Three key mistakes to avoid in setting goals

The below post first appeared on CBS MoneyWatch:

If you set goals for yourself or for others as part of your job, it is imperative you don't make the goal-crushing mistakes discussed below. You already learned how positive fantasies hurt real-world success -- namely, that when you imagine the positive result too vividly, you experience some of the joy and become less energized to actually do the work. But that's just the beginning. Not all goals are created equally. According to research from Harvard Business School, you need to avoid these common errors in setting goals:

1. Goals that are too specific. One benefit of goal is that is focuses your attention. It forces you to focus all of your attention, resources, and energy on a single objective, rather than a range of disparate and even conflicting goal. That can be incredibly powerful. People without goals diffuse their energy across multiple objectives. But have them train their sights on something specific and you will begin to see results. That's the good news.

The bad news? Goals can be too specific. The biggest problem is when you set the wrong goal. You decide to lose 15 pounds. Seems reasonable, but it may be too focused on a specific number and distract from what you really want -- better health. Remember Enron? Their goal was laser-focused on hitting revenue targets -- so much so that bonuses and other incentives were pegged to sales, when a much better goal would have been to target profits.

Another side-effect of excessively targeted goals is that you can become blind to important, but seemingly unrelated, issues. A tragic example of this is the Ford Pinto, which had a tendency to explode in rear-end collisions. The automaker's goal was to bring the car to market, overriding safety concerns.

2. Too many goals. According to the Harvard report, "Individuals with multiple goals are prone to concentrate on only one goal." But which one? Research shows that when we have both quantity and quality goals, we will focus on meeting the quantity goals because they are easier to achieve and measure. The lesson here is to strip away as many of your goals as possible and focus more intensively on a smaller number of objectives.

3. Inappropriate time horizon. We see this play out every quarter in the stock market. For many companies, it's all about hitting this quarter's earnings, even if if that harms long-term growth. It's the kick-the-can approach to goal achievement. And if your time frame is off, your goals may act as a ceiling to performance.

Take an enduring question that the Harvard report addresses -- why it is so hard to get a taxi on a rainy day. Too much people looking for a cab, right? Yes, but there is more to it than that. Cab drivers typically set daily fare goals -- usually double the amount it costs them to rent their cabs for their shift.

With rain comes more customers, so they hit their daily goal early and then go home early. In short, for cabbies the daily goal time-frame is not the most effective. If they set weekly or monthly targets, they could work longer hours when it rains and get off early on days when it is dryer (and slower).

Robert Pagliarini

What are your goals? Are they too focused? Do you have too many? Or do you have time limits that aren't realistic? Review each of your goals so you don't commit the mistakes above and to ensure your goals are designed for maximum success.

Robert Pagliarini is a CBS MoneyWatch columnist, bestselling author, professional life coach, and founder of Richer Life—a community for people who want to achieve more at work and in life. He has appeared as an expert on 20/20, Good Morning America, Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew's Lifechangers and many others. Sign-up for Richer Life Tips at RicherLife.com to get a daily email that provides inspiration and insight each morning.

Is an ICF Credential in your future?

Throughout 2012, ICF Global is offering quarterly webinars on the process of earning an ICF Credential. The subject of these webinars will be two-fold: 1) the process of applying for an ICF Credential using the online application (learn which application type you should apply for and how you can upload the required documents); and 2) a review of skills expectations (this part of the webinar will be led by a current ICF Assessor and will include information on what Assessors are listening for during the ICF portfolio live or recorded exams and will include a review of ICF Core Competencies).

The first of these webinars took place on Friday, March 16 (access audio here and the presentation here). 

If applying for an ICF Credential is in your future, be sure to mark one of the below dates in your calendar:

• Friday, June 15
• Friday, September 14
• Friday, December 14
  

How Did We Get Here? A report on the Development of Coaches Study

Introduction

As we continue to learn more about the world of coaches through studies such as the 2012 ICF Global Coaching Study, we still understand little about the processes by which individuals become effective coaches. We all come to this field of practice with decades of professional and personal experiences. How do these experiences influence how we coach?   The answers to this question have implications for the education, training and on-going professional development of practitioners.

The Development of Coaches Study is a long-term, global study that was designed to investigate this question and gather data to help inform coaches, coach educators and policy-makers in the field. The survey instrument was developed by a collaborative group of coaching researchers *, who adapted an instrument that was used in a long-term global study of the development of psychotherapists.

After the 2009 ICF Research Committee reviewed the merits of the study, they decided that it was so important that the organization should continuing offering promotional support in the future. The quantitative items on the survey investigate a number of dimensions of coach preparation, coaching practices, practice conditions, coach attitudes and perspectives, and coach characteristics. The survey also includes one qualitative item, asking coaches to identify life events which have had a significant impact on them as coaches.

While data collection on the global survey is still in the early stages, a pilot study of the survey generated 80 responses to the life events question, allowing an analysis of this qualitative item. A collaborative colleague, Deepa Awal, and I conducted a content analysis of these responses. The resulting article, entitled: Life’s Thumbprint:  The impact of significant life events on coaches and their coaching, has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice. 

Since the submission and acceptance of our article, we have also been combing through the first set of real quantitative data from the study. While the response numbers are still too small to support any statistical analyses, the descriptive data from the 184 responses to date offers a glimpse of many dimensions and characteristics of coaching practitioners and opens doors to further inquiry. An Executive Summary of this research will eventually be posted in the ICF Research Portal. In the meantime, the following is brief overview of our findings in the life events analysis that was recently completed:

Overview of the Life Events Responses

From the initial 80 responses to the life events question, we identified and categorized  174 discrete life events. These fell into three groups: Coaching field specific events (formal coach training, practice coaching, receiving coaching/mentoring and professional affiliation);  Individual non-work experiences (a wide variety of personal experiences such as illness, death of parent or partner, divorce and similar events); and other professional experiences  (professional activities, education and training not specific to the provision of coaching). 

Each category of events was shown to impact a coach’s development in a different way.  Coaching field specific events, for example, had the greatest impact on coaching specific skills and knowledge. The individual non-work experiences, most of which might be considered of a challenging nature, appear to promote self-insight, empathy and a search for deeper meaning in life. The impact of prior professional experiences varied, offering some transferable skills and an understanding of the organizational context. Given the diverse impacts that different categories of life experiences, we suggest that the preparation and on-going development of coaches should address three domains: technical (skills), affective (self-development) and cognitive (theoretical knowledge). 

What’s Next?

We will continue to collect data on the quantitative and qualitative items of the survey. The resulting data set promises to be a very rich resource for a number of additional studies. The Development of Coaches Study is a collaborative research project and any qualified researcher is invited to participate and to mine the data to add multiple dimensions to our understanding of the initial research questions: 

1. What are the personal and professional experiences that influence coaches in their practice as a coach?
2. What are the dimensions of coaching practice that are impacted by personal and professional experiences?
3. What is the impact of specific life experiences on the coach’s values, mental models and coaching behaviors?

We are seeking a large and diverse respondent population.  So, if you have not already completed the survey, please do so now and also forward the survey link to any of your coaching colleagues. Please click on this link below to take the survey.

 

If you have any questions or comments about the Development of Coaches Study or you are interested in becoming part of the collaborative research project, please contact me at Francine@reinventinglife.net.

Meeting of a lifetime

Last month, we asked our Facebook fans, “if you could meet one person, famous or not, from the past or present, who would it be for you?” Take a look below to see how our Facebook fans responded:

• “Eleanor of Aquitaine.” (Tabitha Jayne)
• “Jesus Christ.” (Keith Lawrence Miller)
• “Buddha." (Paulo Martins)
• “Thot.” (Lucio Andrés Pérez)
• “Two – Albert Einstein and Lucille Ball.” (Dianne Garrett)
• “Myself.” (Renia Nicpon)
• “My mother.” (Karin Nilsson)
• “& Meryl Streep.” (Renia Nicpon)
• “Albert Einstein.” (Eric Degen)
• “Oscar Wilde.” (Magdalena Giec)
• “Endless list, but I would start with my grandfather.” (Katerina Kanelidou)
• “Oprah Winfrey.” (Glen Johnson)
• “My grandmother. Very curious of her way of seeing things where she is now.” (Margareta Carlsson)
• “Gandhi.” (Davide Tambone)
• “Nelson Mandela.” (Annemie van Poppel)
• “Wayne Gretzky.” (Terreeia Rauffman)
• “Terry Fox.” (Cathy Romanko)
• “Cleopatra.” (Clare Sautter)
• “Adam, I guess. The one who married Eve.” (Sandro da Silva)
• “My great great grandparents, both sides.” (Berna Herrera)
• “Socrates, in our days in New York.” (Гришаев Сергей)
• “Robert Kiyosaki.” (Anvesh Babu Pudota)

What about you? Who would you choose to meet? We’d love to know—leave a response below or join the conversation at Facebook.com/ICFHQ.

Cleaning Your Own Temple: A Primer for Coaches

Energy Work and Coaching SIG
March 19 2012 11:00AM ET
Call In: 712-451-6000
427724# Pin
Facilitator:  Rhona Post MCC

During the February Energy Work and Coaching SIG call, we explored how we can more effectively communicate the value and benefits of offering clients an integrated approach to coaching that would honor both the energy or alternative healing modalities we’ve studied while still preserving the dignity of the coaching models we utilize.

One of the recurring themes during these calls is the idea that we serve our clients better when we have done the work on ourselves, first.

That has been my experience. Several group members have asked me to lead a conversation about how we can better clean our own temples first prior to trying to coach clients in those areas with which we are not familiar.

So what does it mean to clean our own temple first? Some of us have spent years learning about ourselves, studying the mind (our minds) to become better acquainted with our mental formations, our viewpoints that direct how we interpret and interact with others. We’ve dissected our emotions and our narratives to better understand and accept our frailties and our gifts. Awareness, we have learned, is the first step to changing ourselves. You cannot change what you don’t know.

This commitment to learn more about the self, not from a strictly analytic or psychological approach has helped many of us become more discerning in our coaching. Because we have cultivated the wisdom to realize that one size does not fit all, we keep learning new modalities so that we have a toolkit from which we can work. Our wisdom is rooted in experience, knowledge and compassion. 

Rhona Post

On our March call we’ll explore the types of practices we can engage in that will support us to clean our own temples and to keep them clean. What are those rooms in your house (mind) that you keep closed? What is it about those areas that scare or frustrate you? What are some practices you do on a regular basis that support you to be fully present and engaged? How do you keep your energetic distance while still maintaining a compassionate presence? How do you know when you are in your head and not fully in your body? We will address these and other questions during the call. A community is a place where our gifts are received. Please take the time to share your gifts with us.

For more information contact, www.facebook.com/rhonapost or call +1.941.554.8466.