What You Emphasize Will Become Your Team Focus

Words, and how you emphasize them, are a powerful tool for establishing expectations, because what you emphasize will ultimately become the focus of your team.

But you cannot be effective by emphasizing everything.
If everything is important, then nothing is… and your job as leader is to clarify the two or three things are going to be most highly valued and most often measured and celebrated in your organization.

Businesses must make these decisions just like an athletic program or principal. One business may choose to place a greater emphasis on improved customer service, but transactions will likely take more time. Another business may want to emphasize having the cheapest price (although that is a dangerous way to brand yourself), but will then likely suffer more frequent customer service complaints.
Some basketball coaches, like Mike Anderson at Arkansas, may emphasize playing fast, pushing the tempo, pressuring the ball, and gambling for steals – but that will likely result in giving up higher percentage shots and committing more team fouls. Others, Like Tom Izzo of Michigan State, have a reputation for demanding that their players focus on defense and rebounding.

But you cannot do everything well. What you work on each day will begin to determine your team’s focus – but many coaches run the same drills, just as many businesses have similar routines and processes. The two most important things that separate your team from another is WHAT YOU SAY to them and HOW YOU SAY IT.

The daily activities, or drills, or published statistics you measure as a leader send a loud message about what is important to you. But the words a leader chooses, and the tone and vocal inflection used to deliver them, drastically alter how the intended audience perceives even a short sentence.

Just as you cannot emphasize every skill as most important, you cannot emphasize every word, either. You may be unaware of how your inflections affect your audience, but by emphasizing one word over another, the same sentence can become something completely different.

I became aware of this one afternoon when standing in line at the grocery store with my kids. My daughter was speaking to my son, who had offered to buy a pack of gum, but it was more expensive than he had anticipated. As he counted the change in his hand, she asked him "What do I have to give you?"

It was completely obvious that her emphasis was placed on the pronouncement of the words "I" and "give." She was completely focused on herself, and about how much she could get away with giving in order to GET what she wanted.
It convicted me, as I could clearly recall instances in my past when I cut corners in hopes of satisfying my selfish desires. Whether it was doing just enough to pass my English Class in high school, or cutting the grass sloppily so I could go play, I recalled a number of times when I showed my own immaturity by focusing on myself only.

And that afternoon, after hearing my daughter's question, I was reminded that we all can sound selfish at times, even when we don’t mean to. We all, when thinking internally "What do I have to give you?" are guilty at times of emphasizing the "I" and the "give," focusing on ourselves and our selfish needs or desires only.

To move your organization from success to significance, one of the messages leaders must share is that individuals on any team become happier by serving and assisting others. Part of our job as parents, and leaders, is to teach others in our organization the importance of that shift in emphasis.

Maturity informs us that significance is a far greater reward than shallow success - and the more we help others succeed, the more surely we will succeed as well. Learning to speak with a voice of service, rather than selfishness, is the key to living a happier life.

If you want to improve your organization, help to create a culture that emphasizes teamwork and service and be very aware of the words and skills you emphasize.

The best way to build a culture of collaboration that overcomes adversity with creativity and communication is through the challenges and relationship building activities that you can experience during a day of business teambuilding at http://www.greatresultsteambuilding.net/results-for-business.

The best leaders emphasize that the most best thing you can do is to encourage and assist others - because the joy you will experience is greater than any fleeting emotion that your selfish or immature desires could possibly provide.
Great team leaders know that what they emphasize is what their people will focus on.

If improving team motivation and morale are important, take the initiative to define expectations and invest time in growing your people with soft-skills training. If you are in a school, or business, or athletic program that needs to develop a greater sense of selfishness and focus more on communication and teamwork, a day of teambuilding or an interactive teamwork speaker may be exactly what you need.