U-turn

I assume that we all know what is a U-turn? ?A U-turn in driving refers to performing a 180° rotation to reverse the direction of travel. It is called a U-turn because the manoeuvre looks like the letter U. The important points to note are: -

·?????? 180-degrees rotation

·?????? Reversing the direction of travel

·?????? Manoeuvre looks like letter U

During conduct of mentoring / coaching lessons, I have noticed that one does not necessarily need to be a driver to know the meaning of U turn & how to execute it!!

Some of my Mentees do not know how to drive (even a bicycle ??) and obviously are not in possession of a driver’s licence!! However, they are fully aware about the meaning of a U-turn and have also perfected this manoeuvre in their personal & professional lives !!

January month is known for setting goals for both personal and / or professional milestones and most of us have set timelines for achieving them. However, during mentoring sessions, I have observed that these goal settings have been planned catering only for “I / ME / MYSELF” and very rarely it includes family members / spouses / siblings / children/ team members etc.

The thought of including “Team Members” in our goal setting comes across as a good idea however there are very few takers for the same!! The reason given is that in Corporate, we are used to being given annual goals / KRAs / KPIs etc by managers / leadership teams and these are linked with Performance Linked Incentives (PLI), Annual Bonuses, Annual Incentive Components (AIC) etc.

While some individuals are unable to achieve their personal goals and execute the U turn perfectly (left or right depending on the nearest exit point ??), they do make an extra effort in achieving their professional goals for reasons mentioned above!!

During one of my team meetings at the beginning of a new calendar year, I proposed that we have a team goal for ‘fitness training’ and on weekly basis we will share our physical activity status / achievements and action plan for loosing 1 kg / member / month.

This team of 12 members lost 36 kilos in 3 months and became much fitter and ended up achieving their respective personal & professional goals. In this case, no one took a U-turn as it would have impacted the overall team performance & goal setting!!

During our informal meetings, some team members did share that they came very close to taking a U-turn as it was not only tempting but also difficult to cope up with others in maintaining momentum set by the team.

The exercise of setting team goals including achieving the fitness standards did result in higher morale, better camaraderie and the team did go on to win some sports trophies in both team and individual categories as well. Lesson learnt in this exercise was “Not taking a U-turn howsoever it may tempt you as it would have impacted not only the individual’s performance but also the team members efforts , morale etc.

It will be interesting to read your stories / incidents if you have ever taken a U-turn on your goal setting at individual or team level or were able to resist it and ended up reaching milestones as planned!!