Accountability and Personal Success – Part 2

Welcome back!

To recap, in Accountability and Personal Success – Part 1 we discussed a few different aspects of accountability and how they affect your personal success.  We finished with mentioning that Marshall and Kelly Goldsmith came up with six significant factors in goal setting and personal achievement.

Today we’ll look that three of them specifically.

Factor 1: Ownership

The Goldsmiths found that when the commitment to change comes from “inside” the person, there is an increase in the likelihood that individuals will achieve their goals.

People, who genuinely want to change, and see coaching as a vehicle to support this commitment, rather than something that could make the change for them, are more likely to succeed.

Implications

It is important for me to challenge the reasons why a client has come to me for coaching before I begin asking for commitments. If they’re coming to me because it is on offer in their company and they think they might give it a try, then they are unlikely to succeed in their commitments.

I may be able to work with the client to help them better understand and appreciate coaching, but unless the have the necessary self-determination, they will unlikely be able to meet their commitments, and will more than likely drop out of coaching and not reach their personal goals or new level of personal success.

“Coaches and companies that have the greatest success in helping leaders achieve long-term change have learned a great lesson – don’t work with leaders who don’t “buy-in” to the process”. (Goldsmith & Goldsmith, 2000) This adage is true not just for leaders but also for all coaching clients across all of the niche areas.

Similarly, if a client comes to me with a set of goals it is worth exploring where the goals came from before holding my client accountable for them. If the client is having these goals imposed on them, if they don’t understand or agree with them, then no amount of accountability is going to help them achieve these goals.

Commitment to change needs to come from a good place. Having to do something because your boss tells you to, or because you believe it is expected of you, or because you think it is the “right thing to do” will not compel you forward.

Some initial work on exploring your values and determining what you really want from the coaching process will increase the likelihood of your personal success.

Factor 2: Time

The Goldsmiths found that people have a natural tendency to underestimate the time it will take to achieve change. This can lead to frustration that the goal is taking so long, or even despair that achieving the goal might not be worth it. The Goldsmiths also talk about an “optimism bias? amongst high achieving individuals, where they want to believe they have achieved a goal when they have really only made a few strides in the right direction, “Harried executives often want to “check the box” and assume that once they understand what to do – and communicate this understanding to others – their problems are solved. If only the world were this simple.” (Goldsmith & Goldsmith, 2000)

Implications

It’s important not to rush or be rushed towards your personal goals. In the context of coaching, this should be a positive not a negative experience.

For example, if a client says that they will achieve X by June and June arrives and they have not completed it, I’m not surprised or disappointed. Knowing what I know about the tendency to underestimate the time it takes to achieve change, I’m prepared for this eventuality with some tactics to help my client move forward. Use these as well if you don’t achieve your personal goal in the timeframe you thought.

These tactics can include:

• Acknowledging the steps they has made so far

• Enthusing them into taking just one more step forward

• Reframing their perspective from one of failure to one of success

• Exploring any barriers to achieving their personal goals

• Reminding them of the big picture and the many wonderful things that will flow into their lives from achieving the change

Factor 3: Difficulty

This is similar to factor 2. According to Goldsmith and Goldsmith clients often underestimate how difficult it will be to change. They make the assumption that because they understand what they need to do, that doing it should be easy.

However, a behavior that has been built up over 50 years is not going to change just because a person identifies it and wants to change it. If this were the case, with all the exercise and diets programs out there we’d have a notion of fit and healthy people.

Real Change Requires Real Work

Change looks easy from the outside. An achievement that is simple for one person can be incredibly difficult for another because every human being is different.

Take active listening, for example. People with high levels of empathy and a fascination with other people may read about the concept of “active listening” once and be able to practice it almost immediately.

However, a busy executive who makes decisions all day and is called on for their opinion constantly might find it incredibly difficult to simply stop talking and tune in to the other person. This person is not bad or wrong; they just have more difficulty reaching this achievement than another person.

Implications

When I am enthusing my clients into action, I need to be mindful that I don’t lead them to believe that change will be easy. There’s a huge difference between “I know you can do this” and “this will be easy”. By acknowledging the size of the challenge at the beginning of the coaching process and all the way through it, my client can be prepared when inevitable challenges arise.

I am also very respectful of every client’s individual learning journey. I ensure that a client is in action, but it is up to my client to determine how much action is enough. One of the greatest challenges for me is really listening to a client to ensure that we don’t miss opportunities to acknowledge subtle but deeply significant moments of growth.

OK, that’s enough to ponder for now.  Even though I gave examples of how the findings of Goldsmith and Goldsmith affect me as a coach, take the same implications and apply them to your life if you don’t have a coach.

These insights will help you develop the mental strength necessary to go after and to stick with your journey of reaching your personal goals and achieving new levels of personal success.

If you are ready to reach these new levels of personal success and reach bodacious personal goals, start with an Introductory Consultation today.