaches from around the world to teach best practices. His research at Yale and New York University and numerous articles have clarified the psychological and physiological mechanisms by which stress impairs effectiveness.
Overstretched executives always seem to reach out for things like time management as a life preserver when they feel like they're drowning. That gets them to the door of a solution. Josh - your work can help them break down that door and discover a missing element that may have been eluding them their entire career - Focus. Having more time is great.
Knowing how to use that time with focus is so much better. You have managed to turn over new earth in the overtilled field of talent development. It confirms a little something we've all experienced from leaders in our careers - that 10 minutes with a leader with focus beats hours with a leader who has none. I eagerly await your upcoming blogs to learn more so we can all stop "wasting our precious energy", as the Tracy Chapman song says.
Bravo!
Andy Bergin
At a time of year when people need to remember what it's like to unload their brains and think clearly, I found the related webcast Josh presented refreshing and helpful. Check out the related webcast Josh presented in HCI's Next Generation Leadership track, re-broadcasting Jan 20-22, or if you're a professional HCI member you can download it on demand at http://www.hci.org/cfe/communities/868/932