Shifting Your Focus Affects Your Leadership
Individual contributors get promoted for different reasons. It’s often a reward for strong individual performance. For others, it’s because they have the potential to help the company meet its goals. Being promoted is good for the individual but the company has to benefit also. The benefit improves things for the bottom line and myriad stakeholders. When the company succeeds, employees have jobs, customers have products and services and stockholders have income. To be successful, you have to direct your focus in two directions, first inward and then outward – in that order.
Looking Inward
In the beginning, you concentrate not so much on getting things right but on not getting them wrong. It’s normal to want to have all the answers right from the start because you want to be liked and respected, especially by the new team. You don’t want to screw up because the boss has placed their trust in you and you want to look like you know what you’re doing. After all, first impressions mean a lot so you have to work on yourself before you can take care of your team.
Inward focus means learning the hard skills that drive the company How do you schedule the team, assign the work, and review their progress? It means writing reviews and knowing what meetings to attend. It’s understanding what you have to do day in and day out to get the work done and it takes all your effort and concentration to get it right. The problem is it takes time to develop the knowledge and the skills. At first, you don’t even know what you’re supposed to do beyond assigning work and approving time off. You have to focus on yourself because your success depends on it. Once you get comfortable in the role, it’s time to shift outward and when you do, the job starts to morph into the craft.
Shifting Focus
Your job starts with a learning curve but changes as you get the hang of the routine stuff. Now you can start to think more about what the team needs. This means finding out which team member needs close supervision, which members can be left alone, and to what degree. More importantly, it means finding out why. Do you know if Jake can’t or won’t do his job? It makes a difference in how you handle his training and his assignments. Once you know what he needs and how you can help him, everyone benefits. Jake, the team, you, the company, and the stakeholders reap the rewards. The road to successful leadership requires seeing the big picture and this is where it begins.
So How Do You Do It?
Changing your focus is a matter of developing skills, hard and soft. I’ll be honest, many managers often think soft skills mean handholding and pop psychology sessions with the team. That’s not what I mean at all. Developing your teams’ hard skills will get them through the workday. Developing their soft skills will help them, and you, sleep at night. Here are a few examples:
Hard Skills:
- Project Management
- Presentations
- Marketing
- Accounting
Soft Skills
- Emotional Intelligence
- Communication skills
- Verbal
- Nonverbal
- Critical Thinking
- Conflict Resolution
- Problem-Solving
Hopefully, you see how the skills in one group can affect performance in the other. A lack of critical thinking skills can torpedo a marketing campaign and botching the accounting could affect a team member’s problem-solving abilities. As the manager, your job is to develop each team member’s ability in both groups and you can’t do that if your focus is on yourself. The team is your direct responsibility and by focusing more on their success, you will ensure yours.
Conclusion
Working your way up the ladder means constantly shifting your focus to see the big picture. Always start with yourself. Discover where you are, where you want to go, and how you plan to get there. This involves being a lifelong learner, whether it’s what the job entails or developing soft skills that grow your outlook. In time you’ll start to see the role others play in your worldview and how your actions impact them. It’s all about being aware and willing to lead the way.