Why Divided Attention is the Unseen Threat to Team’s Energy and Motivation

In the rush to grow, momentum often stalls because teams hesitate to ask a foundational question: Are we working on the right things? Challenging a colleague’s priority can feel like a critique of their judgment, while questioning a leader’s direction can create friction. But avoiding this conversation leads to scattered progress, dividing energy across too many initiatives and robbing teams of the satisfaction of a win.

To better understand how to prioritize, we spoke with Tamara Hastings, the Chief Human Resources Officer at Apex Executive Search. A SHRM-SCP credentialed expert with deep experience in people strategy for private equity-backed companies where speed and focus matter most, she’s led HR at organizations like Premier Dentist Partners and Helios Service Partners. She explains that a core part of a leader’s job is to protect their team’s most valuable, and finite, resource. “People only have so much time and energy to give. You might be at work for eight or ten hours, but you don’t have eight or ten hours of real creative capacity. Leaders need to focus that capacity on what matters most,” she says.

• In focus: That kind of scattered attention can be damaging. “It’s almost always well-intentioned. You get excited about an idea and start down a path. But before you know it, you’re working on ten different things, and progress is moving very slowly in ten different directions versus making real progress on the three things you need to be working on,” Hastings says. The lesson, she notes, becomes crystal clear in the high-stakes private equity space, where the consequences of unfocused work are more than just inefficiency. When teams can’t see their efforts translate into tangible success, the result is a loss of creative energy that leads to widespread burnout.

• The win within: “If the team doesn’t have wins, they become demotivated and frustrated,” she says. “Having those wins to see the progress is what keeps a team energized. They get excited by seeing the impact of their work and are ready to ask what’s next.” This reframes the acknowledging wins as a key ingredient for preventing a sense of burnout or low morale.

The solution, then, begins when leaders create a culture where it is safe to pause, reassess, and realign. She compares it to the “measure twice, cut once” principle or an intentional pause to check for alignment before committing precious resources. While memos and mission statements have their place, building this culture depends on leaders willing to challenge their own priorities, creating an environment where the team’s primary goal becomes directing limited energy toward the work that matters most. After all, in an environment where people are tired, capturing their best energy is the whole game. “Leaders must lead with it. If a CEO or team leader models this behavior by stopping their own project to question whether the team is working on the right things, it gives everyone else on the team permission to ask that question, too,” she encourages.

• Permission to pause: Even seemingly essential tasks like implementing performance reviews in a startup might need to be set aside if they don’t align with the immediate, high-priority needs of the business. “And if a project isn’t the right thing to work on, you have to be willing to shelve it. It’s okay to decide something doesn’t need to be done at all,” she suggests.

• Recalibrate and reset: Hastings shares an example from a past organization that lived this principle. When the leadership team felt their focus splintering among too many ideas, they would pause work to recalibrate. “We had no hesitation about getting the leadership team in a room and sitting there until we had narrowed down our priorities,” she recalls. “We knew focus was the most important thing.”

The key factor, she explains, was a culture built on humility, where leaders were genuinely open to being challenged. “There was a humility to that team. I felt comfortable telling the CEO I thought we should reconsider a priority. It didn’t mean I was always right. Sometimes they would share a perspective I didn’t see, and it helped me get on board. But because we could have that healthy, open debate, we could all walk out of the room aligned. That made a huge difference,” she says.

Ultimately, the responsibility for creating this culture of focus begins with leadership. Asking the priority question over and over can help evolve the issue from a perceived challenge into a shared commitment to success. “Start your leadership meetings by asking whether the team is focused on the right priorities,” Hastings advises. “When people see that question being normalized by leadership, they will start asking it, too. If that modeling doesn’t start at the top, your team is unlikely to believe they have the authority or safety to ask.”