How Excessive Focus Hurts Leaders

Leaders today are obsessed with their personal distinctive leadership style, leading to an excessive focus that hurts their organizations.

Leaders love numbers. Just look at the most famous leadership books—their titles are an exercise in the elevation of quantification:

If you want to be among the best numerically boosted leaders, then remember what Malcolm Gladwell told you about the “10,000 hours” in Outliers, during which you’ll need to learn “Time Management for Mortals” in 4,000 Weeks. In your auspiciously accounted for First 90 Days you can litigate your way through the The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with plenty of margin to “earn” your The 10-Day MBA.

I doubt one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to read The 6 Types of Working Genius, but if you’re part of The 5am Club you’ll be early bird enough to enumerate The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team and The 5 Temptations of a CEO, so then you’ll have a chance to elevate through The 5 Levels of Leadership. Perhaps one of The 4 Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive is to read tomes with tallies in their title such as The 3 Signs of a Miserable Job or The 3 Big Questions for the Frantic Family, which may or may not include the question, “Is my family worse than my miserable job?”

Before you reach the end of this logarithmic list just take 3 Deep Breaths and practice the calculated cogitations of The 1 Minute Manager. Then you can read The #1 Sales Team and rise to the level of 1% Leadership by learning from Lombardi What It Takes To Be Number #1 as long as you focus your reckoning on The 1 Thing alone.

Yes indeed, every single one of these titles is a real leadership book! Which brings me to the problem today, which is much more than our proclivity to come up with (literal) paint-by-numbers leadership titles.

The problem is excessive focus.

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What is Excessive Focus?

When a leader has excessive focus you’ll see evidence of a few related symptoms. A mild case may be preceded by a naval-gazing obsession with their unique personality, and the specificity of their wiring. They may rant at younger generation’s “special snowflake” mentality—but they likely have a whole codified file about their utterly fascinating and unique thumbprint as a leader. They review it quarterly. Another symptom is they tend to talk about themselves in meetings. A lot. While doing so they often mention the specific and focused way they do things. Whenever a problem arises, the real solution becomes: “How does someone like me respond to to something like this?” They may describe themselves by saying, “I’m a leader, not a manager. I don’t sweat the details, I’m a visionary.”

And additional symptom may be counterintuitive: they talk a lot about their weaknesses. They will share how they are bad at almost everything, and that they need people around them strong at what they are weak at. They’ve forgotten that humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself, less (C.S. Lewis). When they celebrate a team member they talk about how they making up for their weaknesses more than they praise the actual strengths of the team member.

When they face resistance, they say “this is just the way I do things.” When they encounter failure, they talk of the “one thing I do,” implying others should have done the thing that failed. They may find heroes in famous people who achieved amazing success but left broken partnerships and relational carnage in their wake, such as Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, Elon Musk, Martha Stewart, Kanye West, or Mark Zuckerberg.

Leaders are conditioned by books and conferences that intense focus is the secret to success, these are created by other leaders with excessive focus, so they may come by it honestly. Whether it is a learned trait or something they’ve had since they were young, it is certainly not challenged much in our world today. In fact, it is hard to convince anyone that excessive focus actually is a problem. It’s like responding to the job interview question, “What is your greatest weakness” with, “My greatest weakness is I care too much and it makes me work too hard.”

So, what are the problems of excessive focus? There are at least four:

1) Excessive Focus is a Luxury of the Top

Only the CEO, president, or point leader of an organization has the luxury of excessive focus. He or she is the only one who can talk themselves into this being a strength, into this being essential for success. Everyone else has a boss that will make sure they become more well rounded. A good supervisor is going to ensure blind spots are covered and we are improving on things that could erode our efforts. The point leader rarely has this coming from their shareholders, board, or anyone else in their life. So they can live in a little bubble of their own making where they live in lap of excessive focus luxury, and the organization pays the toll.

2) Excessive Focus Causes Indiscriminate Delegation

When a leader is exercising excessive focus you’ll start to see that others around them are carrying too much. They have a bunch of subordinates (very talented and highly paid ones at that) who also have subordinates under them, and all the weaknesses of the leader can be covered by someone in the hierarchy, or sometimes even by a whole department. This seems like “good delegation” at first. But later on the problems emerge. Some areas require the point leader’s attention, and if not given effort from the top, then they begin to recede or don’t have the credibility of the point emphasis. Everyone else notices this, and begins to aim initiatives and proposals designed to leverage the One Thing the leader has declared is their strength, because that’s the only way to get the point leader’s attention, and that’s what gets done more and more, and everything else gets sidelined.

3) Excessive Focus Precedes Cascading Failures

When a CEO or point leader gets ousted, we look back and see it most every time. We notice that they focused on one thing and forgot other important things. “They were so great at [insert success here] that we all were distracted from the other things that were eating our lunch.” We can do an autopsy on the crisis and realize we need someone with strengths in other areas. This causes pendulum hiring where the next CEO has strengths in the weakness areas of the last one. Few talk up the value of excessive focus in the hiring or selection process. The candidate claims to be amazing at most things, and at least good at the things they are likely plainly bad at. But later on when they get their hands on the wheel, the excessive focus begins, and they don’t give energy and attention to other areas along the way. When they begin to fail they don’t just fail hard, they fail in a cascade of failures, all interdependent and fueled by a leader that doesn’t even know the right questions to ask about the other areas, since they aren’t a part of his or her focus. Excessive focus leaders don’t just fail, they fail in a blaze of laser-focused ignominy.

4) Excessive Focus has an Insidious Origin

A young boy was known as the most handsome in all of central Greece. However, he could find no young beauty to ever pull at his heartstrings. Many good-looking youths showed interest, but he broke all their hearts. Then, one day, he saw his reflection in a pool of water (do know where this is going yet?) This is the tragedy of Narcissus, and as you might imagine, his relationship with the reflection in the pool didn’t go anywhere. He fell so deeply in love with himself that he never left pool’s edge, and died of thirst for not wanting to disturb the perfect image by drinking.

The fundamental problem with excessive focus is that it’s too inward-looking. The great leaders learn to be outward looking, and adapt to the world around them. Leaders obsessed with excessive focus may not be full blown clinically-diagnosed narcissists, but they show some of those tendencies. Of course, after someone is removed from a position we often notice their excessive focus, their brandishing of their own brand, the way they disrespected other people, and then we name it: “Oh, we were working with someone that was all too focused on themselves!” Self-awareness is a good thing. But self-obsession is the problem. All too often excessive focus is just a way to mask our selfishness and a kind of low-boil narcissism.*

Adaptability, Tensions, & Stewardship

Instead of slipping into excessive focus, good leadership requires a shift from self-focus to selflessness. Here’s how:

Situational Adaptability

Instead of seeing every situation as a chance to exercise my unique way of doing things, I have the opportunity to adapt, learn, and engage in a way that is needed based on the reality on the ground. Instead, I might come in and make things worse by just doing the same things the same way regardless of the problem. Good leaders solve problems, they don’t bring their own problems into the equation.

Managing Tensions

Instead of seeing every issue as a binary to quickly decide based on my own instincts, I have the opportunity to articulate why the issue is difficult in the first place. Everyone on the team realizes that we have a problem to solve, but they might not be able to articulate why it is difficult. A good leader can sort out for the team why the issue is really a tension between two or more values or priorities in the organization, and manage them all rather than running off blind in one direction.

Responsible Stewardship

Instead of seeing every opportunity as a way to take new territory and make a splash, I have the opportunity to make wise investments of visionary emphasis, strategic communication, finances, personnel, and other assets. A good leader finds a way to figure out what their positional stewardship requires. I am not merely me, I am speaking for and on behalf of my position and my organization. That requires things from me that might even feel out of my sweet-spot at times, and that’s ok. That’s just good responsible leadership. I may not be good at everything, but I can be a responsible steward with everything that comes my way.

What’s your take? Do you know leadership books or wisdom promoting adaptability, tension management, or stewardship? Or maybe you’ve been in an org that was hampered by a leader with excessive focus. Share your ideas or experiences in the comments or the DruGroup chat below.

*Studies suggest certain executive job postings may attract individuals with psychopathic traits. Senior executives often score higher on traits often associated with psychopathy, such as being initially charming, poised, and calm, but also egocentric, remorseless, and unwilling to accept blame.