That is what I was thinking of doing as well. The problem is, the character that is now leader would need new action buttons because unfortunately "party1" is the leader for everyone except the leader. "party1" for the leader is someone else. Perhaps a second row of action buttons for each character that don't rely on "party1"...

The focus idea is a good one, unfortunately I use the focus feature liberally so I'm not sure how much it would work for me. Though, perhaps I could alter my macro setup to free up the focus and rely more on second tier targeting (focustarget, focustargettarget, etc.)