The importance of goal setting, for better productivity and psychology, is well-known and documented. What is less well-known is the concept of Goldilocks goals. These are goals that are not too hard and not too easy. They are just right.
The Benefits of Setting Goals and Achieving Them
Goals (when chosen correctly) are beneficial as they give us a target with direction and focus. Goals are a tool we use to bring about change in ourselves and the world around us. They are a tangible measure of action, improvement, and achievement.
And goals can be more than just a good productivity hack. Setting and achieving goals supports good mental health by giving us a sense of purpose and then triggering the release of positive neurotransmitters such as dopamine when we succeed. What’s more, goal setting is related to having a growth mindset. We need to set and fulfil targets to remain in learning mode and continue our personal improvement.
How to Set the Right Type of Goal
So, setting and achieving goals can be highly beneficial, but we do have to set the right type of goals. We need to set ourselves targets that stretch us (forcing us to grow) but they do need to be achievable. Goals can be bold, such as the Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG) advocated by Jim Collins (author of Good to Great), but however big the idea is, it still needs to be broken down into actionable steps.
Therefore, if we want to benefit from all the benefits of goals — the productivity gains of setting them as well as the positive effects of achieving them — then we need to set what I call Goldilocks goals. These are goals that are not too easy but are also not completely unrealistic.
These Goldilocks goals can be ambitious, right on the edge of what we might believe is even possible, but then we must employ the important next step, that of chunking the goal down to make it manageable. For example, we might set ourselves the goal of climbing Mount Everest but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of intermediate tasks we need to complete in order to succeed.
When I coach people and they set stretch goals I help them to break down the overall mission and identify what is the most important next step they need to take. Ideally, this is a simple task, one that might only take a few minutes, such as making a phone call or drafting a message. By effectively breaking down the goal, and then achieving one small element of that overall vision, you gain momentum and a sense of achievement. In fact (as you have probably guessed) you already start to get the positive productivity and psychological benefits of goal setting but achieving these subordinate actions.
The other important advantage of this process is overcoming the mental barrier of what the Scandinavians call the ‘doorstep mile’. Psychologically, the hardest part of a journey (or achieving a goal) is making the first move; it is stepping out the door and taking the first steps (just ask Bilbo Baggins!) If a task seems too daunting, we might never make the first move. So, ensure the first step is the easiest one, then build from there.
If You Are Struggling, Break the Goal Down Even Further
This concept also helps us when we are losing heart on the way to achieving a goal. When we are trying to accomplish something really challenging, we can sometimes lose heart or momentum as time drags on, particularly if we don’t feel we are making the progress we want or when we hit unforeseen obstacles. This is another time when breaking down the goals into ever smaller (achievable) elements is vital.
One example I can draw is my experience of running ultra-marathons. When you are running in excess of 100 kilometres, often over difficult terrain, there are times when you feel pretty low. Exhaustion, negative thoughts, and injuries build up. At times like these, I have dismissed the overall idea of finishing (let alone winning) the race and changed my goals to something as small as “I am going to run the next 100 metres.” I might even then reward myself by walking for 100 metres before setting the next goal. There have been many times when this approach has helped me ride through the physical and psychological low points and — in most cases — go on to succeed in my overall desire. In the case of ultra-races, it has helped me complete courses in excess of 320 km in length.
But there are times — even when we pick a good Goldilocks goal and effectively break it down into steps — when we may not succeed. That is because we cannot control every factor in our lives, let alone the world. And this is where internal goals come into play.
Internal goals are goals that we set in parallel to the overall (external) goal. Internal goals are ones that are not dictated by external circumstances, they are things more under our control. For example, we might have a tough meeting coming up such as a negotiation for a job role. Our overall goal might be the agreement of a new work contract that includes all the benefits we aspire to but, as there are other people involved, we cannot guarantee that result. Therefore, we keep the overall goal but also set an internal goal. In this case, we might set an internal goal of improving our communication skills. This is something that is under our control and the experience — however well it goes — can be a source of learning.
Subsequently, when setting goals, we can set a main goal (something to be achieved in the external world) and then a complementary internal goal (something we control in our mind). This helps us avoid amygdala hijack where we become overloaded by noradrenaline.
By setting an internal goal, one that we can achieve no matter what happens, we guarantee that we can still benefit from the positive aspects of goal achievement — such as getting the neurological dopamine hit and another deposit into the psychological bank of success — even if events conspire against us.
What is Your Goal? What is Your Goldilocks Goal?
So remember, when you are setting your next goal remember to do these things:
Pick a Goldilocks goal; not too easy but not too hard. It should stretch you but not be completely unachievable.
Break that Goldilocks goal down into smaller, more manageable actions.
Make sure you make the first activity an easy one so you can take the first step and start making progress towards your overall goal.
If you are struggling at any point, break down the action into even smaller elements.
Set yourself internal goals; psychological goals that you have complete control over, as well as the external overall goal or action.
In this way, you are not only more likely to succeed, but you will also benefit from the process no matter what happens. You will be both more productive and in better shape mentally.
Now, what about today? Think of a challenging task you want to achieve in the next 24 hours. What internal goal could you set alongside this activity? Take a few seconds and set that goal now. Well done! Your mind will thank you for it later!
If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions
About The Right Questions
The Right Questions is for leaders who want coaching towards greater clarity, purpose and success. We are all leaders (whether we know it or not) as we all have influence. So the question is, what are you doing with your influence?
Wherever you are on your leadership journey, I hope that you find resources on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.
I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and coaching them to achieve their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!
How to do a SWOT Analysis (With Simple Explanation and Examples)
The SWOT analysis is one of the easiest and best-known decision-making tools. Leaders and managers employ this method frequently, but it can be used by anyone. Here is an explanation of what a SWOT analysis is, when to use one and how to write a good SWOT analysis. I have also included a worked example.
What is a SWOT Analysis?
SWOT is an acronym that stands for: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
The SWOT analysis was developed by researchers at Stanford University, following a study in the 1960s. The study looked at various Fortune 500 companies and found that there was a difference between an organisation’s set strategic priorities and what was actually done. The study also revealed that the problem was not poor employees, but rather a lack of clear objectives. Therefore, SWOT was developed to give staff a clear understanding of a business or project.
Why is SWOT analysis effective?
The SWOT analysis is one of the most important and popular tools for decision making and strategy development. This is because of its:
Simplicity – it is simple to learn and quick to use
Clarity – it focusses on the key issues and aids clear communication
Flexibility – it is applicable to individuals and organisations.
Having a coherent strategy is vital to any organisation, and equally, self-awareness is critical to personal effectiveness. But you need to be able to understand and communicate these things clearly. This is why SWOT analysis is such an important tool.
When should you use SWOT analysis?
The SWOT analysis is best used to:
Improve situational awareness
Develop strategy
Identify and refine actions and goals
Improve self-awareness (for an individual or team)
Reflect upon a completed project or activity
The SWOT analysis was designed for organisations but it can equally be used by individuals. The SWOT process identifies crucial internal and external influences within a given situation. Therefore it gives us a snapshot of where we are and is excellent for situational analysis.
The most common way to present and consider the SWOT approach is as a matrix. Here is an example template:
How do you do a SWOT analysis?
Do you want to know how to do a SWOT analysis? Don’t worry; it’s easy! Just follow these steps.
Step 1: Create a SWOT table:
The SWOT matrix is set out thus:
Strengths and weaknesses are usually listed in the first row of the matrix; S and then W. These relate to internal factors.
Opportunities and threats are external issues or circumstances. These create the second row; O and then T.
In this layout, the first column, strengths and opportunities, signify the positive or helpful factors
The second column, weaknesses and threats, are the potentially negative or harmful issues
SWOT Analysis Template Layout
Step 2: Brainstorm
Next, brainstormas many different considerations as you can under each heading.
Here are some questions to help you:
Strengths (internal/personal):
What are your/your team/organisation’s key skills, areas of experience or expertise?
Can you define your USP (unique selling point/proposition)?
What are your core values? What do you love, enjoy or prioritise?
Weaknesses (internal/personal):
What do you not enjoy doing?
Where have you failed or fallen behind the competition?
What skill gaps do you have?
Threats (external/circumstantial):
What circumstances are most troubling you?
Who is your major competition?
Which challenge is the most important right now?
What is the worst thing that could happen to you/your organisation?
Opportunities (external/circumstantial):
How can you leverage your present situation?
Who/what could most help you right now?
How is change providing new openings?
Step 3: Prioritise
Now prioritise the lists; work out which are the top three to five things in each quadrant.
Whether you are using it as an individual or as part of a team, keep it simple and high-level; that is the systems greatest strength.
Step 4: Analyse
Look at each item in turn and consider the actions you could take. Here are some questions to help:
How can you play to or maximise your strengths?
What personal development goals, people and processes can help address your weaknesses?
How can you exploit, expand or multiply the opportunities?
What control measures do you need to put in place to limit the threats?
Now look for further relationships that you can identify across the columns, rows and diagonals.
Remember that weaknesses are often a reflection of strengths. For example, if you have a strength in that you are very good at coming up with lots of ideas, or you are a business with lots of products, a weakness might be that you find it hard to focus on just one of them.
Similarly, look at the flip side of external factors; you may find that threats can also provide opportunities. For example, a competitor could actually be a potential partner.
A failed project is always an opportunity for learning. From your analysis, how could you use that learning and pivot the idea, or re-purpose the team?
How to do a SWOT analysis
SWOT Analysis Example
Here is a short example using personal strengths and weaknesses:
SWOT Analysis Example
First looking at the strengths I recognise that I am quite task-focused. This means I am a good planner and show determination when seeing a project through. Moving across to the right quadrant I have noted a related weakness. Because I am task-focused that means I am quite future-orientated. The downside of this is that sometimes I can forget to be content in the moment or to celebrate the success of achieving something before moving on to the next goal.
Then looking at threats I have noted down that there is increased competition in my industry, with more people entering the market all the time. This threat does lead to an opportunity in the bottom left quadrant. I have the chance to refine my USP (unique selling proposition) in order to stand out from the crowd.
It is more likely that I would list more items under each heading before continuing, but for the sake of simplicity let’s do a little analysis on what we already have.
How do I maximise my strengths and minimise the impact of my weaknesses? There are a few options I could consider under the ‘3 Ps’:
Personal development: I could attend some training to improve my mindfulness and being ‘present’
Person: find or employ someone else with a complementary skill set whose strengths/weaknesses are the opposite of my own
Process: put some time in the diary to be more reflective on a daily basis and plan ahead to celebrate after achieving a goal
When considering the threats, I cannot control new people entering the market but I can work out how to best serve, and therefore retain, my existing clients. The opportunity of refining my USP becomes a strategic task, something that is going to require more work delving into why I do what I do, how that makes me different, who I can best serve and what extra benefit I can bring. The other items that I list in the strengths quadrant will help to develop that USP.
If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions
About The Right Questions
The Right Questions is for leaders who want coaching towards greater clarity, purpose and success. We are all leaders (whether we know it or not) as we all have influence. So the question is, what are you doing with your influence?
Wherever you are on your leadership journey, I hope that you find resources on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.
I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and coaching them to achieve their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!
Which leadership skills do you need to develop most?
What are the most important leadership skills? Which skills do you need to develop as a leader?
Being a leader means being a learner, no matter where we are on our leadership journey. Whether we are a CEO leading a multi-national business, an entrepreneur managing a start-up, or a freelancer just leading ourselves, we all have areas for development. That is why leaders need a growth mindset.
But we cannot improve everything at once so how do we identify where we need the most development as a leader? One of the easiest ways to identify areas for growth is by looking at leadership competencies; the essential skills we need as leaders and managers.
Over the years researchers have come up with extensive lists of leadership skills. We can use these as a guide to thinking about our strengths and weaknesses. Then we can think about whether those areas need personal development (where we need to improve), people to support us, or a process to ensure that work gets done effectively.
I initially trained as a civil engineer. This gave me the technical skills, and some credibility, in early jobs in the military and then leading other engineers and tradespeople in industry. I progressed from engineer to team leader to project manager.
I put effort into developing my human, interpersonal skills, and as I gained further responsibility, my conceptual skills developed too. Being part of a start-up for a few years really helped this area of growth. All this allowed me to take on more general management roles at increasingly senior levels.
As I have developed as a leader and taken roles in senior management those initial technical skills have become less important. Most of my work now has very little to do with engineering as such. I now rely much more on my human and conceptual skills. For example, my work as a leadership coach relies heavily on my interpersonal skills whereas my strategy consulting work is very dependent upon my conceptual skills.
As you can see, my professional career followed quite a classic trajectory. It is a journey through different types and levels of competencies. This sort of progression, and the specific areas of skills, have been well studied and documented.
The essential types of leadership skills
One of the most well-known of these skill development frameworks comes from the research of Robert Katz. He divided leadership skills into 3 primary domains. These were:
Technical
Human
Conceptual
You will notice these categories in my own story but now let’s look at each in more detail.
1. Technical skills
Technical skills relate to the competency and specialist knowledge of a worker or manager. These are primarily the trade skills you need to operate in your profession or industry. This framework recognises that professional knowledge and experience are the primary platforms for leading people at the lower levels of management.
For example, you might be a computer programmer. Over time, as you work and build competence, it is likely that you will be given responsibility for newer programmers. Even if you do not have an official management position, other less experienced programmers will seek you out for your knowledge. In both cases, you now have leadership influence based on your technical skills.
These technical skills are often considered alongside basic business and work skills. Putting these together you get the following list of foundational skills:
Computer, electronic communication, and internet skills
2. Human skills
Technical skills are foundational but if we are going to work in a team then we need to overlay these with human skills. Human skills are the interpersonal skills needed to work effectively with others. These are often referred to a people skills or soft skills.
So, going back to the computer programmer example, having programming skills is not enough to make you an effective manager. You also need to get along with others. You need to learn to understand, communicate with and motivate them. Therefore, alongside the technical skills we can add these human or interpersonal skills:
The third layer of leadership skills is conceptual skills. Conceptual skills are the cognitive competencies that give us the ability to develop ideas, solve problems and initiate strategies. These conceptual skills get more important as you gain responsibility and work with ever-larger teams.
As per the former example: if you were a programmer who worked up to become the CEO of a large tech firm, your conceptual skills now become of primary importance. You would be unlikely to spend much time writing code, so your technical skills would now be of secondary or tertiary importance. This is why very senior leaders can move to key positions in industries where they have little or no technical expertise. They are being employed for their conceptual skills.
Here are examples of a leader’s conceptual skills:
When I look at the lists of competencies above, I can quickly see skills that I am either stronger or weaker at. I am sure you can quickly do the same.
So how do we deal with our weaknesses? What is the most effective approach? Should we work more on our strengths or our weaknesses?
This is where we need to be self-aware but also strategic about our own development. We want to maximise our gifts but limit any downsides that could come from areas of weakness. We cannot improve everything at once, so we must prioritise our growth and yet ensure that we are still effective across the broad range of competencies.
To do this we can explore the skill sets, and how to address them, through the 3 Ps of personal growth, people, and process.
Personal Growth
As mentioned previously, leaders need to have a growth mindset. Leadership is a journey of learning and improvement. A lot of this learning is gained through experience but we also need to be proactive about our learning and set development goals.
It would be tempting to dive straight in at this point and start to work on our biggest weakness. But this would be a mistake. We can never be good at everything and that is why we consider people and processes before we go any further.
People
Leaders are nothing without the team. This is true in a very literal sense: a leader is defined by the group they are leading or influencing.
The leader is there for the team, but the team is also there for the leader. The best teams complement each other by bringing a diversity of thought and skill. In this way, as Meredith Belbin has shown, high performing teams embody all the required component parts of a team.
We do not need to excel at everything. This is actually great news. It ensures a leader remains humble and gives opportunities for every team member to contribute and shine.
A good leader can build, shape, and develop the team to ensure the right people are doing the right jobs and that there are strengths to balance out other people’s weaknesses (including their own).
For example, I am not motivated by finance and budgeting. I can budget and manage a cash flow, but I don’t enjoy it. So, I make sure I have people in my teams who can both help me with this and can keep me accountable. These are people with a passion for numbers and an eye for detail. I could spend more time working on this weakness, but I have found it more effective to find others who simply do it better than I ever will.
But what happens if you don’t get to choose your team or if there just aren’t enough people to cover all the bases?
Processes
This is where a process comes in. Put simply, a process is a system that helps people to do things. It is most useful when it is something they don’t do naturally.
For example, keeping things tidy is a strength of mine. Unfortunately, it is not a strength for everyone in my household and therefore we have a process (a shared rota and routine) to ensure that I am not left to fill and empty the dishwasher every time!
The same goes for a business, if there is something that people don’t do well naturally then institute a process. For example, many organisations employ particularly processes to run their meetings. The creation of agendas, actions and minutes support these structures.
But a word of warning: don’t let the process become the driver! The principle or the need should drive any process not the other way around. Bad behaviours creep in when people doggedly keep to a process, not willing to adapt as the situation evolves or the team changes. Build processes and use them as tools but hold them lightly.
Which skill do you most want to develop?
Now that we have identified strengths and weaknesses and considered the options of personal development, people and processes we can ask ourselves the following question: of the list of skills above, which one is the one you most need to develop, and which one do you most need to compensate for?
The first one, the skill to develop, could be a strength that you want to make your superpower or a weaker area that you just can’t ignore. The second skill, the one you need to compensate for, is probably a weakness, one that you have been able to ignore, but it is tripping you up. That is where another person or process could help.
So now set yourself two goals:
Skill development: Create a plan for how you are going to develop that first skill. What book, course or coach could help you? Give yourself a score of 1-10 for that skill. What would it take for you to increase your level by 1? Make that your goal.
Skill Compensation. Find a person or create a process to help you with that. Who do you know who could help? Have you seen a system or tool that can help you? Try working with that person or process for a set time – maybe a week or month – then assess how you are doing.
If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions
About The Right Questions
The Right Questions is for leaders who want coaching towards greater clarity, purpose and success. We are all leaders (whether we know it or not) as we all have influence. So the question is, what are you doing with your influence?
Wherever you are on your leadership journey, I hope that you find resources on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.
I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and coaching them to achieve their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!