Are you one of the millions of people who make a New Year’s Resolution this week? If so, it may serve you better to make a goal instead of a resolution to get to your desired state. If resolutions have worked out for you in the past and you’re good with their effectiveness, read no more. For the multitude of people who make resolutions each year and then forget about them by St Patrick’s Day, this is for you.
Many people are of the mindset that resolutions are something that you “try” to do and that it is ok to give those resolutions a whirl and if they don’t stick, eh, it’s ok. It was your New Year’s Resolution, not really a big deal. Those same people, however, could probably have accomplished what they set out to do, and maybe even more, if they had just called it a goal. I know, sounds silly, right? Ok, stay with me.
People make vague, wishy washy resolutions. You say, “This year I will exercise more!”, or “This year I am going to lose weight!”, or my personal favorite, “This year is going to be MY year!”. What does any of that even mean? It certainly isn’t specific, how much more are you going to exercise? How much weight are you going to lose and how are you going to do it? What the heck do you mean by MY year?? It’s like that commercial, that’s not how any of this works! Here is the commercial just for giggles sake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq_1l316ow8
When you make a goal, especially a smart goal, you have to be significantly more specific. You can set one big overarching goal with smaller milestones, mini goals and deadlines along the way. When you make a resolution on Jan 1st you are saying that it is going to take you an entire year to get something done and that is just way too much time. If you make a resolution to lose 10 lbs., you can pretty much do and eat anything that you want until around October and then when you step on the scale you might see that the 10 lbs. that you wanted to lose became 10 lbs. that you gained over the course of the year.
Now you’re up an additional 10 lbs. from what you wanted your weight to be at the end of the year and losing 20 lbs. may seem completely unattainable. And now Halloween is coming up, then Thanksgiving and Christmas, it is the time of year when almost everyone is indulging so starting a strict diet and exercise regimen right now is extremely unappealing. So, what do you do now? You say in January I will make another resolution and this year, I will lose weight! I’ll give you one guess as to what happens the next year and the answer is NOT “It will be YOUR year”.
Want a better way to go about it? Make a goal, a real goal, not a wishy-washy, vague, resolution. Be specific. How much weight do you want to lose? You will stop smoking by doing what? You will go to the gym for at least 1 hour, three times a week. You will bring lunch to work instead of buying it at least 10 times a month. Make sure that you describe what your end goal looks like and give yourself a deadline. It doesn’t have to be the end of the year but If you have a big goal, say to lose 30 lbs., become a published author, find your dream job, that might be the right thing to do.
The next step is to figure out what your mini goals during the year will be. Go to the gym for 20 minutes three times a week, and increase the time every month? Lose 3 lbs. a month? Cut back to 3 cigarettes a day and join a program to help you quit? Find a Facebook group for Meal Preppers and prep your lunch for a full week? Figure out what makes sense for your goal and check in every week to make sure you are still on track. If you can get ahead of schedule, even better because remember, life happens. Find a trusted friend, mentor, coach or advisor to help hold you accountable and put a rewards system in place for when you reach your mini-goals. Do you get to splurge on a night out? Buy some shoes? Ignore your chores and watch football? Give yourself something to look forward to.
Shooting for a Leadership Position in 2018? Try these tips to help get you there.
Climbing the corporate ladder and landing a senior leadership role can take years. Start advancing your career now by positioning yourself as a leader.
Continue to cultivate your Personal Brand. Make sure that you have developed a reputation for doing this right the first time, before deadline, and under budget.
Read/listen to something every day. Read books or listen to podcasts that will help you learn more about the industry that you are in. Learn more about topics that interest you. The more you learn, the easier it will be for you to give input and engage in meaningful discussions.
Give and receive feedback. Feedback is a gift and you should thank people for providing it to you. Take every step to learn and grow from the gifts you’re given. On the other hand, offer feedback to others so that you can have a part in their professional growth.
Spend your break time wisely. During breaks between meetings spend time looking up industry news. Use the tools that Google offers to sign up for notices for things that impact your industry and your organization. Imagine the impression you will make if you are the one to break the news about a new acquisition.
Ask an expert. Tap into your network and see who you can talk to about developing your leadership skills and increasing your industry knowledge. If you have a colleague or someone in your network who has published a new book, talk to them about helping them out by promoting their book on your personal blog. You’ll get information, they get free publicity.
Keep track of what you’ve done well. Start writing down your ideas and your accomplishments. When things are looking down you will be able to reflect on these wins. Keeping track of your ideas will help you start to develop a sense for which ideas take flight.
Take charge. Raise your hand for assignments. Go above and beyond the call of duty whenever you can, do things that are outside of your job description even if they seem to be menial tasks. Pitch in and help wherever you can.
Learn something new. If the company that you work for has training programs, sign up! Take advantage of tuition reimbursement if it is offered. Find inexpensive or free trainings that will benefit you. Look for deals on coupon sites like Groupon. Take advantage of all of the free training that the internet has to offer.
Show up with a smile. Attitude is everything and kindness will carry you anywhere. Don’t join in gossip or badmouthing people. When you talk about your coworkers, make sure that you show that you care about them and wellbeing. Try to find fulfillment in your work, no matter what it is that you do.
Do some job shadowing. Ask a high performing employee or a top leader can spend time with you. Flattery will get you everywhere! Let them know what you love about their style and ask them to help you with your development by allowing you to shadow them. You can help them with tasks or projects and learn from them at the same time.
Give of yourself and your time. Make sure that you can be counted on to be a dependable member of the team. Be there for coworkers and colleagues who may be struggling so that you can be a mentor to them and pass along your expertise.
Use these tips to help become the kind of leader that YOU want to follow.
Your Personal Brand impacts the way that others see you. It helps them decide, quickly, things about you such as your level of intelligence and your character. It can determine if they want to do business with you or move on to someone else. It is a combination of how you dress and how you act. Your Personal Brand greatly affects how people treat you professionally and socially. A study done by UCLA proved that 85% of all decisions are made with our eye so the visual aspect of your Personal Brand is extremely important.
You must cultivate a well thought out Personal Brand if you want to stay competitive. Without one, you will miss out on many opportunities. Work on your Personal Brand to have influence, to attract business and to be more successful than your competitors. Remember, you are selling yourself before you sell anything else, any product, service or skill. Take control and take charge. If you do a good job of branding yourself, you will be in demand.
Big companies understand the power and importance of “branding” products. They spent a lot of resources to create “brands” that stand out to their desired customers. They want to make sure that their potential customer feels a connection with that brand.
You have to think branding yourself the same way that big companies brand products. Have you put enough resources into developing your Personal Brand? Do you stand out from your competitors? Are you in demand? Someone with a well thought out and distinct Personal Brand has a competitive advantage over those who do not. If you don’t have a Personal Brand now if the time to create one. What’s your next step towards taking charge of your career? Here are a few tips.
Develop a good sense on what your strengths, weaknesses and values are. What are you good at? What can you do better than anyone else? Identify how you are perceived by people and determine if you need to make any changes there. Figure out who you need to target with your Personal Brand, customers, leaders, etc. and determine what they need and how you can help meet those needs. Practice your communication skills and ask for regular feedback from people that you trust. Remain consistent with your interactions and make sure that you are standing out in a positive way.
Which maze (Left or Right) is easier to navigate? The one on the left is very similar to our career development paths, we have a clear view of everything in plain sight, but we do not know what is around the corner or even how long the journey is to get out the other side. The maze on the right is easier because we are able to separate and see the big picture, the twists, the dead ends and the entire scope of the path. A mentor is someone that can provide that bird’s eye view based on their experience and network. Those with a mentor can feel confident going into the maze on the left, knowing they can ask their eye in the sky for help. Have you identified your eye in the sky?
I had a conversation with someone recently that made me realize that I could put a little more emphasis on a segment of coaching. One thing that I work on with people when dealing with blind spots is uncovering and eliminating unconscious bias. Sometimes these particular blind spots run so deep that people don’t even realize what they are even after other people have pointed it out to them.
How many of you are aware when you’ve judged someone? How often do you make decisions based on the way someone looks, or a “gut feeling” that you think that you have? How many times have you said that you were trusting your “instinct” about someone? A lot of this is an unconscious bias that you have making the decision for you. These blind spots, this bias, develops in a lot of ways; for example, by your own personal experiences, your background and the cultures that that you’ve been exposed to, or conversely not been exposed to.
Research has shown that we, as humans, like to categorize people. Unfortunately, doing this can sometimes lead to negative consequences, especially when you are leading a team of people. Uncovering these types of decisions and facing why you’ve made them is important because they can be harmful not only to the person who you have judged but also to yourself. Are you not going for a promotion at work because you think they’ll never put a woman in that position? Do you look in the mirror and think that you’re too short to be strutting around in the C-Suite? That is a bias that is feeding into a limiting belief, holding you back from getting your dream job.
Studies have proven that diverse teams, people of varied backgrounds, of different ethnicities, genders, age groups, sexualities, education levels, etc. do better than homogeneous teams. Is your unconscious bias holding back your team? Is it holding back you? Take The Implicit Association Test and see if it points out any blind spots. Want to unpack them? Let me know.
I was lucky enough to go on a girl’s trip to Mexico a couple of weeks ago. As we were driving, we passed through the city of Why, Arizona. It is tiny, if you blink you miss it, but the novelty of the name stuck with us for the whole trip. Part of the reason is because my friends that were with me know that I always ask why, why, why…. Why has been on my mind.
Early in my career I had a leader who I thought was always asking for Purple Squirrels. They’d give me a task and I thought that I did what they wanted but time after time I gave them the wrong data, analyzing things the wrong way, just fell short in general. My aha moment came when she told me that if I’d included one more piece of information in what I’d given her, she would be able to do what she need to with the data. Super frustrated, I said “well why didn’t you tell me what you needed the information for, I would have included that!”. She looked me right in the eye and said “well why didn’t you ask me what I needed it for?”. I was humbled, schooled and empowered, all at the same time. It was a breakthrough moment for me.
I took that crazy jumble of emotion with me going forward and began to ask why. Why do you need this info? What are you going to do with it? Why do you do it that way? Why aren’t we able to do that faster? She created a monster. I was extremely annoying for a while. But over time, I was able to see beyond my nose and the task that I was given to do. Once I began to see where what I did fit into the larger picture, my quality of work increased, my productivity increased and I was a more engaged employee. I’d learned a bit about the power of why.
I am fortunate enough to know some people who are experts when it comes to process improvement and are Six Sigma gurus. They helped me understand the science behind the question why and how it can help get to root cause, ensuring that your solutions are sound, not band aids. Under their tutelage, I honed my skills and learned how to truly use the power of why.
As a leader, it is important that you create an environment that lets people ask why. Encourage them find out how their piece fits into the puzzle of your organization. Foster creativity and innovation. Don’t let an answer of “because we’ve always done it this way” suffice. Push your teams, inspire them to have their own breakthrough moments. Letting them know the why behind a decision that you’ve made gives them so much more power when they get to the how; how they can to stand behind that decision and make it work.
If you have an inquisitive person on your team, encourage them to learn some Six Sigma tools. You don’t have to go all out, get them a mentor that can teach them a few things, such as 5 Whys, and let them use their skills. As they hone their skills, they will develop and grow. In turn, so will your team and your organization. I promise you will never regret having someone on your team who knows how to use the power of why.
