What do you focus on?

Imagine 10 people locked in one room. There are 9 good people and 1 person with a criminal record. There is no weapon anywhere and there is police guarding the door of the room from the outside.

What would the good people focus on? One another or the criminal? Isn’t the answer obvious? In all probability, the good people will focus on the criminal. Why do you think this would happen? Because they are confident about one another but not about the criminal? Is it lack of trust for the criminal? No. Think harder and do the 5 why test. The answer ultimately would be that the good people in the room are fearful. They focus on the criminal because they are scared that he would bring misery to them.

This is a life lesson. Just look around yourself and you will find a whole host of people who are conditioned. This conditioning has resulted in a reflex – to focus on ‘what’s not right/good’ first and then look at (if at all there is any intent to) ‘what’s good’. From the highest official in the system to the youngest employee, most would have this reflex. Show them a proposal, they will first look at what is lacking. Show them a creative and hear a lot about what is wrong. Show them a review presentation and they will first look at where they can drill holes.

This behaviour, this reflex comes from a deep seated fear, an insecurity. We fuel it so much that it starts controlling us. So much so that you would find many who would only look at the wrongs or the shortcomings and not pay any attention to the rights or the benefits.

When we focus on the wrong, we do ourselves huge disservice. This focus is self-consuming. It breeds on itself. The more you do it, the better you become at it, the stronger attachment you build with it. The result? You grow weaker and weaker. Has it ever happened to you that you did 100 things right and did not get the appreciation and you did one thing wrong and the whole organisation doubted your ability? This is a very common experience. Why does it happen? Because you are surrounded by weak people. People who focus on the minus than the plus.

Do a quick introspective test. Do you also have this behaviour? Looking first at the wrong and then at the right? If yes, you are a victim of the fear of failure or some other fear for sure. It could also be the fear of building a team not as capable as yourself - “he is not like me so I need to make him like me”. A strong person on the other hand will look at what is right and build upon it. The strong person knows that if he strengthens the strength, the weakness will get eclipsed. I remember Ajay Srinivasan, Chief Executive, Financial Services, Aditya Birla Group, from a chat a few years ago. He was asked how he deals with people’s weaknesses. He said that he doesn’t focus on weaknesses. If he did that, the entire world would appear incompetent. He focusses on the strength of people and pushes them on that strength till they make it so pronounced that it overshadows their weaknesses.

Team leaders need to be more particular and avoid falling into this trap of focussing on weakness. A motivated team is one that feels inspired at all times. A definite murderer of inspiration is a bias for criticism and focus on shortcomings. When on one hand the team hears long discourses on how they are incompetent or have erred and on the other get a passing reference to a job well done, they feel suffocated. Then it is a downward spiral. Their performance suffers, the teal leader criticises more, the performance falls further and it just is an endless reaction. Why would any team leader want that? The truth is, there are such people aplenty in the corporate world.

Even Hanuman needed to realise his strength before he could make the journey to Lanka to meet Sita. We are but mere humans. We need to realise our strengths. We need an environment that is nurturing.  All this can happen only when we look at people’s strengths and push them on them to make is a real game changer. And when we do that, success will be on our side, every single time.