The Focus Factor: How Servant Leadership Saved Me from Multitasking Mediocrity

Early in my career, I wore multitasking like a badge of honor.

Sixty open tabs. Email pings every three minutes. Jumping between projects, conversations, and to-do lists like I was in some productivity Olympics.

I thought I was winning.

But everything changed when I moved into people leadership. Suddenly, my role wasn’t just about delivering results—it was about developing others to deliver them.

And that’s when the wheels started to come off.

Because no matter how fast I moved, I couldn’t outrun the creeping sense that I was missing something important. Important details. Important moments. Important people.

I was busy. But I wasn’t present. I was reacting. Not leading.

That’s when I discovered the antidote to my distraction addiction: servant leadership.

Focus Begins with Purpose

Servant leadership cured me of my multitasking affliction. Because it forced me to clarify what my job really was:

Serve and support my customer-facing teams by removing barriers, providing clarity, and delivering the tools they needed to succeed.

That shift was seismic. Suddenly, the noise faded. I stopped chasing every fire and started designing fire prevention systems.

I realized the reason I couldn’t focus before was simple: I had no true north. But once I made their success my success? I never had a problem making the main thing the main thing again.

Distraction Is the Default—Focus Is a Decision

The modern workplace is a minefield of manufactured urgency. Notifications. Alerts. Ping after ping after ping.

Distraction is a billion-dollar business. Focus? That’s a billion-dollar skill.

And in a world screaming for your attention, the most radical thing a leader can do is protect it.

Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, put it perfectly:

“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”

High performers don’t move faster. They move cleaner. Every yes is intentional.

Every no is a boundary. Because they understand: leadership isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters—with unshakable intention.

And servant leadership gave me that filter. If it didn’t remove a barrier or drive progress for my team, it didn’t belong on my calendar.

Attention Is the Real Currency

Forget time management. That myth died with dial-up. Time is fixed. But energy and attention—those are renewable, if you guard them fiercely.

Leadership is not measured in hours. It’s measured in how deeply you can lock in when it counts.

That sacred 90-minute window when your mind is clear and your intuition is dialed in? That’s not when you check Slack. That’s when you design the future.

Daniel Goleman, author of Focus, wrote:

“The ability to focus is the key to high performance.”

When I embraced servant leadership, I stopped being a slave to my inbox. I started designing my day around my team’s greatest needs, not everyone else’s shallow requests.

Decision Fatigue Is Stealing Your Genius

Before noon, most leaders have already made 100 tiny, low-value decisions—what to wear, where to sit, who to reply to, which fire to fight first.

By the time strategic thinking is required, their brains are fried.

Cal Newport calls this mental erosion attention residue. Every task you leave half-finished leaves behind a residue that dulls your clarity.

Top-tier leaders simplify by frontloading clarity: They make the important decisions before breakfast. They limit their daily priorities to what directly empowers their team’s performance. They don’t let someone else’s crisis hijack their mission.

Servant leadership demanded that discipline from me. Because when people depend on you, clarity stops being optional. It becomes your duty.

Presence Over Perfection

Perfectionism used to seduce me. I thought being polished meant being prepared.

But I learned that perfection is often procrastination in disguise. And what people truly crave from leaders isn’t polish—it’s presence.

Presence communicates power. Presence builds trust. Presence turns a quick check-in into a moment that changes someone’s trajectory.

And presence can’t be faked.

When you’re scattered, your team feels it. When you're grounded, they rise with you.

Jim Collins wrote,

“If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.”

Servant leadership stripped my priorities down to what mattered most: Be present. Remove barriers. Build people.

The more I focused on serving, the less I was distracted by everything else.

Game-Changing Question:

If your focus shaped your legacy—what would you need to stop doing today?

Because here’s the truth:

You don’t need more hours. You need fewer distractions. You need a reason to focus that’s bigger than your inbox.

And if you’re leading people, you already have one.

Make them the main thing. Protect your attention like it’s oxygen. And remember: the most powerful leaders don’t do more.

They do what matters most—on purpose.

Omar L. Harris is the managing partner at Intent Consulting, a firm dedicated to improving employee experience and organizational performance and author of Leader Board: The DNA of High-Performance Teams; The Servant Leader's Manifesto; Be a J.E.D.I. Leader, Not a Boss: Leadership in the Era of Corporate Social Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; Leading Change: The 4 Keys; Hire the Right W.H.O.M.: Sourcing the Right Team DNA Every Time; and The J.E.D.I. Leader's Playbook: The Insider's Guide to Eradicating Injustices, Eliminating Inequities, Expanding Diversity, and Enhancing Inclusion available for purchase in ebook, print, and audio on Amazon.com. Please follow him Instagram, Bluesky, and/or his website for more information and engagement.