If you’ve been reading my recent posts, you know they’ve had a coaching bent to them. We’ve seen the value of coaching in the workplace and now recognize business coaching as the single most important differentiator in performance based organizations.
This is a wonderful time of year to apply your coaching skills – toward your team members, others in the workplace and yourself.
As we wind down 2016 and slide into the New Year it’s a perfect time to reflect on the past twelve months and plan for the next. As our gift to you, there’s a link at the bottom of this post giving you access to our 50-page goal setting guide. I created this guide as I was seeking to intentionally make changes in my life personally and professionally. It’s yours as our gift from a business leadership Boulder perspective.
But wait!
There is one new tool I’d like to introduce you to that will compliment the goal setting guide and give you a solid “look back” at 2016.
Reflect on 2016
As a coach, you can help your people reflect on 2016 by following a standard after action review process utilized by the military. This is a great coaching tool not just for year-end but for anytime throughout the year to help yourself and others learn from the past and improve the future.
Allocate about 20 percent of your time here to the first two steps below, and 80% of your time on steps 3 and 4.
STEP 1: What did you set out to do in 2016? Go back to your personal and professional goals for the year.
- What were your professional goals for the year?
- What were your personal goals?
- What skills and competencies did you intend to build?
- What relationships did you intend to enhance?
STEP 2: What actually happened in 2016? Review the year, quarter-by-quarter. This will force a more complete reflection and move you away from a recency bias. I know that for us at 5.12 Solutions, we’ve accomplished a ton this year and Q1 seems like ages ago. It’s not. For example, we released our Coachmetrix product and there are a ton of learnings we can capitalize on in 2017. But, if we don’t force reflection from the entire year, we may miss out on some key insights.
- What did you accomplish?
- What was missed?
- What worked?
- What failed?
STEP 3: Why did it happen? This step is ultimately about gaining insight and learning from your experience. Take each major area from 2016 and ask:
- Why did you get the result you got?
- What was your contribution to that result?
- What other factors impacted your ability to get that result?
- What motivated you the most/least?
STEP 4: What does this inform you to do next time? Now take your insights and learnings and apply them toward your go forward plan.
- What are you doing well that you’ll continue doing in 2017?
- What will you start doing in 2017?
- What will you stop doing in 2017?
The after action review process is a simple, yet insightful, coaching tool to help you coach yourself and others. In this fast paced world, it’s sometimes hard to slow down and take the time to focus on the important. If we don’t the urgent will always rule our lives. The challenge with the urgent is that most of the times the urgent is focused on other people’s goals and not our own. As a coach you can help others see this by utilizing this simple after action review approach.
Get Your Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Here
If you want to get ahead of the game and create your best year yet in 2017, download our Ultimate Goal Setting Guide now for free. This detailed, 6-step guide is the real deal regarding coaching. You’ll find reflection exercises that will challenge your current state and set you up for success the New Year.
Use it for yourself; pass it along to your co-workers; intentionally get clear on who you are, what you want and how you’ll be.
Wishing you and yours a very happy, peaceful and joyful holiday season.
Sal Silvester and the 5.12 Solutions Team.
Business Leadership Boulder, CO
5.12 Solutions offers customized coaching management and business training programs for organizations in Boulder, Denver, throughout Colorado, and across the nation. Learn more about our business Leadership Boulder coaching options.