Let's set and achieve better goals

Received this email from a colleague? Sign up to Ignition Point​

Time to read: 5 minutes

Hi Reader

Goals are a foundational element in any purposeful personal development plan. However, there’s a lot of well-mannered but often unhelpful information shared about goal setting. And when we get our goal setting wrong, we impact our overall growth.

So this week I’m going to run through some of my fundamentals of goal setting. Because if we can set better goals, we can make better progress.

​

But first, a brief detour because I’ve got something exciting (and free) to share with you…

​

Are You On Track To Achieve Your Full, Purposeful Impact?

I’ve developed a new self-assessment that’s based on my six foundations of purposeful impact. It’s the same assessment that participants take at the start of my Ambition Accelerator programme.

And, as an Ignition Point subscriber, I want to give you early access before I release it more broadly.

Take 5 minutes to answer 24 questions and you’ll get a personalised report that shows where you're already in a strong position, and what might be holding you back.

Are You On Track To Achieve Your Full, Purposeful Impact?

​https://sparked-impact.scoreapp.com/​

Please take a look and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you.

Now, back to goals…
​

Why set goals anyway?

When we set a goal we’re making a statement of intent. An intent for:

• What we deem to be important
• An outcome we’re invested in
• The future opportunities that outcome represents
• A path we want to take
• How we want to measure our progress

​

Even “I don’t have a goal” is still a statement of intent. It could be considered a goal focused on flexibility, freedom, and openness to spontaneous opportunities. A deliberate choice to explore without the pressure of a fixed target. But this is just an aside - let’s leave this particular philosophical debate for another time…
​

So if goals are so important - and I’d argue strongly that they are - how come it’s so easy to get things wrong when we set them?...

​

When goal setting goes wrong

No, that’s not the title of my new Channel 5 real-life documentary. But as you might expect, I’ve come across a lot of goal setting approaches - some more successful than others. Goal setting was prevalent in my years in corporate. And I’ve had hundreds of goal conversations with coaching clients.

Here are some of the common challenges that I see:

​

Settings goals in isolation

I explored the importance of purpose in the last couple of editions. But if we set goals in isolation, then we run the risk of a misallocation of our time and energy on something that might not matter in the long run.

And worse, disconnected goals often lead to dissatisfaction and a lack of fulfilment.

It’s why in my coaching I help clients to focus on the bigger impact they’re drawn to make. Then we set goals as the steps towards that impact. But whatever you do, make sure your goal connects to something bigger.

​

Over-indexing on corporate goal-setting

If you’re in a corporate role you know the drill. Regular goal-setting that’s aligned to higher corporate objectives. It’s a well-used and often valuable process when done well.

But if you’re only setting your personal development goals based on your corporate goals, then you’re missing a trick.

Your goals might lack personal significance, and they almost certainly aren’t thinking beyond your current company, never mind a holistic view of your life and values.

Regardless of your corporate goal setting system, make sure you’ve got a personal goals approach. Then, when setting your corporate goals you can take your personal ones into account.

​

Prescriptive goal-setting rules

I tend to have a negative reaction to the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goal setting process.

There’s nothing massively wrong with it. It’s kind of sensible. However, it has a strong link with corporate goals (see above). And my real problem is that it has a habit of sucking the joy out of goal setting. We get bogged down shoehorning a goal into the framework, instead of setting goals that bring us joy.

So when we want to set big, exciting and slightly scary goals, we might need a little more than SMART to energise us. More on that in a moment.

​

Goals are only about career progression

This is a common misconception. But personal development goals don’t only have to be about career progression.

They can be about mastery, optimisation, balance, exploration, inspiration, or countless other things. The key is that you’re setting an intention that’s important to you and that moves you forward in some meaningful way.

​

Set and forget

It seems obvious - you can’t just set a goal then magic happens. But how many times have you had a goal that’s just languishing somewhere on a personal development plan?

You have to create the actions and systems that move you forwards through regular, iterative, compounding activity.

We’ll get onto execution another time. It’s a whole other newsletter - or three. For now, at least make sure your days are set up so you can take regular, meaningful action towards your goal.

​

There are other challenges too, but tackle these and you’ll be off to a great start.

​

What flavour is your goal?

I’m going to make a binary distinction here. It’s a little artificial, but it’ll help illustrate a subtle but important point.

Some of our goals are big, aspirational, purposeful goals. They’re right at the tip of Maslow’s hierarchy, where we’re working toward self-actualization and becoming the best version of ourselves.

These are what often first comes to mind when we talk about personal development. But we don’t always have that luxury.

Maybe we have more pressing needs. Maybe we have wider constraints in our lives that we need to fulfil right now.

Whatever the reason, sometimes we need more functional goals:

• Just mastering the role we’re already in.
• Landing that next job quickly when we’re out of work.
• Making the best of our career options while balancing family commitments.
• Getting some more clients until we work out a broader business growth plan.

And that’s ok. Not all goals need to be fully purposeful. Understanding the type of goal you need to set right now can help. (Even if it doesn’t have to be as binary as I’m making out.)

Plus, if your career or business goal needs to be functional right now, maybe add in a broader goal in life that feels more purposeful and aspirational, like volunteering, learning a new skill, or finding a new outlet for your talents.
​

Starting to set better goals

Ok, so how do we start to set goals that are going to move us further, faster?

First, the fundamentals. When setting your goal make sure you can answer these questions:

• What: What’s the focus of my goal and the outcome I want?
• Why: Why does this goal matter to me? To others?
• How: What’s my plan for achieving this goal?
• When: What time constraints will I put on it? Both the time I’ll protect to work on the goal, and when I’d like to have it done by.
• Who: What help and support do I need and who can provide it?
• Where: Where are my skills best applied to successfully achieve your goal? What’s my point of leverage?

This might feel like a rehash of SMART, but I find that it’s a subtle but important shift. They'll give you a great foundation for a goal.

​

Then, for maximum effectiveness, apply three more tests. The sprinkles on the goal cake:

1. Compelling.

Is your goal so compelling that you’re driven to achieve it? No?

Then maybe it’s not as connected to a bigger purpose than you might like. Maybe it’s driven by external factors or expectations over intrinsic ones.

Get this right and you’ll have way more motivation to work on your goal.

2. Enjoyable

Are you going to love the journey as much as the outcome?

What’s better?

• A goal that’s a hard slog every day?
• Or one where you’re equally motivated by the daily steps?

How can you build fun and celebration of progress into the journey?

3. Shared

It’s tempting to keep our bigger personal development goals a secret. Especially if we’ve got some fear of failure - or fear of success traits showing up.

But sharing your goals with others creates stronger accountability. It builds your support network too.

So don’t keep your goal to yourself - share it with people you trust.

And of course, for the ultimate in accountability and support, get a coach!

​
​Wrap up

So that’s a whistle-stop tour of goals: why they’re important, the common mistakes we make when goal setting, and my suggestions for setting better, more compelling, and ultimately more achievable goals.

There’s a lot I can cover on goals in future editions. Maybe drop me a reply to share your reflections and questions. I love getting your emails back, I read every one, and they help to shape future topics.

To close today, here’s a question to reflect on:
​

​

Thanks for reading. Stay ambitious.

Rob

Sparked Ambition Ltd

​linkedin.com/in/robstubbs​

​

Only just subscribed? Read all past editions here.​