Narrow Focus

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives. ~Tony Robbins


One of my regular readers has told me that I write too much on the topic of leadership, that it seems all I ever write about somehow is connected to the topic of leadership. My first instinct was to tell the person she was wrong, that I write about many things and leadership is but one of those topics. That was my first instinct, a reaction born of emotion instead of rationale. I have learned to check my initial reactions to a challenge, to check for some facts before responding immediately. I looked back at my blogs and noticed that many of my musings, particularly in the past weeks, has touched on the topic of leadership.

I don't plan my blogs. I have no strategy for the topics that pour forth from my musings. I write on the spur of the moment about a subject that has captured my thoughts. Recently, this has been, more frequently than not, something along the lines of leadership, or a topic in which leadership somehow weaves it's way into the narrative.

This topic has been on the forefront of my mind for many years. I have a red journal sitting at my bedside that contains many entries touching on leadership. This particular journal was started in 2006 with the aim of capturing my learnings and my thoughts on leadership with a focus on challenging myself to be the best leader I can be. Prior to that I devoured books about leadership. A leader is what I was. I wanted to improve my leadership abilities. A leader is what I am so I feel it is vitally important, my duty to build upon this gift I have been given. The journal is not always true to that focus but, I would say, 75% or more of the entries are about leadership. The very first entry, dated 26-Oct-2006, is an excerpt from a the book Winning by Jack Welch.

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."

After two decades of being a leader, I have carved out for myself an opportunity to formerly grow leaders with the sanction of my company. When you grow leaders you multiply your impact. I am very excited about this opportunity so, naturally, it is going to be a frequent visitor on my blog. I feel this will build on my success last year and will be my breakout year, a formational year which will set the foundation for my future either in my current company or as a consultant. For too long in my life, I have waited for someone to shape the future, for the opportunity to fall into my lap. No more. Now, I am seeing a future take shape, a future I can believe in because it's a future I am creating.

Is my focus to narrow? Possibly and possibly not. The topic of leadership has recently dominated my writing and, to a large extent, my work world but does not have an exclusive hold on my life. Leadership is how I make a living, how I make a life. And my style of leadership is how I try to have an impact of the people with whom I work on a daily basis. My training program has also been added to my goals for the year so will have a significant impact on how I get evaluated and will have a direct impact to my bottom line. So, I expect to be musing quite a bit on this topic the next few months both in my blog and in my everyday thinking.

I am not one dimensional, in fact, I have many facets. Besides contemplating leadership, I enjoy a wide variety of interests from soccer to cycling to reading to travel to my family to my friends to a cute lass. It is only in my recent writings that I have kept to such a narrow focus. Sometimes a narrow focus is what is needed for a season in life to break down the barriers to wide open spaces.