Are you a vitamin or a painkiller? - Should leaders focus on the present or the future?

Thank you for listening to The Champion Forum Podcast with Jeff Hancher. Everyone naturally tends to think more about the past, present, or future. However, leaders need to know how to balance focusing on their immediate needs and the challenges they face with investing in their team’s long-term success. Today, we’ll discuss the risks and benefits of focusing on one approach over the other and how to adapt when one approach becomes out of balance.

Is it more important to focus on the here and now or on the future?

Focusing on the future is like taking vitamins:

• Nice to have

• Promise future benefits

• Improvement and prevention

• Not usually urgent

• Focused on incremental growth

Leaders are like vitamins when they focus on making a long-term impact and investing in their team’s health and future development. These leaders love training, coaching, and mentoring. However, when leaders are so focused on the future, their teams feel like they are ignoring their pain and problems. They feel like they do not have the support they need to move forward.

Focusing on the present is like taking painkillers:

• Solve immediate problems

• Resolve issues

• Alleviate pain

Leaders act like painkillers when they constantly solve problems or resolve conflicts. This kind of support is necessary to ensure your team stays focused and productive. However, when leaders constantly treat the urgent, they risk micromanaging their team and even preventing their employees from growing and learning to solve problems independently.

The key is to strike a balance. Ask yourself, what does my team need most from me right now? Never allow yourself to fall into doing just your preference. Don’t lose sight of the short term for the sake of the long term or vice versa. Focus on being adaptable!

Application Activities:

1. Over the last three weeks, have you been more of a vitamin or a painkiller? Honestly evaluate your current leadership performance. Have you been giving your team what they need? Have you been too focused on one area over the other? Schedule time this week to work on whichever area you have given less attention to. 

2. Think about the past year. Are there any patterns to when you tend to fall into one of these two patterns? Mark areas of your calendar where you think you may need to intentionally schedule time to focus on the area that comes less naturally to you.