New Year’s Resolution: Improving Your Skills – Part 1

As you read this you may be working on a few New Year’s Resolutions.  According to Statistical Brain, people who explicitly make resolutions are ten times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions

So how are you doing?

If you’re one of the 62% of Americans who made one or more New Year’s resolutions, by January 15^th at least half your resolutions will have fallen by the wayside.  About a quarter of people who make New Year’s resolutions never succeed in achieving them.  It almost certainly wasn’t that you lacked the interest in making the change.  It’s just that something (or someone) hijacked your resolve – and your plan to get from here to there became too burdensome.  Or maybe you didn’t have an effective plan.  Whatever the reason, something interfered with your resolution to get better.

Lessons from a successful coaching practice.  I’ve been an executive coach for almost three decades with greater than a 97% rehire rate (meaning clients who hire me to work with someone on staff hire me for additional people following the results my coaching produced).  I want to share some of the tactics and strategies that continue to work across different industries, different cultures, and different kinds of need areas.

One: Start by assessing where you are now.   Here are five tools and approaches I use most often to gain an accurate current picture of where a coaching client is in their career.  

Two: Next, determine what is most important to improve, add, or fix first.  Each of us has a different set of priorities dictated by our current work objectives and circumstances, our supervisors, the important people in our life, and our life situation.  I work with each client to prioritize the need areas in order to determine the top three to five areas that if improved, would lead to the greatest growth and success.  These areas don’t remain static, so we periodically re-assess and re-prioritize.  We use a proprietary tool to do this, and my clients can use it to re-prioritize anytime they want.

Three: Next, identify the best practices in a specific area and compare to your current knowledge. Then measure the gap.  There are a number of reliable sources that can be used to set forth the best practices in any given area, from best-practices authors, trainers, practitioners, and experts.  Consult those whose results are proven in actual field use.  Avoid the trendy stuff and the “three-step cures for whatever ails you” solutions.  Look for resources which have a strong record of success in your business area.  Choose the practical over the theoretical.  Over the years I collected a best-practices inventory and kept it current as best practices evolve. This has helped my organization create nearly 200 training programs that are in use on four continents.  {Shameless self-promotion: please visit our course catalog and see all of the topics we address – especially leadership, management, and sales!} 

We’re halfway across the chasm…three more key steps to take.  Which we’ll explore in detail in Part 2 of New Year’s Resolution: Improving Your Skills.  Until next time, remember it is your choice to be green and growing!