I received a phone call recently from my cousin, Oliver. He is the Head of Learning & Development in a fast-growing, and highly-ambitious, business. They have been helping their people to set challenging goals and create a strategy to achieve them. To do this, they started by asking a very straight forward question…
“What do you want to achieve?”
It’s a good question. It sets the ambition. Obviously, it has to be something you really want. It also helps if you want it for the right reason. In many sales-focused teams, the ambitions are often to hit massive targets, earn recognition and huge commissions.
For many people, visualising and communicating their dreams & ambitions is relatively easy.
The next question is…
“How are you going to achieve it?”
It’s a very logical question. What’s your strategy? What’s the plan? What are the tangible steps that will turn your dream into reality?
Along the way, there might also be a realisation that we may need to learn some knew skills or acquire new knowledge to help execute the strategy.
Many goal setting exercises finish there. Once we have our plan, it is simply a matter of putting into action. The problem is, of course, very few of these goals actually become reality. Despite having the plan, very few people hit those ambitious targets and realise their goals.
Why not?
Why didn’t the plan come to fruition? Was it a flawed plan, or is it something else?
In the conversation with Oliver, I suggested that there is another dimension. Often the plans are good, but we’re missing a critical ingredient.
Character!
To achieve these goals and deliver the plan, we often need to develop some key characteristics. It’s beyond learning new skills or acquiring knowledge. We need elements of character…
Persistence, tenacity, resilience, patience, adaptability and courage (to name just a few).
Without these crucial ingredients, there is very little chance that we’ll actually deliver our plan and achieve our goals.
So, how can we develop the characteristics that we need to be successful?
If you’d like to develop character, check out ‘How To Develop Character’ on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Develop-Character-Knowledge-Personality/dp/1518832296
… Or make sure you’re signed up to our advent calendar on Christmas Eve!