Recent research indicates that the experience of lost focus, those instances where you are interrupted, distracted or otherwise disengaged from focused work, is increasing for managers.
As the use of hybrid roles and flexible working hours becomes the norm for some healthcare leadership roles, we acknowledge that lost focus can also occur at home, through demands from other people sharing the space at home and household chores.
In the healthcare setting, face to face interruptions, the over-scheduling of meetings, and habits of checking and responding to emails and chat messages are the main contributors to lost focus.
Why is lost focus such a problem for healthcare leader-managers?
Deep focus, or the flow state, creates the cognitive conditions for insight and innovation.
Conversely, ongoing, rapid switching of attention from one task to another, incorrectly labelled as multi-tasking(!) is a harried and reactive approach to leading-managing. This is “fire-fighting”. Managers working in this way miss crucial opportunities for visionary leadership, that enable medium and longer-term quality improvements in services.
Purposefully scheduling deep self-reflection is a supercharged approach to one's development as a leader.
Growing self-awareness and self-management also assists healthcare leader-managers to operate with greater emotional intelligence, providing psychologically safe, and positive, stimulating places for health professionals to work.
Ask yourself:
What type of environment helps me to do my best work, and which makes this more difficult?
For example - I feel like I get more done at home than at the base, however thinking about it, I notice that this afternoon, I was distracted by the household chores that need doing around the place. I put a load of washing on, sit down, check my emails again, and then just as I feel I’m getting somewhere on a communication that I need to write, the washing machine chirps and I get up to hang out the washing.
In the past week, when was I in a state of deep focus? How did I get there?
For example - I noticed that when I was swimming laps at the pool, the routine movement of my body really helped me follow through a train of thought. I productively considered about how I am leading my team around a really significant organizational change that we are going through at the moment. I thought about how each of the people in my team appeared to be coping with the change. I mused over what I could do to help each of them, move through this unsettled period we are in, and get into a more productive place. Honestly, I don’t think I would have even thought about how I can coach my team around this change, without that time in the pool! Things are just so busy, otherwise.
What ongoing structure can I create, to access deep focus routinely?
For example - I can get to the pool on Friday mornings, and I’m thinking that would be a great opportunity for my leadership self-reflection time. I’m interested in structuring this time by considering a prompting question to focus my thinking, before I get in the water.
I’ll ask one of my colleagues in the management team at work to check in with me on Friday afternoons, as to whether I’ve kept this commitment to myself.
Strategies leaders use for purposeful self-reflection include:
Identifying their own best thinking time, and location, and scheduling it regularly. They may pay special attention to what they notice about their capacity to access deep focus in places of green space, and those that inspire awe, and commit to accessing those spaces, without digital distractions.
Time blocking, and use of specific time management techniques to set boundaries around protected time.
Setting up accountability partners or groups, who use the leaders’ strength in keeping commitments to others, to support them to carry out their self-reflective practices.
Using a Personal Leadership Journal, to prompt and/or record their key reflections of the day or week. This incorporates noting down what happened that has had impact for the leader, their feelings, thoughts and ideas around that event, how these influenced the action they took and their behaviour; and, their resulting learning.
Building a personal mindfulness, meditative or spiritual practice, that enhances contemplative skills.
Working with a professional coach ensures that self-reflection is adaptive, leading to identifying clear actions rather than worry and rumination.
Skilled leader-managers in the health sector take charge of their time and energies, in order to lead themselves and others well. Regularly combining deep focus with purposeful self-reflection is taking the fast-track to peak leadership performance.
Schedule your complimentary coaching session now and set your self-reflection plan in place for the coming year.
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