The Best Leaders Pay Attention to the Process, Not Just the Product

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We tend to celebrate the finish line. The product is delivered. The campaign is launched. The deal is closed. That final moment gets the credit, but what about everything that led up to it? 

A thriving organization isn’t built on execution alone. The best teams are made up of all kinds of strengths: visionaries, communicators, thinkers, implementors, and leaders. Each strength plays a different role at different stages, and every one of them contributes something essential to the process:  

• Visionaries push boundaries.  

• Thinkers poke holes in assumptions and shape better strategies.  

• Communicators hold the glue that keeps everything from falling apart.  

• Implementors turn ideas into reality. 

These distinct and varying skills carry the dynamic functions that keep a team agile, balanced, and high-performing. 

Many tools, like the Kolbe Index, Working Genius, and StrengthsFinder, help us map out where each person on a team shines. Understanding what lights your people up and what drains them can (and should) change how you manage, recognize, and support them. It gives you the context to differentiate between “they’re capable of it” and “they thrive doing it.”  

In the book The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks coined the term “Zone of Genius” to describe this same concept: the place where passion, strength, and talent overlap. This concept matters more than most people realize.

Recognition shapes motivation 

Praise is powerful. It tells your team what matters. It tells them where to aim attention. 

When recognition is only given at the finish line, we train our teams to chase one kind of success. Over time, they start optimizing for it. What happens when that focus sidelines the early-stage visionaries or the behind-the-scenes collaborators? What happens when your team learns that only visible output gets rewarded? 

If you want your team to embrace its strengths, you need to celebrate them when you see them. That means noticing when someone asks a critical question that changes the direction of a project. It means spotlighting the person who keeps communication flowing across teams. Fundamentally, it means seeing the whole system, not just the result. 

While celebrating the final product as a win and helping your team hone their ability to move projects across the finish line is critical, you want to keep all the other pieces of the puzzle in sight. Without quality communication, researchers, or innovators, your organization wouldn’t run as efficiently, your product wouldn’t be as good, and your bottom line could suffer.  

Honing your attention 

Start with curiosity about your team. Ask them what they love doing—the stuff that makes them forget to check the clock. Find out what makes them feel most valuable. You might be surprised at how clear the answers are once you ask the right questions. Consider having them take a strengths evaluator to help you see the data on your entire team. If you don’t use them currently, check out the ones we listed above.  

Then, practice looking at your projects through a different lens.  

At each stage of the project, ask:  

• What type of thinking is needed right now?  

• Who’s showing up with that energy? 

Pause to give feedback in the moment, not only at the end. As a leader, what you pay attention to is the clearest signal of what’s important to your team. Your attention works like a spotlight, so use it responsibly.  

Evaluate roles against individual strengths. Are your team members spending most of their time in their zone of genius or their zone of competence? If there’s a mismatch, how can you shift the responsibilities or the recognition to support them better? 

It doesn’t take grand gestures. A quick Slack message, a public shoutout, or a simple thank-you during a meeting—those moments add up. They create a culture where people feel seen for who they are, not just what they produce. 

The more we understand what drives our team, the more we can build an environment where everyone does their best work and feels good doing it.  

The real impact starts when you learn how to use the data you’ve gathered from these assessments. 

Content published by Q4intelligence

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