new growth

Stop Distractions By Going Back to Your Purpose

With all the distractions in today’s world, it’s easy for your focus to blur and boundaries around your time to erode. Devices, apps, and social media comprise the main technological distractions, with open offices and co-workers creating distractions as well. All told, it’s estimated that you are distracted from your work approximately 2 hours per day!

Additionally, you can create your own distractions. You might want to be (overly) helpful to others and be seen as a team player, so before you know it, you go out of your way and spend time on activities that are not about what is important to you/your team. It is also easy to distract yourself from the things you don’t want to do or don’t feel confident about doing. Moreover, simply the day-to-day busy-ness of life and work can pull you away from the important things to what’s urgent.

Go Back to Purpose

To re-orient yourself, go back to purpose. It seems odd that something as general as “purpose” can create more targeted focus. However, the reason you become unfocused is you lose sight of where you’re headed and the reason for all of your activity. And that reason your doing the work you’re doing comes from a larger purpose. Your personal purpose, the company’s purpose, or the purpose of an initiative can put things into perspective and allow you to re-dedicate yourself to focusing on what matters.

To that point, purpose is what you believe in. It’s “why” you do what you do. For example, at work, you might be leading a team to implement a piece of the company’s strategic plan. What’s the purpose of that plan – why is it important to the company and how does that “why” translate to the work done by your team?

Use Purpose to Re-Commit and Re-Focus Others

Simply re-stating the purpose is a great way to re-focus yourself and others. Even if your colleagues or direct reports disagree about the current work tasks, they will most likely agree on what the purpose is. Starting from this area of general agreement, you can then facilitate a meaningful discussion about what the most relevant daily and weekly activities should be. And this allows a re-alignment of focus. In general, go to the general ideals, like purpose, to re-align yourself and others when things get stuck or discombobulated.

Use Your Purpose to Focus Your Attention

Whether personal or work-related, check to see whether your time and energy is aligned to purpose. Look at how you spend your time over the course of a week (longer if you can). Can you see the connection between your purpose(s) and the activities you spend your time on and people you spend your time with? (Don’t expect that 100% of your time is tied to directly to purpose – you’re doing well if there’s a connection between a larger relevant purpose and at least 25% of your time.)

If it’s not evident what is important to you after examining how you spend your time and energy, it’s time to go back to your purpose and rededicate yourself to behaviors and activities that reflect it and further it. The next time you feel your focus waning or the boundaries around your time getting fuzzy, prioritize your weekly focus by aligning it with your purpose.

WANT TO USE THIS IN YOUR NEWSLETTER, BLOG OR WEBSITE? You can, as long as you include this information with it: Beth Strathman works with women in leadership who want to have more positive impact within their organizations, by gaining greater composure, focus, and influence with their teams. Learn more at: bethstrathman.com.

employee engagement

Forge a Common Purpose to Unite Factions

Pursuing real change in any system is a challenge. One of the main reasons for the challenge of change is the reality of factions within any group. Because each faction has its different perspectives and different and multiple purposes around any issue or challenge, it’s difficult to hold everyone together under one or even two common purposes. Even in organizations where all employees are (or should be) united under the entity’s purpose, each new initiative uncovers multiple purposes for the various factions or interests involved.

For example, in my years as a HR Director, it was common for the Payroll department and the HR department to be at odds. This might seem strange because both groups have the purpose of creating a great workplace by ensuring employee fairness (in pay and work environment). However, each function comes from a different vantage point regarding those same employees. In carrying out the purpose of fairness to employees, Payroll often emphasizes consistent and accurate processes that designed with little flexibility.

In contrast, HR’s purpose of ensuring fairness to employees often occurs during situations fraught with miscommunication and non-standard situations. For example, it was not uncommon to learn of an issue with an employee’s reported work hours after Payroll had finished processing pay for the period. HR sought to rectify the situation before (of even just after) the pay was sent to the bank. Payroll would be frustrated processing had already occurred. Even if there were processes in place to make adjustments due to errors, the adjustments usually occurred after payday.

You see, Payroll typically had an additional purpose of creating a SYSTEM for numerical accuracy and fairness; HR’s additional purpose were often about FLEXIBILITY to address non-standard situations or miscommunication that occurs with people. Neither was correct or wrong. Each function came from a different perspective while pursuing a similar overall purpose. It illustrates why it’s important to forge a common purpose among factions – groups with different interests and perspectives.

How to forge a common purpose with the different factions you work with in your organization:

  1. Clarify your own purpose(s). List up to 10 purposes that are important to you. (Purposes are your “why” for pursuing a course of action. They are deeply-held beliefs that inspire you.)
  2. If you don’t know, find out the “whys” for the other factions you’re working with. What beliefs and “whys” are driving them.
  3. Look for overlap of purposes among individuals/factions. Focus the overlap to reshape and reframe them, so others understand and resonate with them.
  4. Be prepared to let go of some your purposes – at least for now. Concentrate on common ones.
  5. Get “real” with your common purpose(s) by using them to create or modify a concrete plan with goals, objectives, milestones, and timelines.

Even in complex situations with many factions, you can forge common purpose and use that purpose to create a plan to move forward.

WANT TO USE THIS IN YOUR NEWSLETTER, BLOG OR WEBSITE? You can, as long as you include this information with it: Beth Strathman works with women in leadership who want to have more positive impact within their organizations, by gaining greater composure, focus, and influence with their teams. Learn more at: bethstrathman.com.