North Stars and Big Rocks

I can’t quite believe we have hit mid-March and we are thundering towards Easter! I’m wondering if you have had time to pause for yourself or with your team to make sure you are on track with your goals? And if you haven’t yet had time to really get clear on your goals this year don’t worry help is on hand…?

Over the last month or two I’ve been working with my Executive Coaching clients to provide a pause point to take stock of where they were at and spend some time focusing on both short- and long-term goals for 2024.?

In my experience lots of energy can go into short term goals, but it can be rare to really get the headspace to take a step back and dream and imagine what you want in the long term. I see a couple of challenges happen when we don’t plan for the long term.?

1. We never really develop a ‘bigger picture’ north star that has the power to guide us when things are tough?
2. We can get stuck in ‘in-decision’ in the short term if we don’t know where we are ultimately heading?
3. It becomes hard to define our short-term goals if we are not sure what they are adding up to, progress slows, energy drops and often these leaders describe losing their mojo?

But when we do start to put time and energy into both short- and long-term planning then 3 things start happening:?

1. With a clear north star that we are connected to it can create more meaning and purpose in our day-to-day role and tasks?
2. We make clearer and quicker decisions because we know the right choices to make to get us to where we want to go?
3. We feel confident and motivated that what we are working on is making a difference, we kick goals and build momentum behind our results?

So, if you sense for yourself or for your team, that you are not flowing towards the right goals then I wanted to share some tools with you that could help.?

Side note: As the leader of our teams’ chances are if we are not clear on our goals then that is rippling down into a lack of clarity with the team. Or we may be clear, but we haven’t communicated this to the team…I think it’s always best to re-group with ourselves and sense-check this, then get out there and work with our teams to create clear goals. ?

Start developing your north star?

I’m a fan of this quote “If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.” – Abraham Lincoln.?

In the world of coaching, we talk about creating a well-formed outcome for where we want to go before, we jump into doing. ?

Here are some questions that can help with shaping this:?

• What’s your dream or wish for X in the long term??
• What do you really want to make happen??
• What does a 10 out of 10 look like??

Great questions to ask of yourself or the team and really interrogate and align on before you start shaping goals.?

Defining your Big Rocks ?

This is well-trodden ground from Stephen Covey, but I still find it simple and effective. ?It’s based on the idea of focusing on the most important things first and biting them off as chunks and orientating your time and energy around these as the priority vs allowing the unimportant and low value tasks to crowd out your days. In our world, big rocks aren’t just the important work projects they are also the important life projects. Here are some questions to ask yourself (or the team) to define your big rocks;?

• If you could only select 3 key things to focus on for the next 90 days, what would they be??
• Will these 3 projects move me/us towards our north star??
• What do we need to put to the side or stop doing??

Squeeze out the learnings and celebrate??It's also important to celebrate both your and your teams' successes along the way. Recognise when you /they achieve their big rocks. Savour the wins and talk about why these wins are important.??

I like to use the ‘win and learn’ framework. Questions to facilitate this or yourself or the team;?

• Where did I/we win? ?
• Where did things not play out as planned? ?
• What is the lesson in this that I / we can carry forward? ?

When we use these simple questions, we build momentum behind the progress we are making, and we ensure that learnings are squeezed out of the process as we go so, we can grow and evolve. I hope this has been helpful today to get focused on how to build energy and momentum for yourself or your team this year. ?

If this has sparked your thinking and you want to go deeper there are two ways I can help.?

1. Catch the REPLAY of the complimentary masterclass I ran last week for my community to help ‘Create Luminous Goals in 2024’ - 45mins to pause, reflect and define how you want to play big in 2024. DM me with title ‘REPLAY’ but hurry this will only be available for the next 7 days.? ?
2. If you have lost your mojo as a leader and want to create a new north star to reach the next level of growth, impact and business results in 2024 then let's chat. I will have 2 places opening up prior to June 30 to work one-on-one with me. Send me an email at [email protected] with ‘IMPACT’ in the subject and I’ll find a time in the diary to chat.?