Freeing Executive Coaches to Have More Clients and Better Work/Life Balance!
In Part I of this 4-part series, we discussed that transforming your dream into an achievable goal requires that you articulate exactly what you want to achieve and assign a realistic deadline in which to accomplish it. For example:
“I’d like to become an “Organizational Development” coach.” becomes
“I will become a certified “Organizational Development” coach” by June, 2012.”
“I need to learn to use social media marketing for my business.” becomes
“I will learn to use social media marketing tools (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) to advance my business by February 28, 2012
“Writing and publishing a white paper would sure help my credibility factor.” becomes
“I will research, write and publish a white paper in an industry-recognized publication by March 15, 2012.”
I use to let a “desire”, like learning social media marketing, ramble around in my mind as a vague, ambiguous intention. A lot of mental energy was wasted on thoughts like “Where do I begin”; “What comes first”, “It will take too long!”, “Will I really get results from it?” or “Where will I find the time?” I also use to tell myself that I would add it to the list of everything else I hope to accomplish and I’d get to it eventually. If it was a highly interesting “desire, I sometimes jumped right on to the internet to begin looking into the process or taking tutorials. Unfortunately, the time spent on this new discovery expedition was very often a huge distraction from other more immediate and profitable tasks. At the end of all of this overwhelming mental exercise, I rarely moved even one step closer to what I wanted to accomplish.
After one of these fruitless mental exercises, I got pretty frustrated with myself and I remember thinking out loud “I can’t keep doing this! What do I really have to do to make this happen?” That’s when clarity hit me between the eyes…THAT’s exactly what I need to do to make this happen! That’s the one and only question I need to keep asking myself!
I grabbed my laptop and took off for the local coffee shop so I wouldn’t be distracted by the myriad of other thing clamoring for my attention. I had heard Napoleon Hill’s expression “A goal is a dream with a deadline” so I figured that was a good place to start. My goal became ““I will learn to use social media marketing tools (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) to advance my business by February 28, 2012.” There…I’d done it…put it in writing and gave myself a deadline…now what?
The “now what” turned out to be taking what I already knew about learning social media marketing and breaking it out into big bucket items (the Macro View). Again I asked myself the question…”What do I need to do to make this happen”?
My list looked deceptively simple:
1. Learn about and get set up in LinkedIn
2. Learn about and get set up in Twitter
3. Learn about and get set up in Facebook
4. Develop a marketing plan using these tools
As I looked at my list, I realized that these were things I already knew and yet had never moved forward on. Now that I’d articulated my desire into a goal and written a macro view of what needed to be done, I felt like I’d made progress.
Unfortunately, the next morning when I reviewed the list, I realized that, while I’d definitely moved forward towards my goal, I still didn’t have a clue what needed to actually happen to bring it into reality. In my next post, Part 3, I’ll share how using the “1-Question” method continued to bring the finish line into view.
What’s been your greatest struggle in developing goals or in trying to bring your goals to reality?
