Episode 235 Transcript:

0:00:00 Ramona Shaw: This episode is about helping you set growth goals that actually turn into results.

0:00:06 Ramona Shaw: Here are the two questions this podcast answers. One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted? Although the competition and the expectations get bigger, this show, The Manager Track podcast, will provide the answers. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection, and personal fulfillment. This transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead. In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate, and act as a confident and competent leader.

0:00:43 Ramona Shaw: Welcome to this episode of The Manager Track podcast. In this episode, I’m going to talk about how to set growth goals and development goals that actually get you the results that you want. And the reason I want to talk about it is because oftentimes in our leadership development programs or our coaching engagements, we obviously start off with clarifying goals. What I notice is that oftentimes people will say things such as, I want to get better at communicating.

0:01:12 Ramona Shaw: I want to get better at delegating. It all sounds like decent goals, but the issue with these goals is that they’re not specific at all. Communication in itself, for example, is such a big topic. Written communication, verbal communication. Is it the way that you sound, the filler words, the ums when you present? Is it how you communicate? Like the actual influence strategies that you use to speak with different stakeholders?

0:01:41 Ramona Shaw: Is it how quickly you respond to things? Is it being concise and brief and well structured in your communication? Then the list goes on. So, first of all, they’re often topics that we put into our development areas that are really broad. When we say, I want to get better at, it’s not helping. It’s not going to set us up for success. But I want to share in this particular podcast episode is how to set development goals that actually help, and some unconventional, challenging goals that you can set for yourself that will yield better results than you might think. And I call out the fact that they’re unconventional. It’s not going to follow the smart structure and be very prescriptive and traditional in the goal setting approach. So I’m going to bring in some interesting ways that you can challenge yourself, just as if you were to go to the gym and you worked with a trainer and that trainer says, okay, great, like we could do some burpees and some pull ups and bench presses. This is good. But also we’re going to add some jumps and some hip flexors. And we’re going to add some sprints and high interval trainings and things that actually enhance your performance, even on your strength. On the bench press, for example. But it’s an untraditional way in how to get there. So anyways, enough with the gym analogy.

0:03:07 Ramona Shaw: Let’s dive in and talk about development goals. So let’s start with our mind first. You probably have heard me say if you’re a frequent listener or a subscriber, what you think or the way that you think will be the way that you lead. The way that we talk to ourselves and the beliefs that we hold and the thoughts that run through our heads day in and day out will determine how we show up when it comes to development goals. One of those mishaps, or sort of like false assumptions we have, is that we think we need to achieve something before we can really own that. For example, if you say, I want to get promoted into a VP role and we’re working together and we talk about what it would take, what’s the gap between where you are today and how, and what gets you to the VP role.

0:04:05 Ramona Shaw: One of the first things that we’re going to do is to talk about how you would think and how you would feel if you already had a VP title and where are areas in your job right now where you can already think and feel like a VP, even though you don’t have the title yet. Because the more that you already embody the VP aura or the VP mindset, the easier it will be for everyone else to recognize that and for you to act accordingly and hence this promotion to be inevitable.

0:04:41 Ramona Shaw: The more that you think I can only behave like a director right now until the day that I’m an official VP, and then once I’m that VP, suddenly everything will change. If you recall past promotions, that’s not the case. Just because you got a title doesn’t mean you’re a new person that day and you start to think completely differently that day. The way that we change our ways of thinking is gradual. It doesn’t come overnight.

0:05:09 Ramona Shaw: Now, of course, I’m not neglecting the fact that having a title gives you more authority, may make you feel more respected or seem more respected in certain groups. All that is true. I’m also not ignoring the fact that if you’re, let’s say, in a director now and you want to become a VP, or you’re an IC now and you want to become a manager, there are certain things that you cannot do. You would kind of overstep the boundaries would step on other people’s toes, or you would ruffle some feathers in a not good way.

0:05:38 Ramona Shaw: That’s why I say, whatever you can already do and how you can already implement that way of thinking, do that. So, for example, if you imagine someone at the VP level would be very innovative, creative, maybe even disruptive in a way that they think where they challenge our current procedures or our current approach in order to become more efficient, in order to leverage new technologies, in order to streamline teams or increase collaboration between departments, or you think that they bring in new ideas or new relationships with potential customers.

0:06:16 Ramona Shaw: Those are all things you can start to embody today. If I were already a VP, and I would see it as my responsibility to do that, to present about my team to others. To which degree? When and how can I do this within my role? So when we think about our goals, think about how will I think and feel at the end of it, once I’ve achieved that goal, and how can I bring that forward and already start to think and feel that way now? And for the sake of making this really clear, I’m going to use an example from people’s personal lives.

0:06:53 Ramona Shaw: If you are trying to be in a romantic relationship and you think, I want to be in that relationship because I want to feel loved or lovable, but you don’t feel loved or lovable today, and you feel like someone else is going to give that to you. Anyone who’s been in a long term relationship, they know that’s usually not how it pans out. When you get to know someone, you might start to feel more loved or more lovable, but in the longer term, it’s all about how you feel yourself.

0:07:26 Ramona Shaw: So when you start to develop this sense of I am being loved, I’m sovereign, I’m good by myself, I’m lovable. And you have that kind of self confidence and believe in your own self worth. That is what will attract a relationship that will embody this kind of love. And it’s usually one that creates healthy relationship dynamics versus coming from that place where someone else is going to have to provide that love to you. Okay, so that’s an example from people’s personal lives.

0:07:57 Ramona Shaw: And let’s say we’re talking about giving feedback and being direct. If I think that I want to become more direct and timely in the way that I provide performance feedback, and I would think, okay, if by the end of it, I would feel very confident, very comfortable providing feedback, I see it as my responsibility and I would see it like nothing’s wrong with me providing feedback, no one’s going to get hurt by it.

0:08:25 Ramona Shaw: This is all for the development of the team and the individual. If that is how I think I would feel once I’m already doing feedback really well, why not start to think like that today instead of like looking at what are the feedback tools and the feedback models and what exactly should I say and what’s the script? All that is useful, but you will speed up the process and it would feel so much better when you start with the way that you think, how can I today already feel like feedback is going to help their growth?

0:09:00 Ramona Shaw: Me giving you feedback is not personal. I am not making it hard on me. I’m actually investing myself in your growth. When I provide feedback. And if that’s the mindset and that sense of confidence that I feel, this is how I’m going to engage in feedback conversations. Not at the end when I achieve this development goal, but starting today, what would that require? So that’s the foundation of it all.

0:09:25 Ramona Shaw: Now let’s get a little bit more tactical. When we say I want to get better at. And again, I called out that that’s not useful. So break that down. And if one of your employees comes to you as we’re talking about year end and performance reviews and maybe goals for 2025 and says, I want to get better at, please remember this warning bell should go off to say, wait a second, what does better mean? Tell me, if I was to observe you, once you’ve achieved the better, right? The result that you’re going for, what would be different?

0:09:59 Ramona Shaw: Describe a situation where you would be giving feedback, for example, or you would communicate or delegate, and what would I see? Give me a visual. It’s almost like putting legos together. You look at the Lego box or a puzzle. You look at that box to see, this is what it will look like. Now I just have to put the puzzle pieces together, but I’m very clear of what it will look like or the Lego pieces to build that spaceship or whatever you’re building, make sure that you know what exactly would look different then versus now.

0:10:32 Ramona Shaw: And then you can reverse engineer the behavior so you can say, okay, in order to build that spaceship, there are going to be four stages, four different little bags that I have to assemble. One, two, three, and then four, or with the puzzle. So like, I’m going to build the frame first. I’m going to put them all upside down, right side up. Then I will sort them by colors and then by design. Then I will start to figure out which ones will go together.

0:11:00 Ramona Shaw: I don’t have a strategy for being effective at puzzles, but I hope you get the point. So anytime that you think about, I want to get better at warning signs, what does that actually look like? And then write that down. Give a very clear description of what behaviors will change when you get there. So I’m going to give you a few additional examples here that I wrote down. If you say, I want to increase the productivity on my team, you might break that down. You say one step of this is to reduce our project completion time by 15% through improved workflow management.

0:11:37 Ramona Shaw: So if you have data and you say, currently it takes us 20 days to complete the project, and I’m going to take 15% off of that, this is the amount of days that I want to see an average project take. And in order to get to that, we’re going to have to figure out how to cut the x number of days out of the workflow. So that’s one. Another one. Be a better leader. Okay, great. Tell me what a better leader would look like.

0:12:04 Ramona Shaw: And you might say a better leader means I get a higher rating on the engagement survey. It might mean I will feel more competent in my leadership. And currently I feel on a scale from one to ten, I feel at a seven. And by the end of this program, I want to feel like I’m at a nine or a ten. In order to get there. I’m going to complete a leadership course, and I’m going to apply one new technique or one new behavior every single week for the next three months or the next two months or whatever that might be.

0:12:39 Ramona Shaw: That’s very concrete and specific. And then you track what are the behaviors, what’s the behavior every week that you’re going to apply in practice. Another one, how to become more creative in my work. Implement a weekly brainstorming session to contribute five new ideas per month. So now I’m going to block out time in my calendar to brainstorm, either by myself, with AI, or with my team to come up with new ideas.

0:13:09 Ramona Shaw: And when I deliver five new ideas per month, then that in itself means I am more creative. Another one that we often hear from our clients is I want to get better at networking. What does that mean, you want to get better at networking? It could mean a ton of different things. An example could be, I want to establish peer to peer relationships with managers on my level, in other departments or in other demographics or offices in my company.

0:13:40 Ramona Shaw: And I’m specifically looking to make three or two new connections a month and identify what are they doing? What are they working on? What’s their perspective, what are their goals and so forth, and then continue to check in with them every couple months. That is a way to expand your network. When you do this six months down the road, when you’ve met with two or three people a month and built the practice to check in, that will mean you’ve completed that goal or you’ve improved in that field of networking.

0:14:11 Ramona Shaw: So these were a few examples of how to turn better into something that’s actually tangible. I hope as you’re listening to this, at least one development goal comes to mind. If you have no goals that come to mind in terms of your growth areas, you’re probably not setting big enough goals. When we move our goals further down the horizon, every single person here will have development goals, gaps, areas that we want to grow in.

0:14:38 Ramona Shaw: So again, if you’re not sure what yours are, make your goals bigger. That will hopefully clarify or give you some clues of what might be on your list. Then, when you identify those areas, break it down. So that was part two after we talked in part one about how you need to change the way that you think and the way that you feel ahead of time. Right? Don’t wait for that to happen. Once you’ve achieved that goal, try to incorporate as much of that ways of thinking and ways of feeling already.

0:15:08 Ramona Shaw: Now, as a caring and driven manager, you want to strengthen your leadership skills, advance your career, and lead a high performing, engaged team. To do that, you need to lead with a system, not by reacting to everyone else around you. First, learn what should go into a leadership system, and second, develop your own. Now the good news is that I teach. One must have part in your leadership system in a concise, actionable and comprehensive course focused on running successful one on one meetings with your direct report.

0:15:41 Ramona Shaw: It includes over 67 minutes of tactical leadership training, plus a set of resources to make this as easy and immediately applicable as possible. You can either watch the video lessons or listen to it through a private podcast on your phone.

0:15:56 Ramona Shaw: You can get this course, which I.

0:15:58 Ramona Shaw: Want every single manager to have for a nominal $19 at ramonashaw.com/11. That’s two times the number one.

0:16:09 Ramona Shaw: You can check the show notes for.

0:16:10 Ramona Shaw: The details or head on over to ramonashaw.com. one one to get started right now.

0:16:15 Ramona Shaw: Now, the third part that I mentioned upfront that I want to cover are some non conventional suggestions for your growth. One, and I love this one, is reverse mentoring, especially as we see our workforce becoming increasingly diverse in terms of generational diversity. Reverse mentoring means connecting with someone who’s typically less experienced than you are, and you’re trying to see the world through their eyes as much as they might be trying to see the world through your eyes. And it can be sort of a mutual mentoring, but your goal is not to share with them how all the things that you already know.

0:16:57 Ramona Shaw: Your goal is to understand what motivates them, what they see, what challenges that they have, what ideas that they have, how they see the organization, their perspectives, and so forth. That is reverse mentoring, and that can be very eye opening in itself for you to expand your horizon and perspective. That could be one of those more tactical approaches to achieving that goal. Another goal that is a great non conventional tool for growth is a failure goal.

0:17:30 Ramona Shaw: A lot of our clients that we work with are high achieving, ambitious people with big career goals. And what many of them have in common is that they have high standards. They want to grow, they want to move into leadership roles or expand their leadership roles. But by having high standards for themselves and for others, and often having delivered really good work, there’s often this tendency to want to control a lot, to make sure that nothing breaks, nothing fails, no mistakes where they would have to take the blame. And so they may over insert themselves in some of the work or the processes and not be able to let go enough to enable and develop the team because that would mean they have to take some risks.

0:18:16 Ramona Shaw: A lot of these people are fine with taking risks as long as they know it’s not going to turn into a failure. It might turn into a disadvantage. But if failure is on the table, or if a mistake is on the table, they’ll shy away from it. Now, as you grow in your leadership role, you will naturally be more exposed to high stakes situation, more ambiguity, more uncertainty, less information, relatively speaking, that’s available to you when you have to make a decision.

0:18:45 Ramona Shaw: I think they say the president really only gets to make decisions when it’s a 49 51, your 50 50 probability. When it’s a really close, tight call for everything else, someone else will have already decided on it. And with that in mind, as you grow, more ambiguity will be in a process. And if you’re not willing to take a risk where you could actually fail, you could have a setback, or someone on your team may fail.

0:19:12 Ramona Shaw: While that’s hard and it’s a setback, it’s also a huge learning opportunity for them and a growth opportunity for the individual and the team, you might be missing out on huge opportunities. So failure goals are all about looking at ways to push the boundaries. Where can I make a risk assessment? Where I’d say, I’m gonna try this, and I may fail and I might not do well, but I’m going to do this to increase my tolerance for failure.

0:19:41 Ramona Shaw: It may not feel comfortable at all, but I start to recognize that even though this didn’t go anywhere, I’m okay. Like, the world keeps spinning, we’re gonna be okay. It could be work related where you take something on that seems a bit risky, challenging, not quite sure where that’s going. It could also be something that you do outside of work. Run a marathon and give yourself the goal of not walking throughout the marathon or a half marathon.

0:20:08 Ramona Shaw: See how you do. And even if you fail at that, it’ll be okay. For me, it’s like playing golf. I know I’m really bad at it and I still do it, and it doesn’t feel good. But it also reminds me that it’s okay to do things that I’m not good at. I have a lot to learn, and I remind myself of that growth mindset. I can learn. What are those things for you? So, failure goals. The third one that I want to share is to develop your emotional intelligence and emotional management skills.

0:20:41 Ramona Shaw: We often see that sort of as a side product. Oh, I want to have better executive presence. Hence, I’m going to work on my ability to stay composed and calm in a chaotic or stressful situation. Yeah, but how about we make emotional management as a goal in itself? How can I see stressful situations as opportunities to grow? And being tested on my resilience, being tested on my ability to remain calm, that is a growth goal in itself.

0:21:12 Ramona Shaw: How well am I able to manage and compose myself in those high stakes situations? The fourth out of the five non conventional goals here that I want to share is to make it a goal to develop your personal brand. And as I say this, you might be thinking fun. She’s talking about sort of my LinkedIn strategy, or how do I build my resume, or how do I get more visibility and associations within my industry.

0:21:40 Ramona Shaw: That’s all good. But I’m also talking about, how do you build your personal brand in terms of developing your own frameworks or your own models? If you think about people that are recognized for the way that they operate, or they have something unique that they often talk about, it is people who have developed frameworks and models that they can articulate and then replicate what they’re talking about. And this kind of thought leadership that the individual has presented is now providing value to other people, even if it’s not related to tactical or strategic work.

0:22:23 Ramona Shaw: As you’re thinking about developing a personal brand, looking at the way that you do work, and how you structure workflows, for example, or how you assess performance, or how do you leverage certain tools, whatever it may be, in your field, in your profession, where can you see an opportunity to build a unique proprietary framework that is proven and tested, and that you can start to talk about to your team, to the organization, to others in your industry, or publicly on social media, if you’d like to.

0:22:59 Ramona Shaw: A great example of this is in our Chenai summit from the fall. Sean Stewart talked on the summit about how he assesses the performance of individuals on the team based on their ranks. So from the different levels in an organization, from an IC, and expectations on an IC, across the different levels, and the expert leadership track, versus people who then move into leadership and take them to keep in mind. So that would be one example on how to do this.

0:23:31 Ramona Shaw: The fifth non conventional suggestion to help you grow is called the productivity paradox. When we try to become more productive, we often think about, if today is, I’m 100, you know, I do 100% and I want to get more productive, I might think about, how can I do 120? Or how can I do 150% without working more. So we optimize and fine tune and use some technology to cut out certain steps or automate certain processes, and that may get us to that 150%.

0:24:08 Ramona Shaw: What happens often, though, is we get completely different ideas and take different approaches. When we think about ten xing our productivity versus making it a two x or 150% of what we’re currently doing. So if you looked at yourself or your team and you said, if we wanted to deliver not two times more value within the next twelve months, but ten times more value to the organization, what would have to happen?

0:24:41 Ramona Shaw: These types of questions actually change the way we think about productivity. It’s no longer about trying to incrementally increase our productivity. We never get to ten x in a year through incremental changes. Getting to ten x means we might have to change our service catalog. We might have to stop doing certain things or do something very different that adds massive value to the organization. Teams that have done this well, elites have done this well. They may invent or come up with a new sort of product line, or a sub product, or a feature or a service that they can tag on to something that they’re already doing.

0:25:23 Ramona Shaw: And that service in itself takes little effort, but has huge potential for upside and only by taking a step back and applying this creative way of thinking. With that question in mind of how do I ten x my productivity versus two x ing it? What would be done differently? If this is intriguing to you, I recommend the book ten X is easier than two x by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy really outlines the different components of this way of thinking.

0:25:54 Ramona Shaw: But even without reading the book, the main goal here is to look at how can we ask these questions and create new ideas for our team? You could, by the way, also apply this to other areas. It doesn’t just need to be tied to productivity. I’m going to quickly repeat these five non conventional growth goals. One is reverse mentoring. Two was failure goals. The third one was emotional intelligence or management goals.

0:26:24 Ramona Shaw: The fourth one was brand development or brand building and personal brand building. And the fifth one was around that productivity paradox, all looped into the bigger conversation on how to set development goals and growth goals for you as a manager that lead to results. You have to change the way that you think. You have to be very specific in what you’re trying to achieve and what that behavior looks like. Remember the puzzle box or the Lego box?

0:26:51 Ramona Shaw: Before then you break it down into specific action items or strategies that you pursue and then apply some and sprinkle in some unconventional ideas here too, as you define your next level development goals, some of you do an annual review on those goals and you might be coming up on that cycle. Good for you. Some of you do regular quarterly goals, and some of you don’t have an organization that has these goals setting cycles and cadences built in. And it’s all upon you to be driving the process.

0:27:22 Ramona Shaw: And if you’re in that position, remember that it’s not about the company, it’s about your career. It’s your ownership, and I encourage you to lean into it, to write it down, to frequently review it so that you remain focused and your priorities line up with your goals for your work and your personal development. Don’t ignore that just because life got busy or work got busy. Your development, the growth goals, is what’s going to drive your career the most.

0:27:52 Ramona Shaw: Checking off a to do list item likely won’t be, so make sure that you clarify enough time to invest in your growth. If leadership development is one of those areas for you, schedule a call with us. We have different programs, including our highly rated leadership accelerator for new managers, as well as our leadership advisory program for more experienced leader coaching workshops, executive presence trainings, and so forth that will help you achieve your goals.

0:28:21 Ramona Shaw: Again, if you’re not sure where to start, check out our website, arkova.org, and if you want to talk more about your personal situation, check out the show notes to find the link to schedule a one on one call with me or the team to gain clarity on where you’re at, where you want to go, and what the right approach and strategies will be to get you there. Thank you so much for tuning in. I’ll be back with another episode of The Manager Track podcast next week.

0:28:47 Ramona Shaw: If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help.

0:28:51 Ramona Shaw: You become a leader people love to work with.0:28:54 Ramona Shaw: This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out@archova.org/masterclass class the second resource is my best selling book, the confident and competent new manager how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out@archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. You can find all those links in the show notes down below.