Leadership is about directing attention

Few insights can shape work in organisations as much as this simple, almost innocent-sounding statement: ‘Leadership is about directing attention’. Like a pair of glasses, it helps us to see the important things more clearly and to work on them in a more targeted way. A variety of options for action and methods can be derived from it, enabling everyone in the organisation, regardless of their position or role, to take the lead. And even if it is rarely mentioned explicitly as a principle, it runs like a red thread through the entire management literature.

What does leadership have to do with attention?

‘People can only communicate with each other if they share a common focus of attention.’ (Fritz B. Simon)

Every successful communication between people requires a common topic. When you communicate something, you suggest a section of reality as a priority: ‘Look, this is what it’s about, this is what needs our attention!’ And whoever is listening accepts this prioritisation. At best, disagreement about the topic generates minor misunderstandings (‘What do you mean?’), but it can also generate tangible conflicts when several parties compete for collective attention: ‘No, my topic is more important now!’

Being able to determine the topic gives power. Accordingly, offering, accepting or rejecting topics carries significant influence. From birth, we know how to draw the attention of those around us to our needs. A screaming toddler is basically saying: I need something, make me your topic! Most people learn to express their desires in more subtle and differentiated ways over time, but the basic mechanism remains the same.

Whoever attracts the attention of a person or a group determines the topic of communication. And whoever determines the topic leads. Leading directs attention, and directing attention means leading. This also makes it clear that ‘good’ leadership must begin with each of us.

Self-management

‘Measures of the efficiency of attention control predict the performance of air traffic controllers and Israeli Air Force pilots more reliably than IQ.’ (Daniel Kahneman)

• What am I focusing on?
• What am I spending my time on?
• How do I set priorities?
• What goals am I pursuing?
• How do I deal with distractions?

Most people could improve their self-management. By this I do not mean compulsive self-discipline. Rather, it is about consciously using time and attention and not being constantly distracted by changing topics, stimuli and goals. Those who are constantly distracted do not lead (themselves), but become a plaything of their environment.

Of course it is important to observe your environment and to react to it. If you only revolve around yourself mentally and communicatively, you will lose touch. But when there are more impulses, stimuli and information than we can process, mental filters are essential for survival: I perceive it, but I am not dealing with it now. We constantly have to ignore distractions, fade out stimuli, sort tasks, reject requests, and maintain focus. All methods of work organisation, self-management, prioritisation and result orientation are basically tools for better self-management.

Nevertheless, this is not primarily about methods. The best tools can only work if the self is ready for self-management. In my work environment, for example, it is popular to enter blockers for ‘focus time’ in the calendar. But a calendar blocker alone does not create focus. Focus time takes place in the mind, not in the calendar. If I allow myself to be constantly distracted during my ‘focus time’, a calendar entry is of no use to me.

Self-management means consciously focusing on what is important and is a basic requirement for effective leadership in the social environment as well. How is a group supposed to understand what is expected of them if you jump from topic to topic uncontrollably and do not have your time, your tasks and your communication under control? How can you lead others if you are already overwhelmed with self-management?

Leadership in the organisation

‘[Thus,] the question of which distinctions an organisation uses for orientation becomes a central question for its survival. Which topics come into focus and which do not? Which self-image and which models of the world determine its actions? […] One of the most important (albeit sometimes unconsciously used) control and management tools within organisations [is] the focusing of attention and thereby the control of the organisation’s observation.’ (Fritz B. Simon)

‘Why so few priorities? In a word, focus. A business priority defines the most important action that needs to be taken at a given point. Many companies have too many priorities and so their focus is split, and the organization ultimately suffers.’ (Ram Charan)

As soon as we work with others, focusing becomes a social process. If we want to achieve goals together, we have to agree on

• what we are working on (tasks),
• what we want to achieve with it (goals) and
• which means are legitimate for it (parameters).

Most organisational structures are tools to focus attention on these three elements. Strategies describe goals and desired futures. Teams and working groups focus communication on specific tasks. Guidelines, processes and checklists draw attention to important organisational conditions. Roles and responsibilities ensure decisions and thus focus.

Here, too, I see a blatant lack of leadership in many organisations. This does not mean that our working world needs more directives from ‘above’ or that we should define even more goals, roles and guidelines, but that many teams and organisations do not manage their collective attention well. Projects without clear goals, meetings without a clear topic, multitasking in dozens of tasks at the same time, Jira boards with hundreds of parallel tasks: these are all signs of organisational weakness. Once again, it is not about managers ‘leading more’, quite the opposite. I don’t think much of having a group of intelligent experts just carry out instructions. It is obviously not a good idea to limit an entire organisational area to the information processing capacity of a single superior. In healthy organisations, things happen every day that managers know nothing about or would even object to, and often these things are essential for the survival of the organisation. So managing the organisation is a community task, and yet managers play a central role in directing attention.

Leadership for managers

‘Managing attention is one of the most important control instruments in a company.’ (Reinhard Sprenger)

‘Anyone in a position of formal power can expect that he and his interventions will be the focus of attention for those below him. […] What a superior (person) considers important, explicitly or implicitly, thereby becomes important for all those who are subordinate to him. Therefore, every holder of a hierarchical role is observed by the organisation in terms of which persons, topics, questions, goals, purposes, values, etc. he pays attention to. He thereby determines the agenda, whether he is aware of it or not.’ (Fritz B. Simon)

In principle, anyone in the organisation can direct attention, from interns to CEOs. Everyone has the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, look, this looks important!’ Smart entrepreneurs know that the barrier to entry for ideas must be low. You never know who will come up with the next great idea, so we should make it as easy as possible for people to contribute ideas. In this way, leadership becomes something that everyone in the organisation can and should take on. Limiting a large proportion of the organisation’s members to purely executive roles just because they do not have an official leadership role wastes important resources and would simply be bad entrepreneurship.

Conversely, this does not mean that formal leadership roles are irrelevant or superfluous. Leaders draw attention to what they consider important. Their decisions have a major impact and are closely followed by the rest of the organisation. Leaders are hubs in the social network. When they change the focus and thus the direction, they pull their organisational environment with them – every time, with every change of direction, sometimes announced well in advance, sometimes suddenly and abruptly.

The more powerful a person’s position in the organisation, the more important it becomes to consciously manage attention. Those who present themselves as clear and focused also enable the organisation to work on topics in a clear and focused manner. By contrast, those who constantly jump between topics and priorities become unpredictable for those around them. Erratic managers encourage passive and reactive behaviour and inefficient multitasking, because by the time you’ve finished the last topic, the next one is already around the corner. This can go so far that an entire organisation is just waiting for the next spontaneous idea from its flighty decision-maker. I doubt whether an organisation like that could survive in the market in the long term.

The main tools for directing attention as a manager include:

• Long-term goals, strategies and visions
• Success criteria and key figures
• Meetings and working groups on specific topics
• Development of structures, e.g. establishment of roles or communication channels
• Personnel decisions
• Provision of resources such as time and money
• Recognition and sanctions, including symbolic ones
• Key topics in internal communication
• Ritualisation of processes
• Use of tools and methods
• Personal presence internally and externally
• Use of one’s own working time
• Exemplary behaviour (‘Do as I do’)

Ultimately, it is about the ability to maintain or change topics, depending on what is more important for the organisation at the moment. For managers, the ability (!) to act consistently is therefore extremely important. In addition to focus topics, priorities and goals (‘This is more important to me than anything else!’), this also applies to roles, processes and responsibilities. Anyone in a powerful decision-making role who does not respect these structures, ignores them at will or micromanages them in other people’s areas of responsibility devalues them, concentrates decisions and responsibility (not in a positive sense) on themselves and gives the impression that personal initiative and leadership are not worthwhile at other levels of the organisation.

And as already mentioned: most organisations have more issues to focus on than too few. A key skill for managers is therefore not to put issues on the agenda, to say ‘no’ and to remain silent at the right moment. Even if topics keep cropping up in everyday life that could be dealt with, or if there is another perspective that has not yet been considered: successful leaders know how to prioritise these topics and either work on them in a small group, park them for later or (secretly or explicitly) drop them. Some topics are better dealt with at a different time, and it is better to keep your feet still for the moment. There are always other topics to deal with. However, you are not doing the organisation and its productivity any favours by making the list of topics longer and longer and the perspective broader and broader.

Leadership for non-leaders

‘Every word we speak must have an intention; in this way, what we say becomes worthy of attention.’ (Ian Tuhovsky)

As described, directing attention offers leaders a variety of options for action. However, leaders can also be absent or simply not the best source of clarity and orientation. A successful organisation requires that people can, want to and are allowed to lead even without a formal leadership role.

The recurring key question is: What does the group currently need to achieve its goals? Depending on the situation, this may mean defending topics against distractions or introducing new impulses. Successful working groups are capable of both rapid topic changes and high levels of focus. In both cases, they consciously direct their attention. In practice, this means that the opportunity to contribute questions, ideas and impulses should always be given, but at the same time, the group should constantly check whether a new/different topic would really be helpful for achieving their common goal. This also means that topics are regularly rejected and objections and questions are postponed. Not everything has to be said by everyone, but only what really makes a difference. In the interest of effectively using shared time, individuals must be able to tolerate this – this is where the often-cited ‘ability to work in a team’ comes into play.

There are also a number of ways for normal employees to draw attention:

• Opening up new topics: ‘I want to talk about <X>.’
• Closing topics: ‘Let’s not go into that here.’ or ‘We’ll sort that out bilaterally later.’
• Claiming and enforcing priorities: ‘Is this more important than what we’re working on right now?’
• Drawing comparisons, e.g. with goals or strategies: ‘Does this fit with where we want to go overall?’
• Switch to or back to the meta-level: ‘I don’t think we’re going to get a result like this’ or ‘Can we be more specific about what this is about?’
• Ask questions about content and process.
• Exchange information that makes a difference to the current discussion.
• Express recognition, appreciation and criticism.
• Enrich a discussion with data, e.g. in the form of visualisations or metrics.
• Involve experts: ‘Let’s ask Janina from the IT team.’
• Take on topics: ‘Give it to me, I’ll take care of it.’
• Manage your own workload: ‘I can’t deal with this for another four weeks.’
• Refuse topics: ‘I can’t do that.’
• Stay away from topics: ‘I would prefer it if you decided that.’
• Set an example, e.g. through good preparation, quick results, frequent feedback loops and a high level of reliability: ‘Work the way you expect your environment to.’

Can you think of any other ways in which employees can draw attention to themselves?

Structures that promote shared leadership

Leadership and the assumption of responsibility by ‘normal’ employees can be structurally promoted. For me, for example, meetings with an open agenda have proven useful: everyone can bring up topics, but each topic gets a maximum of three minutes. If you need more time, you can use the meeting to organise a follow-up working group (‘Do you two have a moment?’).

Tension-based work, as used in Holacracy or the Loop Approach, among others, is also very helpful. Every team member can introduce ‘tensions’ – I want to pass on information, I have a question, I want to ask someone to do a task – but the team makes sure that the tensions are formulated clearly and understandably in order to use the shared time and attention as effectively as possible. There is little room for personal sensitivities; instead, attention is paid to the clear assignment of tasks and concerns. The central question is: ‘What do you need from the team to be able to continue?’

A common problem in organisations with a division of labour is that teams can drift apart in terms of communication and a shared understanding of the situation can be lost. Over time, silos develop. Particularly unfavourable are situations in which a problem and its solution are present in the organisation at the same time, but do not find each other due to communication barriers. Regular exchange formats and networking events can help here. In bar camps and open spaces, overarching issues can be addressed and discussed in unfamiliar constellations, and the open agenda promotes leadership and initiative.

For employees to be able to take the lead, they need a good understanding of the overall situation. Communication is therefore best open by default. This means avoiding e-mails and other point-to-point messages. Information and questions are shared in open channels where they are visible to others, such as chat groups, Jira tickets, wikis or the intranet. Specific contacts whose attention is absolutely necessary are marked with @-mention. Private direct messages should only be used for information that must be kept confidential or that is obviously of no interest to others. Self-interest alone demands a certain transparency of one’s own work – if you don’t communicate your intentions, tasks and progress, don’t be surprised if others don’t decide in your favour (due to a lack of information).

The basic rules of a team or organisation should be formulated in such a way that they promote leadership and personal responsibility among members. For example, it can be agreed that decisions may always be questioned, but that there is no fundamental right to a say in all matters. Or it is explicitly allowed to tackle problems independently as long as the action is made transparent (‘I intend to…’). With each additional instance whose permission must first be obtained, the willingness to tackle problems independently decreases. So the question is not whether personal initiative is desirable, but how it can be made possible without uncoordinated solo efforts creating new problems elsewhere.

The flip side: followership at all levels

‘Shared leadership implies shared followership, distributed leadership also means distributed following. […] Leadership has never been a one-way street in which leaders exert influence on followers in a one-sided way. Leader and follower have a reciprocal effect on each other.’ (Randolf Jessl, Thomas Wilhelm)

If everyone is always in the lead, the question ultimately arises as to who can actually be led. A situation in which everyone wants to lead at the same time leads to conflicts and a struggle for attention. In other words, for leadership to succeed at all levels, it also requires being led – at all levels!

My rule of thumb is: in a team of five, I have to assume that others will be leading 80 per cent of the time, and I have to reflect on that and accept it for myself. For the manager, this means openly admitting their own lack of knowledge, consciously holding back at times, letting employees lead in their areas of expertise, and above all, providing support and advice in terms of content and process.

In turn, team members are required to let their colleagues lead and make decisions as a matter of course, without feeling offended or having their autonomy curtailed as a result. When leadership tasks and situations are equally available to everyone in the team, this can only be helpful.

Literature and notes (partly in German):

Simon, F. B. (2021). Einfuehrung in die systemische Organisationstheorie. Carl-Auer Verlag
Charan, R. (2001). What the CEO Wants You to Know: How Your Company Really Works. Crown Verlag.
Jessl, R. & Wilhelm, T. (2023). Shared Leadership: Mit geteilter Fuehrung zu mehr Commitment und besseren Ergebnissen. Haufe-Lexware.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Schnelles Denken, Langsames Denken. Penguin UK.
Richter, T. & Groth, T. (2023). Wirksam fuehren mit Systemtheorie: Kernideen für die Praxis. Carl-Auer Verlag.
Sprenger, R. K. (2012). Radikal fuehren. Campus Verlag.
Tuhovsky, I. (2021). How to Talk to Anyone About Anything: How to Communicate Better, Improve Social Skills and Get Your Arguments Across. Positive Coaching LLC.

Kai-Marian Pukall has been working with agile and self-organised teams for over twelve years. For three years, he worked as an agile coach at DB Systel, supporting one of the largest transformations in the German-speaking world. He is currently working as an organisational developer at the Seibert Group. His work is focused on the realisation that particularly successful teams are often characterised by aspects such as voluntary membership, a high level of commitment and clear internal structures. His specialist book Selbstorganisation im Team is about how to achieve this as a team. It is well worth reading!

Kai-Marian Pukall has published more articles in the t2informatik blog, including: