A Constant Task Of Leaders Is Refocusing People's Efforts In Confusing Times

If you don’t find ways to keep people focused on the tasks at hand then you’re likely to spend plenty of time refocusing the efforts of your business or organization. It’s an especially burdensome task in today's environment.

Focus

Keeping people focused is a complex task that requires two things. You first have to identify the problem. Then you have to know which people require being focused. Before you worry about either of those two points do you have a clear definition of focus?

From the dictionary definition of focus, what you are trying to accomplish by focusing people is to get them to pay particular attention to a job, task, problem, or anything that is articulable.

Now you have to identify why your people need help focusing. Without knowing why people in your organization need help to focus, or have lost their focus, identify the causal factors of the problem.

“Sometimes people need a little refocusing,”

— Sheriff David Clague, Knox County Illinois

In reality, my old boss was correct. Sometimes it behooves leaders to take the time to refocus their subordinates or followers. No matter the organization, if the people involved within its’ structure aren’t all focused on the same goal then the organization is doomed to see many more failures that are necessary.

He was also correct when he said that he probably shouldn't have thrown out as many "F" bombs as he had during his speech. It was beneath the stature of his office and as everyone knew he'd never done the job he was upset over, it didn't get taken as seriously as it should have.

Causes Of Being Unfocused

In any organization I’ve ever worked in there are things that cause people to lose focus. Usually, that loss of focus is mitigated by the nominal effect it has on the organization's mission. However, there are times when a loss of focus can be the most destructive thing to an organization and the people it is responsible for serving.

Management Loses Focus

I attended a leadership class or two, well actually it was several, and in more than one instance a key trait of successful leaders also can lead to the loss of focus. It does this through complacency. One of the traits is to make yourself as unneeded as possible. The thought is that once you have people trained, skilled, and on the right path toward the organization’s mission, then you can coast.

Coasting leads to complacency. It causes leaders to begin to take things for granted. Division heads will begin to believe supervisors have everything under control. Supervisors believe everything is under control because they believe their people are doing their absolute best and hearing zero complaints from people beneath them. This goes all the way from the lowest rung of management and supervision to the highest rung in the organization.

When just one rung is wrong and doesn’t know this because they’ve been complacent in checking their area’s progress, the rest of the organization both above them and below suffers.

Employee Complacency

Employees become complacent when they are given the room to believe the wrong things about their jobs. Their job becomes stagnant in this way, and they no longer see anywhere else to go but ultimately out of that organization. When the lowest rung in the organizational chart believes there is no way to advance any higher, or that the people above them in the chart don’t care enough to check on how things are progressing, the employees feel underappreciated in the organization and don’t care about the job or the goals at hand.

Employee Confusion

If you have ever worked in an organization where policy is done by memo, then you’ve no doubt worked in an area that policy changed in a matter that felt confusing, hard to keep up with, and lacked direction. The practice of “policy by memo” feels too much like changing the rules in the middle of a game. It leaves person one doing things in a way that person two isn’t and nearly always pits employees against one another when it comes to performance standards.

Employee Burnout

Employee burnout is a growing trend, especially in the current era of a lower labor force in the markets and what seems like fewer people looking for work. Yet, some jobs have always had a heightened degree of stress, excessive workloads, and subsequent burnout.

The middle managers and upper management must keep the first-line supervisors feeling hopeful about the mission of the organization. This is the best source of real-time information about the daily operations of an organization, as well as the future of the organization's management. Once you begin to lose a connection to the first-line supervisors, you’ve lost that direct line to your labor force.

This is the case because first-line supervisors are often in the “trenches with the labor force.” They are the ones that are most likely to show appreciation to the hard workers in labor. They’ll be the ones to notice deficiencies and address them before middle management or upper management is aware. They are oftentimes, also responsible for training the labor force. So, an unsatisfied, unhappy, and unfocused supervisor can do more damage to an organization than anything else ever will. They’ll build an unfocused and unsatisfied labor force that cares little for their organization.

Finding Solutions

Eventually, people will lose their way. They have had a “bad run” for a time. They’re distracted. They act like they “just don’t care.” People will suffer personal struggles that management may not know about such as divorce, depression, financial stress, or family illness.

That’s when it’s time for management to make a tough decision and step out of the ivory tower or that corner office. The organization needs a leader. For now, you should take a more day-to-day approach. Check in with all of the people beneath you, let them vent, let them know you see them and address the issues as they come to you while being proactive about seeking out the problems that forced you out of your office. Once you’ve got things on track, then you can relax a little.

To keep things on track, if you have had to go through a re-focusing period within your organization, make it a point to check in on the troops from time to time. Quarterly to semi-annually at a minimum. Remember, the best leaders weren’t the ones that stayed in the command centers. The best leaders were the ones that the lowest rung got to see whether it was necessary or not.