Welcome to the final day of our Relationship Action Plan Challenge, designed to give you just a small taste of the system I teach at the Relationship Masters Academy, currently enrolling for the March 4 class.

The final piece of the system? RENEW! Today’s challenge helps manage Goal Drift. Reassessing your goals (and the relationships you need to achieve them) over time is essential. Goal drift isn’t necessarily bad; as you devote yourself to outreach, you take in new information, your horizons expand, and as a result, your goals often shift. But that's why it’s important to renew and refine those goals and your Relationship Action Plan on a regular basis - and at least quarterly.

The Renew step is best accomplished with one or several trusted sparring partners – preferably lifeline relationships, but most importantly someone you respect and who will be honest. The idea is to engage in a no-holds-barred discussion of your goals from top to bottom. Are they the right ones? Are they overly ambitious or too tentative? Have you missed someone obvious on your outreach list? Once you’ve sparred with your partner, you should find another two or three and repeat the process. As your thinking develops, you'll amend your strategy.

Today's challenge: Make a date to spar over goals with someone close to you who's interested in doing the same - or just willing to help! Share your goals in writing before the session, so you and your partner have each had time to think and perhaps even research the issues at hand.

Hope you enjoyed the Challenge! I'd love to hear your feedback if you participated in all or any days - what happened?

Today’s challenge has to do with Goal Drift – reassessing your goals (and the relationships you need to achieve them) over time. Goal drift isn’t necessarily bad; as you devote yourself to outreach, you take in new information, your horizons expand, and as a result, your goals often shift. But that's why it’s important to renew and refine those goals and your Relationship Action Plan on a regular basis - and at least quarterly.

1 comment // In Coaching, Goal Setting

Welcome to Day 3 of our Relationship Action Plan Challenge, designed to give you just a small taste of the system I teach at the Relationship Masters Academy, currently enrolling for the March 4 class.

Today's Challenge: Get Smart About Goals

Most people who read this blog are probably working toward some kind of goal - from experience I know my readers to be motivated and ambitious. I'm willing to bet that for most of you (or at least those who didn't read Who's Got Your Back!), that goal is some form of performance goal: Get the promotion. Increase revenue x%. Lose 10 lbs.

Today I challenge you to develop a Learning Goal to compliment your performance goal. Learning Goals are qualitative, mini-goals that define what you need to learn to help yourself achieve a specific performance goal. As long as you do the work, there’s no way to fail at a Learning Goal.

So for examples:
"Get the promotion" --->Learn 5 new techniques for being a better manager.
"Increase revenue" ---> Improve your bookkeeping skills.
"Lose 10 lbs" ----> Learn to exercise better portion control.

Get the picture? Write down those learning goals and make a plan to make them happen!

4 comments // In Goal Setting

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life.  The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.  - Mark Twain

Have you ever sat down and thought seriously about what you truly love? What you’re good at? What you want to accomplish in life? What are the obstacles that are stopping you? Most people don’t. They accept what they “should” be doing, rather than take the time to figure out what they want to be doing.

We all have our own loves, insecurities, strengths, weaknesses, and unique capabilities. And we have to take those into account in figuring out where our talents and desires intersect. That intersection is what I call your “blue flame”—where passion and ability come together. When that blue flame is ignited within a person, it is a powerful force in getting you where you want to go.

I think of the blue flame as a convergence of mission and passion founded on a realistic self-assessment of your abilities. It helps determine your life’s purpose, from taking care of the elderly to becoming a mother, from being a top engineer to becoming a writer or a musician. I believe everyone has a distinct mission inside of him or her, one that has the capacity to inspire.

So how do you figure out your bliss? There are two aspects to getting good information. One part comes from within you; the other part comes from those around you.

Part I: Look inside

1. Get your mind ready for a deep self-assessment. Some people pray. Others meditate or read. Some exercise. A few seek long periods of solitude.

2. Shift your mindset. Throw away the usual constraints you put around possibility – the doubts, fears, and expectations of what you “should” be doing. You have to be able to set aside the obstacles of time, money, and obligation.  (For some thoughts on whether following your passion will lead to better financial rewards, check out this post at The Art of Nonconformity.)

3. Create a list of dreams and goals. Some will be preposterous; others overly pragmatic. Don’t edit yourself at all right now. Next to that first list, write down in a second column all the things that bring you joy and pleasure: the achievements, people, and things that move you. The clues can be found in the hobbies you pursue and the magazines, movies, and books you enjoy. Which activities excite you the most, where you don’t even notice the hours that pass?

4. Start to connect these two lists. Looki for intersections, that sense of direction or purpose. It’s a simple exercise, but the results can be profound.

Part II: Look outside

1. Call on advisors and friends. Ask the people who know you best what they think your greatest strengths and weaknesses are. Ask them what they admire about you and what areas you may need help in.

2. Discuss your self-assessment with them. Ask them to be candid about their reactions.

3. Make decisions. Use the information from your own review and what you got back from others to establish a mission statement and plan of action. For help in setting goals, see my earlier post, Five Steps to Setting Goals.

This post is based on Chapter III in Never Eat Alone.  Image courtesy of artofstuff.com.

Once you do the exercise, jump back in here and tell me: What did you learn?

7 comments // In Goal Setting

An NEA fan, Jesse La Rose, wrote me with the perfect example of what Jim Collins calls an “audacious goal” – and he’s paired it with an ingenious, NEA-style approach to achieving it. Jesse recently founded his own company, ESE Solutions, a consultancy focused on cost-cutting green solutions. We’ve been in contact sporadically (he's a king of follow-up) since he first reached out to me six years ago at a Sigma Chi event.

From Jesse’s recent email:

So, here I am, living my dream of starting a company that makes money and has a positive impact on the environment and society. I’ve also set an ambitious networking goal of attending the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting before I’m 30, I turn 27 tomorrow. I’ve already been to one of their events for experts in sustainability with about 150 people who President Clinton addressed personally for about an hour which was incredible. I am planning on trying to do some pro-bono consulting work for them and have a call set up as a result of that meeting with their staff for next week. My plan is to use the network I’ve developed to get major companies to partner with them and make commitments that I will help them to implement.

What’s your audacious goal – and do you have a plan to make it happen?

1 comment // In Goal Setting

This is an exercise you can do right now. So get out a sheet of paper and ask yourself:

Who are the 75 people who are most important to your success and joy? This is the barest essential of what I call a Relationship Action Plan. The list should be some combination of people you already know, and those you need to get to know.

Start writing! If you run out of names, start thinking about the types of people you need to know – what I call “constituencies” – and then work backward from those constituencies to add names to your list, or knock ones off as your list grows and you need to prioritize. For example: If your goal is self-publish online, one constituency might be “Successful online self-publishers.” Then all you need is some internet research to help fill in the blanks.

Once you’ve got your list, give each of the people on it an intimacy rating from 1-5. If most of them are at 0s or 1s, you know you’ve really got some work to do to build those relationships into the kind that will contribute more deeply to your success.

But even if all you do is make the list, I guarantee you it will evolve the way you think about your outreach – whether you’re doing enough and targeting the right people.

15 comments // In Goal Setting

...from an unlikely source: Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds, in Men's Health Magazine.

"Whether he's talking about inhabiting characters or running races, there's a theme that arises frequently in Reynolds's conversations: goals versus expectations. He has plenty of goals, both professional and personal, but as much as he can, he tries to avoid having expectations -- simply assuming that something is going to happen without doing the work. "When you have expectations, you are setting yourself up for disappointment," Reynolds says. "I didn't expect to finish the marathon; I trained to finish it."

0 comments // In Goal Setting

People today are shortchanging themselves -- that's the unspoken tragedy of economic recession. The five to ten percent of Americans who are unemployed and struggling lead the headlines, understandably. But how about those with jobs? The crappy employment market reduces people's expectations around satisfaction, advancement, and pay. "Just be glad you have a job" rolls off everyone's tongue and suddenly you're stagnating.

If you're someone who feels stuck, here's one suggestion: Don’t assume that your long-term professional goals can’t be served by your current job, even if it's not your ideal position. As the most successful people out there know, everything is connected! When juggling your personal and professional lives, work on blending the two, not striking a balance. Blend the demands of your day job with your long-term goals by doing what I call “drafting”—recasting current work goals to make them serve longer-term personal interests.

Drafting allows you to bring a greater percentage of your passion and interests to work; it will also significantly increase your energy for the job you have today. Along the way, it will help you to perform better—so everyone wins! Do you have to tell others of your longer-term goals? Not for starters. Just do it. Take one goal that someone’s handed you, and turn it into a learning goal for your own benefit. Or call a friend and say, “Hey, I’m trying to find a way to turn my day-to-day goals at work into something that can really benefit my long-term career. Here are my present goals at work. And here are my long-term goals in life. Can you help me?”

Creating our own personal learning goals (or even suggesting that our managers make it part of company protocol) to support the performance goals we’ve been given is an easy way to "draft." Learning goals are exactly what they sound like - goals that aren't focused on a specific outcome, but on learning a new skill or subject expertise, hopefully complimenting some kind of performance goal. The nice thing about learning is that it serves you as much as your employers. Company goals become tools in our own self-development. Think of it as a job perk that isn’t written in your contract. Meanwhile, your employer will benefit from your increased engagement.

8 comments // In Goal Setting

I'm developing a webinar on my goal-setting strategy. YOU can help drive its direction. I'd like to know what questions you'd like answered. What are your biggest challenges in setting and following through on goals? What were the loopholes or oversights in strategies you've attempted in the past?

Please respond in the comments below! And in the meantime…

Five Steps to Better Goals and the Success You So Richly Deserve
Grab a pen (or a keyboard) and create the strategy you need to execute steadily and confidently on your boldest ambitions.

Read more →

27 comments // In Goal Setting

Peers in lifeline relationships help each other set goals and refine the plans to achieve them. To get really smart around this area of your <em>Who's Got Your Back</em> success strategy, I recommend working together to set two types of goals: performance goals and learning goals.

Performance goals are what most of us probably think of right now as goals. They’re all about achieving a highly specific outcome. Landing the job. Getting the promotion. Hitting the sales quota. Taking a vacation to Kenya. Getting married. Losing twenty pounds.

Learning goals, on the other hand, emphasize acquiring new skills and knowledge to push and expand your skills and career forward. Often performance goals require new learning - and if you ignore that important part of the process, you'll never achieve them. For example, while I'm completely relaxed speaking to audiences on stage, TV has always made me uncomfortable - I'm much happier talking to people than I am to a camera. But I knew that if I wanted to transmit my message more broadly, I'd have to get comfortable in the medium. So I set a learning goal: Improve my on-camera presence by book launch. Then I found myself a coach who would work with me on that goal. (Look for me and the NY Lifeline Group on Good Morning America next week and tell me what you think!)

Performance goals can be motivating. The flip side is that, set inappropriately, they can be intimidating and sometimes even debilitating when we fall short. People who are narrowly focused on performance goals tend to withdraw and perform worse during setbacks.

On the other hand, those who set learning goals, according to a study by Drs. Carol Dweck and Heidi Grant of Stanford University, are better able to cope, remain motivated, and achieve more when faced with the setbacks that inevitably occur.

This week, consider one of the goals you're currently working on, and set a learning goal to compliment it.

6 comments // In Goal Setting

Peers in lifeline relationships help each other set goals and refine the plans to achieve them. To get really smart around this area of your Who's Got Your Back success strategy, I recommend working together to set two types of goals: performance goals and learning goals.

Performance goals are what most of us probably think of right now as goals. They’re all about achieving a highly specific outcome. Landing the job. Getting the promotion. Hitting the sales quota. Taking a vacation to Kenya. Getting married. Losing twenty pounds.

Learning goals, on the other hand, emphasize acquiring new skills and knowledge to push and expand your skills and career forward. Often performance goals require new learning - and if you ignore that important part of the process, you'll never achieve them. For example, while I'm completely relaxed speaking to audiences on stage, TV has always made me uncomfortable - I'm much happier talking to people than I am to a camera. But I knew that if I wanted to transmit my message more broadly, I'd have to get comfortable in the medium. So I set a learning goal: Improve my on-camera presence by book launch. Then I found myself a coach who would work with me on that goal. (Look for me and the NY Lifeline Group on Good Morning America next week and tell me what you think!)

Performance goals can be motivating. The flip side is that, set inappropriately, they can be intimidating and sometimes even debilitating when we fall short. People who are narrowly focused on performance goals tend to withdraw and perform worse during setbacks.

On the other hand, those who set learning goals, according to a study by Drs. Carol Dweck and Heidi Grant of Stanford University, are better able to cope, remain motivated, and achieve more when faced with the setbacks that inevitably occur.

This week, consider one of the goals you're currently working on, and set a learning goal to compliment it.

1 comment // In Goal Setting