Goals

Set Clear Expectations As A Leader

By Brandon W. Jones on March 26, 2013 6

A little while back, I spoke to my friend Jason. Jason was a mid-level manager at the company where he worked, but he was still responsible for creating the vision and setting clear expectations. In his position, he was a leader in every sense of the word and faced all the regular leadership challenges.

One particular challenge that Jason faced came from the inability of others to set clear expectations. As a mid-level manager, Jason reported to leaders within his organization. They regularly gave him big projects to work on that helped move the company towards some of the overall corporate goals. At the time I spoke to him, he had received a number of projects from his superiors. His frustration at the time was that they had not given him clear clear expectations.

The importance of clear expectations

As Jason began working on the projects, he asked for additional clarification on what he should do. They clarified to the point where Jason felt he had clear expectations, so he began working towards the completion of the projects. In many cases, Jason’s vision for the projects was greater than the vision of his superiors. He worked very hard on each project to get the projects done. Once he was done, he presented his work to his superiors for approval. They would inevitably say he had done a great job, but he needed to add some things here or change some things there. Many of the changes were extensive and required a lot of work. [Read more…] about Set Clear Expectations As A Leader

Learn To Prioritize Effectively

By Brandon W. Jones on March 15, 2013 0

How do you prioritize effectively? In life there are many choices that must be made on a regular basis. There are choices in all aspects of life including family, work, religious activities, education, etc. All the choices alone may seem insignificant, but they lead to the type of person you are as a whole. When making choices it is very important to prioritize effectively so you make the most effective use of your time. A little while back I heard a speech given by Dallin H. Oaks. He spoke about how to prioritize effectively and make correct choices. He spoke about the difference between good, better, and best choices.

Prioritize Effectively

To prioritize effectively, it is important to think about what activities, tasks, responsibilities, etc. are most important to you and deserve your time. So how do you decide what is “important?” I use a simple criteria to define what is important and where I spend my time. I define things I can do as good, better, and best.

Good

There are many good things that one can spend time on. A first step to prioritize effectively is to identify what is even worth an ounce of your time. In the speech Dallin H. Oaks gave, he said, “We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them.” There are so many good things we can do with our time. When I prioritize, a good thing is something that falls under a the thought that, “some day this may be something I will do, but today is not that day and right now is not a good time.” [Read more…] about Learn To Prioritize Effectively

The Power Of Choices

By Brandon W. Jones on March 12, 2013 2

Do you understand the power of choices? Everyday brings new choices and challenges. You have to choose what to eat, what to wear, how to spend your time, what projects to work on, where you spend your money, who you spend your time with, etc. We have to make many choices everyday. Some of the choices are hard and others are easy. As a leader, it is important to make good choices. In this post I will share three important aspects of choices for you to consider to help you understand the power of choices.

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Your power of choices as the leader

The power of choices is very evident as a leader. You make choices all the time that almost always effect someone else. Many times your choices have a major impact on those you lead. In addition, the choices you make, as a leader, directly effect the behavior of your followers. You set the example. As you make good choices, there is a good chance those you lead will follow suit and make good choices as well. At the same time, when you make bad choices you send a message to your followers that bad choices are okay. (Have you seen the companies in the news with multiple people making bad choices?)

Ultimately, you have the power of choices and with that, you can choose between three types of choices.

Good Choices. There are many choices that are good. Many of the good choices will help you move in the right direction in your life. They allow you to do good things that will help yourself and others.
Better Choices. However, even though there are many good choices, there are also better choices. The better choices come in disguise because they are a little harder to see right off the bat. The better choices help you reach your goals a little faster than the good choices. They help you to move in a right direction but at a quicker pace than the good choices.
Best Choices. In addition to the good and better choices, there are also the best choices. The best choices help you reach your goals the quickest. They can be looked at as the top level choices. As leaders, you should always seek the best choices.

How To Set SMART Goals

By Brandon W. Jones on March 8, 2013 4

I feel to invite everyone to rise to the great potential within you. I do not ask that you reach beyond your capacity, I hope you will not nag yourselves with thoughts of failure. I hope you will not try to set goals far beyond your capacity to achieve. I hope you will simply do what you can do in the best way you know. If you do so, you will witness miracles come to pass. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

I really like the above quote. For goals to be worthwhile, they must be SMART goals. Each year I set SMART goals for myself and my employees. The SMART goals range from personal and team development goals to process improvement goals. When I set those goals, I make sure that they are not easy to accomplish. At the same time, they are not goals that are far beyond reach and/or unrealistic.

So, what are SMART Goals?

The word “SMART” in SMART goals is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. For a goal to be a SMART goal, it must meet the following criteria.

Specific Goals

It is very important to set very specific goals. It is easy to set a lofty, “up in the air” goal that cannot be understood. A goal that is not specific and “up in the air” is ambiguous and leads to confusion. An example of this type of goal would be to say, “We want to make the organization better this year.” How will you make the organization better? What changes will you make? How can you know if you reached your goal if you don’t know what your goal is?

Specific goals explain exactly what you want to do and how you are going to do it. In line with the goal mentioned above, what will you do to make the organization better? Will you increase profit by 20%? If so, how will you increase the profit by 20%? A specific goals would sound more like, “This year we will increase the profit by 20% by eliminating down time between shifts.” From there you would set specific subgoals that would break down how you would eliminate the down time. Each goal would be very specific. [Read more…] about How To Set SMART Goals

The Five B’s Of Leadership Organization

By Brandon W. Jones on February 7, 2013 4

In order to be a good leader it is very important to be organized. As a leader, this can also be quite a challenge because in most cases leaders have many responsibilities that they must constantly balance to be effective in what they do. It can be very easy to become very organized in your approach to one responsibility, while letting others gradually get less organized.

The Five B’s of Leadership Organization

The five B’s of organization will help you as a leader to focus your energy so that you can stay organized and maintain balance in your life.

1. Be organized In your communication.

As a leader, you must communicate with others regularly. That communication is done in many forms, e.g. public speaking, email, letters, meetings, etc. To be organized in your communication means that you have a consistent message that goes out to everyone. To be organized, you are also direct in the message that you convey.

Have you ever worked for someone that would tell you one thing in front of your coworkers and then something different in front of your boss or other departments? Isn’t that frustrating? A leader that is organized in their communication, maintains their integrity by keeping the same message on all fronts. When you, as a leader, are organized in your communication, you gain the trust and respect of those you lead and they are more willing to follow you. [Read more…] about The Five B’s Of Leadership Organization

The Correlation Between Goals, Expectations, And Success

By Brandon W. Jones on June 18, 2012 2

One of my main goals as a leader is to have success. Success comes in many forms. Seeing a big project get completed, helping an employee improve and overcome a weakness, hitting a budget target, meeting customer needs and keeping them satisfied, and implementing a new procedure within the given parameters are all forms of success. There are many other forms of success that you will see in your career.

Success

One important aspect of success is that success is in the eye of the beholder. What one person sees as success may be failure to someone else. Success is dependent on your expectations. If you reach your expectations, you will feel successful whereas if you don’t meet them, you will probably not feel successful.

Expectations

In order to be successful, you need to set correct expectations. You need to set your expectations based on your own desires and abilities. It is very easy to get caught up thinking that you should set your goals based off of someone’s past performance, when in reality you should set your goals based on your past performance. I have seen many cases where one person is successful in a specific way so the next person has to have the same success in the same way for them to be as successful. [Read more…] about The Correlation Between Goals, Expectations, And Success