Field Notes

To foster high team performance, leaders set priorities and direct the team to focus on issues that have the biggest impact on long-term success.  

But with so many ongoing projects, initiatives, and tasks, it is sometimes hard to break through the noise and elevate the urgency and importance of a particular issue without causing concern or trepidation. 

Emphasizing one priority, project, or task over others and raising the seriousness and gravity of that effort is harder than many leaders think. 

In most cases, this is not because leaders have “cried wolf” and suggested something was more important in the past when it wasn’t. Rather, it’s more that competing goals and tasks have made it difficult for team members to drop what they’ve been doing to focus on the issue being elevated.

To cut through the noise and competition for focused attention, leaders must create emphasis without sounding an alarm.

Here are a few best practices: 

First, when talking about the elevated priority or issue, leaders must find a distinctive time or setting to explain the need to change focus. 

Speaking in the evening, for example, when that is not typical, signals to everyone that something different is afoot. An uncommon venue can also create emphasis. A setting like a huddle in the leader’s office or gathering the team outside or on a rooftop tells everyone that this issue is unique. 

In addition to a time or setting that is not common, good leaders connect the dots for the team between the elevated priority and the impact it can have on long-term success. 

By highlighting the metrics being influenced by the issue, leaders can persuade others of the new importance of the initiative. Finding metrics that accomplish this is critical. This encourages a fresh look at priorities and what matters most right now. 

If the issue must be taken more seriously, team members look for a different cadence and substance about it. 

Good leaders create emphasis by utilizing different mediums, message formats, and reminders to emphasize the gravity needed. Once again, the unconventional highlights that more focus is required. 

What these tactics share in common is the unexpected. When team members receive messages at times, settings, in formats, and with a frequency they don’t expect, they pay attention differently. They ponder what is going on and take in the direction to shift gears, giving more focus to a particular issue. 

Creating emphasis or urgency and elevating the gravity of an issue requires an unconventional call to action. When the message team members hear doesn’t fit into their everyday thinking, they take pause and listen. 

Once you have their attention, gravity usually falls into place. Pun intended.