More on goal setting

I’ve started a new lunch-and-learn series, the first of which is about goal setting. This based primarily on my previous posts on this topic, incorporating some new ideas based on reading and reviewing my own goal setting approach. I’ve been making new year goals and resolutions, along with setting priorities, for several years, I’ve incorporated the anti-resolution approach to reducing the behaviours I don’t like or am not proud of. So far, around 100 people have attended and participated, and the feedback has been positive. My objective is to enable others to establish for themselves their own goal and resolutions and have a better chance of achieving those.

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Some additional suggestions when goal setting:

• The buddy system. Having a buddy for goal setting can help with motivating you to actually work on making a list and then sticking with it. Work with a coach or a good friend to share your goals list, and check in regularly on each other’s progress. This little bit of safe accountability can help keep you on track.
• Never say never. It’s best to avoid absolutes like “always” and “never” in your goals. Especially if you’re changing a behaviour, an absolute is very difficult to achieve and stick to. And it can be demoralizing or defeating when you eventually break your own rule. If you do want to make an absolute, give yourself some caveats – some rules that allow you to break your own rule occasionally. I did something like this recently when tackling my tsunduko.
• Give yourself some mulligans. Like the caveats to absolutes, mulligans are ‘do-overs’, an allowance to slip or make an error and have it not counted. How strict you are with your own score keeping is up to you, but be kind to yourself by allowing for the occasional slip.
• Include some things you’re looking forward to. Not all of your goals and resolutions have to be challenges and sacrifices, and even the positive things take a bit of work. Be sure to include some things like vacations or special occasions, even treats especially for you, so that your accomplishments include some things you want to do in addition to those you feel that you have to do.

 
At the end of each session, I ask if there are any questions. Here are two that stuck with me:
 
How do get the courage to stick to your goals and choices when the rest of the world wants to tell you to do other things?
 
One of the benefits about the work of establishing priorities, categories, goals and resolutions is that it reinforces your own commitment to those things. Assessing and choosing your priorities is hard work, but the payoff is the conviction that these things really matter to you. If you’ve determined the criteria that are most important to you in your work or your life, you can use those criteria as guiding principles for setting your goals and resolutions. When those are based the principles that you’ve established for yourself, it becomes easier to stick to them when the going gets rough, and to defend them when others question them. And when you believe in what you’re doing and why, you can Ignore Everybody.
 
What if your big hairy audacious goal really is beyond your reach? Should you always have a “plan b”?
 
You might want to always have a plan b, no matter how hairy your goal. But for those really big ones (“I want to be prime minister of Canada. I want to go to the moon.”), having alternatives is recommended, mostly because so much of what is required for those goals to happen is beyond your control. Yes, you can study history or aeronautics, and be top of your class. You can schmooze and network, you can train and volunteer. In the end, the individuals who achieve such goals do so with a pretty decent amount of good fortune on their side. And for every one who achieves those goals, there are many more who do not.
 
Keeping those big goals in mind can be motivational, but a laser focus on such a specific and very difficult target can cause you to miss some other opportunities along the way. One approach might be to consider the priorities approach and assess what it is about that specific role that is interesting or appealing. Perhaps it is the fame or status of the role that aligns with your priorities. But there may be other priorities that you have, such as quiet time in the outdoors, that conflicts with those priorities. Understanding that, you might then identify a different goal or direction that aligns with more of your priorities and allows you to maintain a balance of all things that are important to you.

One of my own priorities is “the opportunity to contribute to development of others.” Putting on these sessions is in keeping with that, and I’m very fortunate that I have the support within my organization to develop and deliver these materials. Even better, I learn some things in the development of the sessions and in the interactions with participants, and I feel a great sense of pride when I hear from attendees that the materials and insights were useful to them.

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