5 Essential Skills to Be a Focused Leader

A focused leader is essential to drive success and motivate others in the workplace. A focused leader will not just be able to give others direction but will know how to remove distractions that can hinder progress. However, being focused doesn’t mean suffering from tunnel vision. A leader with focus will be able to discern what is important and set clear goals to achieve that.

There are 3 essential factors that deserve your focus if you want to be a successful leader

• Focus on yourself and your goals
• Focus on others around you to give clear direction
• Focus on the wider world to see the broader picture

Let’s briefly at how you can use these 3 ways to become a focused leader.

Focus on yourself

First, self-awareness is essential for any successful and focused leader. To lead others successfully, you need to be aware of how others view you. You also need to clearly know your own opinions and be able to have the courage to make decisions without outside distractions.

Focus on others

To be a successful leader also requires focusing on others to give them clear direction. As a business leader, this requires a great amount of empathy. After all, if you don’t understand how others will respond to your decisions, it may be difficult for them to trust your leadership. So, a focused leader should understand 3 things:

• the perspective of others
• how someone else feels about matters
• know what others expect of you as a leader

Focus on the wider world

Advances in technology mean that it is even more essential that focused leaders pay attention to the changing world. This often means stepping out of your comfort zone to focus on new technology.

5 Skills to Be a Focused Leader

Now that you know where you focus should be as a successful business leader, let’s look at 5 skills to achieve that.

1. Increase collaboration

One of the best skills to focus on to improve your leadership qualities is to improve collaboration. Traditional leadership usually involves dictating from the top down with very little involvement. To stay focused as a successful leader, it’s important to involve others. As a leader, you are not expected to have all the answers all of the time.

Increase collaboration with others can help to better define goals, priorities, and strategies. This will give team members and subordinates a sense of satisfaction and also increase their responsibility in the company.

If you are also focused on technological changes in the wider world, you can use online collaboration tools to increase employee engagements in your business.

2. Improve the art of communication

When you increase collaboration with others in your company, it’s important to focus skills on the art of communication. Communication is an art because there is no one set way to accomplish it.

Qualities that are needed for successful communication are positivity, empathy, humility, compassion, and purpose. If these qualities come through in your communications, you will earn and get the trust of others who rely on your leadership skills.

3. Focus on the positives

Of course, you can’t expect that the day-to-day running of a company will run smothly all the time. In these circumstances, it’s important to focus on the positives before looking at the cause of the problem. This can help you to think clearly in any situation and come up with a better solution to the issue.

4. Don’t tell, show

To sharpen your leadership skills, you should focus on showing others what is required, not just telling them. This has many benefits for you and your team, for example:

• Your team members will trust your expertise when they see you perform the task.
• Your team members will respect your judgment and be more willing to follow through.
• You will build up a rapport with your team that will forge strong relationships in the workplace.

5. Clarity

Clarity is also so important to be a successful, focused leader who is truly respected. Honest, direct feedback is the best way to give your team direction. This allows people to know what is needed to attain the goals of the company or project. Also, team members should clearly receive feedback – both constructive feedback and positive feedback.

Photo by Tim Gouw