When the calendar flips from December to January, it’s a great time to establish goals for all that you want to accomplish in the new year. Get a head start on this process right now before the calendar flips. There are the typical lose weight, relax more and increase my wealth type goals which are all fine but the biggest mistakes that most people make in establishing ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ are they aren’t attached to a long-term vision and or they aren’t balanced across all facets of their lives. You can easily avoid these two mistakes by starting with creating a personal vision of what you want your life to be like in the future. This vision will then be the ‘guidepost’ for creating goals that are motivational and enriching to help keep you on track and when created in alignment with your Life Purpose, it will be a very powerful combination providing a powerful source of energy for creating the life you desire.

As a Certified Jack Canfield Success Principles Trainer, I’m happy to provide Jack’s Vision Exercise as a free download to assist with this process.  This tool will help you create a balanced vision across seven key areas of your life that will be the foundation for your annual goals.  Don’t be afraid to make this a bold and audacious vision so it provides the necessary motivation for you to work towards achieving that compelling future vision of your life. Then establish annual goals that align and move you closer to realizing your vision. The final tip for success with the vision and goal setting process is for you to share your vision and goals with a trusted person or persons in your life. Someone who you can count on to be positive and supportive. This simple step of sharing your vision and goals will provide many benefits for you as you begin the journey of realizing the life you desire.

Please take the first step to realizing a more fulfilling life and download the free Vision Exercise tool now.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and successful new year!

The first step to having a successful and fulfilling life is to figure out ‘why you are here’ as Jack Canfield likes to say. Without knowing what your personal ‘North Star’ is, it will be nearly impossible to determine what really energizes and motivates you to achieve great things. Pat Williams, the former senior vice president and founder of the Orlando Magic and professional speaker states it very well when he says, “Figure out what you love to do as young as you can, and then organize your life around figuring out how to make a living at it.” It doesn’t matter how young or old that you are if you haven’t done this yet, start today. 

Follow the example below to help you determine your ‘North Star’ or ‘Life Purpose’. This example reflects how I completed the exercise and my actual Life Purpose Statement.

Life Purpose Exercise*

• List two of your unique personal qualities, such as enthusiasm and creativity.

Integrity Acting with a purpose 

• List one or two ways you enjoy expressing those qualities when interacting with others, such as to support and to inspire. 

Help others learn Have an impact 

• Assume the world is perfect right now. What does this world look like? How is everyone interacting with everyone else? What does it feel like? Write your answer as a statement, in the present tense, describing the ultimate condition, the perfect world as you see it and feel it. Remember, a perfect world is a fun place to be.

EXAMPLE: Everyone is freely expressing their won unique talents. Everyone is working in harmony. Everyone is expressing love.

People are learning and helping others to improve their lives. Everyone treats each other with respect, integrity and dignity. 

1. Combine the three prior subdivisions of this paragraph into a single statement.

EXAMPLE: My purpose is to use my creativity and enthusiasm to support and inspire others to freely express their talents in a harmonious and loving way.

Dan’s Life Purpose Statement: Live with integrity, creativity, and positive energy to help others improve their lives through learning.

Now that you have the tools, it’s your turn to try it out and start creating your life purpose. Don’t worry about making it perfect the first time. Put something down the first time, go back and revise what doesn’t feel right and keep editing it over time to get it just right. Most importantly, start using it to guide your life with purpose and achieve the success you desire.

*This version of the life purpose exercise is from Arnold M. Patent, spiritual coach, and author of You Can Have It All.

Coaching is one of the key skills that sets exceptional leaders apart from average leaders. Yet, the most critical skills for coaching are not well understood and not widely practiced. One of the most important skills for coaches is understanding that telling the other person what to do is not very effective coaching. This stems from our history with coaches and how we were coached when playing youth sports. As young participants in just about any sport, we are exposed to ‘coaches’ who believe their job is to tell the athletes what they need to do continuously while they’re competing. We’ve all seen the coach who paces the sidelines constantly barking orders at the players from start to finish of the game. This is too late for real coaching. In fact, that is not very effective coaching at all. The most effective coaching occurs prior to the competition and consists of the coach providing information, demonstration, encouragement, correction, and feedback during practice and allowing the athlete to compete with a minimum of ‘telling them what to do’. Coaching also best occurs in a safe environment separate from the competition so the performer can try without repercussion for failure. The coach then provides the appropriate level of feedback, correction, encouragement, and support needed for the performer to try again and again, if necessary, to master the skill during practice. This is true coaching and builds new skills and high levels of performance more effectively than the coach barking orders at the performer when the game is on the line. It’s the difference between the Bobby Knight style of barking orders and the John Wooden style of excellence in practice and preparation. No one won more NCAA Men’s basketball titles than John Wooden, and no one likely ever will. Be an exceptional coach by putting your energy into proper coaching technique in a safe practice environment and then let your ‘players’ compete with skill and confidence! 

The act or process of coaching is intended to build better behaviors and skills in others so they will perform at a higher level and achieve better results. Being an effective coach is one aspect that sets great leaders apart from average or mediocre leaders. The most important responsibility for any leader is to grow the capacity of others to contribute and perform at a higher level. There are dozens if not hundreds of different coaching models with anywhere from three to seven steps to follow. There is one model that I will focus on and recommend with this blog post. The GROW model for coaching is one very simple yet very effective model that any leader can use to help them conduct more effective coaching discussions. The model was first described in legendary executive coach, John Whitmore’s 1992 book Coaching For Performance. GROW is an acronym that stands for Goal; Reality (Current); Options (or Obstacles); Will (or Way Forward). Following the four steps provide a framework for effective coaching discussions that anyone can follow and master on their journey to being an effective coach. There is a plethora of information, articles, books and videos readily available online for building a better understanding of and applying the GROW model so I will not go into any more depth with this blog. If you’re struggling with your coaching discussions or you feel they’re not as effective as they should be, check out more information about the GROW model and begin following the four steps and you’ll become a better coach.

After ensuring expectations are clear and there are regular discussions about what is going well and areas for improvement, the manager needs to probe further if there continues to be a gap between desired and actual results. The next step is to assess whether the root cause for the performance gap is a ‘skill or will’ issue. Dig into the issue, talk to the employee, and get feedback from others that have knowledge about the employee’s work performance. Try to determine if the root of the problem is a lack of having the requisite ‘skill’ to perform adequately. Have there been recent changes to processes or technology that are hindering performance. Determine if the employee has the talent and ability to do the work as designed. If not, address whatever issues exist by helping the employee develop a plan to close the skill gaps and improve performance. If your analysis determines there aren’t any skill deficits with the employee, then focus on the ‘will’ aspect of their performance. What are their barriers to wanting to perform as expected? Are there some work environment issues getting in the way such as significant conflict with other team members, are they having health or emotional issues or are they just in a job that is not a good fit and therefore they are not engaged and motivated to perform at a high level. Again, work with the employee to discover and address any issues that are identified while helping them develop a plan to get their performance to the desired level. Not addressing performance problems will never be the best approach for performance management and putting off meaningful actions will only make the problem worse. Make regular informal discussions about performance a part of your regular routine with your employees and the dread of performance management and the year-end rating will fade away!

Most employees and managers would agree that Performance Management is one of the activities they most dislike about work. Why is that? It’s probably several reasons, most of which are either system or manager related. There isn’t much most of us can do about ‘the system’ so this discussion will focus on the manager’s impact on performance management. Following a few simple principles can change the dynamic of performance management and make the process much less painful for all involved. The vast majority of employees want to do a good job and will work hard to make a positive contribution to the organization’s success. So, the first and most important principle of performance management is to be clear about expectations. Whenever there is gap between desired and actual performance, the first place to start is making sure that expectations are clear. Also make sure to continually reinforce and recommunicate expectations throughout the year during regular discussions with every direct report. Those regular discussions should happen frequently and should be open discussions about what is going well, what needs to improve and asking the employee what support they need to accomplish the team’s goals. The best, most effective leaders don’t hesitate to engage in regular discussions with their employees to let them know what they’re doing well and what they need to do to improve. There should be no surprises for the manager and, more importantly, for the employee when it comes to the end of year performance rating. If the employee is surprised by anything in the final performance rating, the manager has failed to perform the most important duty they have to an acceptable level.