Setting goals can be both liberating and terrifying. You’re essentially declaring what you want to accomplish, and that means risking failure. In our recent session, we dug into the real challenges people face with goal setting, and I want to share some expanded thoughts that might help you in your own process.
The SMART Goal Trap
We’ve all heard about SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. These principles have value, but they can also become a straightjacket. In our session, several participants shared feeling overwhelmed by trying to fit their dreams into this rigid framework.
The truth? There are over 14 different variations of the SMART acronym out there. As I note in the MagnetGoals workbook, some people substitute “Actionable” for “Achievable” or “Relevant” for “Realistic.” One coach I highly esteem, Sir John Whitmore, has taken it to an extreme, saying goals need to be SMART, PURE, and CLEAR – that’s 14 different characteristics to remember!
Studying these 14 characteristics might be a great foundation for goal setting. But even though I can remember the words SMART, PURE, and CLEAR, I have a really hard time remembering all 14 points! It’s overwhelming and can lead to paralysis rather than progress. And SMART goals don’t account for character goals and habits that are intended to be ongoing.
If you feel constrained by SMART goals, remember that your goals should serve you, not the other way around.
1. The Power of 100
One of my favorite goal-setting exercises is to have leaders write a “list of 100.” This exercise often feels overwhelming at first but creates incredible breakthroughs later. I’ve been using this technique for nearly 20 years with clients, and the patterns are fascinating.
People often can come up with 5 – 10 for the list. Then they hit a wall. Then they have another flow of ideas. And the process continues. Sometimes the List of 100 can be done in a sitting. Other times, it takes a few days.
Because there are 100 lines to fill, the constraint of the expectations of a “goal” gets pushed. In reality, the List of 100 is for goals, dreams, tasks, ideas, and better than can be expected wishes.
During a recent training, two leaders shared that they had been resistant to any sort of goal setting. In the past, they had felt writing down goals restricted them. Seeing them on paper made them feel morally obliged to accomplish what they’d written down. Both said that having to work on one hundred goals helped free them up from that crushing sense of obligation. They were surprised to find their internal resistance to goal setting melting away.
They were even more surprised to rediscover parts of themselves and interests they hadn’t considered for years.
And that’s the point. The List of 100 exercise isn’t about completing 100 things — it’s about pushing past your self-censoring mind to discover what really matters to you.
2. Beyond Visualization: The History of the Future
Lists are helpful but we take goal setting further in the next exercise with what I call writing “The History of the Future.” This isn’t just about reviewing your List of 100; it’s about writing story about what your life looks like after you’ve accomplished your goals.
Harnessing the power of story brings more of your creative senses into the goal setting process. You picture what you’d look like. You feel what it would be like to hear people talk about your accomplishments. You imagine having the title or the award.
The History of the Future doesn’t have to be long to engage your imagination. While one client wrote a six page story, most of us are fine with a paragraph or two.
During a leadership intensive, upon writing her History of the Future, one department leader said, “This is giving me the operating system for my leadership! I want my department to be full of joy. But I’ve been so focused on tasks of the new database conversion, my team has no way of knowing that. Having written this, I can live into this story.”
3. Finding Your MagnetGoals
Doing the first two exercises is enough for many leaders to have unexpected breakthroughs in their performance – and in their enjoyment of life. But the third exercise can help turn your List and History into real, doable goals. I call these “MagnetGoals.”
When reviewing your goals, look for two kinds of goals:
- Goals that influence many other goals on the list. In other words, those that encompass many of your other goals.
- Goals that just seem to “jump” off the page. There does not need to be a rhyme or reason to these.
As I share in my leadership book The Surprising Gift of Doubt, one of my own MagnetGoals years ago was “ballroom dancing lessons with my wife.” This goal didn’t really make any sense. I’d just started a new company. I was desperately trying make enough money as a self-employed business owner to feed my family. So, ballroom dance lessons seemed frivolous at best. But I honored the process.
Keeping “ballroom dancing with my wife” on my radar, even imperfectly, amid my other more urgent income-generating goals signaled to my wife that she was more important to me than my new business. In a very stressful year, this intuitive goal helped strengthen my marriage in a way I would not have dreamed of if I had listed only analytical goals. And that made me better equipped to reach my professional goals too.
The Accountability Factor
The final piece we discuss in our leadership intensives is accountability. Having someone to hold you accountable dramatically increases your chances of success.
For some reason, we are more afraid of letting someone else down than we are of letting ourselves down. So use that to your advantage. Find a peer, a colleague, or hire a coach to help keep you accountable. (It can be a person you live with, but we’ve found it’s often best if the person is outside your living arrangements and outside of your work environment.)
What’s Your Next Step?
Goal setting isn’t about perfection — it’s about progress. Even minimal systematic effort can lead to extraordinary results. One team I worked with found they accomplished their 12-month revenue goals in just four months using this process.
To download your own copy of the MagnetGoals Workbook, go to https://concordleadershipgroup.com/magnetgoals.
I’d love to hear which of these approaches resonates most with you. Let us know in the comments!
If you want to learn more about how to grow as a leader and grow the leaders around you, look at our coaching skills for leaders intensives. New cohorts happen often. And we can bring explore doing a custom cohort for your team.
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