Focus

Denver used to host an extensive street fair, BuskerFest, every summer. This street carnival featured scores of performers: contortionists, magicians, jugglers, fire-swallowers, memory experts, and more. It was a good place to learn about and witness true engagement.

In 2001, one performer captured my attention. He sat atop a seven-foot unicycle. He balanced one end of a three-foot pole on his chin and a spinning plate balanced on the pole's other end. As he pedaled the unicycle and balanced the spinning plate, he began to juggle three flaming torches. He never missed a pedal. He kept that plate spinning atop the pole. He juggled the torches with seeming ease. An amazing act. An engaging act. An amazing act of engagement.

When he finished, I complimented him for his masterful focus on every detail of his performance. He grinned through his grease paint and said, “Well, there's so much going on up there, that's how I keep tuned in. I guess you're right, it is focus."

Staying engaged in one's individual work demands a high level of focus, but, I'd say that working on a successful team requires focus on functions and tasks, as well. Enhanced employee engagement is one result that focus achieves. The more successfully team members share focus on issues, the more successfully they will become engaged in the cause and purpose of their team.

Here are three specific benefits to a team’s sharing focus:

1. Shared focus on team identity generates a simple perspective of team purpose, objectives, and procedures. Shared identity creates harmony and unity within the team. That team works more smoothly and successfully.
2. Shared focus on objectives and direction enhances team awareness of “what we’re all about.” That focus streamlines actions and interactions.
3. Shared focus on actions and performance gives a team synergistic energy. Team members accomplish “greater than the sum” of their energies and abilities. That conserves and generates energy.

Here are 5 ways  managers can encourage team members to enhance their common, shared focus:

1. Sloganize. Create a team slogan or motto for shared focus. Use it as the attention-getter, memory-jogger, focus-maintainer on e-mail signatures, team meeting agendas, and in the byline for newsletter articles about team projects.  The team will more likely gravitate to a slogan members generate themselves.
2. Break the Ice. Start team meetings with icebreakers that target team focus. Simple start-up questions can be answered around the table: “How fast can we create an F.O.C.U.S. acronym?” “What one word best names our focus?” “Can we create an acronym with that word?”
3. Seek to Clarify. Build the team habit of talking about how clear the team’s focus is and how it can be made clearer. The more common these conversations, the more the team is attuned to an ever-sharper focus.
4. Focus on Focus. Make focus a part of every evaluation of team progress. (It is assumed that such evaluation is ongoing and not just at the completion of a/the team project.) These questions may be, “Did these results come from our (lack of) common focus?” “If we ensure that every member of the team is ‘on the same page,’ how can we improve our performance going forward?”
5. Question the Focus. Call the focus into question at regular intervals. Make it a point to ask if the team is looking in the right direction, if it is time to refocus, if there are factors that require change in the team’s focus.

Source Notes:

Photo of busker is by Lachezar