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"Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible."
~ Tony Robbins
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"Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination and disregard for obstacles and other people's criticisms, carry out your plan."
~ Paul J. Meyer
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"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."
~ Henry David Thoreau
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"Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive
thinking."
~ Malcolm Gladwell
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"A mind id like a parachute, it doesn't work if it is not open."
~ Frank Zappa
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"Begin challenging your own assumptions.
Your assumptions are your windows on the world.
Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in."
~ Alan Alda
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"You persuade a man only insofar as you talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his."
~ Kenneth Burke
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"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
~ Maya Angelou
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"Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people."
~ Jim Rohn
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Greetings!
Welcome to the November 2012 edition of Insights. I hope you will find this month's selection of articles interesting and thought-provoking and that you will take from these words at least one thought or idea that you can use to bring about a positive change in some aspect of your personal or professional life.
Our life's journey is the most important one we will ever take, but ironically, most people spend more time planning a short vacation than they do planning their lives. A person without a life plan is like a ship without a rudder. Unable to chart its own course, such a ship will sail about aimlessly and eventually land on some shore. The passengers on board will be at the mercy of the prevailing conditions there. They may be fortunate or unfortunate in the conditions they find, but they will have had no part in determining their destiny.
Rather, it will have been determined by random events outside of their control. Similarly, people without clear goals in life and an effective plan for their achievement, will be solely at the mercy of the people and circumstances they interact with on a daily basis, and instead of being masters of their own destinies, will merely be players in the plans of others who may not necessarily have their best interests at heart.
As 2012 is ending, now is the time to set some key goals for 2013 that will lead to greater satisfaction in your personal and professional life. There are two primary reasons for setting goals. First, they give us focus. Second, they give us direction. Without focus, it is difficult to hit a bull's eye, take a good photograph or avoid getting into an accident on a highway. Focus is an essential characteristic of successful people. Without clear direction, much effort and energy can be wasted. A powerful goal keeps us on track.
As there will be no publication of this newsletter in December, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your readership and feedback and wish you and your loved ones a Happy Holiday Season and a Glorious New Year!
If you know of anyone who you think might also be interested in receiving Insights, please forward this issue on. As always, I would be very interested in receiving your feedback. Pat Iannuzzi |
 THE DYNAMICS OF GOAL SETTING
Most people generally desire improved results in one or more areas of their personal or professional lives. The same is true of most organizations. The results individuals and organizations produce, be they short-term or long-term, are primarily determined by the behaviors people exhibit on a daily basis. Since all behaviors are goal-directed, it stands to reason, therefore, that a major factor in shaping the outcomes we achieve in life is our effectiveness in setting and achieving goals. It is our drive to achieve goals that generates the results we get. We get what we are currently getting out of life because of our current behaviors, and our current behaviors are to a very large extent determined by what we set out to achieve (i.e., our goals). Therefore, in order to achieve improved results, individuals and organizations must develop an appreciation of how goals affect behavior and an understanding of the process for setting and achieving productive goals.
Goals vs. Objectives
In general every day usage, the terms "goal" and "objective" are usually considered to be synonymous and are often used interchangeably. However, in the context of understanding goal-directed behavior and its relevance to success, it is helpful to distinguish between the two. An objective is a comprehensive state, condition or purpose an individual or organization expects to achieve within a specified timeframe. It can be likened to a personal or organizational vision. Objectives like visions are usually intangible concepts reflecting states of being that are difficult to clearly define or describe. One could have an objective to be "respected" and "admired," but it might be difficult to explain in concrete terms how such a state would look or feel like or how it could be recognized as having clearly been achieved.
A goal on the other hand, is an easily definable, observable, measurable and time-bound performance outcome that an individual or organization intends to achieve through behavior and is usually as one of several subordinate components of a more wide-ranging objective. A goal is more like a personal mission inked to a specific activity. Unlike objectives, goals can usually be clearly defined and described and, therefore, serve as much more effective targets for focusing and directing performance behaviors.
Objectives can be viewed as the end result we seek through our behaviors while the achievement of goals is the event or accomplishment that will bring our objectives to reality. Goal achievement in itself is rarely the ultimate end we desire to attain. It is usually only the means through which we gain something we ultimately want which is most often best characterized by a desirable mood or feeling.
Winning a professional basketball championship for example, would be a desired goal, but it would not be the ultimate objective. If it were, as soon as the game ended, spectators, players and coaches would immediately pack up, get up and quietly leave the arena, and there would be no further mention or reflection about the completed game. In such a situation, winning just for winning's sake is not the desired end result. Rather, the desired end result has to do with the benefits and rewards winning brings. In this case, desired end results could include admiration, honor, recognition, praise, increased self-esteem as well as other desirable emotions.
One might argue that an important benefit or reward for winning a professional basketball championship would also be increased financial compensation. Certainly players on the winning team would probably be paid more than those on the losing team, and their future earning prospects might be better. But as with winning a game, the accumulation of money is usually only an immediate goal rather than an ultimate objective. Accumulating money is simply a goal that can contribute to attaining objectives having to do with positive moods and emotions that having money can help provide, such as the enjoyment of leisure and travel activities, a sense of security, a reduction in stress and worry and the satisfaction that comes from helping others. Achieving goals then, is the path through which we attain our ultimate desired objectives. One objective can depend on the attainment of a single goal or several goals achieved either independently or sequentially.
Performance Goals and Developmental Goals
Performance goals are tangible and are primarily action-oriented. They are goals that have to do with doing something. Performance goals are tangible in that they can be easily grasped either with the hand or the mind. Examples of performance goals are buying a new house, running a marathon, scheduling an interview, taking a course or writing a book.
Developmental goals on the other hand, relate to desired growth in personal capabilities as demonstrated by behaviors reflecting improved attitudes, attributes, skills and knowledge. While they also involve action, they are more intangible being or becoming goals, and require that a person devote time and energy to vividly imagine and visualize them. Nonetheless, developmental goals can have a profound impact on personal and professional growth and achievement. Examples of developmental goals would be learning to play the piano, becoming more assertive, becoming a good spouse or parent or improving listening skills.
Both types of goals are extremely important to success. True success in life usually is derived through the accomplishment of interrelated performance and developmental goals that are complementary to each other. A person may have as a performance goal, the purchase of a vacation home. In assessing the obstacles standing in the way of the achievement of this goal, this person realizes that the only way this can happen if he or she is able to increase annual income by 30%, another performance goal. As this person is a salesperson paid on commission already making as many sales calls per day as possible, it becomes clear that the best strategy for increasing sales to produce the desired income would be by becoming a more effective salesperson by closing a greater percentage of prospects. This is a developmental goal that requires personal growth and development.
Goal Setting for Success
Success can be broadly defined as making optimal use of one's own potential to achieve. Since each of us has a unique set of individual knowledge, skills and attitudes, genuine personal success should be measured by what a person does with his or her own potential and not by comparison with what others have accomplished. Being successful essentially means setting out to accomplish something significant and meaningful and then doing whatever it takes to get it done. Another way to say it is that success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile, predetermined goal. This means that where there is no goal there can be no success. Also, since success involves a "progressive" goal realization, it is not achieved solely upon the attainment of the target goal; it is evident throughout the journey. Furthermore, a person cannot succeed by accident or luck. True success requires a strong commitment to intentional, planned personal growth to develop the knowledge, skills and attitude necessary for goal achievement.
Effective Goal Setting is a fundamental component of Symbiont's Self-Leadership Program.
Learn more about Self-Leadership.
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WHAT IS YOUR DECISION STYLE?
We live in a world of perceptions. Each of us exhibits a distinct approach for how we perceive what something is or should be, and the nature of our perceptions can have a powerful impact on how we make decisions in both our personal and professional lives. Building on the work of many of his predecessors, Dr. Robert S. Hartman (1910 - 1973) who held Ph.D. degrees in mathematics, philosophy and law, sought to identify a simple, workable system for organizing the different ways in which human beings think. Dr. Hartman conducted extensive research, and he proposed that there are three basic ways in which we perceive everything in the world: in terms of people, things or concepts. "People" obviously refers to our perceptions of individual persons. "Things" represents any tangible, inanimate object, and "concepts" has to do with our intangible mental awareness of thoughts and ideas.
Furthermore, anything we can name or think about, whether it's an article, a person or thought; no matter what, can each be perceived and valuated in terms of one of these three basic approaches to thinking which Dr. Hartman characterized as the Personal, Practical and Analytical decision making styles. The way in which we value something has a strong bearing on how we apply judgments in making decisions. Each of us is capable of utilizing all three of these approaches, but we generally tend to develop a preference for one more than the other two when making decisions. This preference becomes a subconscious force that affects the quality of the decisions we make on a daily basis.
Personal Decision Style
The Personal Decision Style values the uniqueness and individuality of persons, things or concepts as they exist in themselves. The Personal valuation style incorporates a strong concern for the impact of a decision on the people involved. There is diminished emphasis on the practical aspects of a particular situation and on analytical assessment of issues. The Personal decision style is reflected in phrases such as "I love you (person) because of who you are," "that heirloom (thing) is priceless," and "I value loyalty (concept) above all else." All of these evaluations and resulting decisions relate to the uniqueness and individuality of the focus of attention.
Practical Decision Style
The Practical Decision Style is characterized by a focus on making the best choices based on the relative value of a person, thing or concept within a group. It involves elements of the real, material world, comparisons of good/better/best and seeing things as they compare to each other and to other things in their class. The Practical Decision Style can be characterized by phrases such as "John is more competent than Susan (people); this chair is more comfortable than that one (thing)," and "It is better to forgive and forget than to hold a grudge (concept)."
Analytical Decision Style
The Analytical Decision Style involves formal judgment. It is associated with structured thinking, rules and yes/no determinations. Here the valuation is based on the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of required terms and conditions for something to exist. There is no middle ground or partial fulfillment in the Analytical Decision Style. An expression of Analytical thinking in evaluating people would be "John is my son," meaning that John fulfills the requirements I hold for the definition of son. There is no emphasis placed on John's uniqueness (i.e., Personal Decision Style) or whether John is a good or bad son (i.e., Practical Evaluation Style). In regard to the valuation of things or concepts in the Analytical Decision Style, we could say "This is not a car (thing)," or "Justice was done (concept)," again, indicating whether each did or did not fulfill our definition of it.
Putting it in Context
In order to gain a better understanding of the three thinking dimensions, consider the following hypothetical scenario. Three people, each representing one of the core decision styles (i.e., a pure Personal Decision Style, a pure Practical Decision Style, a pure Analytic Decision Style and each having no real affinity for the other two styles are sitting around a table talking. They are assembled to work on a project. The Personal Decision Style thinker starts immediately to approach the situation from a personal perspective, wondering how the project will be accepted by the work team and indicating concern for the impact the project will have on them.
The Practical decision-maker on the other hand, doesn't focus so much on the people involved. This person begins talking about ways to get all the resources in place as quickly as possible to get things started. The Personal Decision Style thinker and the Practical Decision Style thinker soon get into a heated discussion over the project. The Practical Decision Style thinker feels the Personal Decision Style thinker is unnecessarily concerned about people issues and is holding up action on the project. The Personal Decision style thinker feels that the Practical Decision Style thinker is being insensitive and maybe even a bit ruthless by putting results over the needs of people.
The Analytical Decision Style thinker is annoyed by the infighting between the other two. This person feels everybody should slow down a bit and think things over in a logical, rational, manner. The Analytical thinker wants to understand the situation clearly first and then take appropriate action based on thorough thought and analysis. This person wants to discuss the important issues related to the project to remove any ambiguity and prevent any potential chaos. The Personal Decision Style thinker and the Practical Decision Style thinker feel the Systemic thinker is needlessly and irritatingly over-thinking things and is wasting valuable time.
Snap Decisions
The reality is that none of us is a pure thinker in any one style. We each possess the ability to think in each of these ways. However, unless we take the time and effort to deliberately try to employ all three styles in making decisions, we are likely to routinely default to our preferred decision-making style, thereby making snap decisions which may not necessarily result in the best outcome for a particular situation. Snap decisions are those reactive, instinctive, knee-jerk, decisions we make all the time. They are not conscious, rationally well-though-out, carefully weighed, decisions based on facts. Snap decisions can be characterized as reactive decisions while well-thought-out, conscious decisions can be labeled as reasoned decisions. It has been estimated that 80% to 90% of the decisions we make are snap decisions.
Why It's Important to Know Your Decision-Making Style
Two key factors in our lives that have a strong impact on whether we will make a conscious (reasoned) decision or a subconscious (reactive) decision are time and stress. As long as we are making conscious, well-thought-out decisions, we can pay extra attention to each of the three decision-making styles.
But even more important is having a good understanding of our personal decision-making style preferences. By knowing and understanding them, we can often leverage that preference in our work life to become more productive, fulfilled and happy. By knowing and understanding those styles for which we may not an affinity (possibly even a significant deficiency), we can work to avoid blind spots which can cause us to make that snap decisions which may or may not give us the best results. More on blind spots.
Learn about the ATTRIBUTE INDEX and how you can participate in a complimentary assessment to identify your Decision Style preferences
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YOUR PERSUASIVE EDGE
People often associate the topic of persuasion primarily with the concept of selling, but the importance of effective persuasion skills really pertains to every one of us regardless of our individual vocation. Every day each of us is involved to some degree in influencing the thoughts and actions of others. In fact, the path to success in life lies to a very large extent in gaining the cooperation of others. In this edition of Insights, we continue with our ongoing segment dedicated to the topic of persuasion.
Interpersonal Communication Style and Persuasiveness
As anyone who's ever worked with others can tell you, people approach their jobs in a variety of ways. Some people think and act quickly, while others like to take more time; some people are more friendly and sociable, while others are more reserved. At times, these differences can create freshness, balance, interesting relationships and innovative solutions. But all too often differences in "work style" lead to misunderstanding, mistrust and frustration, not to mention lowered productivity and poor results.
Each of has a particular preference for the manner in which we prefer to interact with other individuals. Some of us for example, prefer to express our attitudes and emotions openly and sincerely when communicating while others favor being somewhat more reserved and less forthcoming about sharing our thoughts and feelings. Similarly, some people are comfortable communication in a direct, forceful and straightforward manner while others are more comfortable being less direct and more accommodating and obliging to the needs and desires of others.
Some people like to take charge in challenging situations and others prefer to take less dominant, more supportive roles. It is generally recognized that personal interaction styles can have a strong impact on the establishment of rapport between people. Essentially, people are generally more comfortable and more inclined to develop rapport with other people who exhibit similar interpersonal communication behavior and are, therefore, more likely to be persuaded by them.
Throughout history there have been many attempts to explain the differences in people's personalities. The earliest recorded efforts were founded in astrology and proposed that people's behavior was influenced by the alignment of celestial bodies. Later Hippocrates advanced the concept of classifying people according to their supposed dominant physiologic fluids represented by blood (Sanguine = confident and optimistic), phlegm (Phlegmatic = apathetic or indifferent), black bile (Melancholy = sad and gloomy) and yellow bile (Choleric = angry and bad tempered).
Then in the early 1920s, psychologist Carl Jung developed the concept of psychological personal interaction styles based on certain specific dimensions regarding the way people prefer to think and interact, and focused prominently on the concepts of introversion and extroversion. During the latter part that decade, Dr. William Moulton Marston built on Jung's work to develop a personality style matrix consisting of four basic personality types derived from an assessment of people's task/people orientation and their assertiveness style.
Marston viewed people as behaving along two axes, with their interpersonal orientation being either passive or active (assertiveness axis) and their primary situational focus being on either task or people (responsiveness axis).
In the 1960s David Merrill and Roger Reid refined the concept further and created the Social Style Matrix depicted below which identifies four different personal interaction styles: Driver, Expressive, Amiable and Analytical
SOCIAL STYLE MATRIX
DRIVER: Individuals in the Driver quadrant are extroverted and task focused. Their interactions with others are usually fast-paced, direct and to-the-point. They do not like to waste time and are unlikely to express emotions or feelings. They tend to be strong-willed, independent and decisive. Their primary objective is getting results. Their subliminal message is "I'm in charge."
Communication Preferences
Verbal - Concise, factual and direct message
Vocal - Quick, forceful, unemotional with minimal infection
Visual - Reserved, formal, limited gestures but pronounced eye-contact
EXPRESSIVE: Expressives like Drivers are also extroverted, but unlike them, they are more people-focused and emotionally more open. While they are also fast-paced, they enjoy personal interaction and socializing, which at times may be more important to them than the task at hand. They tend to be spontaneous, stimulating and dramatic. Their primary objective is to play an active role in the situation at hand. Their subliminal message is "Recognize me."
Communication Preferences
Verbal - More expansive, colorful and descriptive message
Vocal - Forceful, enthusiastic and expressive with pronounced infection
Visual - Animated with prominent gestures and body language
AMIABLE: Amiables like Expressives are emotionally open and people-focused. However, they are more introverted and passive in their interpersonal behavior. They prefer to play an indirect supportive role when working with others and place a high value on trust, loyalty and close personal relationships. They tend to be easy-going, relaxed and friendly, but can be slow to make decisions until they feel comfortable on a personal level. Their primary objective is to be a good team player. Their subliminal message is "I want to be liked."
Communication Preferences
Verbal - Feelings-driven language that reveals thoughts and opinions
Vocal - Warm and friendly with a moderate pace and tone and subdued inflection
Visual - Inviting gestures such as leaning back, smiling and uncrossed arms
ANALYTICAL: People who fall into the Analytical category are task-focused (emotionally closed) and introverted (passive). They value details and processes and place strong emphasis on efficiency and precision. They are usually very structured and organized and are usually slow, methodical and cautious in making decisions. Their primary objective is doing the right thing. Their subliminal message is "I know."
Communication Preferences
Verbal - Comprehensive, task-focused, detailed message that invites listener comments
Vocal - Slow, steady, even-paced, unemotional with minimal inflection
Visual - Subdued posture, gestures and facial expressions
The Golden Rule of Persuasion
To become a more persuasive person, communicate with others in the manner that reflects their own verbal, vocal and visual personal interaction preferences.
Ask us a question about Persuasiveness.
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| I hope you have enjoyed what you've read. As always, we value your thoughts and comments. Please feel free to:
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Pat Iannuzzi
Symbiont Performance Group |
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