Ask Yourself These 3 Questions About Your Goals as a Leader to Ensure You Succeed
Leadership doesn’t happen on autopilot.
Like a lot of people, I used to believe that when I became a leader, I would be confident, steadfast, and unshakeable. I believed I would have brilliant ideas and they would come into existence simply through their brilliance alone.
Then I served in the military, worked in the “Big Four,’’ and in Fortune 500 companies, where I experienced true leadership. It took years of experience, as well as multiple personal successes and failures; but finally, it clicked for me: real leadership is introspective. Good leaders don’t just come up with an idea and assume it will happen. Behind the scenes, leadership requires you to interrogate your assumptions and beliefs to make sure you are committed to seeing it through. In other words, if you are leading others, you still need to lead yourself.
It can be tough for new leaders to put aside their preconceived notions of leadership, but these three questions can help you make sure your goals become reality and not just sit in the back of your mind as awesome ideas.
1. What will I do differently to make this happen? Am I willing to do that?
Start with this simple ask. Let’s say you have a great idea to create onboarding training at your company so the next person your company hires won’t have to struggle to learn the ropes.
Now, let’s pause here for a moment. You may be asking yourself, “How is creating onboarding training an example of leadership?” Fair question. Creating the onboarding training is the task you are looking to do. But what is your real goal? The goal is for the new hires at your company to take your onboarding training so they have a better experience than you did. Even if you do all of the work, you are creating a change in your environment. This means you are going to have to influence others to, at a minimum, support your idea. As a bonus, if done thoughtfully, you can practice your leadership skills while doing something useful for yourself, your community, or your company. Win-win!
Back to the example. A common issue potential leaders have when they set off on a leadership journey is being blinded by the brilliance of their idea. It’s not a bad thing — your idea is probably as awesome as you think it is! But it means you may not have a clear view of your goal’s parameters. Instead, you have visions running through your head of hours of furious typing at your keyboard and how grateful your imagined protegees will be upon receiving the labors of your work.
Before you set off, you need to ensure that you are committed to putting in the work, not just the work to create the training but also to also ensure others in your company are willing to support it. No matter how great your training is, if the new hires don’t know about it, or won’t take it, then you won’t accomplish your goal. It is critical to realize that leading yourself is always the first step of leading others. If you don’t genuinely believe in what you want to accomplish, it’ll be hard to authentically bring others on the journey. By asking this question, you reframe your own goal in your mind. You understand that the idea won’t materialize on its own, and it’s not a question of just throwing your energy at it.
Ensure that you’re willing to do what it takes to make sure your goal happens. That’s step 1.
2. What will I let go of to make this happen? Am I willing to let that go?
Crushing your goals will come at a cost, which is a side of leadership nobody likes to think about. The cost could be time or energy or something more intangible like social capital or your pride.
When thinking about your goal, you need to be aware of what’s at stake for you and your community. Nobody is superman; but if you honestly assess your limitations and potential obstacles, you’ll be better prepared to deal with them when they come up. And you can bet they will come up. Half of true leadership is knowing your weak spots and how to handle them.
For example, going back to our onboarding training thought experiment, you should know right away that you won’t be able to do all the work during company hours. Maybe you’ll have to give up your Saturday afternoons. Maybe you’ll need to talk to your manager to see if you can make time during work hours to get your great idea done.
Step 2 is to think about what you can and what you can’t give up to reach your goal. It is possible you won’t think of everything. In fact, it is almost guaranteed you won’t. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Even if you only come up with half of the real costs, at least you took the time to consider what you might give up. If you are willing to give up the most obvious things, then it is likely you can deal with the additional costs. Regardless, it is critical to assess your willingness to bear the cost before you try to bring others along. If not, you will likely find yourself in an uncomfortable situation down the road.
3. What is my motivation for this idea? Is that worth it to me?
In the example of your onboarding training, we have already established that the goal is for the new hires at your company to take your training so they have a better initial experience than you did. Now, before you set off on your journey you should ensure that you honestly know why you want to accomplish this goal. I know this sounds obvious, but the mind can be a funny thing. When I say you need to understand your motivation I mean no b.s. Don’t try to fool yourself; you need to be crystal clear on your why.
For example, here are three potential reasons why you might want to create an onboarding training at your company:
- It might save you time by giving the new hires at your company a resource to consult as they onboard instead of asking you tons of repetitive questions
- It might give you an opportunity to serve others in a way that you enjoy (assuming that you enjoy making onboarding training)
- It might help differentiate you as a go-getter in hopes of building your social capital and possibly leading to bigger and better opportunities for you at your company
Now, all three are completely acceptable reasons to accomplish your goal, but which is the real reason behind your goal? If you are serious about being a leader, it’s critical to know. Why? Imagine that two weeks into your effort, you find out a better solution already exists that can be implemented immediately. How do you pivot? Your stated goal is for the new hires at your company to have a better initial experience than you did. Will this other solution do that? It sounds like it. If you want to practice true leadership with this idea, then your decision on how to proceed will be directly linked to your honest motivation for your idea.
If your motivation was to spend time creating a training program or building your social capital in the company by creating something new, those motivations may be at risk if your company decides to implement the other idea. It’s not a good look if you sold your idea as a way to create a better onboarding experience and then not support the better idea. This is where I’ve seen so many potential leaders fall flat on their face because they weren’t being honest with themselves or with those they sought to lead.
There are two paths past this potential roadblock, and they both start with you being honest with yourself about your motivations.
The first way is to be crystal clear about why you want to accomplish the goal and be honest with yourself and anyone you need support from. For example, let’s imagine that you really just enjoy creating training programs, whether or not they are for onboarding other employees. Be honest with yourself about that; and then when the better solution presents itself, you can pivot to making some other type of training. If you were honest with yourself upfront and honest with others about your motivations, then this pivot will be natural and can be seen as an opportunity to still accomplish your goal.
The second way still starts with being clear about your goal. If it’s really about creating a better onboarding experience or improving your social capital, you still have a great shot at accomplishing those motivations. How? By fully supporting the better idea. Maybe you can make a marketing campaign for it or lead an effort to ensure that every manager and new hire at your company has access to the training and a way to track their progress.
In the business world, it’s not common to think of that second way as “leadership.” Why? Because you didn’t create the awesome training you wanted to, so you must have failed. I disagree. If your true goal was to create a better onboarding experience for your company’s new hires and you fully jumped into helping the better solution be successful, then you still achieved your ultimate goal. You were clear about your goal, why it mattered to you, why others should care, and took responsibility to ensure that the actual goal of a better onboarding experience was achieved. Committing to that responsibility, regardless of the way the goal was achieved, is leadership. It may not feel like it at first, but I promise you, anyone who understands what true leadership is about, will see it in you when you commit to what you ultimately set out to achieve.
Only you can guarantee your growth as a leader.
The time you spend asking and answering these questions should take place before you say one word to anyone else about your idea or your motivations for it. It’s time spent that no one else will see. Because of that, it is not often talked about or taught as a part of leadership development. In fact, often when someone does this work before embarking on a leadership journey, the resulting resilience they show in the face of eventual roadblocks often earns them the title of a “natural leader.”
Now you know better. Taking the time to be introspective, and really ensuring that you are willing to lead yourself through the roadblocks so you actually accomplish your true goal will put you on the path of being one of those “natural leaders.”
However, just knowing the questions isn’t a guarantee of success for whatever goal you have in mind. Now that you’ve gone through these questions, the way you prepare to accomplish your goal can be a more mindful and intentional event. You should be more aware of the fact that leadership doesn’t happen on autopilot. It takes soul searching and self-awareness, and then actually following through with your real motivations.
By reflecting on your goals and being honest with yourself about what you will commit to, you have a great shot at seeing it through to the end. Try these questions every time you set a goal for yourself and see how far you can go.
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