Concept
Triple focus
Triple focus is Daniel Goleman's term for the three directions of attention a leader needs: inner focus on one's own thoughts, feelings and values, other focus on the people one works with, and outer focus on the wider systems in which the work takes place.
Goleman sets out the idea in Focus (2013) and later developed it with Peter Senge for schools. Each direction covers a blind spot of the others. Inner focus keeps decisions tied to values and to the body's early warnings; other focus, which includes understanding people, feeling with them and caring about them, keeps the people who carry a plan on side; outer focus reads markets, supply chains and long trends that no single meeting reveals. A leader strong in one and weak in another tends to fail in a recognisable way: decisive but out of touch, warm but surprised by the market, or well informed but adrift from what they stand for. Goleman treats attention in all three directions as trainable, like a muscle, rather than fixed. The framework is an organising argument built on research rather than a tested model; its practical value is as a checklist. A simple test is to write one question for each direction at the end of a week and see which one stays empty.
A real-life example
The general manager of a dairy cooperative in Konya reviews her week every Friday with three questions. For a month the outer question stays blank, until she notices that two large retail buyers have started asking about animal-welfare audits. She asks the quality team to prepare for an audit before the buyers make it a condition.
How to use it
- 1Write one question for each direction (inner, other, outer) and answer them in writing once a week.
- 2Notice which direction you answer least, and give it extra time in the following week.
- 3Before a major decision, ask one question of each kind: what do I feel, who is affected and how, and what lies outside the room?