Leading With Focus and Intention

Your general leadership skills are helpful and useful, especially during tough times. In addition, the more you exhibit those skills, the more people in the organization will emulate them. By following your actions, the organization will generate its own leaders at all levels. But it is necessary to use your skills in a more distinct way, to hone your leadership into focused, intent, and useful actions for individuals and the organization as a whole. Here are five ways to lead with focus and intention.
First of all, you must know what you're trying to achieve and how you're going to get there. This may sound elementary, but leaders can become "all talk", especially when things are at a high level of uncertainty. Analyze your own knowledge of this subject. Ask yourself where your organization is and what it is trying to achieve. This means looking again at the vision and mission of the organization. Perhaps it means creating a five-point strategic plan based on that vision and mission. But this also means that you have to get familiar with the organization's operations in order to know how you're going to lead it from where it is now to where you want it to be. But the main point here is to know where you're going and how you're going to get there.
Next, you must take the "how" you've just discovered, i.e. how you're going to get the organization from point A to point B, and learn to talk about it. Don't simply talk about it at the executive or leadership levels. Take it to the "streets" of your organization. Know how to talk about the "how" to the front lines, the middle managers, the accounting department, and the salespeople. Know how each unit you're addressing fits in with the "how" and go from there. Leadership is inspirational, but imagine how inspirational you can really become if you can talk intelligently to all the levels about how each person will contribute to the achievement of the organization's goals.
The first two actions may be fairly easy. Or, depending on how you've involved yourself in the past, they may come with a difficult learning curve. But once you know what you're trying to achieve, how you're going to achieve it, and how to talk about it, you must be prepared for the obstacles that will come your way. In the current economic uncertainty, the one guarantee is that tomorrow will probably not be like today. And you must prepare for this. When obstacles arise, go back to the drawing board to figure out how they affect the original goal and mission. Then figure out the "how" once again. This is where your executive or leadership team comes in - each one of them has specific experience that will help you create a new plan in the face of obstacles. But the biggest thing to remember is that when obstacles occur, focus the organization back on the mission and goals using the new and improved "how". Your job is to keep people from losing their focus in uncertainty. You and your team have to figure it out and keep moving.
Along with a refocus in the face of uncertainty, you can use your other leadership skills. Think about how you can use your powers of persuasion and negotiation to refocus the groups that may be suspicious of changes, even if the changes mean that the organization is saving itself from a bad situation. Also think about how you can use your ability to choose the best battles to refocus not only your own energy but that of the organization, as well. All of the skills you've built as a leader over time will now come in handy. It's not up to the rest of the organization to get your buy-in. It's now up to you to get their buy-in; every person in every group must come with you in order to keep things moving.
Finally, if things change completely, you must still refocus. Your entire organizational goal or mission may change in the face of new problems, issues, and obstacles. But there is no giving up on leading with focus and intent. Find the organization's new goal, the new "how", and start over again. This can be the most difficult aspect of leadership - it means that you may have to admit whatever failures caused the problem, and whether they were internal, external, or both. But once you do that, keep the focus on the new goal and the new "how". Position the change as a field of ripe opportunities that each person can take advantage of as the organization moves forward.
Leadership is one thing, but leading with focus and intention is another. Do both and you'll see that the organization follows.