Great Leaders Have a Laser Focus

To become a great leader, you need to be focused on achieving your vision, living your core values and accomplishing your goals. To be able to accomplish these ambitions and dreams, you need to have a laser focus on how you spend your time. If the task adds value to accomplishing your vision, living your core values or accomplishing your goals, that’s exactly where you want to spend your time.

Research demonstrates that nearly half of your daily activities are discretionary tasks that offer little personal satisfaction or the accomplishment of your vision. If the activity doesn’t add value, you need to delegate or dump the task. Do they relate to the goals you want to accomplish this year? Most people feel that we all need to figure out how to do more with less. There’s some truth to this because the only way we are all blessed equally is we all have the same amount of time. And, the reality is that some people get a lot more accomplished in the same amount of time. The old cliché is true. If you want something done, give it to a busy person.

Laozi, the great Chinese philosopher was right. To obtain wisdom, subtract things every day. Getting rid of activities that keep you busy is easier said than done. Most people will go to great lengths to tell you why they need to continue to spend their time doing what they do. So as you review your vision, values and goals, figure out what you’re going to streamline, delegate, or dump so you can obtain even greater focus in achieving your goals. The following will help you gain even greater clarity:

Keep a time log: Over the course of one week, keep track, in 15 minute increments, of how you actually spend your time. At the end of the week, total up the amount of time that is spent moving forward your vision, values, and goals, and how much time is spent on busy work that someone else could do. As executive coaches, we’ve helped many clients create a time log and each time the executive has been able to dramatically reduce the amount of time they spend on low value tasks.

Identify low value tasks: Unless you are a local politician, reading the entire local newspaper when you can see the news highlights online has become a time wasting habit for some. What are you reading that might be distracting you from accomplishing your vision? What are the associations you belong to that no longer provide you with value? How many stacks of paper or magazines do you have piling up around you when you could go paperless and be much more efficient and streamlined? What activities have you been doing for your clients/customers for years that may no longer hold value to them in accomplishing their vision and goals?

Meeting effectiveness evaluation: Determine if a meeting is really necessary or if the goal can be accomplished in another format. In our technological world, there is an even more important question: Is it the best use of everyone’s time to travel and meet in person or can the goal be accomplished in a video conference call. This week, I did a video conference presentation that, to complete in person, normally would have required travel and taken two days of my time.

Delegate, outsource or dump low value activities: Repetitive tasks that add little value to your vision, values or goals need to go. They need to go because they take your time, very little thought and, if they truly need to be accomplished, are better off being done by someone else. Our research shows that somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of your week is spent on these type of activities.

Gain efficiency: Each year, hold discussions around how you and your team can become even more efficient. Simple things like converting from using both a laptop and an iPad, to a small portable computer with a touch screen can make you even more efficient having all your information in one location, with you at all times. Other ideas may be purging files, emptying your in-basket, or creating templates for reoccurring tasks can all help in making you even more efficient.

Say “no:” There are a lot of things that people ask you to do, many times complimenting you and telling you how you’re needed or that you’re the perfect person to handle this request. Is the task at hand really something you want to do? Does the activity advance your vision, values, or goals? If not, a simple, “I’m so flattered you asked me to do this with/for you, but I’m unable to do so at this time. If anything changes, I’ll get back to you.”

Organize your workspace: With many organizations, downsizing the workspace they provide to employees, and some employees moving to hoteling workspace (if there is an open workstation, you are welcome to check in there for the hour or day) you have to be even more streamlined and organized if you want to improve your effectiveness. File or throw out things you are not currently using. Move everything that you can to an electronic file so that you’ll have immediate access, anywhere you go.

Fight off distractions: Email, social media, your phone, and people walking by to stick their head in your office can all be huge distractions from your laser focus. If you need to be effective, find or create an environment where you will have less opportunity to be distracted.

Schedule time to think: I asked a pediatric cardio thoracic surgeon how he had built a reputation for being one of the best surgeons in the nation. He replied that, early in his career, he spent a great deal of time researching, writing papers, making presentations and doing peer review. He went on to add that under the current system of RVU reimbursement, he has to spend almost all of his waking hours doing surgery and he no longer has time to think. Finding time to think is a challenge for many of us. But, it’s only when we have time to think that we are able to create ideas and make breakthroughs that help us to significantly advance our vision, values and goals. Thinking time is what allows you to expand your bandwidth…allowing you to focus, learn, reason, resist the way we have always done things and make creative leaps forward. To gain bandwidth, you need time to think.

Do one thing at a time: To all the people who take great pride in being multi-taskers, juggling multiple balls at the same time, I have bad news for you. You can only do one thing well at a time. You can listen, or you can talk, or you can respond to an email but it’s difficult to be effective and do all at the same time. Figuring out what your most important activity is at this moment is something that separates great leaders from managers who struggle.

Now is a great time to start a new habit. Set aside a quiet time to really think about where your time is going each day, and then develop a plan to take charge of how/where you spend your time. You cannot have a laser focus on leadership if your thought process is constantly being bombarded from all angles. Make 2014 the year that you stop doing things that limit your effectiveness, and start focusing on doing the things that maximize your leadership potential.