Why clarity helps you achieve your goals
Clarity is everything.
When you set out to achieve a goal, your secret weapon is being absolutely clear on what your goal is. Clarity gives you focus and confidence, and creates a buzz of energy and excitement to drive you on to achieve it. This is true for both individuals and teams.
Yet sometimes having clarity can also leave you feeling a bit overwhelmed. We’ve all experienced that feeling when you realise exactly what’s required and end up with a dauntingly long list of tasks to complete!
Achieve clarity of thought with a vision board
One brilliant way to achieve clarity is to create a vision board. I love them and have had great success using them. They can provide a helpful reference for teams too.
What is a vision board?
If you’re not familiar with a vision board, it’s similar to a collage. To create one you collect images, words and quotes cut out from magazines and other sources to create a picture of the vision you want to achieve. Your finished board should depict what success would look like to you.
You can use a vision board to support a variety of goals and ambitions, from saving up for the trip of a lifetime to taking the next step in your career. They work well if you’re a visual person who needs, and is motivated by, a constant reminder of your goal.
Creating clarity in corporate or team environments
Creating a vision board is an effective way to bring clarity to achieving a personal project. But they don’t work for everyone and may not be appropriate in a team or work setting. Why not have a go. What have you got to lose?
Let’s imagine you lead a customer service team in a call centre and you’ve been set some improvement targets by your senior management team. How do you go about bringing clarity and detail to what this improvement looks like?
Start by asking yourself the simple question, ‘What does good look like in my role?’
Then ask your team the same question. Did you all give similar answers? If not, there’s a need for clarity to bring the whole team on the same page. When everyone is clear on what good looks like and understands why this is important, you begin to make small improvements and move forward together as a team.
Impact of clarity on motivation
When people don’t have clarity in their role, they often start to drift. They can lose their energy and excitement for coming to work and begin to tread water, feeling demotivated and perhaps even resentful. Once individuals start to drift, the feeling can trickle into the wider team and create more serious impact. So, as a leader, it’s essential to tackle this swiftly,
Drifters will often find their day-to-day tasks monotonous. If you find this happening to you, try to re-frame the situation in your mind. Instead of ‘this part of my job is boring’, try switching your thinking to ‘As a result of me doing this task, I am helping my team achieve XX, or I am helping my organisation grow.’ A change of perspective gives you clarity and motivates you to power through.
A great example of clarity as motivation is the janitor at NASA. When a consultant asked what his job was, he replied “I help put people on the moon.”
An important lesson on being clear what’s needed
A fabulous leader I know once asked a long serving loyal colleague in her team, ‘What’s important in your life at the moment?’ He replied it was his daughter.
The leader then asked what was important to his daughter. The dad shared that his daughter adored playing football and was part of a team that trained every week.
The leader then asked how she could support him to help his daughter enjoy her football. He explained that his daughter had practice every Thursday evening but he was usually working and unable to be there. He confessed he would love to be able to take her and watch the session.
Following their conversation, the leader promptly arranged for dad to have Thursday evenings off work so he could share in his daughter’s passion.
This story is an excellent example of how being clear on what’s needed can motivate a team.
Next time you have one on one time with your team, ask them what’s important in their lives? With this clarity, consider what adjustments you could make to their role to assist and compliment their individual goals and priorities.
Are you clear on your training and development goals?
At Zest for Life, we apply this same logic and thinking to our training and development programmes. How can you be certain you’re choosing the right kind of learning for your team or organisation? It’s difficult to commit budget when you’re unclear on what what’s involved and what kind of outcomes you can expect.
Clarity is one reason we offer complimentary ‘try before you buy’ experiences of our Exceptional Service Makes Sense programmes. The free monthly one-hour online sessions are designed to give you a taster of programme content and delivery as well as an opportunity to ask questions. As I said at the start, clarity is everything.
If you’d like to find out more or sign up for a session, follow this link to Eventbrite.
