Effective Leaders Create Focus

One of my tendencies when dealing with an active child is to look them in the eyes and say as I'm pointing to my own: "Now, let's focus. Do you hear me? What am I asking you to do?" The more I hear and read about leadership, the more I see that much of it relates directly to what some of us do naturally as parents. I have been in many a home (sometimes my own), when the place is a mess, kids are running wild and one spouse is sitting with his feet up on the couch and the other is sweating in a hot kitchen trying to get dinner on the table.

Then there are other homes where the kids are helping to chop tomatoes and set the table, one spouse is getting drinks ready as the other pulls a casserole out of the oven. It is a calm and peaceful place and everyone is pitching in.

We we look at our libraries, we can easily relate them to life in either home. It's not the child's role to tell everyone what to do, but the parent's, and as Robert Benson shared in a recent presentation: "When a person becomes a director, their thought pattern changes from thinking not about what I can do as an individual, but about what we can do as a team." The effective director gives the team focus or vision, and the key to that is for staff members to understand their place in the priorities of implementing that vision.

If a child knows that by helping mom set the table, he will be able to eat sooner, then he will be more willing to help. In the same way, a staff member is more willing to do his specific task if he or she realizes that in accomplishing that, a child will be able to learn to read sooner or a person will learn the skills they need to get that job they so badly need.

If we set the vision and connect it with a higher purpose than just the "task at hand", our staff will be more emotionally invested in the overall goals of the library. Routines will change from dull tasks to an invaluable part in the process of seeing the library reach her potential in changing lives for the good.

Along with striving to find the "why" we exist as a library in our community, our next goal should be not only for the staff to understand and "buy into" that purpose, but also to then discover their areas of strength which we will then be able to harness to see our purpose fulfilled. One of the greatest deficiencies in many organizations is for people to "move up" or into empty positions because "they've been there the longest" and not because they are qualified or gifted to serve in that capacity. Working toward seeing staff grow and work out of their strengths is an important goal to work toward as a leader who strives to create focus.