The war for attention: A challenge for future leaders

For decades organisations have been focussed on how to win the “War for talent”. This concept of attracting and retaining the best people for your organisation to beat the competition has been studied and written about extensively. Billions of dollars are invested by the largest organisations in the world every year to ensure they win this so-called “war”. Reason being, it’s hard to find talented people, and even harder to keep them. Before you tune-out and move onto the next story in your newsfeed let me hold your attention for a moment longer. If you want to win, stop focussing on trying to “win” new talent and start focussing on how you harness the attention of the talent you already have. A room full of highly talented people that are constantly distracted is far less productive than a room full of average people who are highly focussed.

Talent vs Attention

When was the last time you recall being 100% focused on the task at hand for more than 15mins without letting your thoughts wander, your motivation wane or your frustration build? For many people, it may even be a challenge to recall the last time they spent more than 5 minutes focussing on a single task. If that’s you, then your talent is being hindered by your inability to focus your attention. In doing so, you’re not working toward your potential and denying yourself the opportunity to be happy, fulfilled and successful. When I think of attention it’s like holding a magnifying glass at an angle to catch the rays of the sun so they can concentrate intensely on a single point. When you get the angle just right, the heat becomes so focussed that it can cause wood and paper to spontaneously combust (or a few ants meet a gruesome and spectacularly fiery death). At the wrong angle, the magnifying glass does nothing to increase the intensity of the sun’s rays or worse, block the sun’s rays altogether and create a shadow! In many ways, the ability to focus your own attention is how you create a critical threshold for productivity, creativity and ultimately achieve results. The rays of the sun are reflective of talent, but without the magnifying glass focussing our attention, we can never fully generate enough energy to create fire.

Attention-deficit

We’ve all experienced having the best of intentions to finish off an important project or deliverable only to get side-tracked by a multitude of competing priorities and not follow through on what we started. Sadly, the competing priorities that steal our attention are usually our email inbox or notifications on our phone. I’ve asked thousands of people to consider what’s most important to them over the years and not one of them has ever answered with “email”, “social media” or “responding to my latest text messages”.  Despite this, many people still gauge their productivity, value and effectiveness on how many emails they have in their inbox. About three years ago when I was still working in corporate, I had a colleague peer over my shoulder and make comment on how few emails I had in my inbox. I personally wasn’t phased by how few emails I received. I saw this as a sign that I was communicating clearly with my clients and meeting their expectations. It meant that I was spending more time sitting with my clients and doing what I do best, rather than spend time hunched in front of my laptop. My colleague’s interpretation was that my job was on the line and I should be feeling vulnerable. My response… “thanks for your concern. I don’t get paid to have an inbox crammed full of emails, most of which are not relevant to me.” With a smug tone, they made a prediction that I wouldn’t be there much longer. About three months later, that same employee was made redundant and I continued on in my role for another 6 months before jumping ship. The point here is, where your attention goes, your energy flows. Indeed, when your attention is so thinly spread, you start to suffer from an attention deficit. This colleague was so focussed on transactional emails and other menial tasks, their role was no longer of value. They had become irrelevant.

Attention first, talent second

The reason why your results aren’t reflective of your potential isn’t that you don’t have enough talent, it’s because your talent isn’t focussed. Just as you’re beginning to make some progress your attention is shifted onto the next distraction. This tendency to follow distraction is not new but let’s just agree that the explosion of social media and the prevalence of smartphones has made being distracted a whole lot easier than it used to be. What’s worse is that the most popular apps are those such as Instagram, Tik-Tok and Snapchat that predominately use short videos to capture your attention. What’s more, is that while our ability to sustain focussed attention is getting shorter, our time spent on social media apps is increasing. Don’t get me wrong, I love the benefits that social media have introduced to the world and fully support them moving forward. My real concern is how organisations are managing this “war for attention” which will only become more relevant in the coming years as generation Z and generation alpha kids start to form a larger percentage of our workforce. I don’t care how talented somebody is, if they aren’t able to hold their focus for more than a few minutes without checking their social media feeds or texting a friend, we have a problem.

Despite me being Gen Y (or Millenial if you prefer that terminology), my kids insist that I’m a “boomer” and I’m acutely aware that this article is likely to get a similar response. Please don’t misinterpret what I’m writing here as sledging social media. I’m not. I am, however, challenging you to think about how you sustain your own attention and consider how you might focus the attention of your team when it is filled with Gen Zs and Gen Alphas over the next decade.

How to focus your attention

Cal Newport discusses strategies to reduce distraction in his book “Deep work” which I highly recommend reading. There are many ways to focus your attention but one of the best ways I know is to engage in learning. When you are learning something new (particularly if you are interested in the topic/task) you become fully engrossed, leaving little room for faulty thinking, boredom, negative thoughts or self-doubt to creep in. Motivation is arguably the biggest hurdle when engaging in new learning which is why I make conscious learning a daily practice. As most of my clients know, I’m a juggler and have been practising for 25 years now. Every day, I spend time focussing my attention completely on finessing my skills and enhancing my ability to sustain my focus. There have been times in my life where my practice has fallen off the priority list, but each time I come back to it, I recognise how important the daily ritual is to align my body with my mind. As an executive coach, being able to focus my attention is a critical skill. Without this skill, I’d be unable to hold presence with my clients which is essential for them to be able to get present in our sessions. While it’s rather serendipitous that I discovered juggling at an early age, I maintain that it is the single best activity I have come across that simultaneously engages the mind and body in complex adaptive learning but also allows you to flex between that which is easy and that which is challenging. I also attribute my ability to remain calm under fire to my years of conscious practice with juggling[1]. Additional benefits include reduced stress, reduced anxiety, improved peripheral vision, improved co-ordination, and some studies have even shown and increase in both white and grey matter in the brain as a result of continued practice.

If you’d like to give it a go and learn for yourself, check out my youtube videos here which guide you through steps you need to take to learn how to juggle.

If juggling isn’t your thing, have a go anyway! If you are resisting it because you  “don’t have time” or “you already know how” or you’re “not very co-ordinated”. These are all excuses that you are using to not learn. My advice, drop your ego and stop telling yourself bullshit stories that are preventing you from learning, improving and developing. Your ability to focus your attention, be in the moment and enable others to do the same will be what sets you apart as a future leader. Nobody is born with the ability to completely focus so it takes considerable practice. While it may be hard, the payoff is well worth it.

[1] If you’d like to learn more about the research on the many benefits of juggling please email me at: joe@joehart.com.au and I’d be happy to share my resources with you

Performance Management vs Performance Investment: The devil is in your intentions

The phone buzzed relentlessly to notify that a new message was awaiting. As if there was nothing else that mattered in the world on a Thursday night, Paul leapt to his phone with the eagerness of a highschool student awaiting communication from their first love. Despite his enthusiasm, Paul wasn’t expecting an important message, it was more of a distraction from the mind-numbing work he’d been doing.

The message read:

Sensing the urgency, Paul paused for a moment to consider why his manager would be texting him so urgently for a meeting. He then replied:

Paul had only been in the company for about 5 months and was finding his way around his role. He found the organisation quite challenging with very little development, a massive workload, a fairly disengaged team, and a manager who didn’t really seem to care. He wasn’t really happy with his decision to join the company but he wanted to give it a shot and not give up on the organisation too early. Besides, it took a lot of effort to shift jobs and Paul had left a great manager and team for the prospect of a bigger brand, higher pay, and more responsibility.

The meeting

Paul met with his manager in a small windowless meeting room with fluorescent lights so bright and airconditioning so cold, he felt like he was in a hospital ward. His manager seemed tense. Paul knew this meeting was not going to be good.

Feeling shellshocked, Paul left the meeting room feeling confused. Words that his manager had used like ‘disappointed’, ‘commitment’, ‘performance’, and ‘proactivity’ were all jumbled up in his head. The message was that Paul needed to lift his performance as his manager had been disappointed with the results; he needed to show a bit more proactivity and commitment. It was then followed up with, “we’re here to support you to be successful”. Paul knew his probation was due to finish up in exactly four weeks. Blinded by his emotions, Paul agreed to ‘lift his game’ while suppressing the noise his guts were making as they churned with fear.

The problem for Paul was, the decision was already made. His manager had no intention of keeping him and urgently called the meeting to later justify the course of action to the Human Resources department. Paul had also grown very accustomed to ignoring his guts when they started to churn with fear….a practice that prevented Paul from seeing what was really happening around him.

The real intention

Sadly, like Paul, many people experience very similar situations where they join a new company full of hope and expectation to soon find themselves staring longingly into the rear vision mirror that was their old job. It’s not that their old job was better or even good, it’s that the performance management conversations endured with an ill-equipped manager guided by a dehumanised organisation are humiliating. While it would be easy to lay blame on the manager, or the organisation, that is not the intention of this article. Given so many people I have worked with over the years have experienced a similar situation I wanted to provide an alternative view on how to generate the best outcomes for both employers and employees, without all the noises from guts churning with fear.

Performance Management vs Performance Investment

As a standard practice, most organisations are well acquainted with the annual performance review which often carries no benefit beyond HR meeting their KPIs. If the organisation is ‘progressive’ and has the capacity, they may even conduct a talent review to determine the true performance of their employees in relation to their potential. In recent years, organisations such as Accenture and Deloitte have radically revamped their performance management process in favour of ongoing regular performance conversations, reliable performance measurement, and strong investment in development for employees. Early indicators are demonstrating the increase in employee engagement and productivity as a result not to mention the massive amount of time that is no longer wasted by leaders gaining consensus on employee performance behind closed doors. In a 2015 HBR article, a study conducted on Deloitte employees suggested as many as 2 million hours a year were spent on the employee evaluation process of all 65 000 employees.  None of this is surprising if you consider the data presented in Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, suggesting that 85% of the world’s employees are either actively disengaged or not engaged.

Rather than focus on evaluating employees to understand their performance and whether they have potential, I’d like to suggest that organisations evaluate how much they have invested in their employees to maximise their performance. Assuming that you’ve made a decent hire, how much time have you invested in that employee? What sort of opportunities have you given them to grow, develop, and expand? Is their performance a reflection of their capability or the amount of time you have spent with them?

Below is a decision matrix that you can use to quickly classify how your team fits and more importantly, indicates what you can do improve.

High Growth (Engaged + Productive)- These are high performers that are responding to the investment you are making in their development. They are engaged and productive employees. Sadly, there are only about 15% of employees globally that fit into this category so when you get them there, the trick is to keep them there.

Flight Risk (Not Sustainable)- They are your high performers but the discontent is usually written all over their face. They have the capability and like to demonstrate what they can do. Unfortunately, you can’t provide them with the development they are seeking. Without providing them with an opportunity to stretch themselves, you’ll lose this talent.

Poor Fit (Wrong role/company)- For many reasons, people end up in the wrong role and sometimes in a company that just doesn’t gel with them. You’ve invested in their development but somehow, they just aren’t performing. Go back to your selection process and make sure you have a good process in place to support who you are bringing in. Often, the recruiters that sourced your employees are doing such a great job at selling the role that they might be inadvertently setting unrealistic expectations. Sometimes, despite a great process, things still don’t work. In my experience, the majority of performance issues fall into this category. Try changing the person’s role first but if that still isn’t an option, initiate an honest conversation about organisational fit and support them to move on.

Neglected (Helpless + Stuck)- For these poor souls, they’ve never really been given a fighting chance. The philosophical debate of the chicken coming before the egg springs to mind here….did you not invest because of their poor performance? Or did their poor performance stem from a lack of investment? Regardless, the right thing to do is to provide them with an opportunity to feel valued and supported. It’s amazing what a little bit of encouragement can do for someone’s productivity. Even if their performance doesn’t improve, you’ll be able to help them find their next role knowing you gave them a shot.

Where to from here?

For all four quadrants, while there are differences in how to manage employees that reside within them, the solution for all is the same; invest!

For my entire career, I’ve been listening to justifications about why 360-degree assessments don’t work or how engagement survey data is wrong, or why employees are too entitled. The truth is quite simple. If you take the time to invest in your employees by encouraging them to expand, learn, grow, and develop, they will perform. If you hold them accountable, give them responsibility, and let them fall, they will perform. If you treat them with respect, empower them, trust them, and have good intentions, they will perform.

The next time you are on either side of a conversation like Paul was at the beginning of this article, see if you can decipher the intention that sits beneath the words.

For managers- challenge the investment you have put into the employee. Ask yourself if you really are willing to invest in their success and develop their capability. Can you see yourself cheering for them on the sideline like a doting parent….all while you know they will never be the best player on the team? If the answer is no, then your falling back on a process to help you terminate an employee i.e you have bad intentions. My advice, rise to the challenge of having a tough conversation and be a manager. That’s what you get paid for.

For employees- listen to your gut….if it’s churning with fear it’s probably responding to what’s happening around you, while your judgement is clouded by emotion. Hanging on to a role to prove a point, save your pride, or dodge adversity simply doesn’t work. When faced with bad intentions, simply walk in the other direction.

My final thought for the day….before embarking on a 360 review or performance management process, reflect on your real intentions that lurk beneath the surface. If your intentions are bad the tools you utilise will also turn bad. These tools are designed to elevate and support employees not trip them up.