For many of us, a new year brings opportunities for improving skills and building resilience through goal setting. We call such goals “resolutions” and human beings are notoriously bad at achieving them. In fact, over 90% of us will not follow-through on our resolutions. The problem is that resolutions are more like wishes, not goals. We’ve also been trained to focus our goals on overcoming weaknesses, as opposed to building on our strengths. Positive psychology tells us that we’re more likely to achieve goals that are crafted in alignment with what we’re naturally good at. Here are five tips for setting strengths-based goals this year.
In their book First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Great Managers Do Differently, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman found very low levels of employee engagement within hundreds of organizations. Their contention is that most human beings live by the unfounded principle that “anybody can be anything they want to be” and goal setting like New Year’s resolutions to corporate performance plans conforms to this belief. In reality, we all have unique strengths and our personal and professional development should focus on what we already do well to enhance our talent.
Regardless of whether you’re a manager helping an employee set their goals for the year or you’re making a personal commitment to lose weight, goal setting needs to change because we’re wasting too much time on a horribly flawed process. A recent study by Osnat Bouskila-yam and Avraham N. Kluger in Human Resource Management Review, applied concepts such as the best-self portrait and the feedforward interview to help people set goals that allow them to find new ways to use existing strengths. While these examples favour development within an organization, you can absolutely use the ideas to craft personal goals for behaviour changes (e.g. eating healthier) or accomplishments (e.g. running 10K per week from July-December).
With this in mind, here are five tips for setting strengths-based goals this year.
Embrace your awesomeness
There is no better time than today for reflecting on life. Here’s a great example of thoughtful thinking about accomplishments in 2015 by my friend Brenda Rigney, VP People Operations of Nurse Next Door. Whether you’re a talker, writer or doodler, capture some of the behaviours, personality traits and abilities that make you different from others. Think about the compliments you frequently receive. Jot down what tasks are easy for you, but frustrate others. Try to capture moments when you are “in the zone” and describe what it might take to make more of these moments happen every day. However you take-stock of who you are, it is essential to articulate two or three ways that you are awesome.
Crave feedback from others
When I was travelling through East Africa several years ago I came across a wonderful Kenyan proverb that, when translated, says: “you are the way that others see you.” In addition to deep self-reflection it is essential for you to gather input from a community of friends, colleagues and mentors, too. You can do this by listening to what’s being said and refrain from forming an opinion about it (that comes later). For example, the first time that I engaged in this practice produced a lot of descriptors like “enthusiastic” and “energetic” and “fun”, none of which I was expecting nor was I hoping for. How this feedback helped me was by offering an important assessment of my natural style that I never would’ve thought to be a strength, but in my work as a leader of people it absolutely is and I have worked to cultivate this ability ever since I learned about the positive impact that it has on folks.
Stretch yourself
One of the reasons to focus on strengths is that doing so comes more naturally to us, which might also mean that the work is easier. Striving to be a great writer is certainly easier for me than striving to be a mediocre spreadsheet-builder. With this in mind, try to stretch yourself when creating and achieving strengths-based goals – the process is naturally engaging because we get to focus on things we’re good at and probably like, so try to make your goals big ones. Following through on them will feel even more satisfying! Most personal and professional development should make us uncomfortable.
Monitor your progress
According to a report from the American Psychological Association, the more often that you monitor your progress and share results with others the more likely you will be to achieve your goals. Self-assessment is critical. “Specifically, we would recommend that people be encouraged to record, report or make public what they find out as they assess their progress,” argues the study’s lead author, Benjamin Harkin.
Know your blind spots
While a strengths-based approach to goal-setting focuses less on overturning weaknesses, we still need to know what we’re not so good at doing. For example, two of my strengths – being inclusive and decisive – make me a decision-maker who puts collective interests first; however, I often struggle to balance the speed with which I make decisions and how I bring along folks who might not have been directly involved in the process. Consequently, an area of development on which I’ll be focusing in 2016 will be refining my decision making skills by embracing mindfulness and downplaying email (I respond to things very quickly). While understanding (and, perhaps, addressing) our blind spots might make us uncomfortable, when we are aware of our limitations then it becomes easier to know what might frustrate others and how to ask for help.
—
This article was originally posted on December 30, 2015.