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Leadership Requires Attentional Skill by Ed Yager I was driving north on I-15 from Sandy the other day. I took the 6th South exit into downtown Salt Lake City. Not that I had intended to, however. I was planning on getting off at 53rd South, but I was well past the 53rd South exit when I came to my senses. I don't remember driving any of the previous 3 or 4 miles - lost in thought. Tiger Woods did it again at the British Open - this time becoming the youngest in history to win golf's grand slam, and again at the PGA, setting PGA records, and winning his fourth major in one year, something not accomplished since Ben Hogan did it in 1953. Have you ever seen anyone as focused as is Tiger Woods? What does this have to do with a leader's edge? Dr. Robert Nideffer asks a simple, yet a profound, question. "What do successful people in business have in common with some of the world's greatest athletes?" We are talking about much more than the simplistic metaphors about teamwork, scorekeeping, or coaching that dominate the typical motivational speaker's lexicon. Nideffer has spent his career researching and teaching about what he calls "Attentional Control". He says that there are significant comparisons between world-class athletes and successful people in business -- especially those in positions of leadership." The common factors include the ability 1) to concentrate under pressure, 2) to avoid distractions, and 3) to ignore irrelevant noise, including their own doubts and fears. They know they cannot perform effectively if they can't concentrate. Basketball players call it "being in the zone". They describe it as making plays, passing, shooting, and defending, without consciously thinking about it; the moves come intuitively, almost automatically. I attended a master's recital last week. Young violinists playing at a level of skill hard to imagine. (I was there because my grandson, Josiah Lambert, was one of those masters.) He performed a very difficult concerto. Watching Josiah perform I was reminded again of how easy it is to recognize when someone is "in the zone". It is like watching Tiger Woods putt for an "eagle". Josiah's and the other masters' eyes move between being closed and staring into space, Josiah's body moves with the emotion of the performance. It was really quite overwhelming to watch. It was characteristic of all those master performers that day. Sometimes when I write I get in the zone - the words just seem to flow. But most of the time I am chasing thoughts and then editing and reediting to try to make sense. I am generally a "broad external" typical of a musician turned conductor. Josiah is an "internal narrow" typical of a soloist. We have found, under relatively "normal" conditions, most people are able to pay attention or concentrate in appropriate ways. Communication may not be 100% effective, but it is adequate until a stressful event comes up. But then there are those times when the highway becomes a blur and we find ourselves miles beyond our last conscious thoughts of the road, or of any external surroundings. Concentration, the ability to focus, can be described as following two dimensions, 'internal" and 'external'. The less able you are to concentrate, and the less flexible you are make up two major components determining your ultimate success. The more easily distracted you are by internal messages (fear, defensiveness, self talk, etc.) or the more absorbed you are in external events, the more problematic this function of concentration can be. Distractions, interruptions, activities around you are constantly competing for, and winning, your attention. Each of these factors (internal and external attention) can be further described along a continuum running from narrow (utilizing a narrow range of inputs) to broad (taking in information from a variety of sources). This simple, but as I say profound and robust model of attention explains why some leaders (athletes, artists, writers, programmers, analysts, customer service reps, etc.) act as they do. Every leader must understand and study this. Some have difficulty carrying on a conversation or listening to another person as their broad/external focus continually drives them to shift their attention to any distraction. Perhaps, as their broad/internal focus forces them to continually be thinking about everything else going on in their lives at the same time, they should be listening to just one conversation or concentrating on the details of a difficult task. I recently met with the CEO of a very inventive, but now struggling software company. It was clear immediately that the broad attention that served as the stimulus for the innovations he had introduced in the software design presented a huge barrier to his ability to focus on leadership/management issues. While talking to those of us in the office he continually glanced at his computer screen, reading a never ending series of messages and inputs the software was designed to generate. He had four incoming phone lines on his desk - at least one of which was ringing all the time we met. He occasionally interrupted the conversation to answer one of the lines. The side table and his desk were piled high with materials of all sorts, and he occasionally thumbed through one of the piles, thus triggering more thoughts in his mind. His extroverted style resulted in constant interruptions. (Had he been more introverted the ideas may have stayed in his head, further interfering with his listening.) Organizations also develop collective attentional deficits. The external focus can become so narrow that the organization's members fail collectively to recognize (or refuse to recognize) what is going on in the environment that surrounds them. Their internal focus is so broad that they are continually caught up in what Stephen Covey calls "urgent" but unimportant activities. Group think and arrogance replace understanding. Nideffer goes on to add to the "attentional skills" measurement a key set of interpersonal variables (self esteem, control, expression of anger, critique, expressiveness, etc.) which, when modified by or loaded on the attentional functions, serve to totally define the factors of success (or of failure). Each, 20 in all, factor is rated on a scale with comparative scores of hundreds of others in the same job category. These have been combined in an instrument that serves to measure the tendencies toward one another. It is so powerful and so relevant that we now include The Attentional and Interpersonal Survey in all of our leader coaching, consulting potential leader assessments, and team building activities. The relevance and immediate implications for behavior and attentional control exceed any information we have been able to gain in the past through variety of other popular personality instruments. |
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