Ep. 06— 5 Steps to Better Goal Setting
Even though I am not the goal-setting guru, I have researched this quite a bit because I over-think and over-research everything. I love a good framework for getting things done, and I love a good leadership lesson with a clear case study and so today, this podcast is the case study.
As you know I released it this past week and IT WAS/IS SCARY. But leader, what if I told you that the scarier your goal, the more motivated you are to complete it? Here we go--Dr. Edwin Locke who you know if you’ve studied goal theory or motivation, found that the harder and more specific a goal is, the harder you will work to succeed at that goal. A perfect example is this podcast. I picked three big scary goals for myself this year (they almost feel too big to accomplish) BUT you better believe I’m working hard to get there.
Locke’s research shows that for 90 percent of the time, specific and challenging (but not too challenging) goals led to higher performance than easy, or "do your best," goals. For example, try hard to get a podcast done for coffee on leadership would have been way less effective than how I framed it -- I decided to launch a Coffee on leadership podcast focused on 10-15 minute micro-lessons in leader development with 5 episodes in the bank by May 2020 AND HERE WE ARE. It feels like a huge accomplishment because I had to work hard for it--including scavenging a mic and some squishy foam stuff for decent quality sound from our offices, teaching myself how to edit together clips on audacity, and framing a format for this thing while ALSO taking care of two humans and working my other roles from home.
But if I can tackle a scary personal goal, so can you. And I know there’s a lot of motivational workshops and speakers out there right now giving GREAT advice on crushing goals, but I’m a learner who needs to know the tactical side so want to quickly break down the theory so that it might help you.
Ok, so our buddy Locke who says to motivate yourself by setting challenging goals? He met his research bestie, Dr. Latham and they are brilliant and the godfathers of goal setting theory-- breaking down five goal setting principles in a framework that helps you succeed. Grab a pen and paper:
Clarity.
Challenge.
Commitment.
Feedback.
Task complexity.
1. Clarity - Set Clear Goals
Use the SMART goal framework because the more clear you can be, the more likely you’ll accomplish that. I knew my by-whens and exactly how I was going to measure the success of launching a podcast. Listen to the podcast while I briefly run through SMART goals.
2. Challenge - Set a challenging goal, but make sure it’s realistic.
Do your research -- I took Jenna Kutcher’s Course, The Podcast Lab, A YEAR AGO, because a year ago, two people in different areas of my life mentioned they could see me putting some of this learning into a podcast -- and honestly, it made this process so much more grounded because I knew the reality of how much work it would take me to complete.
Find ways to benchmark your progress and celebrate the small wins with incremental rewards! After I set up my podcast and got the shell created, I had a credit at our sticker company for West and so I ordered Coffee on Leadership stickers to scatter around (like on my water glass) so that I would be reminded of my progress. When I finished the first 5 episodes and launched, I ordered a mic holder thingee and pop filter that I had told myself I could order IF i launched with 5 episodes in the bank! And I got there! Make it challenging to make it worth it.
3. Commitment - Stay committed to the goal!
One way is to create little trinkets and treasures that guide you back toward the goal -- like those stickers on my water glass and I have a picture hanging in my room of how I imagined the cover of the podcast with the goal written underneath so that I saw it every morning and every night before I went to bed. But the key is visualization of completing a goal. If you’re a Rachel Hollis fan, she talks about this a LOT. There is a reason why vision boards work and have made a comeback. You have to visualize the goal and how you will respond/be changed by completing it. Visualization is a practice: Decide what you want, picture it, map out and visualize every step you need to take to get there, and revisit it ALL THE TIME.
Visualization is a profound exercise -- athletes do this all the time. I grew up playing sports and can remember the bus rides on game days where we weren’t allowed to talk so that we could focus intently on the moment ahead of us. Now, I cannot remember the book it is in right now, but there is an incredible story of how Michael Phelps would prep for races, and his coach had him prepare for every scenario, including not being able to see. And because he is an Olympic athlete, Michael Phelps is pretty focused on what he does in a swimming pool and so he knows exactly how many strokes it is from one side of the pool to the other and when he was in the Olympics in Beijing competing for what felt like his bazillionth gold medal, he dove in for the 200 metre butterfly and his goggles slowly started filling with water, so that he went into the turn unable to see and swam the final leg of the race completely blind. That is why, the footage is played over and over of him touching the wall and then ripping off his goggles to look at the leader-board with surprise and the most genuine response EVER. Because he swam a 200 m butterfly blind and won the gold medal and set a world record. Visualization, people.
4. Feedback: ASK FOR IT!
Find honest accountability. You are more likely to accomplish a goal if you share it with another human. And even more likely than that to accomplish it if you give them some control in the milestones along the way -- now is the time to chunk up your goal and share those mile markers with your person and bounce it off of them. They may say you need to step it up or change a timeline and that is GOOD. The week of launching this podcast, my friend who is a business owner like me, reached out to see how I was doing and before we got off the call, she made me set a by-when for the next step. And then she followed up and cheered for me when I met that goal. That’s good accountability. Get feedback.
5. Task Complexity
If a task is too complex - your response will be stress and anxiety -- I touched on this briefly in Episode 3 when I talked about Csikszentmihalyi’s research on Flow. The pressure to complete a goal can be crippling if you did not give yourself enough time, realistic benchmarks, or even just don’t have the right skillsets to do what you need to do. So you have to adjust. I always say to make those SMART goal frameworks smarter by adding the -ER which means you evaluate and re-adjust. It’s ok to fail, but we fail fast and fail forward - meaning we are self-aware enough to know our abilities, our weaknesses and when we need help. So don’t push yourself so hard that you crumble and give up altogether. Consider task complexity when you’re in step one of setting clear goals. And have honest and strategic people who you are getting feedback from so that you can be realistic.
So those are Locke and Latham’s 5 principles that I love -- they’re a good check-in for your goal setting strategy, but the final thing I have learned over the past 10 years of helping leaders set goals-- have grace with yourself in the same way you have grace with the people you lead. When someone on my team is honest and vulnerable about missing a deadline, my response is always -- thank you for your honesty, what do you need to reset and get there?
Be ok with extending yourself that same grace as a leader -- thank you for your honesty, what do you need to reset and get there?