Dear Readers
How to achieve your GOAL, not goals!
In pursuit of many goals, often none are reached. Put aside all of your goals for now, except one, so that you or your organization can focus on the highest priority. How you define the goal is critical. Try these three steps:
Step 1: Get SMART
Many of you are aware of SMART goals, but if you aren't or you need a refresher, here's what it stands for:
S - specific, significant, stretching
M - measurable, meaningful, motivational
A - agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented
R - realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented
T - time-based, timely, tangible, tractable
Defining your goal in SMART language increases your chances of success because you know precisely what you're aiming for and when you've arrived.
Step 2: Push the Positive
Determining goals is an intellectual exercise. The barriers to meeting your goals are often emotional, physiological, and behavioral. This means that your goal can be undermined by complex and often unpredictable forces.
Give yourself every chance to succeed by phrasing the goal in positive terms. If, for example, your goal is to give up a counterproductive habit or decision-making process, try phrasing the goal in terms of what you wish to do or gain instead.
Step 3: Picture Perfect
Richard Bandler and John Grinder developed NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming), a technology that revealed the correlation between effective communication, successful patterns of behavior, and sensory descriptions. The more you're able to picture an outcome, they found, the more likely you can bring it to fruition.
Ask yourself:
What will you see when you are successful?
What will you hear?
What will you taste or smell?
What will you feel?
Now revise your goal definition so that it's SMART, positive, and picture-able. Perfect!
This is the first part of a multi-part column on setting and achieving goals. Please join us next month to learn some of the biggest progress-barriers and how to overcome them!
Gary |
Leaders themselves are so diverse, is it any wonder that one definition can't capture what it is they do? In