How to avoid the distraction of someone else's goals

Do people interrupt your work on your own goals because they want you to work on theirs?

How do you get back on track? How to you keep your focus on your own goals?

People mean well. It's a good thing that their goals are important to them. And, in many cases we find the time to help them with their goals and sometimes they reciprocate. That's healthy. What's a problem is getting so pulled into someone else's situation that your own goals go untended. That does not lead to success or happiness.

Here are some ways to keep your focus on your own goals:

1. Schedule time to work on them. Keep that time inviolate. When people interrupt, let them know when you will be available and not until then.

2. Post your goals so that others can see what you're working on. If you've written them skillfully enough, other people may interrupt so that they can work on YOUR goals.

3. Find an isolated placed to work on your goals (I'm doing that right now to avoid interruption!). Someone people like a busy place like a coffee shop -- others like a quiet room or nature spot. Find out what works best for you and choose it at least once this week.

4. When someone does interrupt, take the time to understand their reason. It may be valid. It may be worth your attention. In any case, they won't be ready to leave you alone until you've taken the time to understand them -- to validate either what they want or who they are. This can feel like it takes extra time, but in the long run will save you lots of time.

5. Align your goals with the goals of your organization. This keeps your focus on things that matter to the people who pay you. Why would anyone in your organization want to stop that from happening? The closer the alignment and more clear how your efforts advance the organization, the more freedom you will have to work on those goals.

What other ways have you discovered to avoid the distraction of someone else's goals? I'd love to know what also works for you...

--Douglas Brent Smith

Get the coaching you need to achieve your goals in our group coaching program:Achieving Your Goals.

Comments

Insist on Results

Do you insist on positive results?

Team members will struggle sometimes. As high performance leaders part of what we must do is to teach the people who need teaching. And guess who needs teaching? Everyone! Including us!

Every day, part of what leaders do is teach. Through intentional as well as spontaneous coaching, mentoring, prodding and motivating, our role is to help other people achieve their goals, and in so doing achieve our own.

We teach -- patiently, persistently, even unrelentingly. We teach -- and then we need more. We need progress, performance, and results.

Leaders are teachers who insist on results.

Remember to teach. Remember the output.

-- doug smith

Delegate for the Right Reasons

Do you delegate?

Many leaders struggle with delegation. Some don't delegate enough because they worry that the work will not be done to their satisfaction. That's a case for developing both the leader and the people the leader could delegate to. It can be overcome.

Some leaders struggle with delegation by only delegating work they'd NEVER do -- mundane, routine, or nasty tasks that the person getting the work doesn't want either, they simply have no choice. That is no way to endear yourself to your team.

We do need to delegate though. And sometimes the work that we delegate is routine but simply needs to be done. During the time that I worked there, my team leader at Whole Foods once told me, "we don't pay supervisors to wash the dishes." She did go on to say that handling the dishes for 15 minutes set a good example, but washing them the whole shift simply kept the supervisor from leading.

A more powerful form of delegation is done for developmental of …

Fast, Affordable Leadership Training

Here are four ways to develop your leadership skills now:
Leadership tool box - Click on any of the labels for any entry on this site to find more useful content, much of which will contain suggested actions for developing your skills and leadership calls to action to prompt you. Teleclass Appointments - You do not need to wait for a teleclass or webinar to be offered to sign up for it. Using our teleclass appointment system you can schedule the teleclass you want, when you want it. Just click here.Supervisors Coaching Calls - Attend our group coaching opportunity for front line leaders to discuss your leadership goals, action plans, insights, and challenges. Designed as a way to extend and apply the learning from previous workshops and teleclasses, but this coaching call is open to anyone who is working on developing leadership skills. Register to participate here.Supervising for Success - Bring our live, in-person training program to your location. Get more information here. Still…

Five Keys to Happiness

We could spend the rest of our lives chasing happiness. There are books, seminars, retreats, and workshops galore to help us get there. I do not disparage any of that. Happiness is wonderful.

Is there a faster way?

Here is a consistent way. Yes, it does involve changing habits. None of the habits are too strenuous. It's balance. It's consistency. It's health. Here are five keys to happiness:

SleepExerciseEat healthy foodsDrink more waterSpend time in nature You knew all that already, didn't you? Consider this a gentle and happy reminder. Five keys to happiness. Sure, there are more. Work on as many as you like. These five will not let you down.
-- doug smith

Getting Help By Helping

Are you working hard on your goals? I hope so. Goals require attention, effort, and energy. And you know what else goals benefit from? Help. Specifically, help from other people.

And where do those people come from? They could be your team. They could be your peers. They probably START though with people you have helped before. When you help others to achieve their goals, they become remarkably more available to help you with yours.

When you help other people achieve their goals they become more powerful allies.

Whether you are working on goals that need help or not right now -- reach out to see who else you can help. Maybe they'll reciprocate and maybe they won't -- but there's nothing TO reciprocate unless you help first.

-- doug smith

Leadership Call to Action: Think about a friend or co-worker who is working on a project that you are not involved with. Sometime in the next week, call them and ask how you can help.

Initiate the Tough Conversations

Do you avoid tough conversations? If we know that we need to talk something over, but avoid it because it makes us uneasy, the difficulty remains unresolved. If we avoid talking with someone because THEY are difficult to talk with (maybe they sulk, or yell, or roll their eyes...) the problem remains stuck AND it remains ours. That's not what leaders want.

Taking the time to learn how to better communicate in those tough situations helps leaders to reach their team members, assert their needs with their bosses, and collaborate more successfully with their peers. It's a win for everyone when communication prospers with clarity, courage, creativity, and compassion.

It's not easy. That's what differentiates high performance leaders.

High performance leaders initiate the tough conversations that others avoid.

It gets easier with training and practice, just like any other skill. And while tough conversations may never feel like a breeze, they are often the path to better rel…

Video: Key Points in Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

As a bonus, I finally learned how to pronounce this author's name. As a practical use of 8 minutes this is hard to beat - a great video with fascinating visuals and an easy to understand summary of a book that's not an easy read.

I'm sharing it so of course I can remember to watch it again later. It's also time to read the book again.

Here's the video:

Four Important Factors:

FocusFreedomFeedbackFour % Challenge It's well worth checking out the other quality material available at The Productivity Game.

Video: How to create a culture of high productivity & low stress

From the Life Hack Bootcamp series featuring the cheerful and direct Demir & Carey comes this 13 minute video offering useful tips for creating teams that are productive and less stressed. You could call it Knowing When to Manage and When to Get Out of the Way. Good stuff!

Easy Answers

Are you looking for an easy answer?

We have so many simplified solutions these days. Our web sites give us big fonts to read, our phones send us reminders and even count our steps (got to get those 10k per day!) and our cars give us automatic transmission, power brakes, automatic lights, and soon will even drive themselves so that we can sit absorbed in our phones.

We've been getting used to easy answers. I'm not advocating giving back those easy answers - without a GPS I'd spend considerable time lost - but too much leisure also takes away muscle. We need the struggles of a tough solution to keep fit.

As tempting as it is, easy answers are not the only answers. We need a second light to see the shadows behind that all too easy to find solution. What are the complications? Who else is affected? What happens later?

Easy answers often play out hard.

We need more than easy answers because easy answers sometimes play out hard. It's not all grab-and-go, sometimes we need t…

Goals In Service to Others

Are goals selfish? Is it self-centered to pursue your goals?

Our goals are important. Successful goal achievement brings positive results along with a healthy sense of self-accomplishment. It builds our esteem. Even when those goals are dedicated to outcomes that benefit others more than ourselves, in fact, perhaps more so.

Serving others as we achieve our goals builds good will, strong relationships, and more sustainable results. When others are happy, in addition to ourselves, the results are more likely to persist.

It is at once unselfish AND self-improving. It's a winning combination: creating and achieving goals that serve others.

We are best at achieving our goals when they are in service to others.

I'm in favor of the best results possible for all. How about you?

-- doug smith

doug smith training

Search This Blog