How do you set goals and achieve them?
If someone asks me, how do I set goals and achieve them, I tell them to “Begin with the end in mind”. “Begin with the end in mind” is the second habit of Stephen Covey’s, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s not about moving forwards, but looking at where you want to be and working backwards from there.
How do you set goals?
Dream Goals
When you want to know how you set goals and achieve them, you want to think big, This is down to effective goal setting. There are two types of goals you want to aim for. The first is your main goal. Let’s call this your ‘Dream Goal’. This is what Jim Collins would call a ‘BHAG’ (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). This would be something like winning gold at the olympics, climbing Mt Everest, becoming the highest ranking school in the country etc.These are big goals which are difficult to achieve.
What’s not a Dream Goal?
A dream goal has to be something that really takes you out of your comfort zone. To have “I want to pass my performance management review’ as a Dream Goal wouldn’t work if you have passed it each year so far. However it could be suited towards being a Performance Goal depending on the situation.
Performance Goals
Your next set of goals will be your Performance Goals. These are smaller, yet still possibly quite difficult goals to achieve. THe idea here is that your ‘PErformance Goals’ with accumulate to help you achieve your ‘Dream Goal’.
Aiming for Gold
If you asked John Nabor, how do you set goals and achieve them, here’s what he might tell you. Here is a truly inspirational story about setting goals and working backwards to achieve them. The story is about an American college student called John Nabor. John watched Mark Spitz win seven gold medals for swimming in the 1972 Olympics in Munich. This created a ‘Dream’ in John. He decided that he wanted to win the gold in the 100 meters backstroke in the 1976 Olympics.
Until that point in time, his only achievement was winning the National Junior Championship. The main issue he had was he was nearly five seconds off the speed required to win the Olympics. Although 5 seconds doesn’t sound like much, in olympic races was massive. At this particular point he had no chance of reaching it, but knew that if he broke his ‘Dream Goal’ down into ‘Performance Goals’, he believed he could do it.
He knew that he had a certain number of training hours from now until the next Olympics. He also knew how much quicker he needed to be. He took both pieces of data and from that he worked out for each hour of training, he needed to improve by one-fifth of an eye blink.
Thinking strategically, he decided on what he needed to work on to improve. His performance goals may have focussed on the dive, diet, strength, endurance etc. He broke everything down to help him focus on what needs to happen on the day.
Find out more about John’s story by CLICKING HERE
What happened in the end?
At the next Olympics, John achieved 2 Gold medals. All because he started off with a dream and broke it down into its key parts.
Begin with the end in mind
CLICK HERE to watch a great TEDx talk about beginning with the end in mind.
Coaching Sessions
When working with a Life and Performance Coach, each session will revolve around the accomplishment of a Performance Goal. The coaching relationship usually lasts 6 months. This doesn't mean that the Dream Goal can be achieved in that time, there are many factors that could delay it, or bring it closer. Through coaching you will be able to maintain the momentum to achieve goals after the 6 month period. You may even want to continue with a coach to ensure that the Dream can be achieved.
This article was written by Paul Martin. Head Coach at Coaching for Leverage.
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