The 5 components of an effective leadership goal!

I was working with a client this week, let's call her Divya, to develop her quarterly goals. 

The Goal: Reduce hours working
The Outcome: Increased work-life balance
The Strategy: To delegate more

It's time to delegate more!
Seems simple enough, right? If you have too much to do, give some of it away. We all know that it's not quite that simple, so I asked her what roadblocks might get in the way of that?

It's not that easy!
Quickly Divya indicated she was worried about overwhelming her staff if she delegated more to them. If that's the case, then she's going to fail at her goal before she even starts. Even though Divya wants to reduce her hours and wants to delegate more, her thoughts will get in the way, and she won't do it.

Our beliefs get in the way!
Our coaching turned to examine her beliefs. A belief is a thought you keep thinking. In this situation, Divya kept thinking she would overwhelm her staff if she delegated more to them. This assumption had become a habitual way of thinking. When we looked more closely at that perception, Divya realized there was some truth to it, but there was more to the story.

A belief is a thought you keep thinking

Our beliefs aren't always right!
After some coaching, Divya came up with these 4 realizations.

1. If Divya delegated more to her managers, it would help them grow, develop and advance in their careers.
   
2. Divya also needed to teach her managers how to delegate to their employees. She realized she'd been role modelling an "it's easier to just do it yourself" way of leading. 
   
3. There would be times when it became clear that if Divya were to delegate to her managers, it would be too much for them and their employees. Then it became clear that that was an issue for Divya to bring to upper management.
   
4. If Divya delegated more, it would allow her to get out of the weeds of micromanaging. Instead of doing the work of line managers delegating would enable Divya to move more into leadership functions.  

You may need to change what you are thinking!
The thing that Divya was missing, and that I am guessing you might be missing is that to achieve a goal, you need to not just look at the outcome you desire and the strategy that you will use to get there but that you will also look at what mindset shifts you need to make.

The Goal: Reduce hours working
The Outcome: Increased work-life balance
The Strategy: To delegate more
The Mindset Shift: Delegating helps not just me, but my managers and our team
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Use the Inner Guidance Cycle to shift your mindset
We then worked on operationalizing this goal into a daily habit that would lead to Divya achieving success. Divya realized there was no magical number of things she needed to delegate or even types of things. It was more about being intentional about her workload and the process of delegation. She created a habit to help her proceed through the Inner Guidance Cycle. 

At the end of the day, Divya will work through the INNER GUIDANCE CYCLE:

🔹PAUSE

• Grab her notebook with her running To-Do list and sit down for 3 minutes.

🔹PONDER

• Make a few notes about a delegation choice point in her day.

🔹PIVOT

• Consider if the thoughts helped her and her team get to where they needed to go considering work-life balance, program goals, and staff developmental needs.

🔹PROCEED

• If something she realized needed delegating, she'd either do it or make a note to follow up on it. 

The Goal: Reduce hours working
The Outcome: Increased work-life balance
The Strategy: To delegate more
The Mindset Shift: Delegating helps not just me, but my managers and our team
Daily Habit: Note where I delegated, thought about delegating or struggled to delegate and what my thought was about that

It's your turn!
Take time to work through your goals for the upcoming quarter. Notice I don't say for the year. A year is a bit long to really do the deep dive work here. You can set annual goals, and you should. But then break them down to how you will work on that goal each quarter.

More Help

1. Set your quarterly goals with the help of this webinar in The Training Library.
2. Become a member of The Training Libary here for ongoing help with your personal and professional development
3. Book a 1-1 coaching call here
4. Listen to this week's podcast: Goal Creation Magic​

Make this year the year to achieve some remarkable leadership goals!
Remeber, there is more to goal setting than just writing a sentence down. Also, strong leaders develop their own personal and professional goals AND work on them! Please don't assume your performance appraisal goals are enough. There are likely more details that need flushing out to help you truly feel more confident, composed and comfortable leading with integrity!

If you need help with that, message me here!