Personal and Professional Tune Up – what I do at the start of every coaching assignment
February 3, 2017
I’ve been working with a group of leaders in a business over the last six months and I’ve been teaching them as a group about a wide range of things… goal setting, productivity, business development, “dream team” (how to get their teams going) and part of that program is designed to really accelerate their performance so they can reach their career goals.
One thing I’ve noticed has been quite bizarre. While they have goals to be the best they can be and really perform (and you might too) they don’t have a clear picture of where they’re headed, so they can’t map where they’re going and what that does is lower their energy and their motivation and they feel a bit stuck.
If you’re the same, stick around I’m going to give you the framework that worked for them and enabled them to unlock their energy and motivation and hopefully it will do the same for you.
When we got to the part with this group where they were doing their planning and goal setting it was really powerful for them. In fact there was a girl there who ultimately when she cracked this and found her image of where she was heading to, used it as motivation to negotiate for her to become a partner in the business and has now got a salary increase of about 1/3 and came up to me the other day saying that it all came about because of the insight that she had.
I was teaching my standard “The Reason & The Road” planning framework, every career and team and leader has to have a reason for what they’re doing, a destination for where they’re going, 12 month goals and then break those down into quarters and daily and weekly plans.
It’s actually the destination piece where people become a bit unstuck, because that’s the bit where it’s a bit like… “Well, I don’t really know where I’m going, do you know where I’m going? Can you tell me? I don’t know!” and it all slows down. If they don’t have an answer – and half this group were telling me “I don’t know” – this is the trick we used.
In your brain (here I’m drawing a very creative picture of your brain… I’m sure your brain is better looking than this!) right down the very bottom is a part of the brain called the Reticular Activating System, and it’s the part of your brain that governs all your daily functions – breathing, sleeping, eating, all those things and you don’t need to think about them, you don’t need to be conscious of them, they just happen… And that’s what we want for you. What we want to do is bring out that part of your activating system. Even more than that we can consciously program that part of ourselves so that this whole planning system is helping you move in the right direction.
The thing that doesn’t work is that you can’t use your conscious brain to program your R.A.S. Your R.A.S. is saying “I’m already there, buddy. I know where you’re going, and you don’t.”
What you need to do is bring the image of what you want out into the open. I got these guys to
1. Pick a time frame and
2. Draw me a picture of what your life and work look like at that point. There will be various things in that picture, them with family, how much time they have at work etc… From that picture we
3. Mind Map the elements. So we said “This is you in 3 years time… what are all the components of that picture?and where would you be?”.
Your subconscious R.A.S. is almost having a fight with your conscious. You need to allow the picture (of your destination) to come out. One of the ways you can access it is by actually drawing a picture.
To come up with your destination, I recommend choosing a time frame, and then rather than writing it down with words, draw yourself a picture and then mind map the elements.
The interesting thing that happened was that one of the people I’ve already told you about in the group, she’s gained clarity that she absolutely wants to be at the top and has already negotiated. The other guy has decided he wants to be four days on a week and one day off, and those have become their goals for the next twelve months to help them get to their destination. Turn your mindmap from the destination you’re after into your clear goals for the next twelve months.
For you, the call to action is that if you don’t have a clear destination you can do one of two things, you can stay stuck or you can use this process to unlock that picture that you have in your brain of where you want to get to.
If you have any more questions, or you want to let me know how you found this process worked for you leave me a comment below... “like” this and share it with others…
See you next time on The Reason and The Road.
