The Focused Leader Essay Example

Leadership requires a lot of both innate and learned skills. An essential skill a leader is required to have is his ability to focus - on himself, on others and on his surroundings. He has to strike a balance between doing all of these simultaneously. Each mode of attention is interrelated in a sense that if you lose focus on yourself, you would not be able to focus on others leaving you ignorant and at a loss and most importantly, losing focus of one’s immediate surroundings will leave you unaware.
Focusing on one’s self starts by giving attention to one’s conscience or being self-aware. Paying attention to one’s instinct and gut feel proves beneficial in terms of decision-making. A wise leader also relies on his intuition, in addition to considering facts, to help him arrive at a sound decision. Being able to combine various experiences over time, be it failures and successes, makes up one’s true self. Authenticity is being the same person even when in front of others. This entails for a leader to be both aware of his immediate surrounding but at the same time stand his ground and not be swayed on focusing on a particular thing. It is also helpful to learn to listen to what others say about you, internalize and filter what is relevant and go from there. Another way to develop the focus on one’s self is to practice self-control or willpower. Having control enables a leader to focus his attention in pursuit of a particular goal despite distractions surrounding him. It also enables him to gain control of his emotions, which results in decisions made on a sound mind. It now boils down to how we focus on shifting our attention from one point of interest to another, how we restraint from gravitating to a particular object and how we are able to fully give our attention to fulfilling an objective. Being able to practice self-control is almost an indication of one’s success.
After achieving full focus on one’s self, we now focus on others. Recognizing the presence of others and ultimately focusing on them helps the leader develop empathy and move towards building one’s social relationships. Leaders who give due attention to people around him are the ones who are able to integrate others’ opinions to one’s own, enabling him to look at more options or alternatives. They are the ones that people choose to lead them. Being emphatic means that a leader is able to recognize and understand the views and perspective of others (cognitive empathy), able to feel what others feel (emotional empathy) and be able to feel what others need from you (emphatic concern). A leader who is naturally interested in people around him is someone who demonstrates cognitive empathy. One who is able to relate to others practices emotional empathy. Sometimes, these leaders go as far as suffering what others suffer themselves. Since they feel too much, they tend to intentionally kill their emotions, which is an extreme reaction and will lead to one losing empathy. So, it is very important to strike a balance between feeling too much and not feeling anything at all. And lastly, if a leader feels what others feel, then he will be able to sense what they need from him. Being able to practice empathy effectively enables for relationships to be built. A leader who is socially sensitive reacts appropriately and behave in such a way that they put others around him comfortable to work with him. However, a leader must maintain caution when rising from the ranks as he tends to lose sight of his relationships and tend to focus on more on other matters which makes him miss out on opportunities presented by these relationships.
Once a leader is able to master focusing on one’s self while learning to focus on others as well, he is now ready to put focus on a wider scale, on his wider world. He is someone who has foresight on the effects of decisions made on a small scale and its impact on a much wider scale. To be able to focus on our wider world, leaders must be able to focus on the strategy needed to be applied and take advantage of innovations that would help the leader to effectively perform. Taking advantage of information provided in today’s times and learning to innovatively make use of this information in unique ways, marks the making of a good leader.
This article was able to deduce what makes a good leader in terms of how he can channel his attention to things that matter. Having self-control of one’s emotions leads to developing focus on one’s self. Once the leader has mastered this skill, he now has the ability to focus on others, feel what they feel and be able to develop the sense for what they need. Lastly, with these two skills combined, a good leader now focuses his attention to the outside world, getting all that he can in achievement of his immediate goals. He gets creative and learns to intertwine the necessary information, process the information on hand and makes use of innovations and systems effectively in pursuit of his organization’s goals and objectives. A good leader knows how to direct his focus and attention to where it is needed when it is needed.