Goal Setting isn’t just for Fourth Graders

I was recently invited to a local elementary school to speak to a group of about 70 fourth and fifth graders about goal setting, for their Wonderful Wednesday program. At first I was a bit surprised to learn that most of these kids have had little exposure to what goals are or what is involved at goal setting. Then after thinking a bit more about it, I realized that many adults really have no idea about goals and goal setting. In fact one of the adults in the room came up to me afterwards and said, “I think I took more away from your presentation than the kids did.”

After thinking about that, I thought perhaps it would be useful to get into a little more detail about this simple presentation that I gave. Goal setting is so core to everything that I do as a coach, yet it seems to play a smaller role to my marketing and communication. As we approach the end of the year, I tend to spend my coaching sessions looking at ways to ramp up my clients to increase their achievement because they got started late in the year producing the results they wanted, or I spend time evaluating the year of successes and misses and begin planning for next year. Well with you, my readers I want to take a different practice schedule. I want to work on the basics.

What are goals?

When I asked the kids this, the first response was a soccer goal. “Some place where I kick the soccer ball.” I asked why he wanted to kick the ball there and he responded it is how he scores. And the one that scores the most wins, right.

Well life and business goals are similar. How do you really win in your life? How do you win in your business? How well do you know how to score in your life and your business?

I shared with the kids the very basic answer of goals are something you want in your life or something you want to achieve. I like the idea of thinking of goals as the “scores” in your life and business that ultimately lead to the wins. After you add up enough wins, you claim the cup, or “trophy” life.

In the next few installments on the blog I’m going to cover the simple steps to setting goals that lead to achievement. So keep reading. And watch for a link to the actual presentation I gave at BF Kitchen Elementary school in Loveland, CO.

Until the next installment you have some homework. Define how you define the “scores” in your life. Write it down. I make you a deal also, if you post your answers in the comments section below I will enter you in a drawing for a free year of coaching. This will be a free pass to my new online coaching program that will be released in December.

So how do you score?

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