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Focus The Hidden Driver of Excellence By Daniel Goleman
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Page 1: The Hidden Driver of Excellences3.amazonaws.com/ebsp/pdf/focust_s.pdf · Focus The Hidden Driver of Excellence By Daniel Goleman. In 1995, a psychologist named Daniel Goleman propelled

FocusThe Hidden Driver of Excellence

By Daniel Goleman

Page 2: The Hidden Driver of Excellences3.amazonaws.com/ebsp/pdf/focust_s.pdf · Focus The Hidden Driver of Excellence By Daniel Goleman. In 1995, a psychologist named Daniel Goleman propelled

In 1995, a psychologist named Daniel Goleman propelled a little-known concept called “Emotional Intelligence” into Corporate America’s collective consciousness with the publication of his mega-bestseller of the same name. Almost overnight, the traditional measure of a worker’s intellectual capability - IQ - was relegated to second place. From that point forward, Emotional Intelligence (or “EI”) would become the yardstick against which every ladder-climbing MBA was to be measured.

Since the publication of Emotional Intelligence nearly two decades ago, countless books, conferences, consultancy practices and academic institutes have sprung up around Goleman’s groundbreaking idea. EI is taught in business schools around the world and thousands of corporations have adopted it as the de facto way of thinking about success and leadership.

In his latest book, Goleman argues that our

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individual ability to focus (i.e. to block-out distractions and really bear down on the task at hand) is a hugely underrated mental asset. The main goal of his book is to shine a spotlight on this underappreciated mental faculty, and showcase its vital role in helping people live a more fulfilling life.

Our ability to pay attention - to focus - works much like a muscle. If we use it either poorly or too infrequently, it will wither. But if we work it, it will grow.

Goleman describes three different categories of focus. The first category - inner focus - attunes us to our intuition and guiding values. When we practice inner focus, we tend to make better decisions. The second type - other focus - helps us create strong and enduring connections with important people in our lives. Finally, our outer focus helps us navigate the great big world around us. As Goleman explains: “A leader tuned out

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of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; and those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.”

We’ll start by looking more closely at the true costs and benefits of living an unfocused life. Then, we’ll delve into Goleman’s three categories of focus (inner, outer and other). Finally, we’ll offer practical ways to strengthen focus across all three domains.

The Cost of Being UnfocusedAccording to Goleman, it’s not your fault that you sometimes lack focus. It’s in your genes.

Modern life often entails sitting still for long periods of time, either in school or an office, and focusing on complex projects. As important as it is today to sit still and focus on a single task, these sorts of behaviors were less valuable earlier in human history. This is because human survival thousands

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of years ago depended on people’s rapidly shifting attention and swift action, without hesitating to think what to do. As the author explains, “What we now diagnose as an attentional deficit may reflect a natural variation in focusing styles that had advantages in evolution - and so it lives on in our gene pool.”

Unfortunately, whether it comes naturally to us or not, success in the modern workplace means being able to suppress our hardwired drive to flit-and-flirt around, and stay task-focused. (Here, Goleman calls “multi-tasking” the “bane of efficiency.” Studies have shown that multi-tasking-related disruptions, such as stepping away from a given task to answer an e-mail, usually undermine the quality of the original task. It can take ten or fifteen minutes to regain full focus.)

Without a doubt, the more our focus gets disrupted, the worse we do.

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Our ability to stay steady on one target and ignore everything else operates from our brain’s prefrontal regions. Specialized circuitry in this area boosts the strength of incoming signals we want to concentrate on (e.g. that email) and dampens down those we choose to ignore. The good news is, because our brains are highly plastic, this mental circuitry isn’t fixed forever. Through deliberate practice, it is possible to improve our focus. And doing so will pay off in spades. According to Goleman’s research, there’s irrefutable evidence that those who focus best are less affected by emotional turbulence, more likely to emerge unscathed from a crisis, and more able to keep on an even keel despite life’s constant ups and downs.

The Power of Inner FocusBecoming more focused usually starts with becoming more self-aware.

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After being diagnosed with the liver cancer that was to take his life a few years later, Steve Jobs gave a heartfelt commencement address at Stanford University. His advice to the graduating class: “Don’t let the voice of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to … follow your intuition. It already knows what you truly want to become.”

There can be little doubt that Steve Jobs knows a thing or two about the importance of focus, and the best ways to achieve it. As we know, Jobs brought a single-minded focus to shaping Apple’s winning business strategy. And one of his key strengths was in filtering out distractions – like when he pared Apple’s cumbersome product line down to just a handful of artfully designed products. It was a controversial decision at the time, but a brilliant strategy in the long-run.

According to Goleman, our “gut feelings” are very

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real and we mustn’t be so quick to dismiss them. Gut feelings are kind of like coded messages from the insula and other primitive circuits in our brains that were designed to help us make smarter decisions. Sometimes they’re hard to express in words. But the better we are at reading these messages, the better our intuition.

“Take that tug you might sometimes feel when you suspect you’re forgetting something important just as you’re leaving on a big trip,” writes Goleman. “A marathon runner friend of mine once told me of a time she was on her way to a race 400 miles away. She felt that tug - and ignored it. But as she continued on down the freeway, it kept coming back. Then she paused to think about what the tug might be about, and she realized she’d forgotten her shoes!”

In addition to learning to trust our inner voice, Goleman stresses the importance of fostering our

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willpower - particularly from a young age - as a pathway to achieving strong life focus.

Decades of research results show the singular importance of willpower in determining the course of our lives. One such example involved a study that took place in New York City during the 1960s where kids from deprived homes were given special attention from teachers in a preschool program that was designed to help them cultivate self-control. Many years later, when these preschoolers were compared with similar kids who hadn’t participated in the program, they were found to have had lower rates of teen pregnancy, fewer school dropouts, less delinquency, and even less days missed from work. Simply by learning how to cultivate and exert willpower at a young age, these disadvantaged kids managed to outperform their peer group for decades to come. (The findings were a major argument for what has become the “Head Start” preschool programs, now

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found everywhere in the United States.)

The seminal importance of teaching willpower to our kids cannot be understated, says Goleman. “Statistical analysis has proven that a child’s level of self-control is every bit as powerful a predictor of her adult financial success and health (and criminal record, for that matter) as are her social class, wealth of family of origin, or IQ,” he explains.

So how can we foster conscientiousness and willpower in ourselves, and our children? There’s no silver bullet, of course. But for Goleman, it’s all about the little things. “Don’t underestimate the value of encouraging your kid to finish his guitar lessons before he runs off to the mall with his friends; or keep his promise to feed the guinea pig and clean its cage,” he writes.

Among adults, meditation and mindfulness training can also be effective means of awakening one’s

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inner voice. In addition to unlocking our natural intuition, which perhaps may sound a bit touchy-feely to some, studies have shown that regular meditation can also lead to symptom reduction in a remarkable range of physiological disorders, from hypertension to chronic pain. Some of these benefits can be seen with as little as twenty minutes of practice for just four days.

Focusing on OthersDeveloping our “other focus” involves paying close attention to the things that others say and do. But in particular, it’s about watching closely for non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions and posture, which often speak volumes about a person’s true intentions.

For example, during any business negotiation, you can gain a significant advantage over the other side if you pay close attention to their non-verbal cues. As any professional athlete will tell you,

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learning to read your opponent’s body language can give you a crucial edge in any competition. Top players in sports like squash and tennis can sense where an opponent’s serve will land by noting subtle shifts in his posture as he positions himself to hit the ball. And many of baseball’s great hitters, like Hank Aaron, would watch films over and over of the pitchers they would face in their next game, to spot telling cues that revealed which pitch would come next.

Also, those who hope to succeed in our diverse, global economy need to understand the needs and desires of others, many of which often go unspoken. Business executives who are good at reading other people’s body language and practicing empathetic social sensitivity tend to do better at overseas assignments. This is presumably because they can pick up implicit norms quickly as they learn the unique mental models of a given culture.

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Now, it may be the case that some of us are naturally more nurturing, and attuned to the needs of others. Empathy seems to come much easier to certain types of people. But even if you’re not naturally very empathetic in the core of your being, it’s still possible to demonstrate empathetic behaviors. Even if these behaviors aren’t entirely heart-felt in each and every case, they can still yield great dividends. For instance, Goleman points to medical school studies which show that if a doctor simply looks you in the eye, then she’ll get higher patient ratings. By contrast, if the doctor mainly looks at her clipboard, or her computer screen, the ratings will be lower. Who’s to say whether the doctors with good eye contact truly and deeply care about the needs of their patients? When it comes to client satisfaction, it hardly matters; the patients just expect good eye contact.

In any event, even if you don’t feel it at first,

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Goleman argues that it’s possible to become more empathetic, in a lasting and genuine way, simply by practicing empathetic-type behaviors. As one of the doctors Goleman interviewed for this book explained: “If you act in a compassionate and caring way - when you deliberately look the patient in the eye and notice their emotional expressions, even when you don’t feel like it at first - you start to feel more engaged.” In other words, you may begin by going through the motions, but that can actually lead to greater empathy.

If you’re still not convinced of the value of practicing greater empathy, know that there can be huge costs to being emotionally distant from the clients you serve. For instance, it’s been shown that physicians who are sued for malpractice in the United States generally make no more medical errors than those who are not sued. The main difference, according to Goleman’s research, basically comes down to the tenor of the doctor-

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patient relationship. As it turns out, those doctors who are sued generally have less emotional rapport. They tend to have shorter visits with their patients, and have more emotional distance (there’s little smiling or laughter, for example).

In short, you can never go wrong when you focus on the needs of other people.

Focusing on The Big PictureSome people are really good at listening to their intuition. And some people are also quite adept at focusing on the subtle signals that other people give off. But according to Goleman, many of us struggle mightily with the third and final type of focus – the category that he calls “outer” focus. Another way of describing outer focus is “big picture thinking,” which involves being aware of the hidden forces that are shaping our world and understanding how they impact us individually and collectively.

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A blind spot in the human brain may contribute to our general inability to focus on the big picture. For example, we’re naturally equipped with “razor-sharp focus” that’s able to perceive small changes in our environment at the micro-level, such as when a colleague’s face shifts from a smile to a frown. But Goleman argues we have “zero neural radar” for macro-level trends such as global warming, which can wreak havoc on the systems that support human life. So when we’re faced with news of these global forces, “our attention circuits tend to shrug.”

Still, though it may not come easily for most of us, we can’t hope to succeed unless we respect and appreciate the sheer complexity of the systems in which we operate. For starters, there’s the globalization of markets, suppliers, and organizations; the hyper-speed of evolving information technologies and impending ecological dangers. These and other threats are all very real.

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Yet, as real as these forces are, Goleman readily acknowledges that it can be extremely difficult to focus on them. Not only because they’re unseen, but also because focusing on the big forces that threaten to rip our economy, society and environment apart can be very depressing.

“I find it hard to write this section of my book without sounding shrill,” confesses the author. “Our impacts on the planet are inherently guilt-inducing and depressing, which is unpleasant.”

Fortunately, there’s a way to cultivate a big picture focus, and to take meaningful action to combat the threats facing our world, without getting sucked into a death spiral of depression. The key is to deliberately overlay an action-oriented, positive lens on our big picture thinking.

As a practical example of how that can work, Goleman uses the example of a Facebook app called Handprinter, which is aimed at helping

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people to reduce their environmental footprint. As Goleman explains, “Handprinter takes all the helpful things we do - use renewable energy, ride a bike to work, turn the thermostat down - and gives us a precise metric for the good we do by lessening our footprint. The sum total of all your good habits yields the value for your handprint. The key idea: keep making improvements, so that your handprint becomes bigger than your footprint. At that point you become a net positive for the planet.”

As you adopt a more sustainable lifestyle, your handprint grows accordingly, and other people can follow the progress you’re making. Indeed, Handprinter is a natural for social media. Families, work teams, and even entire towns, can have fun increasing their handprint together. In this way, an app like Handprinter puts the negatives (i.e. the damage we’re causing through our detrimental environmental footprint) in the background, and

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brings the positives (i.e. the steps we are taking to reduce that footprint) in the foreground. This clever reframing of the issue does more than just make us feel better in the short-term. It increases our overall feeling of empowerment, which makes it far more likely that we’ll stick with the positive behaviors (i.e. constantly looking for new ways to reduce our environmental footprint) over the longer-term.

“Positive emotions widen our span of attention,” explains Goleman. “Indeed, when we are in the grip of positivity, our perceptions shift.” Or, as psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, who studies positive feelings and their effects, puts it: “When we’re feeling good our awareness expands from our usual self-centered focus on ‘me’ to a more inclusive and warm focus on ‘we.’”

Why does positivity hold such power over our behavior? In part, it’s because nurturing feelings

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of positivity can open up certain receptors in our brain, which leads to a natural dopamine high.

All of this comes with a bit of a warning, though. As important as systems thinking is, and as personally rewarding as it can be, Goleman warns that we should never lose sight of the people immediately around us as we start to shift our focus to the broader systems we inhabit. To highlight the danger of becoming too systems focused, Goleman reminds us of the “Larry Summers Example.” Where Larry Summers clearly has a genius-level IQ and is a brilliant systems thinker, he nevertheless had to move on from being president of Harvard, largely due to his insensitive personal blunders – most notably dismissing women’s capabilities for science.

The Power of Switching OffAs big a fan as Daniel Goleman obviously is of the power of focus, he’s equally fond of the power of

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switching off, from time-to-time. Giving ourselves permission to take our eye off the ball now and then so that we can relax and decompress is critically important to regaining, and sustaining our focus. “New ideas won’t appear if you don’t have permission within yourself,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff once told Goleman. When Benioff was a VP at Oracle, he took off to Hawaii for a month just to relax, and that opened him up to new ideas, perspectives, and directions. In that open space, Benioff saw the potential of cloud computing that led him to quit Oracle and start Salesforce. He became a pioneer in what is now a multibillion-dollar industry.

Powerful moments of insight, like the one Marc Benioff experienced in Hawaii, come with being fully relaxed and open to possibility. Unfortunately, our crazy-busy lifestyle creates a brain state antithetical to the open focus where serendipitous discoveries thrive.

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That’s why, says Goleman, “the annals of discovery are rife with tales of a brilliant insight during a walk or a bath, on a long ride or vacation. Open time lets our creative spirit flourish.”

For so many of us, the explosion of news streams, e-mails, phone calls, tweets and blogs is overloading our cognitive processors on a daily basis. And only certain kinds of “unplugged” activities can help us rebuild and restore the mental energy we need to sustain focused attention across all three domains.

Surfing the Web, playing video games, or answering e-mail doesn’t help us regain focus; nor does taking a walk down a busy city street, or going to the mall. These sorts of activities still place high demands on our attention - we’ve got to navigate through crowds, dodge cars, and ignore honking horns and the hum of street noise. None of that is particularly restorative.

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In contrast, a walk through a park puts little demand on our attention. So if a Hawaiian getaway is out of your reach for the time being, you can still restore your focus by spending some time in nature. Even a few minutes strolling in a park might lead to a serendipitous insight or discovery.

But, the fact remains: serendipity alone cannot take us the whole way. Once we’ve hit upon a creative insight, we still need focus to “capture the prize.” Only focus leads to execution.


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