Ep#2 - Effective Goal Setting for a Successful Year Ahead - The Women's Room

[00:00:00] So. as we come towards the end of the year, at least as I'm recording this video, the new, year's obviously always a great time to think about what is it we want from the year ahead. What would we like to do differently? What plans do we want to make? And what goals do we want to set.

[00:00:15] So this is just some of my thoughts on how you might approach goal setting and achieving those goals in the year ahead. this is really a subset of what I talk about when I talk about approach to career development and career progression. my first rule when approaching all of this is that you must take some time out. To think this through.

[00:00:35] So you won't be able to think it through whilst you're busy dealing with your day job emails, meetings, and all the other demands on your time. You really need to set some time away to think about things. And I would suggest that you schedule this time. So maybe schedule it now, put it in your diary. Ideally set aside a whole day, if you possibly can.

[00:00:56] It's very likely that this may get interfered with, with a bit of work that spills over into the day, but at least you'll have a really good chunk of time when you're sitting down in front of a blank page and thinking about what is it you want to achieve for the year ahead? If you can't do it for a whole day. do it for a half day, do it for a couple of hours.

[00:01:14] And. I'd always recommend that you do it in the morning if it's not going to be a whole day. Because this means that you won't get distracted by other matters coming into your inbox. So first rule, take time out and think it through. And the second rule is to write it down. And this is really because as you're writing it down using one part of your brain, you'll find the other part of your brain is analyzing exactly what you're writing. So it's almost like you've got your own internal coach as you're devising your plan for the year ahead. Once you've written it down, you've got something that you can clearly hold yourself accountable to, and that is really helpful.

[00:01:52] And it's also really interesting to look back in three months or six months time to see exactly what you said you were going to do and what you felt about things. So. Before we get into the year ahead, let's think about a bit of background work that might be useful to do before you get into the nitty gritty of the planning.

[00:02:10] So, first of all, I'd really encourage you to look back and think about the year gone by. What went well, what would you do differently? What can. You take away what lessons. Can you take away from the year that has just passed? And before we get into actual planning and writing goals. I'd really like you to think about the feeling like how do you actually feel now? And then what would you like to feel this time next year? So really. Put the emphasis on the feeling, not on the actual actions that you'd like to have achieved, or goals you'd like to achieve, but how is it you would like to feel and then go backwards and think about what things would need to have happened in order to feel the way you want to feel by the end of next year.

[00:02:54] So focus on the feelings first and then try and identify what it is that would make you feel the way you'd really like to feel. So in terms of writing things down, I'd encourage you to do this in a way that really works for you and different things work for different people. So some people are much more visual and they want to draw something about, how they want the year ahead to be how they want to feel at the end of it.

[00:03:21] Some people use vision boards. I've got an example of a vision board here. That I've done in the past. And that can be quite useful. You just rip bits out of magazines that represent things that you'd like to achieve things that you're hoping will come into your life. So it's a little bit more like a, to do list than a traditional vision board.

[00:03:41] And I will admit I'm not just ripping things randomly out of magazines sometimes when I'm creating it, I am actually looking for specific images on the computer so that I can put them on my vision board, but what's really nice is that you can put it up somewhere and it's a visual representation of what it is that you'd like to achieve.

[00:03:58] It's not just a written list and obviously as lawyers, we spend a lot of our time with words, sometimes it's nice to have something a bit different. That's going to represent what you want to achieve. But I think we do need to come back to the words on the paper because when we get into the nitty gritty of the planning, it is really helpful to have some steps written down in writing.

[00:04:20] So I'm just going to switch this to the screen now, so you can see a document that I often use with my coachees and for myself. a personal strategy document. And this can be quite a useful tool for planning for the year ahead.

[00:04:34] So there is quite a lot of groundwork.

[00:04:38] I've called it background review here. that I would always try and encourage people to do before they start doing the planning.

[00:04:46] So as well as looking back on the year gone by let's have a think about you personally and where you are in terms of your career. your life, your skill set. you don't have to do this. You can skip straight to the planning section, which I'll get to in a minute. But let me just talk you through some of the headings that I sometimes use here, and I will put a link to this document in the show notes to the video that I will put on YouTube on goal setting for the year ahead. So having a section that describes where you are now in work and life is really useful. And then I'd encourage people to think about things like what are your key strengths? What are your needs? What are the values that you live by? Maybe what's your vision for life? So lots of companies will set up what their vision is for the company have a think about you. What is it you really want to get out of life? Maybe think about what's your brand. What three words do you think people would use to describe you? Maybe what, three words would you lke people to say about you. there might well be a difference there. That might be interesting. What's your USP? What's special about you. Usually when I do this, people like to go. through some of their weaknesses.

[00:05:56] Whenever I ask about strengths, people tend to tell me what their weaknesses are. I would really encourage you not to go into the detail of weaknesses, which is why it's in square brackets here, but maybe think about developmental areas. Things you'd like to work on during the course of this year. I always encourage people to think long term, like, what are some dreams that you have that you'd really like to experience in life from the smaller, like learning a language or an instrument to much bigger, like becoming an MP or writing a book or becoming CEO. And then again, what are you really grateful in your life for at the moment? So that's all just groundwork.

[00:06:32] You definitely don't have to do that every single year, but I'd encourage you to, at some point during the course of the year to just have, take some time out, to step back to think about some of these things about your life and you and where you are. So some other tools that can be really useful in terms of setting the scene, are maybe having a look at a wheel of life, and some of you will have come across this before. And I'll just show you how it works, but basically it's a, it's a pie chart divided into however many segments And giving headings that really work for you and your life. So you could just do it about work and you could break work down into different areas of your work, or you can use it about your whole life, which is what's happened with this wheel of life here. And then I'll show you a completed example.

[00:07:21] So here's an example where someone has filled it in and basically. They are deciding what do they want the story to be. scale to be? And usually we would use something like the amount of effort or time that you're putting into each of these areas. And then you just score it out of ten to see where you are. And this had quite a big effect on me the first time I did it because I'm sure like a lot of you, when I've had my work filling one pie and things like my family and personal interests, my work actually went up to about 14.

[00:07:52] So it went off the scale and everything else had a really little tiny segment. And that was one of the things that, really gave me a visual representation of something that I absolutely knew, which was I needed to pull my life a bit more back into balance. So you might find that a helpful tool to use. The other thing that can be quite fun is to do a SWOT analysis.

[00:08:13] So again, some of you will be familiar with this when talking about analyzing a company. Just setting out what are what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What opportunities do you have and what are threats? Just a different way to think about where you are and what you might need to focus on for the year ahead. And then we really come into, what is it you want to, where do you want to get to during the course of this year?

[00:08:38] So where am I today? What's good. What would I like to be different and what would I like to achieve? And you don't need to write a lot here, but just a sentence or two about how you're feeling about where you are. And then we start getting into the nitty gritty of what I would say is the plan. Now here I've put a three to five year progression plan.

[00:08:58] I think it's quite useful to think ahead for more than one year, but you could just do this for one year and you could do it in a completely different way. So here I've put, where am I today? What are my aims for say three years time, and starting with something like overall vision, and there's an example here, but then I would do it with each area of my working life.

[00:09:17] So my role, my title, what. I'm paid my internal reputation, my external reputation, personal life. Don't forget about life outside work. because it's always useful to include that in these analyses. So that's your longer term planning. That's almost like your strategy for you. And then we come into your business plan for the current year, which is effectively a to do list for the current year. And sometimes it's quite useful to, again, just because you're looking at this very much from your point of view it might be worth thinking about who are, what we call in the corporate world, your key stakeholders.

[00:09:53] So, so you know what you'd like to achieve for you? But let's just have a think about if you're working for a firm, which most of you will be. What do you think that firm values, maybe what's your clients value, who are your key stakeholders? And they will include people who are working for you as well as clients and other people you interact with. And then what is anyone who's going to input to any appraisal of you or your compensation?

[00:10:16] What do they really value? And are you making sure. That whilst satisfying your goals you've got an eye to ensuring that you're delivering to them what they're looking to be delivered. And then I've written down a series of headings.

[00:10:31] This one is really geared towards private practice about what are all the different elements of your working life that you should have a think about. So the first one is admin and possibly efficiency in here. So you could think about delegation,

[00:10:45] you could think about, are you being efficient? your team. Business development, often a big, big area for people. And again, break it down into different areas, like, what is it you really want to achieve as well as your established clients, who are your target clients? What else can you do to really enhance business development.

[00:11:04] And I do have a talk that is specifically focused on business development for lawyers that will go into this in more detail. So again, look at your internal network and reputation, maybe your relationship with senior management and are you contributing to the infrastructure of your firm, and then your external profile and anything you might want to do to enhance that and again, break it down into different areas that you could be engaged in to enhance that profile.

[00:11:29] We then get into some of the nitty gritty really around. What's your role? What's your compensation? Do you want those to change? What are your hours looking like? , If you're working in private practice, what are your billings and recovery rate? Maybe the profitability of the people you're working for and then going back and looking at more of the personal stuff, which is just as important as the work stuff So how are you feeling about work life balance?

[00:11:52] Is there anything you want to do to change that, what should you be looking at during the course of this year for personal development? And again, how are you taking care of yourself? So how are you building resilience and how are you making sure that you are in peak condition to deliver what you need to at work?

[00:12:08] And these last two, the personal development and the resilience building, they're often the things that get pushed to one side when we get busy. So anything, again, anything you can think of that will make sure that these happen. So schedule them, tell people that you're going to do them, maybe tell your PA, tell your family, make sure they happen.

[00:12:27] So I've really put a lot of emphasis, probably on all three of these, so don't just think about the business planning. So really think about how are you going to make sure you're in peak performance mode so that you can really deliver on the goals that you want to achieve.

[00:12:41] And then from this to do list, I'm going to encourage you to get even more specific. And I'm just going to talk about a coaching model. That's probably the first model that every trainee coach learns about. It's called the GROW model. And GROW stands for Goals, Reality, Options, and then Will. And it's a really, really useful tool when trying to work through how are you going to make sure that you achieve your goals.

[00:13:09] And the more specific and more detailed we can get about what we want to achieve, the better. Often that's one of the hardest things to do, because once you know exactly what you, what you want to achieve, it's really all about execution. How do you get there? And that's easier. What's hard is really identifying what it is you want to achieve.

[00:13:26] So you've got your list of things you want to do this year. Get really, really specific about them. So they're your goals. You can look at your reality, you can look at your options, and then the will is really about making sure this absolutely happens. And this is where I would really encourage you all to think about And I'm going to be talking about writing it down, but if at all possible, writing it down using Excel.

[00:13:48] Now, I know this is a bit of an anathema for a lot of lawyers. They don't like Excel spreadsheets, but it can be really useful for this sort of thing, which is really a much more detailed to do list with dates and information about what you're going to do, particularly about clients, because you can then manipulate it to put it into different formats.

[00:14:07] So you can show things. By the earliest date that you want to do something or you can split clients into target clients or established clients. So I'd encourage you to have a play around with Excel. There are lots of, there's lots of information online about how to do the basics. All you really need to know is how to sort and how to filter, and then you'll be able to craft a really, really good to do list for your current year.

[00:14:32] So in terms of specific with clients, you could say, for example, I want one more major client in this area, billing at least X amount per year, plus three more smaller clients billing at least X amount per year. Reality, where are you now with those clients? What are the options? Who are the potential clients that could fall into those brackets?

[00:14:50] And then your will, what would it take to get there? What specific steps do you need to take? So it might be having coffee with people. It might be doing a talk. It might be sending out a flyer. It might be cold calling. So write those down into Excel or Word if you're not comfortable with Excel and then set a date.

[00:15:08] When I'm coaching people I will often be saying to them, Okay, you've said you're going to do this. When are you going to do it? And they'll say, Oh, I'll do it probably in a couple of weeks time. I'll say, Okay, which week? Okay, I'll do it next week. Which day are you going to do it on? Okay, I'll do it on Wednesday.

[00:15:22] What time are you going to do it on Wednesday? So try and be that specific with yourself and then write it down so that you can hold yourself accountable. And again, think about is there anyone you can ask for help in terms of holding yourself accountable for your goals. So you could share them with your PA, a colleague, your wife, your children.

[00:15:42] It might be quite fun to get a child involved in helping to police you and to check if you've done things. And then the most important. thing is that you schedule some time to look back on what it is that you've said you're going to do this year. So have a look at that basic business plan for the year and go back to your Excel spreadsheet and see what specific actions you've said you're going to take and by when.

[00:16:05] So they're my top tips for goal setting for the year ahead. I hope you find them helpful. I would just say don't give yourself a hard time if you don't do. them all exactly when you said you'd do them. If we do that, if we give ourselves a hard time, we, we often tend to give up completely. So just recognize this is just a plan.

[00:16:23] Plans change. They need to be flexible. But I think you'll find it really helpful to have taken some time out to plan the year ahead and then just take some time out during the course of the year to look back and reflect on exactly where you are. Thank you.

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