By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy
Here’s an idea to better align your goal-setting. Reading time 3:07.
Goals. The leader scrawled the word—goals—so quickly on the marker board the “a” and the “l” fused together to look like a “d”.
The word –goals – looked very much like the word –gods. That Freudian slip was not lost on the leader and her strategic planners conducting a goal-setting business meeting.
Like religion, goals are often infused with a dogma and a fervor that inspires a martyr-like dedication to the hallowed script of goal-setting: the To Do list.
But the most effective leaders realize you commit first to a DUE To list, long before you develop a To Do list.
A DUE TO list is comprised of long-range commitments that bring goals into a clearer, more realistic focus based on well-defined values.
A DUE TO list keeps your goals on track: well connected to the Train of Thought and fully linked to the Engine of Purpose.
Like a train, effective goal-setting is a process of linking not listing— linking a list of things To Do to a clearer rationale that is DUE TO a higher purpose.
For example, DUE TO the value I place in hiking and swimming with my grandchildren each summer, I will lose 40 pounds in 20 weeks.
The DUE TO (enjoying grandchildren) drives the To do action step (losing weight). And the power of purpose links the two and keeps your Train of Thought on track —and DUE- to reach your goal.
That power of purpose – your YEARNING power – ultimately establishes your earning power.
To cash in on your goal of high income earning, the leader in you would first demonstrate that you are a high powered YEARNER. You have to have an “urgent longing” as the dictionary defines yearning.
And you have to define your goal in the compelling language of something that is DUE, something you have invested in over time, something that you have aleady paid your dues to and now your return on your investment is due to you.
How do you determine what you should yearn?
First you have to define your values. Think of VALUES as a word that stands for: Vital Assessment Leveraging Unique Expectations Systematically.
The most effective leaders assess their values are imbedded deeply and indelibly into the bedrock of their heart and soul, far below the surface of their feelings.
Their deeply-held values form a foundation that cements unique expectations and personal beliefs and that paves their Road to Success. Their unique expectations anchored deeply in their values, thrust upward giving birth to the twin towers of passion and purpose.
With your values well defined and with your DUE TO yearnings well aligned, the most effective leaders will more purposely and more precisely and powerfully yearn their way down their Road to Success. In due time.
LEADERSHIP MINTS PUBLISHING 