Image Credit: Oliver Hirtenfelder Photography

Supercharge Your Focus: 5 Insights from an Agile Coach to Help You Thrive as a Leader

As we’ve stepped into 2024, the world of Agile continues to evolve, presenting new challenges and opportunities. Amidst the fast-paced, ever-changing digital landscape, it has become evident that distractions and multitasking hinder collaboration and impact quality work. We need to acknowledge that we need to prioritize focus to unlock our teams’ (and our own) full potential.

Drawing from my experiences as an Agile Lead in the digital innovation space, I would like to share some valuable insights. In this article, I’m sharing some tips on how to foster focus and delve into why it is key to our Agile agenda this year.

1. Embrace single-tasking: Multitasking has long been seen as a symbol of productivity. However, research shows that it diminishes productivity. By adopting a single-tasking approach, we can concentrate our efforts and create an environment that supports focused, high-quality work.
   The hardest part is actually making this shift happen. Give yourself time to coach yourself through this change. Firstly, you’ll need to commit yourself to the goal of embracing single-tasking, visualize the benefits, and then outline small actionable steps to get there. Establish measurable KPIs for yourself and visibly display them to keep yourself accountable.
2. Replace meeting adrenaline with accomplishment: There is a reason why the ‘this meeting could have been an email’ meme exists. When meetings don’t have clear objectives, and concise agendas, people feel like their time is being wasted (while two of 10 attendees bounce ideas off each other).
   This is not news to anyone, yet preparation and documentation are perpetually deprioritized. Despite there being a chaos-energy-momentum generated by these ad hoc approaches to meetings, a failure to prepare means that multiple people pick up the slack. Hold yourself accountable by planning in the necessary preparation slots before, and action-capturing slots after, meetings. If done consistently, these solo tasks create a sustainable meeting culture for many.
3. Make reflection and alignment a top priority: We need to move beyond seeing Agile as a set of processes and embrace it more as a human-centric approach. Cultivating these values is often the most abstract yet foundational part. It requires us to confront what prevents true adoption — whether it’s a lack of understanding, clarity, or buy-in.
   Constant multi-tasking limits our ability to reflect and enact real change. It’s like software without test automation — bugs pop up and quick fixes lead to more issues. We must slow down, do the deep work (together) that is required to truly live the benefits of Agile.
4. Cultivate trust: While we know trust is crucial, it remains an elusive concept. The key is recognizing our role as leaders in building a culture of trust. This requires a lot of self-reflection to let go of ego, status, and the need for control. Our focus should be on providing clear frameworks for autonomy and resisting the urge to micromanage. It’s about moving from commandeering to coaching — giving team members the space to organize while supporting them with resources and guidance.
   We earn trust by walking the talk — granting ownership, embracing vulnerability, and having faith in people’s abilities. The rewards of a trust-based culture are immense, but getting there starts with looking inwards.
5. Carve out time for focus: While we know focus is crucial, distractions abound. The key is driving cultural norms that protect focus time. This could include having “no meeting” blocks on calendars, providing quiet workspaces, or agreeing on “focus hours” for head-down work. However, norms only stick if leaders model this behavior themselves. We must coach team members who struggle and reinforce focus time as vital. It requires shifting mindsets from valuing busyness to valuing deep, thoughtful work.
   With persistence and support, we can make focus time an ingrained habit, not an afterthought. The better we get at defending our attention, the more we can unlock innovation, creativity, and strategic thinking. Before advocating focus time to others, we must practice what we preach! Only then can we effectively coach our teams to do the same.

Before the year gets ahead of us, let us boldly embrace the power of focus in the world of Agile (and our lives in general!). By prioritizing single-tasking, streamlining meetings, embracing Agile principles, cultivating trust, and dedicating focus time, we can amplify collaboration, productivity, and overall work quality. The best news: it starts with ourselves, so we can get to work immediately.

This article was written for by our Lead Agile Coach, Julia Stavrev-Kraft. Check out our website to see the work we do at Sclable!

If you liked it, give it a 👏 and share if you ❤️.