Ep#2 - Effective Goal Setting for a Successful Year Ahead

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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?

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[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.

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[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?

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[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,

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[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.

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[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?

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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?

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.