Re-Align your 2021. Using Coaching Tools to Set Better Goals (Webinar)
At the beginning of each year, many of us set goals we all wish to accomplish within the year. One of my biggest goals for 2021 is to set a schedule to work on my personal projects and stick to it, regardless of what is happening in my personal and professional life. But we’re already in February, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who is losing sight of my goals for the year. So how can we fix that?
On February 16, 2021, we had the pleasure to host a webinar led by Kristine Ayuzawa, ACC Certified Coach and Talent & Development Manager at Wahl+Case, and Kristy Ishii, Career Transitions Consultant and Coach. The goal of this webinar was to allow attendees to refocus on their goals for 2021 with the help of coaching.
The webinar was divided into 3 parts:
What is coaching?
Common Goal-Setting Stumbling Blocks
Goal Setting Exercises to Use in Your Life
What Really is Coaching?
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching as a partnering between a client and a coach in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
Let’s break a few clichés about coaching: first of all, coaching isn’t for people who are unmotivated, and coaches don’t use the same coaching method with everyone. It’s also different from therapy or counselling. However, coaching is for people who are proactive and ready to make changes. It’s flexible and customized for each person, as well as a way to deepen self-awareness and gain new insights.
Kristy defined coaching as a co-creation experience by talking to someone to do an internal deep-dive, and see through different perspectives. In other words, it’s a co-creation brainstorming used to identify what needs to be done and how to do it, depending on the person she has in front of her.
Kristine considers coaching as a process of creating space for exploration, and is most successful when people already have an idea of what they want to change or improve, but don’t know how to get there. To her, a coach is a guide who asks you questions to help you reflect and guide you toward your goals. She also mentioned during the webinar that some coaches will tell you what exactly to do, but, in most cases, they approach the issue with the perspective that you are the expert, and are here to ask you questions for you to get insights only you can gain.
Common elements that can prevent you from achieving your goals
Many of us find ourselves faced with several challenges to achieve the goals that we set. In order to fix that, Kristine and Kristy recommended a few things:
Starting off small rather than setting big, unrealistic goals. If you set several realistically achievable goals, you are a lot more likely to actually achieve them.
Don’t rely on others or external events to achieve your goals. Instead, pick goals you can achieve completely on your own.
There isn’t one single definition of success. Shift your focus to a growth mindset and progress based goals.
Many people give up as soon as they start struggling to achieve their goals. Find someone who will hold you accountable for reaching them.
Avoid focusing on what went wrong, look at the positive impacts you have witnessed so far instead.
Make sure you are not working on these goals for how others perceive you, define why these goals are important for you.
Try creating new habits instead of trying to break old habits as it’s more exciting and easier to create new ones.
Exercises to refine your goal-setting
Get the webinar workbook here.
Reflection
What do you want to stop doing?
What do you want to start doing?
What do you want to continue doing?
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned?
What are you proud of accomplishing?
Clarity
What excites you and makes you feel most alive?
At the end of the year, how do you want to feel?
By the end of the year, what do you want to have created, achieved or worked toward? What would make the year a success?
Once you’ve answered these questions, go over them and pick what feels the most important for you and what you should focus on this year.
Planning
Kristy and Kristine recommended using the WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plan) method developed by Gabriele Oettingen. With this framework, you will be able to step back and visualize things in order to imagine what you want to achieve and how to put into words and define your actions.
Wish: What do you want to achieve this year? This should be something challenging but realistically achievable.
Outcome: What is the best outcome that could come out of you realizing your wish? How will you feel then?
Obstacles: What are possible challenges that you could encounter trying to fulfill your wish? These obstacles have to be internal, i.e. things in your control.
Plan: How will you overcome your obstacle(s)?
Action
Based on all your previous answers, you will be able to answer the following questions:
What is the first step you will take? This should be something you could do today.
When are you going to do it?
Does it help you to share your goal plan with someone? If so, who are you going to share it with?
My personal take-away from Kristy and Kristine’s coaching
As I mentioned above, my goal for this year is to set up a schedule to work on my personal projects and, most importantly, stick to it (probably the hardest part, if you ask me). After watching Kristine and Kristy’s webinar, I realized that I can’t just change my usual schedule by snapping my fingers, and that I need to make changes to it step by step, in order to find a new balance.
I think many of us see the beginning of a new year as a fresh start where, we think, we can just wipe out our old habits and plug in new ones. But, as Kristy and Kristine mentioned, old habits are hard to break. Creating new habits also takes time and can be frustrating at times, especially when we don’t get the results we expect. But that can be fixed.
I personally found the WOOP method quite helpful to refocus on my goal and have a clearer view on what I need to do to get there.
I’m sure many of you could also benefit from Kristy and Kristine’s webinar workbook, no matter what time of the year it is. It only takes a few minutes and will help you gain precious insights as well as clarity on what to do to reach your goals. The final outcome is up to you!
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