 |
Sweet On LeadershipAuthor: Tim Sweet
This show is for new leaders, experienced leaders, struggling leaders, and leaders at the top of their game. It is for those who want to hear about the skills, tools and concepts that lead to better results. In this show, I want to bring leaders valuable concepts that aren't just trending the flavour of the month "shoulds." These might be ideas that haven't been sucked up and branded by LinkedIn personalities and gurus. What they will be is field-tested in the real world. Episodes will each focus on developing the skills and capacity today's leaders ask for. And they'll be kept interesting, fun, and full of metaphors and stories. It will be memorable, relatable, and accessible. Here's to you and your best version of a leader. Language: en-us Genres: Business, Careers, Management Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Focus to Focus on Focus
Episode 55
Wednesday, 14 May, 2025
In this powerful episode, Tim Sweet unpacks the critical role of focus in leadership, especially when navigating the noise of political and economic uncertainty. With heartfelt clarity, Tim explores how today’s leaders can rise above the chaos by gaining altitude and stepping back to assess what truly matters. He invites us to let go of the busywork, choose the essential few priorities, and give ourselves permission to slow down and realign.Drawing from his own experiences, including a delay in releasing this very episode due to a client crisis, Tim reinforces the idea that integrity in leadership starts with reclaiming control of our time and energy. Through practical tools and emotional insight, Tim challenges us to start each day with intention, not the inbox.He introduces a simple but powerful three-step practice: notice when energy is off-track, name a meaningful action, and schedule it. By understanding the emotional drivers of distraction, such as insecurity and the urge to prove ourselves, leaders can instead ground themselves in purpose. Whether it's protecting your most creative hour or "bilge-sweeping" your week to clear the clutter, this episode offers a refreshing reminder: true leadership starts from within. Resources discussed in this episode:Ep. 30 with Jagroop ChhinaEp. 51 with Jared VanderMeer--Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: WebsiteLinkedIn: Tim SweetInstagramLinkedIn: Team Work Excellence--Transcript:Tim 00:01Everything we talk about in the show pertains to leadership in some way, shape or form, or at least your leadership impact and your leadership career. But real daily leadership in a time where we've got political upheaval, where we've got economic upheaval, it feels harder and harder to maintain. So this week, one of my editors said to me, Tim, could you talk about how we can focus when everything feels uncertain? That landed. Because right now, a lot of leaders are tired. They're asking a lot of big questions, they're reacting to a lot of volatility, and they've got teams that are distracted. They've got teams that are actually, in some cases, at each other's throats. They may have lost trust. They may be dealing with personal crisis. While we have to talk about that as well. We have to be able to do our jobs at the end of the day, Tim 00:58I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet. This is episode 55 of the Sweet on Leadership podcast. Tim 01:30I want to be transparent with you. This episode, it was supposed to be out a few days ago, or at least I was supposed to get the recording to my editor, but a client crisis came up. It was urgent, it was important, it was distracting. I got pulled in. The irony isn't lost on me that when I'm about to record something about focus, I myself lost focus. Tim 01:54So today's for the leader who wants traction, not just more output, but clarity, integrity, so that they can believe in themselves, so they make good on the promises they make to themselves. We want to develop a rhythm that we can predict and that we can trust. Let's start up high 10,000 feet, because the first problem with focus is where we're looking. It's easy sometimes to get stuck in the weeds when we haven't really considered how we do the work. We need to take some time and work on the work. We need to focus on how we focus. If we get locked in on a task level, what's due, what's late, what's noisy, what's the emergency of the day? Things can seem very unmovable. So our first concept is, think about altitude. Be able to go way up, 300,000 feet, look down every once in a while and say, am I working on the right thing? Is this the piece of work that's going to move that needle forward. Tim 3:06So here's the first question, what does this season of your career actually demand you become? Not what's trendy, not what's the burning platform in the moment politically, not what used to work, not what others are simply applauding. Just this season. Just right now. Who do you need to be? In my work with executives, with clients and universities and businesses and medicine, we want to be able to name those one to three things at any point that are going to move the needle and then ruthlessly let go of the rest. Because here's the truth, if everything is important, you know that nothing is. You have to choose, not just what to do and the quality you bring with that, but what to release, what to stop doing? Tim 04:05Focus isn't just about intensity of attention. It's about permission, giving ourselves the right to stop and invest in what matters. We ask our people to keep their head on the swivel, to think about what matters. Why are you doing things? But so often, we ourselves get overwhelmed and we forget that not everything is possible. Leaders often become the catch all. They will do something just because they're trying to keep their other people so committed and deployed effectively that the little things well, it's just easier to do them than to develop a system by which we're going to get those done. And in the process, the people that are at the top most positions in teams and businesses themselves become overwhelmed and you cannot give away calm. You cannot promote calm in others if you yourself don't have a sense of calm and control. So before we optimize our own schedules, we want to think about elevation. We need to get up and zoom out and get honest what deserves our focus in this season of our lives, in this quarter of the business, in this area of our growth and development. Tim 05:34Even when you know your priorities, your day, can still get hijacked. What does it take? One email, one off handed comment, one meeting you didn't expect to be in, one emergency you didn't think was going to take place, and you're back in reaction mode. So here's a simple shift start your day in intention, not in your inbox, but with intention. Before the world grabs your energy. Decide where does your energy need to go? Decide where that day needs to end. Tim 06:14With the work life design tool that I use with every client, when we onboard, we talk about energy alignment. Not just how to get more done, but how to develop a capacity to feel more focused and to really make sure you're in command of your day. You need capacity to create capacity. For me, I live by my calendar. My clients know that if it's not in my calendar, it does not happen. So I make sure that every time a new event comes in, it has to go in my calendar. It has to immediately be jotted down, captured even contextually. If I don't have it, if I don't have access to that, because I've chosen not to focus on long term things, I'm very much into the Get it into my inbox and delegate it into an event. I need that so that I can maintain my free time and my booked time. My free time is very, very important, and I wouldn't say it's necessarily free. Let's let's probably call it flexible time. But for me, that time becomes wildly creative. It's when I get to be curious. It's when I get to think about which one of my clients I'm caring about most in the moment, which one requires my intention, which one do I need to send out a little hello to if I haven't heard from them. Who am I concerned about? Who am I really wanting to see move something forward. If it's not in my calendar, it simply doesn't happen. Tim 07:52Because if even one block of my responsibility hasn't been represented in a visual way, and this is my way, it doesn't have to be yours. I can't keep control of it. I will fill the whole day, but I may fill it with what I'm most interested in or most passionate about, or I just don't let something go rather than diverting and changing tact. And when you have as many clients as I do, as many projects on the go, as many books that I want to write, you need to be able to switch gears. So here is a question for you. What's one part of your day that you can reclaim? Take a look at your calendar and see where you are pointed at things that simply don't provide you any value. Can you get that back? Where is there a spot that is claimed with the wrong thing and you could put that to better use? Tim 08:57Okay. Next question. When does your energy in the day feel most clear? Pay attention for the next week when you feel a sense of clarity. For some people, it's first thing in the morning. For myself, it's often first thing in the morning. For other people, it's right before they go to bed. And for still other people, they need to have experienced the day. So it might be at four o'clock or five o'clock. People are different. Some people need to be in this dance between forecasting what they need to do and finding out what they actually need to do that day. But pay attention when during the day is best for you to stop and kind of do a broad sweep of what you're working on. Tim 9:42Third question, what's one thing that you can protect that fuels your impact and your focus and your time, not just the activity? So what's something that settles you down or gives you that type of space it might be going for a walk. It might be taking a glass of water. It might be that space before you decide to hunker down and watch a movie. When do you need to honour your requirement of refocusing your life, of really clearing out the bilge, getting rid of things that don't matter? All in all, this means don't manage your time. Design it. Design a day that you can win with. Here's the layer most productivity advice skips. There is an emotional driver underneath everything that we do. And there is an emotional driver underneath, failing to focus, failing to take stock of what's important and what can you ignore. We're not simply distracted because we're disorganized. We're distracted because of insecurity. We fail to cut loose things we don't need to do because doing those things, says something to ourselves, proves something to ourselves, that allows us to feel secure in the moment. Perhaps it's that useless meeting that we're supposed to go to, that if we don't, the boss is going to hate us. We're trying to, in those moments, prove that we’re enough. If you're a mom or a dad, you might be trying to please everyone. Or you might be trying to pattern yourself after someone else's formula. But proving pleasing, patterning, it's all exhausting, and it can keep us busy but completely unfulfilled. Tim 11:46So another question, when you look at the tasks that you've got in front of yourself, is it about impact, or is it about insecurity? Until we confront that and we're fluent in what makes us insecure and what has us nervous. It's very hard to arrive at the best systems, because that insecurity that trying to keep up the false self sits there like a gravitational force that pulls us faster and faster, often in the wrong direction again when we pause, we take that time to reflect. We have to look at everything that's important to us, everything that's happening on the outside, but then also, what are we trying to be on the inside? Whose approval are we chasing? What would change if we stopped needing to prove that thing to others or to ourselves. Tim 12:46The deepest kind of focus isn't tactical. The deepest kind of focus is emotional intelligence and emotional alignment. Where are we and why are we there, and is it aligned with who we really are and what we really need to do? Tim 13:05Okay, big words. How do we make this real? Well, you don't need a new app, although there's lots that are out there that they're going to promise that they can solve this for you. And you don't need a massive overhaul. An app is snake oil. There's things out there that promise to do it for you. We don't need to develop faster pencils, faster ways to get unfocused, trying to do more when really we need to be doing less. And we don't need to change ourselves. We don't have time to change you, nor would we want to, because why would we want to knock all those sharp edges off of you, who is perfect and very effective at being you better than anybody else at being you. Tim 13:52Here's a three-step practice that I come back to, especially when I feel scattered. Practice, like meditation, is knowing you're out of that state of flow. You've got to notice. I feel like my energy is misdirected. So where is my energy going today? Is it being bled by urgency and emergency? Is it being bled by ego or insecurity? Is it being bled by lack of alignment with something, I don't feel like I'm working on something that I feel is important, or I can't connect the dots? Am I having an issue with fit with the type of work I'm doing today? Or am I having an issue with being frustrated with perhaps someone else or a set of values that I don't agree with. So notice, is your energy slipping away? Is your focus slipping away? And where is it going? Tim 14:52The next thing is, find one meaningful action and name it. Notice the energy is going away. Right? And then name that one meaningful thing you could do that would bring this back into control. And it's often not something complex. It's not becoming somebody new. It's not developing some new tool. It's saying, Hey, I'm feeling insecure right now. I'm not sure if Bob appreciated how I talked to them yesterday. So what's one meaningful thing I could do? Call Bob, call Bob and ask. It's not complex. It takes ownership and leadership of the situation, and it goes out and says, Hey, this is what I'm worried about. And Bob may not agree, um, you know, I'm fine, or he might say, yeah, you were an asshole. But we've settled it, and we've probably dealt with what we really needed to deal with in the process. You might not be able to deal with them right in the moment. You might feel something but not be able to action it. So, notice you're out. Notice you're out of focus. Name the thing that's going to bring you back in and then schedule that thing. When are you going to do it? When are you going to protect 45 minutes in the day where you are going to move some of these things forward? And it can be a great, really liberating part of your day to say, you know, I'm going to have that spot to just clean the bilge. If you follow me for a little while now, you know that I've had this, this interest in Napoleonic seafaring. Well, those ships were disgusting. You know, these large ships of the line, these large merchant vessels, they had these disgusting bilges down in the bottom, where, where, you know, the wood was rotting, there was effluent, there was rat shit, there was there was stagnant sea water, and, gosh knows what else down there. The best ships are said to have sweetened the bilge on a regular basis, because, you know, down there in the hold, things can get pretty sour and pretty stagnant. And so they would let sea water in, and they would have people on the pumps, and they would exchange the dirty bilge water for clean bilge water. Ideally, you'd like to keep the bilge dry, but if you can't, at least sweeten it. Tim 17:21So think about that. What's the time of day that you're going to have a time to sit back and and sweeten your bilge? Right? You can do it in the morning. You can do it before anything else starts barking for your attention. It's a great way to use the morning pages activity that we talked about in several other episodes. This isn't about being perfect. It's not about making sure that you are never exposed. It's not about being resistant to ever being unfocused. Lack focus happens. It's going to happen to you. We are we are built to look far off and close up. It's why our eyes were nearsighted and far sighted. It's not about being perfect. It's not about never being surprised. It's about building trust with yourself again that you can make the calls needed to take control of your day. Because when you can consistently refocus, you can follow through on what matters, and that sense of agency over what you're working on what's important to you returns. And interestingly enough, you know, there's a million ways to get something done. This practice also allows us to design what's our best way through a problem, because our route may not be the route that our neighbors should take. In the end, it allows us to stop drifting and start leading our day, start leading our schedule. Tim 18:52So let's land here. In these times, these times where volatility and distraction and noise, where everything is vying for our attention. Focus isn't a tactic. It's a leadership stance. In martial arts, depending on what practice you're in, the first thing they teach you is grounded horse stance. If you're boxing, they teach you that orthodox or that southpaw stance, where your back foot, the back foot is the one that when your eyes are closed and they push you, that's the one that falls to the back, because that's your steadiest position. That position says to you, when you know what it is, you've got a home base, you can say this focus, this home base, this feeling of stability, is what I've chosen to give myself today. I deserve this. I deserve to not feel off kilter. This is where I will show up for myself and protect the time that I want to spend on this planet. This doesn't make you better than everybody else. It does not make you superhuman. It just means that you're intentional, and the more you practice this, the easier it gets. Tim 20:07Warren Buffet, everybody's business Grandpa, lovely, straight headed, wildly successful. Salt of the earth, super grounded. He never has felt the need to put on airs. He wants to be practical. He lives in a small home with his wife, and he drives in a simple car. He says that it's his drive home and his drive to work which is his chance to refocus and think deep thoughts and and really plan out his day. And he finds that by silencing the radio, he doesn't use his radio. He doesn't listen to music. He takes that opportunity to just enjoy silence, and that is something that we don't have a lot of in our lives. For myself, it's first thing in the morning. I got a busy family. When everybody gets up, it is mayhem. I'm the only morning Lark. I'm a morning person. I'm the only morning Lark in a House of Night owls. They love to stay up late. They've got all sorts of energy at night, but that few minutes in the morning when I can just be intentional, focus on what I need to do, have that bit of quiet. Ideally, being out on a walk and doing it is golden. It's how I find traction and wherever you find your most energy, where you feel that you can have that natural propensity to focus, schedule it, because that's how you're going to find traction every day, in small ways in this shifting world that is trying to vie for your Attention. Jagroop Chhina said that the new economy is an attention economy. Jared van der Meer said the same thing. It's all about watch time. People are trying to keep you focused on them, not focused on yourself, and we need to win this focus back. When we can find focus, we find traction. Tim 22:03That's how we create clarity for ourselves. And when we have clarity for ourselves, we can provide that clarity for our teams. That's how you become a better leader or focused on integrity, doing the right thing at the right time, not just activity. We look up to heroes because they're the ones that do the right thing at the right time, even when it's tough. That is the definition of integrity. Extend that integrity down to every activity that you do. Is that the best thing that you could be doing right now? And then, I would really highly recommend you have some recess time, some free time, both to reground yourself and focus, but also just to go out and do some silly stuff, go out and exercise, go out and just get creative. You know, that's the rule. Free time when you're allowed to be distracted, when you're allowed to just free think and ideally producing it, creating, not consuming. And keep that time and schedule it in the same way, intentionally. Tim 23:10with all of this. I hope it helps you find new levels of focus this week and every week beyond. If you are interested in getting very, very precise about where your life is aimed, where your day is aimed, where your career is aimed, and you want to build that back in your life. I think it's probably time that we we have a conversation. Meanwhile, thanks once again for joining us here. Thanks again for investing a few minutes in yourself and your own development. If this resonated with you, share it with your colleagues. Share it with your team. Share it with your family. Anybody who you feel is wrestling with clarity on who they are and what they do in the course of the day and who you think focus might help. It's a skill that we don't think of as a skill. We think we should just have it. But you teach it to yourself, bring it into your relationships, perhaps you teach it to young people that are important to you. Can do amazing things. Can unlock amazing levels of natural efficiency, because when we have capacity, we can create capacity. When we have a feeling of togetherness and calm, we can create togetherness and calm. And when we have focus, we can create focus. We can move from creating it for ourselves to mastery over it. And when we have mastery over it, we can mentor it in others, if you want more tools to help you with finding your rhythm, your groove, and to protect that energy that so many people want to rob you of, you'll find a link to how you can get into a Work Life, Design, conversation with me in the show notes. Take the time to stay focused, and when you do, you'll feel more aligned. You'll feel more confident. And you'll feel like you are better able to show up and lead not just your own life,but the work of others. Okay, I'll see you again next time. Tim 25:12Thank you, so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership, please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts, this helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host. Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.
