Focus anybody ?

Daniel Goleman's (emotional intelligence) recent book is titled "Focus, the hidden driver of excellence". There are different levels of focus, but what I am interested in is the focus that exists (or is missing !) in a team.


Have you recently addressed your team (either those reporting to you, or a team of your peers), making a presentation about last year's results or this year's priorities ? Of course, when you make your presentation, you are concentrating on what you are saying, ensuring your message is clear and well understood. But have you ever tried - not easy, as you are presenting at the same time - to observe who is really listening ? Very often, some start to peek at their cell phone for the latest emails. And yet more often, distraction is not noticeable ... People can be nodding or staring at you and yet they think about something completely different. In larger groups, the challenge is even more important. A one-hour presentation by the CEO to the entire workforce is often the opportunity for some unnoticed Facebook time (for the audience that is, not for the CEO !).

More and more knowledge workers spend their working hours on a computer. As one of my Linkedin contacts recently admitted "I was looking for a piece of information on the Internet and ended up spending one hour watching Youtube videos !" Judging from the postings and likes on Facebook, many people I know spend a good portion of their day making sure they have not missed any important update on their social network ! Distractions are abound, and in my view have become a major challenge for productivity in organizations. A few years ago, blocking access to social media sites was a partial solution. But smart phones and fast networks make for a very good alternative !


How can you ensure that your people are working to solve your organization's challenges ? How can you ensure their minds don't wander off all the time ?

The most simple way is to ... stop talking. Ask someone a question, and wait for their reply. And then follow up their reply with another question, not your thoughts on what they just said. And then another question. When you ask someone a question, a very simple yet powerful thing happens: people think (because you are waiting for an answer). When people think and are actively engaged in the exchange with you, they will not wander off and get distracted. They are actually using their brains to think and solve the challenge you offer them. Action Learning allows you to apply this principle to a group setting. I have observed groups addressing an important business problem, for nearly 3 hours. There was no Powerpoint presentation, and nobody told the others what the solution was. People only asked questions to one another. The level of concentration and focus is very powerful. When you have a group of people engaging with each other, building on each other's ideas, intensely for 3 hours, the output of the session is so different from any regular meeting. One of the most frequent comments from a group that has experienced their first Action Learning session is "If only all our meetings could be run like this !"

Don't try to fight Facebook distractions: you'll lose ! Instead, engage your team, give them a challenge and ensure they ask questions to each other. Minds don't wander off when questions are being asked ... ! And the brain is still a pretty powerful tool to look for solutions.

When was the last time you asked your team to reflect ?

In a recent McKinsey article on the challenges around leadership development, the authors write that one issue is that reflection (learning) is often disconnected from the 'real work'. Learning and reflection happens in the training room, or in the off-site development program, or in the MBA program. In the office, we ... work ! And there are so many important priorities to deal with that we do not really have much time to go for training sessions. And we all know that, for all the reflection and thinking that goes on in a training room, very few can actually apply their new learning in their working environment. The challenge is combining this learning and reflection, with 'real work'.

Any leader would agree that learning is important. Organizations and teams need to learn to better deal with the more and more complex business challenges of our time. Most often we assume that people learn by doing stuff, like new assignments or projects. Trying out new things is important, but a key variable in how humans learn is the way they reflect about what they have been doing. Is this similar to what I know ? What is different ? Where else is this new experience applicable ? Learning really only happens when reflection is added to the experience. Otherwise we are stuck in the treadmill-like cycle of doing things and then doing some more things.

How and where does reflection happen ? We often assume that it happens somewhere "in people's heads", more or less automatically, like breathing. Either while they work or when they drive home. In some cases, this might be true, but for sure leaving it up to each individual to 'think' about their learning is limited. Reflection is sometimes associated with 'doing nothing' or daydreaming, because indeed, it does involve silence.

Action Learning does assume that reflection happens by itself. In an Action Learning setting, reflecting on what each individual, as well as the group, has experienced is made explicit. It is each time very powerful to go around the group and ask each member what they have learned, how they see this experience, or how it changes their view on things.

When is the last time you asked your team to reflect on something, and asked them to share what they had learned ? Try it - allow for some silence - and you might be surprised about the quality of what they share.