A primary task of leadership is to direct attention.To do so, leaders must learn to focus their own attention. When we speak about being focused, we commonly mean thinking about one thing while filtering out distractions. But, as intelligent human beings, we can focus in many ways and for different purposes.
These modes of attention can be further grouped into three broad buckets—focusing on yourself, focusing on others, and focusing on the wider world—and sheds new light on the practice of many essential leadership skills! using on yourself first, you build up emotional intelligence through self awareness and self control.
Focusing on others is the foundation of empathy and the ability to build social relationships. Leaders who focus on others are easily recognisable; they are the ones who find common ground, whose opinions carry the most weight and with whom other people want to work with. Here we deal with the ability of a leader to understand another’s perspective, ability to feel what another feels and the ability to sense what the other person wants from you. Fortunately, these can be learned.
Focusing on the wider world; leaders with a strong outward focus are not only good listeners, but also good questioners. They are visionaries who can sense the consequences of decisions and imagine how the choices they make today will play out in the future. They are open to the surprising ways in which unrelated data can inform their central interests. Focusing on the wider world also means focusing on Strategy (another wide subject), Innovation and systems awareness.
So, a Focused Leader… puts it all together!
We want to work with you to help you develop your Inner Leader… and talk about one major character trait of a focused leader. This is an extremely broad subject, but we have attempted to summarise it here for you.
These modes of attention can be further grouped into three broad buckets—focusing on yourself, focusing on others, and focusing on the wider world—and sheds new light on the practice of many essential leadership skills! using on yourself first, you build up emotional intelligence through self awareness and self control.
Focusing on others is the foundation of empathy and the ability to build social relationships. Leaders who focus on others are easily recognisable; they are the ones who find common ground, whose opinions carry the most weight and with whom other people want to work with. Here we deal with the ability of a leader to understand another’s perspective, ability to feel what another feels and the ability to sense what the other person wants from you. Fortunately, these can be learned.
Focusing on the wider world; leaders with a strong outward focus are not only good listeners, but also good questioners. They are visionaries who can sense the consequences of decisions and imagine how the choices they make today will play out in the future. They are open to the surprising ways in which unrelated data can inform their central interests. Focusing on the wider world also means focusing on Strategy (another wide subject), Innovation and systems awareness.
So, a Focused Leader… puts it all together!
We want to work with you to help you develop your Inner Leader… and talk about one major character trait of a focused leader. This is an extremely broad subject, but we have attempted to summarise it here for you.
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