Goal, set, match...is it all?

Around 3 weeks ago, I was having a video-call conversation with a North American based executive of a multinational company, with whom I have a mutual respect and very informal relationship. It was one of those sorts of peer-mentoring conversations I enjoy having since it helps to see myself “in the eyes” of somebody else, who knows and challenges me, hence always giving me back a different perspective, a human based one. While discussing of my coaching activity and its declinations, the executive asks me the following question: “…and what are your goals by the end of the year?”. I stopped for 20′seconds. I turned my head and eyes to the right, directed at the window to have a top-down glimpse of Olympia Park in Munich, from the location I was in that moment. I turned my head straight again towards the screen and I said: “I actually do not think about the year end, I have one main goal, but it is in the very long run. More than a goal, it represents the expression of my values, what drives me, my living vision in a way. I have it clear in mind some key initiatives. Exactly, initiatives is maybe a more suitable expression. Knowing myself, my values, hence what motivates me besides my practical needs, I prefer having a long-term goal and setting initiatives towards it. Whether I can achieve such long-term goal in 1, 3, 5 years of this I am not sure. I will adjust paths when needed. What I am sure of is what I can control and work on, the rest should not drain energy from me, unless I can learn from it."

We went ahead touching other points and when the conversation was over, being a person who likes to challenge himself when the occasion arises, I started wondering why I answered in such a way. Putting aside thoughts of circumstances when the focus is on team and organizational goals (where dynamics of coordination and mutual influence should be considered), I grouped some of my reflections:

The focus (I believe) should be more on the performance than on the results.

1. I have always seen and approached life, in particular my professional life, as if I was involved in sport. And in sport, the focus (I believe) should be more on the performance than on the results. The first being expression of the accumulated development as you go through your sport endeavour, while the second being the meeting point of your efforts & the out-of-control factors (1). And I believe, anyone should value her/his efforts on performance and not results. Was I focusing on development-performance and not on results?
2. I am often trying to dedicate time to research, and I recall a few years ago having read a research article suggesting that making your goals public might decrease the probability to achieve them. To be a little technical, a premature sense of completeness could be felt should you share your goals as concluded and suggested by the researchers (2). Was I trying to avoid feeling fulfilled with my goals too early on?
3. Why did I start in the first place? Often time, when you undertake a courageous path and the going gets tough, you ask yourself: “Why am I doing this?” Making sure to fully embody the honest, true driver of a brave choice is crucial…as long as your value as a person does not depend exclusively on achieving it (do you remember the performance vs. results from the first point?). Once again from sport, it came to my mind the recent answer given to a reporter by NBA player Giannis Antetokounmpo where he went like: “There is no failure in sport (and in other areas of life as well?). Some days you are able to be successful, some days you are not. Some days it is your turn, some days it is not your turn (…) so the 50 years from 1971 to 2021 that we (the Bucks) didn′t win a championship, was it 50 years of failure? No, it was not. It was steps to it, you know and we were able to win one, hopefully we are able to win another one”(3). Was I thinking of my initiatives in terms of steps? Was, to me, thinking in terms of steps, more human, hence creating space to do-discover-learn-grow, feeling it as a more interesting journey than the binomial of success vs. failure??
4. I consider myself a learning animal. And as a learning animal you bravely look at yourself and others as developing beings, in continuous discovery mode. Whatever the situation is. The environment around you may or may not notice this (yet). In 2015, almost everybody considered Rafael Nadal career at a declining point. Everybody apart from the most important person: himself. Sure, he was older, sure he had quite a few injures and surely should he had decided to accept it was over, his career would have still been considered unbelievable. Tennis history tells us that in 2022 he won his 22nd Grand Slam. He lowered “the noise” around himself by doing what he enjoys the most: hitting next ball as if it was the first or the last. I wonder to myself, how he faced that moment. What did he learn during that situation? He felt emotions, and let′s say they were data points: what were they saying about himself and the relations with that moment?

In 2015, almost everybody considered Rafael Nadal career at a declining point. Everybody apart from the most important person: himself.

In the above passage, I underlined to me and steps. But I probably should have also underlined another word: learning. There are 2 quotes I truly like about learning. One is from Matthias Ehrahrdt and focuses on the inputs of learning: “Undirected curiosity (is) a state where everything that interests you is a game for learning”(4) . The other one is from Gianpiero Petriglieri and focuses on the trajectory of learning, of the transformative learning typology: “The ability to learn from experience in the present — from moments, not models — is what is needed when the past has become a hindrance and the future is unclear” (5).

Whatever you decide to focus on a goal or a step, learning about knowing yourself and your character strengths is of utmost importance. Once being conscious of the self, you can set directions. To me incremental steps towards a bigger, holistic goal is more motivating than goals to achieve with a certain frequency. But for everybody else this “framing” may not fit. Knowing that I am working for something impactful is how I frame the story and everyone else writes their own story. And as the American psychologist Jerome Seymour Bruner argued “Narrative imitates life, life imitates narrative” (6). I often come across individuals who ask me: “I would like to do A. How does it work to get to A?”. In those instances, I may reflect the question back to them: “Ok, you would like to do A. What if the point is not how it works. But rather: how would YOU get to A?”

?Gianmichele Potito. All Rights Reserved.

(1) For sport coaching, a different concept is the attentional focus. For who is passionate about it, here an article on the topic: Wulf G. (2013). Attentional Focus and motor learning: a review of 15 years, International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 6:1, 77-104.

(2) Gollwitzer, P. M., Sheeran, P., Michalski, V., & Seifert, A. E. (2009). When intentions go public: Does social reality widen the intention-behavior gap? Psychological Science, 20, 612-618.

(3) NBA (2023), There is no failure in sport. Retrievable from: “There Is No Failure In Sports” - Giannis Addresses Comments On “Failure” - YouTube

(4) Ehrhardt M. (2022), Learn Like Leonardo. Retrievable from: Learn like Leonardo | LinkedIn

(5) Petriglieri G. (2020). Learning for a Living, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 61, No. 2. 5

(6) Ehrhardt M. (2014). The Ugly Duckling is a Swan. On turnaround stories, Herbert Utz Verlag