Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness

Individual Assignment: The Focused Leader – How

effective executives direct their own and organizations’
attention

The case study The Focused Leader highlights the main task of a leader which is having the
ability to direct attention. To do this, leaders must learn how to focus their own attention to
enable them to direct the attention of the organization. Often when the term focused is being
brought up, there is a tendency to mean thinking about one specific thing whilst filtering out
everything else, however, a significant number of research in neuroscience has now shown
that focus comes in a lot of different ways, for different reasons using different neural
pathways.

Putting the many forms of attention into three broad categories, focusing on oneself, focusing
on others, and focusing on the larger world, sheds new light on a variety of leadership
qualities. Understanding how a leaders focus on the larger world could boost their ability to
create, develop strategy, and manage organizations, understanding how they focus on the
larger world is essential. Leaders can enhance their emotional intelligence by focusing both
on themselves and on others.

While it is not difficult to identify leaders who can effectively focus on others, typically these
leaders are the ones who can establish common goals and shared values, whose ideas carry
the most weight, and with whom others desire to collaborate. It is however difficult to
identify leaders who are able to have the right balance between the ability to focus on oneself,
focus on others and the larger world. This can be achieved by having high level of emotional
intelligence.

Salovey and Mayer (1990) defined emotional intelligence as “the subset of social intelligence
that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feeling and emotions, to
discriminate among them and use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions”. The

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foundation of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. Leaders with greater self-awareness
can access more resources to make better decisions and drive greater value.

 Self-awareness: To be self-aware, one must be attentive to internal physiological

signs. Focusing on present-moment sensory sensations is an important aspect of self-
awareness. The ability to see our genuine selves is a second factor. Being authentic
involves presenting yourself to others how you present yourself to yourself. This
requires paying attention to what others think of you and being receptive to feedback.

 Self-control: ‘Cognitive control’ is the scientific word for what many individuals refer
to as "willpower". This cognitive control permits leaders to pursue a goal despite
obstacles and diversions. Those who maintain their composure amid adversity and
recover demonstrate superior cognitive control.

Self-regulation of emotions is vital for a leader. Among the domains of emotional intelligence
and skills Goleman emphasizes the need of empathy, one of the social abilities. Social skills
are abilities that play a role in regulating our interpersonal relationships. One of the social
skills is empathy. According to Goleman et al. (2003), empathy is the capacity to experience,
comprehend, and respect the emotions and perspectives of others, as well as the
responsiveness to them.

One of the key leadership styles highlighted in the case study is Transformational Leadership
that seeks to inspire and transform its followers for the better in order to achieve a higher
purpose. According to Gardner and Stough (2002), transformational leadership seeks to boost
the confidence of followers while fostering a growth-oriented environment that propels the
business toward its objectives (Pinos, Twigg, Parayitam, & Olson, 2013, p. 63).

Furthermore, Bass et al. (1995) stated that empathy is a crucial trait of transformational
leadership. Transformational leadership is founded on the perspective of followers;
consequently, the more followers perceive the leader to be transformational, the more
followers internalize the leader's vision, Pinos et al. (2013). When followers perceive that
their leaders have trust in them and empathy for them, they are more likely to strive toward
and achieve the organization's vision and goals.

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It is also discussed by Wolff et al. (2002) that when leaders demonstrate empathy, they are
able to favorably influence the emotional states of their followers leading to increase in
performance. Additionally, empathy fosters respect between leaders and followers. It helps
maintain, build, and manage interpersonal relationships.

Empathy enables leaders to be "in tune" with their followers and makes them more
democratic and open-minded. Perspective-seeking is a democratic strategy, which means that
leaders seek and cherish the perspectives of their followers during decision-making and
problem-solving. This might make followers feel loved and understood. Often empathy is
referred to as a single attribute, however a closer look shows that there are three distinct kinds
which are significant for leader-member relationship effectiveness:

 Cognitive empathy: Which is the capacity to comprehend the viewpoint of another

one. It enables leaders to explain themselves in meaningful ways, which is essential
for maximizing the performance of their subordinates. This sort of empathy needs
leaders to consider rather than directly experience emotions.

 Emotional empathy: It is the capacity to experience another's emotions. This is

essential for interpreting group dynamics, mentoring, and client management.

 Empathic concern: It is the capacity to perceive what another person needs from you.
This is directly tied to emotional empathy and enables you to perceive both how
others feel and what they require from you. A person must manage their own grief
without cutting oneself off to the suffering of others in order to demonstrate empathy.

A leader with high level of empathy can practically decipher and comprehend other
individual's nonverbal communication. The leader may also be aware of the impact he has on
others, as, for instance, a follower's nonverbal manifestations indicate the degree to which he
accepts him and his emotional manifestation in the situation. This is essential for leaders
because followers tend to agree with and praise the leaders despite sometime being in
disagreement according to Levenson – Ruef (1997). This increases the effectiveness of the
leader-member relationship.

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Finally, the case study highlights the importance of a focused leader having the quality of
strong outward focus, and these leaders tend to be both good listeners and good questioners.
They are typically visionaries who can sense the repercussions of their judgments and foresee
how their current decisions will play out in the future. Leaders who are strong at outward
focus would be able to channel their focus towards the following three areas:

 Strategy: The two primary components of strategy are maximizing current advantage
and discovering new opportunities. Exploitation demands a focus on the current task,
whereas exploration necessitates an open mind to recognize opportunities.

 Innovation: Today, everyone has access to the same information; therefore, the ability
to combine ideas in novel and inventive ways generates new value.

 Systems Awareness: This skill in most prevalent in those excel at matrix

organizations, assembly lines or designing software. It had been suggested that in a
significant number of people, a strong systems awareness is linked to an empathy
deficit. As a result of this, although people who have a superior understanding of
systems are assets to an organization, they may not necessarily be effective leaders.

In conclusion, focused leaders are in tune with how they feel, understand how other people
see them, can manage their impulses, can tune out distractions and comprehend what other
people need from them. As a result, they have high level of empathy which is intrinsically
formed within each human being. It is the capacity and practice of putting oneself in the
shoes of another and underpinned by a strong foundation of emotional intelligence.

Although it may initially appear overly intimate or unprofessional, it has the potential for
enormous accomplishments and successes, especially for individuals in leadership roles. It
can bolster them toward transformative leadership; it can envelop a leader with trust,
intuition, resonance, creativity, democracy, ethics, and respect; it can assist them in locating
new solutions and gaining devoted, inspired followers. Leaders that aim to exemplify and
foster empathy can significantly improve and motivate the outcomes and efforts of their
followers.

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References:

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, cognition and

personality, 9(3), 185-211.

Goleman, D. (2003). What makes a leader. Organizational influence processes, 82, 229-241.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2001). Primal leadership: The hidden driver of
great performance.

Levenson, R. W., & Ruef, A. M. (1997). Physiological aspects of emotional knowledge and
rapport. Empathic accuracy, 8, 44-72.

Wolff, S. B., Pescosolido, A. T., & Druskat, V. U. (2002). Emotional intelligence as the basis
of leadership emergence in self-managing teams. The Leadership Quarterly, 13(5), 505-522.

Avolio, B. J., & Bass, B. M. (1995). Individual consideration viewed at multiple levels of
analysis: A multi-level framework for examining the diffusion of transformational
leadership. The leadership quarterly, 6(2), 199-218.

Pinos, V., Twigg, N. W., Parayitam, S., & Olson, B. J. (2006). Leadership in the 21st century:
The effect of emotional intelligence. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 5, 61.

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