Managing your Talents [27] - Focus

According to Gallup, the essence of the talent theme of Focus is the following:

“Where am I headed?” you ask yourself. You ask this question every day. Guided by this theme of Focus, you need a

clear destination. Lacking one, your life and your work can quickly become frustrating. And so each year, each month, and even each week you set goals. These goals then serve as your compass, helping you determine priorities and make the necessary corrections to get back on course. Your Focus is powerful because it forces you to filter; you instinctively evaluate whether or not a particular action will help you move toward your goal. Those that don’t are ignored. In the end, then, your Focus forces you to be efficient. Naturally, the flip side of this is that it causes you to become impatient with delays, obstacles, and even tangents, no matter how intriguing they appear to be. This makes you an extremely valuable team member. When others start to wander down other avenues, you bring them back to the main road. Your Focus reminds everyone that if something is not helping you move toward your destination, then it is not important. And if it is not important, then it is not worth your time. You keep everyone on point.

But a talent like this on itself is quite meaningless unless you develop and manage it. That is why we believe that "a well managed talent becomes a strength, but a mismanaged talent becomes a detriment".

How do you manage the talent of Focus?

With the Focus talent you hit the mark: dead-on. Like an arrow flying out of a bow, once launched, you cannot be called back. You are locked on until you hit the mark.  This in itself should be managed, as it means that any disturbance can throw you of balance.
You "stick-to-it", naturally. You have this amazing ability to "zoom in" on the exact target - one at a time, aim, fire and hit.  But exactly this strength is what should be managed well and with intention. If not developed and managed well, this may become detrimental to your own productivity.  You probably know better than anyone that you do not like to be disturbed once you started with a task.  Also, you prefer to do one thing at a time, and complete it, before you move to another task.  You prefer not to multitask.

How?

As far as possible you need to communicate this to everyone who works with you, who you report to and those reporting to you.  If they can understand your "zoned" state when busy, they can accommodate it better.

Your surroundings is just as important.  The Focus talent will not prefer an open plan setting.  If possible, you will work best when as much as possible of your external environment can be set up not to disturb you:  closed door, phone on silent etc.

Obviously this will not always be possible.  But as far as you can be celebrated for your "arrow-like" accuracy and precision, you also need to be celebrated by the fact that you need to focus fully.  Create that environment yourself.

People with Focus are very often also seen as being perfectionists.  This is because of the absolute precision and attention to detail that comes with the talent.  Perfectionism can also be a detriment though...
Everything cannot be perfect.  This need to be accepted by someone with the Focus talent - especially if Focus dynamically aligns with talents like Discipline or Achiever, thus forming "Super Themes".  Focus is meticulous when it comes to detail and precision. This is what they bring as a strength.  But this also mean that Focus can be stuck within a "perfection loop" to make sure that the results are exactly as needed.  If this does not cause a detriment, you should not see this as mis-management.  Detail is what saves lives....literally at times.  But when it becomes something that keeps you and your team back, you need to "turn down the perfection volume".

How?

It may well be one of the hardest things for you to do, but it need to be managed.  Understand that although the "devil is in the details", that same "devil" can also be the one who cause you to lose effectiveness and productivity.  You need to let go then. Purposefully.  You need to decide that hitting the target is more important than the surrounding details that my hold you and the team back.  So, at the end, it is a decision of :sacrifice" from your end - but only when needed.

Meanwhile, keep hitting the mark!! That is what you do best.

- by Dries Lombaard, Director of Strategic Engagement at the Strengths Institute SA.
Important note when reading this: in this series, I simply focus on the specific talent in isolation. I do not take the crucial element of Talent Dynamics (two or more talent themes combining) into consideration. This is very important as any Coach should take that into consideration when coaching people in their talents. But you need to understand the challenges that the talent theme on its own might hold. Therefor the challenges in managing the talent as explained below might not be applicable to everyone, as the dynamics with some of their other talent themes might override the specific challenge and "make up for it". But, knowledge of the most common management challenges in every talent theme still is crucial in talent development and when turning the talent into a strength.  All information is my own, acquired by years of Strengths Coaching experience, and not verified or scientifically tested by Gallup. The definition at the beginning is the intellectual property of Gallup, and well researched.