Making resolutions you'll keep

The New Year has started, the hangovers are a distant memory and now you must start living up to that list of resolutions you rashly announced to friends and colleagues.

Career coach Kevin McMahon says executives who achieve the most are more likely to set resolutions than those who don't. "Most people only find the time and solitude for serious resolution-making over the end-of-year break," he says.

The key to successful resolutions - goal-setting by another name - is deciding what you want to achieve between now and the end of the year. That means deciding what you want more (and less) of this year.

"These days people are saying, 'I want it all - quality time with family while taking my career to the next level'. But what's realistic must be thoroughly thought through," says McMahon, a partner with Blue Chip Coaching.

The following are 10 tips to help you set and follow through on your resolutions and goals for career advancement next year.

Self awareness

Once you have found the right environment for reflection allow yourself the time to contemplate where your career goals lie. If you don't really know what you want from work, try to get a better understanding of yourself, your values and the beliefs that support them. The more you truly know yourself the easier it will be to align work-based goals with personal values.

But once you have made your resolutions, allow yourself sufficient time to complete them at a realistic pace.

Commit resolutions to writing

Nothing creates clarity better than writing ideas down. Summarise your goals and why they are important in the front of your diary where you will read them regularly.

Outline the strategies and tactics you will adopt to get there. As well as being an empowering exercise, jotting down goals should entrench your commitment. If you find you have trouble committing your goals to writing, you still have work to do.

Be specific

Ensure your goals are unambiguous and achievable within a certain time. Don't set yourself up for failure by having a laundry list of goals you want to knock off.

To ensure they remain fun and within your sights, keep key goals to three or fewer. Make sure each goal has a series of practical steps you can nail progressively.
One of the reasons resolutions crash and burn is people under-cook their compelling reasons for change. So stay committed to your goals by continually reminding yourself why you set them and what they will deliver.

Factor in downsides

Check the overall "ecology" of your resolutions. That means honestly assessing the gains and what you will lose or trade-off in achieving key goals. Know in advance how your career goals will affect other areas of your life. For example, can you really complete that MBA or work 20 per cent harder while also meeting family commitments?

Review regularly

To ensure you stay on track, establish regular (preferably monthly) reviews that will monitor your progress and the steps and stages you are using to achieve it. It is equally important to celebrate those early wins to ensure you stay committed, even if it's just champagne with dinner.

Even if you don't achieve all you set out to, stay focused on the progress you have made. By reviewing where you may have gone wrong you will often discover new opportunities for creating the results you are looking for. Whether you incorporate these goals in your formal review depends on how much they align with your job.

If one of your goals is to use your existing job to segue into a new career have the sense to keep it under your hat.

Positive visualisation

Visualise the achievability of the goals and start behaving as if they have already happened. Embedding an expectation that you will achieve these goals often triggers a behavioural change - the more you can imagine success the more ready you will be to handle any career advancement it might bring.

Stay focused on what reaching your goals will mean to you, family, friends and co-workers.

The more you can create a mental picture of the new and improved you the more you will experience the success you are looking for. But how you evolve personally and professionally during the journey is as important as your final goal destination.

Support structures

The challenge is staying on track once you have achieved early wins (or losses), so it is important to share your resolutions with loved ones. The moral support of family and friends can make or break your ability to achieve certain goals. Ensure they fully understand and believe in what you have set out to achieve.

It is also useful to align yourself with co-workers who will support your resolutions. Include within your network peers who have already achieved some or all of the goals you want to reach.

Become results focused A permanently full in-tray can make it harder to stay focused on key daily or weekly activities that will move you towards your goals. Good prioritising will ensure that career resolutions don't fall off your "to do" list.

Keep your weekly schedules flexible enough to include some lateral thinking and reflection. New levels of achievement are often preceded by new levels of thinking so grant yourself permission to change.

Trial and error

Accept that there may be times when you fall short of your goals. Recognise that learning from failure is an integral part of change. Instead of giving up just because you fell at the first hurdle, develop a process that allows you to learn from your mistakes.

Identify an "open ear" from one or two people you trust sufficiently to listen, pick you up emotionally after failures, and remind you the end goal is still in sight.

Seek help

When you're making resolutions it is important to know that you are not alone. People who don't have anyone to commit their goals to - family, friends, a career coach or work peers - are less likely to set goals or achieve them.

So consider getting some input from a mentor, co-worker or a career coach to help to unearth broad resolutions - how they can be turned into goals - and what you need to do to achieve them.

* Mark Story spoke to Kevin McMahon, partner with Blue Chip Coaching; career coach Christian Dahmen of ChristianDahmen; and Graziella Thake, executive coach with Insinc LifeSynergy.