Going for Goals!

By Angela Bensemann

Having time to juggle everything in your day is hard enough without finding time to sit down and ponder your goals for the year – right? Wrong!

The time you set aside now to think about what you want to achieve will pay dividends in the long term when you start to see the progress you make and the changes you achieve.

I once worked with a woman, Jane Hyde, who really wanted to change things about her work and personal life. 

There were things holding Jane back from progressing in her chosen career (lack of formal qualifications, limited tolerance for work colleagues not as dedicated as she was and a perception from management of what her role should be).

Personally she wanted to travel to visit her daughter but was afraid of flying, she wanted a plan for her retirement that didn’t involve working until she dropped and she wanted a better quality of life and to spend more time with her husband.

Like all good relationships we started with hot chocolate and cake.  When you’re talking about goal setting and what you want out of life you need to be with someone you can talk to and relate to.
We started big and then went small.  By that I mean we looked at what Jane would you like to be doing in five years’ time. 

Next we worked back from there and looked at the steps that needed to be taken each year to achieve the end goal.  Each step was logical and achievable – it could be ticked off when completed.
Jane wanted to move out of her general office manager role into a more specialised communications and marketing role.  She introduced the idea of working with a mentor in this field to her manager and had this integrated into her professional development plan. 

Jane enrolled in a formal qualification and worked towards completing this.  She then worked with her manager and mentor to take on more and more communications and marketing work.  While this added to her workload it provided valuable on the job experience.

Critically Jane also worked on her relationships with colleagues.  I worked with Jane to see how she could have handled and reacted differently to specific circumstances.  Jane became even more focused in her work achieving every task within time and on budget – becoming a top performer because she had her eye on the end goal.

An opportunity came up along the way for Jane’s husband to set up his own business.  Jane was behind him 100 per cent doing all the marketing from behind the scenes while still working full time.  Eventually Jane left her job to go and work with her husband and took over the marketing and relationship management of the company.

They built the business to the point where it could be sold and guess what – Jane handled all the sales negotiations.  Jane and her husband have now moved off-shore to look for new and exciting challenges – yes she did conquer her fear of flying.

Jane confessed to me that she had kept the goal setting piece of paper on the wall of her home office and religiously ticked off every one of the steps we’d identified to help her meet her goals.

That was several years ago now and Jane’s on to her next set of goals – I wonder where they will take her?

If you’re thinking about goal setting check out this free 2012 Goal Setting Guide from Scott Dinsmore.

(AB)