Although I didn’t have to go up on Mount Sinai to get these, let me share my “7 Commandments of Effective Goal Setting” with you:

1. You must base your goals upon your Mission Statement. If you’ve created your Mission Statement according to the Nightingale-Conant Build My Mission Statement link, you’ll now have “big” goals to achieve by one year from today. From there, you’ll need to break them down into quarterly, monthly and even weekly goals.

Stephen Covey has a great quote in his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In it, he says: “If you don’t set your goals based upon your Mission Statement, you may be climbing ‘the ladder of success’ only to realize, when you get to the top, you’re on the WRONG BUILDING.” Amen!

2. Set goals in all areas of your life — Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual. Mental goals are your goals for your career and financial well-being. Physical goals are for the shape of your body and what you put in it. Emotional goals are for enhancing your relationships, both personal and professional. And Spiritual goals are those things you do on a regular basis that will get you more in touch with your Self, however you define that. If you don’t set goals in these four areas, you will eventually find yourself out of balance … and will subsequently get a “wake-up call” to address them.

3. You must commit your goals to writing. You have to write your goals down, because if you don’t, you’re just daydreaming. A close corollary to this is that once you write them down, it’s probably a good idea to look at them once in a while, like every day.

4. Your goals must be realistic. You might want to add the word “optimistically” in front of realistic. This is the essence of the coaching relationship I have with all of my clients — I want them to be able to stretch themselves without setting their goals so high that they feel overwhelmed.

I believe ALL producers, especially “rookies” (first 1 – 3 years), benefit from having some type of coach or mentor (formal or informal. Either can work if the commitment is there.) to help them set and evaluate their goals on a regular basis. And producers who consider themselves to be professionals should welcome this type of coaching … after all, all professional athletes have coaches. You wouldn’t want your favorite team to play its games without one, now would you?

5. You must find a way to quantify your goals, with a deadline. Obviously it’s easy to quantify dollar production numbers. It may be more challenging to find a way to quantify the number of new accounts needed to achieve those numbers, or to determine other career benchmarks needed, such as professional designations, improved technical ability, computer skills, etc. But what fun is any game where you don’t keep score?

6. Show flexibility when moving toward your goals. By analogy, if your goal was to become “King” or “Queen” and you started to move toward this goal, you might find that there was a preliminary step — to first become “Prince” or Princess” You would then adjust your goal accordingly. Notice I said “adjust,” not wimp out.

7. The way you get good at goal setting is the way you get good at anything, which is to P – R – A – C – T – I – C – E. The process of effective goal-setting is not taught in schools, or even in many business organizations. So most people have never engaged in the discipline of sitting down and writing out exactly what they want to achieve, and by when. And often, when they do begin, they set their goals too high, like wanting to run a marathon in the next year before they’ve ever walked around the block. Then they get overwhelmed and they quit. That is what makes it important to have a coach who can guide you through this process, providing the training, support and accountability you’ll need to become a top achiever.
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Success Skills Coach Jim Rohrbach, “The Personal Fitness Trainer for Your Business,” coaches business owners, entrepreneurs and sales professionals on growing their clientele. He has helped hundreds of individuals to achieve their goals since he developed his first coaching program in 1982. You can visit Jim on the web at www.SuccessSkills.com.