How important is goal setting? Most people will single this out as the first thing to making things happen. So, why is it that achieving those goals so difficult? Especially the ones that are more behavioral in nature. The goals around becoming a better listener, mentoring a peer or subordinate, and maybe the goals that are focused on organization change.
How many of you have made goals of losing weight, going to the gym, or maybe a New Year’s resolution? When it comes to professional behavior goals, I believe that they pretty much follow the same path as our personal behavioral goals. There definitely is a strong tie.
So why do people give up?
- Ownership: My favorite comments I have heard are, “I don’t believe that this change that we are being forced to do is going to work. We will give it a try anyways.” We are all in – right? Rolling out programs or initiatives have a first hurdle of ownership. How many times did you hear with those programs, “this will make you better”? The focus is on the program, not the you in the program. When setting goals make sure the focus is applied in the right place.
- Time: Have you heard this one? “I can’t believe that this is taking this long.” I am no different than most folks, we all have a tendency to under estimate how long things should take over what we would like them to take. When you are dealing with behavioral changes that have been in the works for many years, don’t expect those changes to happen in a week or two. Make sure to be realistic in setting how long it should take.
- Difficulty: How about this one? “It was a lot harder than I thought.” I have made that mistake in my personal goals. Back in my younger days, losing weight was not really that difficult. Stop eating the wrong things and I would lose weight. Now it takes much longer and I have to add more than just cutting out some bad foods, like exercise cutting out carbs. Focus on the cost of that success, so that trade offs can happen!
- Distractions: I just heard this one, “I would love to focus on making that improvement, but we are facing some critical time crunches.” There is always something that is going to happen from time to time. We can not allow ourselves to push aside one for the other. Setting up a solid follow-up process to insure focus is put in the right place is necessary.
- Rewards: “Why should I work so hard on being a better manager? It is not getting me anymore money.” We all want to get rewarded for our hard work. Sometimes the reward is not going to be an immediate monetary benefit at the end of a behavioral change. Being a better listener, is not going to be sometime that can me measured in just listening. It helps in all other areas. Reward yourself , rather than wait for someone else.
- Keep, keeping on: “I did do a better job when I was getting some mentoring, too bad I have slipped.” Or maybe this one falls in the yoyo dieting… You put that hard work in to obtain the change, the real hard work is keeping the change going forward.
If the change is for you – you need to make sure that you are willing and want to accomplish your goal. You wrote it. Now comes the difficult task of making and keeping the changes moving forward. If this is for one of your team or your organization – you have to make sure that all parties are on board. Understand that this journey is going to be difficult and is going to take time and effort. Getting to what the goal is – is worth it!
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