I chose the opening quote because love is not just a value to me; it's my core. This past year, I've been fortunate to experience an abundance of love, and I hope that I've embodied this core value more days than not. What's truly remarkable about the work I do is the privilege of connecting with new partners in love and service. To each of you, thank you for being a constant inspiration.

The most profound and meaningful love I've encountered comes from my wife and Da Boys (pictured above). Running a coaching and consulting business isn't without its challenges, but they've been my unwavering support, standing by my side and encouraging me at every turn. I'm blessed to have them and all of you on this incredible journey.

How does love manifest itseld? 
Here are a few instances from my experiences this year:

• Leaders investing in coaching from their own pockets to develop their teams.
  
• A first-time manager eager to navigate the transition to leadership for a positive impact.
  
• Leaders working through conflicts to move forward together with their teammates and colleagues.
  
• Efforts to shift organizational culture for a thriving team.
• Acts of generosity, such as donating time and resources to help those in need.
  
• Mentors passing on best practices to aid in career transitions.
  
• HR executives going above and beyond to understand and serve their constituents.
  
• Colleagues and small business owners navigating the challenges of improving lives through their work.
  
• Colleagues encouraging and supporting one another in too many ways to count!
  

As you know, I'm on a mission to collaborate with like-minded leaders dedicated to making a positive difference. So, in this festive season and beyond, I invite you to conspire with me and others in love, service, and creating a positive impact.

In alignment with my central core value of love, I'll be on a soft vacation for the next two weeks, focusing on family, holidays, and personal renewal. While I'll be posting on Facebook and LinkedIn occasionally, there won't be a blog next week. Mikolaj's Monday Maunder will return the week of January 7, 2024. I'll still be checking emails and voicemail messages daily.

I encourage you to also take time for renewal and reflection, cherishing moments with loved ones.

During this season of love and reflection, I invite you to share your stories of positive impact or reflect on the values that guide you.  Let's create a community of like-minded individuals committed to making a difference.

Happy holidays and a joyful New Year from our family to yours!

It's that time of the year again.  No, I'm not talking about the holidays.  I'm referring to strategic planning for the upcoming year.  You've likely begun this process.  What's on your agenda for leadership development? 

As you set goals and plan initiatives, the most effective leaders reevaluate their leaders' competencies and frameworks to ensure development efforts align with those goals and initiatives.

In a recent post, Rhabit Analytics identified ten leadership development trends for 2024.  Let's delve into five of them and explore three simple, cost-effective ways to meet these trends without sacrificing long-term impact and ROI.

TREND #1:  Growth Unleashed - Fostering a Growth Mindset
Most of us have heard of Carol Dweck.  In her book introducing the idea of a growth mindset, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she said, "The fixed mindset limits achievement" and in describing the growth mindset, she notes, "...no matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment." 

Peter Senge, in his book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, emphasizes that, "organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization."  Simply put, organizations learn through individuals who learn.

If you're serious about leadership development trends, then this one is crucial to get right.  Canned programs that have people clicking through slides or attending boring SOP updates and software training isn't what leaders want in our fast-paced and challenging environments.  While some of this training might be necessary for functional purposes, it doesn't constitute leadership development as implied by this trend and it's not what leaders want.

Leadership development programs that foster a growth mindset recognize the value of continuous learning.   They challenge and advance skills and competencies, enriching leaders in meaningful ways.  These programs equip leaders with tools, strategies, and principles that extend far beyond a few months.  The best programs add value that sticks throughout their careers, possessing the power to change lives.

TREND #2:  Success On-Demand - Leadership in Bite-Sized Brilliance for Busy Leaders
Creating growth mindset programs that are truly developmental in today's demanding schedules necessitates breaking the learning into bite-sized, engaging chunks that can be delivered on-demand and consumed on the go.

TREND #3:  Metrics & ROI Matter - Unveiling Leadership Development Impact
Simultaneously, justifying ROI is essential.  You and your senior leadership need evidence-based leadership development that impacts key metrics such as employee engagement, productivity, innovation, revenue and financials, well-being, retention, and, most importantly, leadership effectiveness.  In addition to advancing, equipping, and enriching leaders, the best programs influence some or all of these key metrics.

TREND #4:  Fostering Cultures of Feedback & Continuous Improvement
As the Rhabit Analytics post says, "A culture of feedback is essential for fostering continuous improvement and leadership growth."  I call leadership feedback leadership gold. 

While most leaders are proficient in giving feedback, the real question is whether they can do it well.  Has a safe and open culture been established? The attention given to psychological safety is warranted as many teams and organizations lack it.  Gallup's report indicating that globally, 77% of employees are less than engaged is telling.  When only 23% of employees are fully engaged, something is amiss, and that something is often attributed to the manager.  Gallup also reports that seventy percent of team engagement is attributable to the manager.

While leaders may know how to give feedback (whether they do it well or not), very few know how to seek feedback.  Organizations must not only encourage leaders to seek and give constructive feedback, but they also need to teach them how to do it and how to create a safe and supportive environment.  Senior leaders must model these behaviors for effective personal and professional development to occur.

TREND #5:  Coaching - Supporting Learning Through Personalized Support
Coaching is an essential component of leadership development.  It  provides leaders with confidential, ongoing support, guidance, and feedback that is goal and results-oriented.  Most leadership development programs overlook the value of professional coaching.

A Final Analysis
In conclusion, our Purpose-Driven Leadership Program, administration of the LPI360, and coaching services uniquely align with these trends.

By fostering a growth mindset, delivering on-demand brilliance, unveiling tangible metrics, fostering feedback cultures, and supporting personalized learning through coaching, we provide a comprehensive solution that not only meets 2024's leadership development trends but propels your organization into a future of success.

We come to the third and final week of our goal-setting journey here.  Previously, we have learned that clearly articulating the why or purpose of a goal, driving commitment to that goal, and creating goals that are specific and measurable that we believe that we can achieve, are strong strategies supported by over 35 years of goal-setting research.

Today we turn our attention to the final big moderators of successful goal-setting from the literature:  Feedback, task complexity, and satisfaction.

Feedback
For goals to be the most effective, people need summary feedback that shows them the progress towards reaching their goals.  This is connected to the M-measure part of SMART goals.  If you don't know how you're doing on your journey towards your goal, it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to adjust your efforts or your strategies to match what your goal requires.

For example, let's imagine that you have a BHAG around communication with your team for the purposes of increasing employee engagement.  Let's further imagine that you have created a supporting smaller goal of conducting effective monthly staff/team meetings and that part of that supporting goal is preparing engaging agendas, your regular attendance, establishing and using a rotation of team members who will help you with each month's meeting preparations and facilitation, and a follow-up survey for each meeting.   If your not tracking each of those items in some way, how will you know if you're achieving that supporting goal? 

You can use spreadsheets, to-do lists, dashboards, apps—whatever allows you to track what's important and provides you feedback to let you know how you're doing.  Complex goals or BHAGs may require scorecards on which several supporting or sub-goals feed into a total score for the overall BHAG.  Let the goal drive what you measure and that can give you the feedback on what timescale(s) you need it (e.g., daily, monthly, etc.).

You and your organization are most likely already doing this with metrics for important organizational and department goals, so why not do it for yourself both personally and professionally and for your team goals?

Task Complexity
For complex tasks, things get a bit trickier.   For most goals, people use skills and strategies that they already know how to do—they're more or less automatic or habitualized.  But when a task or goal is so complex, that those don't totally serve us and we need to learn new skills and strategies, performance goals actual hinder performance and outcomes. 

For the most complex goals, the research clearly demonstrates that setting goals about strategy, a learning goal, and/or breaking the complex goal into "proximal" goals—what we've been calling supporting or sub-goals positively impacts outcomes.  Remember what we said about telling someone to simply "do their best" and that didn't work?  Well, the exception to the rule on that is:  Highly complex goals. 

Take for example research involving an air traffic controller simulation (a highly complex task).  When people were given a performance-outcome goal for the simulation, it actually interfered with acquiring the knowledge necessary to perform the task.  When people were asked to do their
best on the simulation, they performed better.  However, when people were given a learning goal rather than a performance goal, those people outperformed everyone else.

Can't get no satisfaction?
While goals set the target, they also set the standard for satisfaction. 

Take our example of communication and employee engagement above.  When you get feedback from your tracking sheet that you are setting engaging agendas, that your showing up and attending staff meeting regularly, using a variety of team members to help, and the meeting survey results are strong, you feel a strong sense of satisfaction.  And if you exceed your expectations and goals?  Then satisfaction is even greater, especially if the survey indicates it may be impacting engagement—your ultimate goal.  On the flip side of that, if you're not meeting your goals, dissatisfaction grows and that can be used to motivate yourself into action.

Some caution here: If you set difficult goals, expect greater dissatisfaction—at least initially.  Since the bar is higher, you have a greater gap between current state and future state.  It's a difficult and challenging goal.  So, your gap between being dissatisfied (current state) and satisfied (future state) is greater, too.

Outputs versus outcomes
Some people confuse outputs with outcomes when it comes to goal-setting.  Outcomes are the events, occurrences, or changes in conditions, behavior, or attitudes that indicate goal success.  Outcomes are specific, measurable, preferably simple, and attainable (yet challenging), meaningful, and time-bound.  It's what you really, really, want.

Outputs are things people do—the milestones or tasks that are part of a change initiative that contribute to achieving the end goal or outcome.  While outputs are activities or products of work that support outcomes, outputs will not demonstrate the value of the goal.

Take our example supporting goal from above.  Having and attending monthly staff meetings are technically outputs.  Your outcome expected by successfully hosting and attending monthly staff meetings—the output—is positively impacting the goal or outcome of communication and employee engagement.  You don't have staff meetings just to have staff meetings.

Similarly, counting how many people attended a training or how many workshops were conducted are outputs.  What you want—your outcome, goal, or success measure—is whether they effectively demonstrate a new skill or learning objective.  Contacting ten potential clients a day is an output that should impact the outcome or goal of increased sales and revenue.

So, while we may measure outputs as part of a journey toward goal achievement, they are not the goal.  They support it.  And if they don't, then we need to ask why and adjust accordingly.

So now that we understand more about effective goal-setting, we can look at it conversely and list some reasons goal-setting oftentimes fails.

Some reasons goal-setting fails

• Not matching the goal to the performance measures and/or outputs
• Not creating sufficient specificity of what success or outcomes should be
• Not explaining well or selling the “why” or importance of the task(s) and goal(s)
• Not getting and/or supporting goal commitment
• Not providing (or getting) regular and consistent feedback
• Not expressing confidence that the person can attain the goal and other reinforcement and inspirational strategies (self-efficacy)
• Not conveying task knowledge and adequate training for the skills and strategies required for goal attainment
• For the most complex goals, setting a performance goal when a specific high‐learning goal is required
• Not setting proximal (supporting) goals and outputs for complex tasks
• Not setting reasonable time-frames or deadlines or not setting them at all

Do you want to impact performance and outcomes?
Then set goals.  That's the big take-away from last week's blog as we started, and now continue, exploring successful goal-setting tips and strategies.   Don't miss the free SMART Goals worksheet at the end.

Yes, over 35-years of research confirm that goals affect performance and outcomes, period.  So the question isn't should you set goals, the question is how can you be more successful at goal-setting?

Here are the other strong take-aways from last week:

• Goals keep us focused on what's important and what really matters.
• Goals energize us with a self-reinforcing cycle, even when motivation is low.
• Goal commitment is the secret sauce to successful goal achievement.
• The why behind a goal drives goal commitment making the purpose behind a goal paramount.
• Support (e.g., active listening, celebrating small wins, removing obstacles) is a game-changer for goal commitment.
• Public commitments work wonders for team and work-related goals.
• Keep private goals private.  Announcing personal goals tricks the mind into thinking you've made progress, even when you haven't started.
• Aim high:  The highest and most difficult goals produce the highest levels of both effort and performance. 
• Autonomy of time management with a difficult goal prolongs effort.
• Having a clearly defined deadline or time-frame is key to goal achievement.

Now let's take a look at a couple of more important ingredients from the research that can make your goal-setting journey more successful and see how it all connects to smarter SMART goals.

 'Do your best' or Specific & Difficult?
Have you ever said to someone, "Do your best' when assigning a task or motivating someone towards achievement?  Well, to sum up the research, when people are asked to do their best, they simply don't. 

It's specific and difficult goals that consistently leads to higher performance.  With ambiguity removed by a clearly stated goal with enough details to provide a clear picture of what is desired or needed, you eliminate the wiggle room and wide variation of possible interpretations of just what 'doing your best' means.  It's more motivating and easier to commit to.

Specificity also mean that you can measure outcomes and results.  Like Tim Ferriss says in our opening quote, goals should be measurable so that you have tangible evidence that you have accomplished the goal.  And if it's a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and more complex, there may be multiple goals and sub-goals to guide you and others on the journey of goal achievement.

Let's say you want to learn how to play golf.  That's a BHAG, for sure.  Here's a goal a new golfer might set for themselves:

While on the surface that seems specific and measurable, compare it to this goal:

The second goal gets really granular.  It spells out exactly what and when and makes it seem much more doable.  Compared to the first goal, you get a much clearer picture of what success looks like.  It also looks like there might be room for some sub-goals to support the overall BHAG.

Self-efficacy
Norman Vincent Peale once said, "Believe in yourself!  Have faith in your abilities!  Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy."

In fact, a person's belief in their own ability to succeed at a particular task or goal—whether it's actually attainable or not—is also important in goal‐setting in several ways.  People with high self‐efficacy set higher goals than do people with lower self‐efficacy.  They are more committed to assigned goals.  They find and use better task strategies to attain the goals.  And, they respond more positively to negative feedback than do people with low self‐efficacy.

Leaders can raise the self‐efficacy of their direct reports by:

• Ensuring adequate training to increase mastery that provides success experiences.
• Role modeling or finding models with whom the person can identify.
• Using persuasive communication that expresses confidence that the person can attain the goal.
• Giving direct reports information about strategies that facilitate goal attainment.
• Using inspiring messages to and cognitive stimulation of subordinates

SMART Goals
My big take-away from goal-setting research is that SMART goals are indeed, smart.  While there are variations on the definitions of the SMART goals acronym, we can use this to summarize what the research supports:

S - Specific:  Goals should be simplistically written and clearly define what you are going to do.  Specific is the What, Why, and How of the SMART goal model.  It should be focused, clearly stated, and there should be enough details to provide a clear picture of what is desired.

M - Measurable:  Goals should be measurable so that you have tangible evidence that you have accomplished the goal.  Usually, the entire goal statement is a measure for a project or achievement, but there are can be several short-term or smaller measurements built into the overall goal. 

You can choose to put smaller measurements or sub-goals here or create separate sub-goals worksheets that support a larger, more complex goal or project.  Take the time to create goals that will drive success, not just what is expedient.  As we say in change management and leadership, sometimes you have to go slow in order to go fast.

A - Attainable/Achievable:  This is the self-efficacy part of SMART.  Goals should be achievable; they should stretch you slightly so you feel challenged, but defined well enough so that you can achieve them.  You must possess the appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to achieve the goal.  You can meet almost any goal when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time-frame that allows you to carry out those steps.  As you carry out the steps, you can achieve goals that may have seemed impossible when you started. 

On the other hand, if a goal is impossible to achieve, you may not even try to accomplish it.  Achievable goals motivate employees.  Impossible goals demotivate them.  I will share more findings from the research on how to tackle the most complex goals, next week.

R - Relevant:  Goals should measure outcomes, not activities or outputs.  More on that next week, too.  Goals should be applicable to your current role and clearly linked to your responsibilities in that role.

T - Time-bound:  Goals should be linked to a time-frame or deadline that creates a practical sense of urgency, or results in tension between the current reality and the vision of the goal.  Without such tension, the goal is unlikely to produce a relevant outcome.

If you would like a simple SMART goal worksheet, feel free to download mine:

Read Part 3 here:  Goals: Feedback,  Complexity, & Satisfaction