Goals and motivation

There have been numerous studies conducted on the benefits to
motivation and performance, of setting challenging goals. A quick search on Google Scholar will find almost all of them, including Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. This blog
post describes the challenges that I’ve faced with motivation and how goal
setting has helped me to succeed.

High school and
university – last minute man

During high school and university I was a “last-minute man”.
If it wasn’t the last minute before an assignment was due, then chances were
good that I hadn’t even started the assignment, which I’d been given weeks ago.
I needed the fear of failing to motivate me to work, which obviously isn’t a recipe
for success.

Zero motivation –
contemplating quitting

Very early in my career I was working in a role that I detested;
I found the work boring and time seemed to crawl from 9am to 5pm. I visualized horrifically,
spending the rest of my life working eight hours a day, doing a job that I
hated and having nothing to show for it except a small amount of money. Needless
to say, I was seriously contemplating quitting my job.

A challenging goal –
the key to motivation

I’m not exactly sure what lead me there, but a few days into
that detested role, I began contemplating the following:

- What if I looked back on my career and didn’t just see the
money I had made, but saw the things that I had achieved?

- What if I could achieve something I’d be proud of in this
role?

- What if I produced the most output, with the least errors?
What if I found ways of making the entire team more efficient?

- What if I were the best employee that this team had ever
had?

And that became my answer… being “the best employee ever”
was something I could be proud of and it motivated me to work and ultimately succeed,
all while enjoying my role.

Looking back now, it wasn’t the specifics of the goal that were important, especially as I had no way of knowing whether I was better than any of my predecessors, it was the fact that the goal was challenging and something that I really cared about that mattered. 

Since that day, I have found ways to set relevant goals in many aspects of my life, not just in business and I am certain that it has contributed to my happiness. I encourage you to find your own challenging, yet worthwhile goals, with just one note of caution: be very careful when setting your goals and make sure to have fun!

Mentors – why and how to get them

I firmly believe in the benefits of having mentors and have
tried to build relationships with one of two, from each phase of my
career (i.e. leaders from various former roles and professors from my MBA).

Why find mentors:

A mentor is someone who is an experienced individual who is
able to provide guidance based on their wealth of experience. They’re able to help
you avoid potential pitfalls by providing a “been there, done that and this is
what I’ve learned” perspective.

One other benefit of mentors is that they’re likely to be
well connected (i.e. their friends/colleagues are in positions of power), which
is useful for a large number of reasons.

How to get a mentor:

The approach I’ve taken to gaining mentors is simply to ask
if they’d like to catch up in person or over the phone, to discuss career
development or creative problem solving. I make sure to book meetings or calls
with them at a frequency that is determined by their seniority. If I have a
mentor that is only a few rungs higher than me in business, then I might catch
up with them monthly, whereas someone who is a leader in industry, I might only
catch up with them briefly, once every three months.

If you’ve read my post on the right way to network, you’ll know
to make sure that the relationship provides value for both parties. If a mentor
offers you advice, be sure to consider it and if it’s appropriate, act on it.
In my experience, mentors like to know that they’re being listened to and that
they aren’t wasting their time.

I have noticed that the best mentors often had excellent
mentors themselves when they first built their businesses or made progress in their
careers. Many senior leaders, provided the time commitment is small, would love
to take someone under their wing to "pay forward" the support they received when
they were just starting out.