Why Can't I Stay Focused When It Matters Most?
Updated: Sep 18
TLDR: Presence is one of the most powerful and overlooked leadership disciplines. For years, I relied on multitasking, especially during Zoom meetings, believing I was being productive while my attention was constantly divided. Coaching taught me a different way. When I give a client my complete attention, I hear more, notice subtle signals, and access my intuition more clearly. Writing down important thoughts allows me to stay focused on the person rather than mentally planning my next question. Real presence takes practice, but it strengthens connection, trust, and impact. When leaders slow down, listen deeply, and fully engage, people feel genuinely seen.
For years, I was really good at multitasking.
Especially on Zoom.
I could be in a meeting and have my email open in another window, checking something while someone was talking. I might be taking notes, looking something up, responding to a message, or mentally working through the next thing on my to-do list. I convinced myself I was being efficient. After all, I was getting more done at the same time.
The problem was that I wasn't fully anywhere.
I could be physically present in a meeting while my attention was bouncing between whatever was happening on the screen, the thought that had just popped into my head, and the five things I was already thinking about doing next.
And I missed things.
I missed the hesitation in someone's voice. I missed the moment when someone was about to say something important and then thought better of it. I missed opportunities to ask a better question because I was already thinking about what I wanted to say next.
When I started coaching, I realized I had to change.
Coaching requires a completely different level of presence. If someone is sitting across from me, sharing something important about their career, their leadership, their confidence, or their life, they deserve my complete attention. I can't be half listening while thinking about my next question or mentally holding onto something they just said because I'm afraid I'll forget it.
For me, that meant learning to write things down.
If a client said something important, I could capture a few words on paper and then let it go. I didn't have to keep rehearsing it in my head. I didn't have to formulate the next question while they were still talking. Writing it down allowed me to keep listening.
The difference has been significant.
When I give someone my complete attention, I hear more. I notice more. My intuition is heightened. I pick up on the things underneath the words, and I have a much better sense of when to ask a question, when to stay quiet, and when something important is emerging.
My impact as a coach is stronger because the person in front of me has my full attention.
That experience changed how I think about presence. I stopped thinking about it as a nice-to-have and started seeing it as a leadership discipline.
What Does Real Presence Actually Look Like?
If you've been following this series, you know we've been walking through the ten disciplines of the 7th Level Leader in iPEC's COR.E Dynamics framework. We've explored awareness,acceptance,conscious choices,trusting the process,authenticity,fearlessness,confidence, andconnection. Each one builds on the last. And discipline nine, Presence, might be where they all converge.
Here's what I mean. You can be aware of your patterns, accept what's hard, make conscious choices, trust the process, show up authentically, move through fear, carry confidence, and still miss the human being sitting across from you if your attention is fragmented.
Presence isn't putting your phone face-down on the table. That's the minimum. Presence is a quality of attention that other people can actually feel. It's the difference between someone who hears your words and someone who hears what's underneath your words.
Think about the best listener you've ever met. Not the person who waited for their turn to talk, but the person who made you feel like you were the only thing happening in the world for those few minutes. That's presence. And it's rare enough in leadership that when someone has it, everyone notices.
The 7th Level Leader practices presence not as a personality trait but as a discipline: one action at a time, fully immersed, undistracted by the noise that pulls most of us in six directions before lunch.
Why Is Staying Present So Hard for High Achievers?
Here's the uncomfortable truth: the same drive that makes you effective is the thing that fractures your attention.
If you're ambitious, if you're the kind of leader who reads a blog series about COR.E Dynamics on a Wednesday evening, your brain is wired for forward motion. You're always scanning the next problem, the next opportunity, the next thing to optimize. That scanning mode is incredibly useful for strategy. It's terrible for the human in front of you who needs thirty seconds of your full attention.
We talked about this in the post onconscious choices, the gap between stimulus and response is where leadership lives. Presence is what fills that gap. Without it, you're reacting to internal noise instead of responding to what's actually happening.
I've been there. I've sat in coaching conversations, one-on-ones, even dinners with people I love, while mentally composing to-do lists. Not because I didn't care, but because my brain had been trained to treat every quiet moment as wasted bandwidth. Sound familiar? Yeah, same.
How Do You Build Presence as a Real Practice?
Once I recognized how much I had relied on multitasking, I started treating presence like a skill rather than a mood. Here's what's worked.
1. Clear the mental stage before important conversations. I take sixty seconds before any meaningful meeting to close my eyes, take three breaths, and mentally put down whatever I was carrying. I picture setting a bag by the door. Sounds simple. It's changed everything. Those sixty seconds are the difference between showing up scattered and showing up ready.
2. Name the distraction instead of fighting it. When my mind drifts, and it will, I don't beat myself up. I silently name what pulled me away ("that's the product launch," "that's the email I haven't sent") and come back. Fighting distraction creates more distraction. Naming it releases it.
3. Focus on one action at a time. The 7th Level Leader doesn't multitask their attention. When you're in a conversation, be in the conversation. When you're writing, write. When you're thinking strategically, think strategically. The switching tax is real, and your team pays it when your attention keeps toggling.
4. Watch for the body, not just the words. Presence sharpens your ability to notice what people aren't saying. Crossed arms, hesitation before answering, a shift in vocal tone, these signals only register when you're actually here. When I was multitasking, I could easily miss them. When I'm fully present with a client, those signals become much easier to notice.
5. Build recovery rituals for when you lose it. You're going to lose presence. Repeatedly. The practice isn't perfection. It's how fast you come back. I reset with a single deep breath, a moment of eye contact, or a simple internal question: "What does this person need from me right now?"
What Becomes Available When You're Fully Here?
Here's something I didn't expect when I started practicing presence: my intuition came alive.
We explored intuition back in theconscious choices post, how your gut isn't always reliable when it's shaped by limiting beliefs. But there's a different kind of intuition that shows up when you're fully present. It's a quieter signal, a sense of what's true in the room, what someone needs, and what the right next move is.
When your attention is fragmented, your brain is processing too many inputs to hear the subtle ones. But when you're fully here, one conversation, one moment, one person, your nervous system relaxes enough to pick up on information that a distracted mind would filter out. You start noticing shifts in energy before anyone speaks. You catch the question behind the question. You feel when something is off, even when the words say everything is fine.
I experience this particularly strongly in my coaching sessions now. Because I'm no longer trying to remember every important thing a client says while simultaneously planning my next question, I can actually listen. If something important comes up, I write it down and return my attention to the person in front of me. That simple practice has made a tremendous difference in the quality of my coaching.
Presence doesn't just make you a better listener. It makes you a more intuitive leader. And in my experience, that intuition is one of the most powerful tools you'll ever develop, but only if you slow down enough to hear it.
What's the Real Takeaway?
Presence is a discipline, not a personality trait. You build it the same way you build any leadership skill, through practice, intention, and a willingness to start over when you drift. The leaders who create the deepest impact aren't the ones with the best strategies. They're the ones who make people feel genuinely seen. That starts with being here, fully, one moment at a time.
Ask yourself: when was the last time someone had your complete, undivided attention, and you had theirs?
Ready to Lead With More Presence?
If you're realizing that scattered attention is quietly costing you trust, connection, and clarity as a leader, you don't have to figure it out alone.Book a free discovery coaching session and let's explore what intentional presence could look like in your leadership, no pressure, just a real conversation about where you are and where you want to be.
Check out our other posts in this series:
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