Most of us have lots of development potential. The indication of familiarity helps expose this fact, but can also make it feel overwhelming to get started improving ones familiarity ("Where do I start?").

In order to make the development process more tangible, better aligned with others perception of our potential and to enable us to better prioritize, the Platform uses the concept of expectations in focus.

Think of expectations in focus as providing you with a method for addressing the concept of people working with themselves in the context of a role. You can hear this referred to in day-to-day chatter as people saying "I'm working on that" or "He really needs to work on that".

With focus we can signal which specific expectations (be it a responsibility, a skill, etc) a person is expected to prioritize their development efforts towards. Put another way, we can communicate which expectations a person is expected to improve their familiarity with.

Focus can be set by the familiarity holder themselves, or by another person suggesting something that that person might benefit from focusing on.

Set focus

There are two ways in which you can set something in focus:

From the user side

To set focus on an expectation navigate to that user, make sure the "Expectations" tab is selected and click the "Add expectation" button.

This opens up a search field in which you can search for the expectation you would like to be put into focus.

From check-in

Start a check-in. When you get to the expectations step, click the "Add expectation" button.

This opens up a search field in which you can search for the expectation you would like to be put into focus.

From the expectation side

Navigate to the expectation.

If you want to set the expectation in focus for yourself, click the pin-icon to the right of the familiarity indicator. Click again to disable focus.

If you want to set the expectation for someone else, toggle the familiarity panel and click the focus indicator corresponding with the person you want to focus on it.

Please note that this way of setting familiarity only works if the person has already indicated their familiarity. If the person has not indicated their familiarity yet, you can work around this by first setting the familiarity expectation for that individual, and then set focus on that expectation.

Focus limit

To prevent the expectation of focusing on too many things at once, a person can only have 5 expectations in focus at the same time.

If you attempt to set items in focus for a person who already has 5 items in focus, you will receive a warning and focus will not be set.

View things in focus

In order to view which expectations a person is focused on improving, navigate to the Focus-dashboard for that person. The expectations in focused are displayed under the "Expectations" tab of the Priorities-section, which is visible below the Plans-section in the left column.

To review the focus of multiple individuals at the same time, use the Focus report.

Identifying things to put in focus

In the beginning, it can feel foreign and difficult to identify which things to put in focus. Consider using one or more of the following methods for identifying relevant expectations:

• Select individual responsibilities or skills from the roles or skillsets you have an ambition of getting better at
• Identify the roles with which you have the lowest familiarity and pick some of the expectations from this role in order to improve your overall comfort with the role.
• Ask someone you trust (a leader/coworker/partner) which expectations they feel you might benefit the most from focusing on in order to improve your perceived performance.
• Which tasks do you tend to procrastinate? In which ways do people signify frustration with your performance? Consider if the reason is expectations with which you are less familiar or comfortable.
• Identify expectations you would not be uncomfortable delegating to someone else because they are not sufficiently clear, and use focus as a means to better describe them.

As you grow more familiar with the expectations in focus feature, so will your intuition for discovering and pinning expectations whenever you realize that there's something you would benefit from improving your familiarity with.

Maintain familiarity with things in focus

As a reminder to keep checking in with and reflecting over the expectations you have in focus, a purple play button appears at the top of your expectations in focus whenever you have one or more expectation with which you have not updated your familiarity the last 7 days.

Click the button to be taken through each pinned familiarity indication older than 7 days.

You can also use Check-in (one-on-one) to ensure that you maintain focus on both your expectations and other priorities.