Transform your goals

“I’m not sure why my company hired you,” said Jeff,
a new coaching client.
“I’m really good at setting
goals, and I really don’t think
I need any help.”

Jeff was partially correct.
He regularly set goals for
himself and for his team.
Unfortunately, he seldom
achieved them — a characteristic that had led his company to suspect he was not
the leader it needed. Hiring
me was a final attempt to
help him.

As we continued our first
coaching session, I asked
Jeff to share the goals he
had set for the coming year.
He withdrew a binder from
his briefcase and opened it
on the table in front of us.

“This binder contains all
of our goals as a team, broken down into four major
categories,” Jeff said
proudly.

Over the next few minutes, Jeff reviewed the
four categories, each of
which contained at least
five goals. All told, he had
set more than 20 separate
goals for his team, all of
which were classified as
“high priority.”

When he finished, Jeff
leaned back in his chair and
said, “Now, do you still think
I need help?”

With real compassion, I
said, “Yes.”

Decide what’s important

The first difficulty Jeff
faced is one that affects
almost every leader — saying no to the relatively
important in order to focus
on the truly important.

Without question, this is
easy to say, but it’s hard to
do. It’s hard to say no to a
good idea, even in deference
to a great one. It’s also hard
to say no to an idea that’s
politically correct to support, even if it’s not the right
focus. Most of all, it’s hard to
say no because limiting your
goals increases your risk if
you choose incorrectly.

But the more goals you set,
the more you spread the
focus of your team. Set
enough goals, and the focus
on each one will be so small
that it is almost meaningless.
Limiting the number of goals
is the only way to ensure
that enough time and talent
will be applied to achieve
exceptional results.

When I forced Jeff to identify the most important goals
out of the 20 he had chosen,
it was like a root canal without anesthetic, but he eventually narrowed his list to
three.

Assess new behaviors

Jeff’s next assignment was
the most often overlooked
aspect of effective goal setting — identifying the new
behaviors his team would
need to adopt.

Jeff and I made a list of the
changes that achieving the
three goals would require of
his team. The list contained
existing activities that would
now have to be performed at
a higher level, requiring the
team to identify best practices, document new standards and develop training.
The list also contained
entirely new activities for
which even more change
was required. In the end, we
identified more than 26
changes that would have to
be fully adopted for the team
to succeed.

Changing human behavior
is hard, even in the best of
circumstances. While it’s
common for a leader to
assess the staffing, technology and expense requirements
of achieving a goal, it’s rare
to see an assessment of the
behavioral changes it will
require. Identifying this critical aspect in advance
allowed Jeff to understand
the magnitude of the changes
and to plan accordingly.

Prepare to follow through

Despite all we had done, the
most difficult aspect of achieving Jeff’s goals still remained
— following through.

In the next few weeks, we
engaged his team in refining
and solidifying our analysis,
knowing that they would
identify things we had
missed. We also designed performance tracking that would
enable Jeff to remain focused
and detect early warning
signs when progress was
stalling as well as regular
communication methods and
personal accountabilities for
each member of his team.

Jeff ultimately transformed
his goals from a list of things
he hoped he would do to a
set of results he knew he
would deliver. In the end, he
became the leader both he
and his company wanted
him to be.

JIM HULING is CEO of The Jim Huling Group, a strategic consulting company enabling leaders and
their teams to achieve extraordinary results. Jim’s leadership experience spans more than 30 years,
including a decade as CEO of a company recognized four times as one of the “25 Best Companies to
Work For in America.” Jim is also a nationally recognized keynote speaker and the author of Choose Your
Life! a powerful proven method for creating the life you want. He can be reached at href='mailto:jim@jimhuling.com'>jim@jimhuling.com.