Why Your Team Can’t Focus
Your team cannot focus because nobody has taught them how, and people become good at whatever they practise, including distraction.
Dandapani asks leaders and entrepreneurs a direct question: have you taught your teams how to focus? He points out how much time and energy goes to waste when employees are perpetually distracted, and argues that focus has to be taught and then practised, leadership included.
What this talk covers
- Ask yourself whether you have ever actually taught your team how to focus.
- We become good at whatever we practise, so someone practising distraction eight hours a day becomes excellent at being distracted.
- A distracted team cannot hold attention on a problem long enough to find a solution, or see a project through to a conclusion.
- Focus does not come naturally to people, so it has to be taught, and learning it is not enough without practice.
- One of the greatest gifts you can give your company is making sure everyone, including the leadership team and the owners, understands how to focus and practises it.
Focus is not something that comes naturally to people.Dandapani
Questions
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Teach them how to focus and then have them practise it. Dandapani says focus is not natural, so it has to be learned and then practised regularly, the same as any other skill.
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Yes. Dandapani treats focus as a trainable skill, because we become good at whatever we practise. Practise distraction all day and you get good at distraction, practise focus and you get good at focus.
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If people cannot keep their attention on a problem long enough to find a solution, projects do not reach a conclusion. Dandapani points to the ability to focus as the underlying issue.
Transcript
364 words · 2:07
For those of you that are entrepreneurs or leaders within organizations or companies, have you asked yourself this question? Have I taught my teams how to focus?
Think how much time and energy is wasted on a daily basis by your employees because they do not have the ability to focus, that they are perpetually distracted
because we become good at whatever it is we practice. So if I practice distraction five hours a day, eight hours a day, I've become really good at being distracted. If I practice being focused five hours a day or eight hours a day,
I've become really good at being focused. If your employees are masters at being distracted, what is getting done within the company? How much time, how much energy is being wasted?
How a problem of being able to be solved if they can't even keep their attention on the problem long enough to find a solution? This is one of the basic things we want to teach our teams.
is the ability to be focused so that you can see projects through to the end to a conclusion. You can stay with a problem long enough to find a solution, to find a solution for it.
But if we don't teach our teams how to focus, we can't expect them to focus. Focus is not something that comes naturally to people. We need to teach them how to focus,
and we need to help them practice focusing, because learning is one thing, but if you don't practice something, you're never going to be good at it. And that includes focus as well.
So if you're managing teams, if you run a company, one of the greatest gifts you can give your own company is making sure that everybody within the team has the ability or the understanding on how to focus and how to practice it so they can become better at it.
And I can guarantee you there will be so much more efficiency and productivity within the company when people are not being distracted all day long. And that includes you as well, the leadership team and the owners of the company.