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Goal setting for personal and business success
According to Tom Morris, in his book “True Success” (1994), successful people:
o Determine what they want – that is, a goal or set of goals “powerfully imagined”.
o Show focus and concentration in preparation and planning.
o Have the confidence and belief in themselves to see the goal through – that is, “self-efficacy”.
o Commit emotional energy.
o Are consistent, stubborn and persistent in the pursuit of their goal.
o Have the kind of integrity that inspires trust and gets people pulling for them.
o Enjoy the process of getting there.
Interestingly, although outside the rather artificial constraints of our companies’ performance management systems, few of us invest the time and metal effort to set them for ourselves, most of us are never the less aware of the efficiency of “powerfully imagined” goals.
Goals that are set in a clear, specific, realistic and compelling way (I will discuss how to do this in more detail in a future article), have the effect of programming us for success. As business leaders, we would never expect our businesses to be fully successful without us setting and constantly reviewing business goals and objectives. Why then do we so often ignore this critical step when it comes to our career, or, indeed, our life in general?
Put simply, to take control of or business, our career, or whatever other aspect of our life, we need to be able to answer five key questions:
o Where have I / we been?
o Where am I / are we now?
o Where am I / are we going?
o How am I / are we going to get there?
o How am I / are we going to know when I / we have arrived?
The first two questions are about fully understanding your resources and capabilities, what it is that makes you different, and what it is that gives you competitive advantage. The final three questions describe the process of goal setting.
To repeat, the power of goal setting is that it is about programming your subconscious mind for success. Having clear and compelling outcome goals at the back of your mind acts like a sort of magnet. It provides an overall structure and direction within which things seem to just happen to you. Provided they are realistic and clear, outcomes that are clearly visualised and deeply imagined have a sometimes unnerving way of pulling us towards them.
Here unfortunately, comes the paradox. Following the process of setting clear and memorable goals, most of us tend, at least initially, to try hard to achieve them: calculating, controlling, worrying, trying, fearing, and judging. However, as I highlighted in my previous article on “Leadership with Impact”, peak performance reached when the mind is still. This state is best achieved through the engrossed attention and relaxed concentration of a mind that is focused and calm.
In other words, it is important to “set and forget” your goals. You set them to be clear and achievable, review them at regular intervals and then, as the nice man from the shoe company said, “just do it”.
The best mind set for the achievement of your goals is that state of relaxed concentration that Milhay Csikszentmihalyi [1] describes as “Flow”. The criteria for such a high performance state are as follows:
o The tasks we set ourselves are both challenging and achievable.
o We are able to fully concentrate and absorb ourselves in what we are doing.
o We have set clear and specific outcome goals.
o We have arranged to receive honest, open and direct feedback.
o Activities are undertaken with a deep but effortless involvement which completely distracts us from our everyday worries and concerns.
o There is a strong and enjoyable sense of exercising control over our own actions.
o The sense of and concern for self, our usual self absorption, disappears.
o Our sense of the duration of time is changed or temporarily removed.
This successful pursuit of your goals and ambitions is part of what I would call a learning approach to life. When these elements are combined, the chances of success increase many fold. Sadly, as Tim Gallwey points out in his book “The Inner Game of Tennis” [2], during our formative years most of us have developed a rather negative and self defeating way of learning. This consists of:
o Criticising or judging our behaviour and the progress we are making.
o Instructing ourselves to change and maintaining an ongoing internal dialogue of commands, instructions and directions.
o Trying harder and pushing ourselves to get it right.
o Continuing to criticise ourselves and the results we achieve.
o Tensing up and trying harder.
I expect these steps will have a certain familiarity to you. I hope you can also recognise their futility. I guarantee that the following approach will be much more effective. It will take time and persistence (but not trying) to master, because the former method is deeply ingrained in all of us. Each time you persist in learning in this new way, however, you reinforce it as a habitual pattern of learning and weaken the hold of the previous self defeating approach.
As with all the practical proposals I make, I recommend that you do not simply read and think about the steps set out below. Instead, try them out for real and repeatedly. Real learning only comes from taking action.
o Observe non-judgementally the current situation. Notice and be fully aware of what is happening, and how you behave and react. Make this mindful observation, curiosity and noticing an everyday habit, but be scrupulously aware never to judge yourself.
o Ask yourself to change. Be specific about what and how you want to change. Create a detailed visual image of the desired change. Get a strong sense of how the outcome will feel. Get a felt sense of how you will move and hold your body, and the bodily sensations you will experience.
o Where possible, find models who already perform in the way you aspire to. Watch closely what they do. What do they think about? What do they feel? What do they believe about themselves, the world and their place in it? Hold a clear image of them in your mind and act as if, in this specific instance, you are them. Do not criticise the results, just notice.
o Let it happen. Give yourself the freedom to do it spontaneously and without effort. Trust your subconscious mind to look out for you and guide you. Get into flow (see the section above).
o Continue to notice and observe with full sensory acuity and awareness. This means being fully present in the here and now. It means being fully conscious of what is going on outside and within, but in a non-judgemental way.
References
[1] Csikszentmihalyi, M., (2002 rev.), “Flow”, Rider & Co.
[2] Gallwey, W. T., (1974), “The Inner Game of Tennis”, Random House.
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