Broaden Your Goal Setting Strategy

Posted on May 18th, 2009 by admin

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.

Send a trackback!
1 comment // In Goal Setting
Bookmark and Share
« Previous Post Next Post »

One Response so far | Have Your Say!

  1. Great post Keith. I attended the LA launch event of Who's got your back? I'm looking forward to what it's going to bring to my life.

Leave a Reply