“Without proper self-evaluation, failure is inevitable.” John Wooden
This quote from the legendary UCLA coach, John Wooden, applies to more than just a basketball game. To different extents, we all have personal and/or professional goals. Perhaps we want to switch industries or get a promotion. Maybe you want to write a book, move to another country, run a marathon, or learn a foreign language. Whatever your goal may be, a key to achieving it is assessing where you are now and steps that are needed to get to where you want to be.
In my previous article, Why a Personal Board of Advisors Can Help You Succeed, I introduced the concept of a Personal Board of Advisors and how this can be used as a tool to achieve personal and professional success. I also introduced what I call the Advisor Framework which is the three-step framework that I used to build and maintain a Personal Board of Advisors. There are three steps to the Advisor Framework: Assess, Assemble and Act. This article explores the first step which is Assessment.
In the Assessment step, the objective is to evaluate your personal and professional trajectory to identify and clarify any areas where improvements or support are needed. This step is rooted in a desire to change something about our lives. Not because something is wrong, but because we can see a vision of something we want to move towards. We start to envision what the future could look like and identify areas we want to improve or change instead of allowing complacency, insecurity, confidence or anything else to root us in the status quo.
There are different formats of Assessment depending on your unique disposition and the way you process information. You may be someone who processes by journaling and quiet self-reflection. Or, you may find physical activity helps you to process your thoughts.
Regardless of your preferred method of evaluation, identifying and clarifying your goals will help you to build a Personal Board of Advisors that have the right skills, experience and expertise to help you succeed personally and professionally.
Equally important to having clear goals is understanding why that goal is meaningful to you. Investing time to uncover why a goal is important to us can be a rewarding and insightful exercise, because our “why” becomes a framework for how we think, act and communicate. It also helps us to build our own definition of success. There are so many conscious and subconscious external pressures and examples of what success looks like and no shortage of how others define it. But, when can begin to separate ourselves from those external pressures and focus on understanding our own “why” we are free to determine what success means to us.
Our “why” becomes a framework for how we think, act and communicate and define success.
Answering questions like, “Why is this goal important to me?” and “[How would my life be different if this goal was achieved?” help to get you on the path of creating a vision of what the future could look like. These answers will also help fuel us when we face adversity or when we inevitably hit a rough patch.
Have grace with yourself here, this is a tough step. Honest self-evaluation can be a challenge even for the most confident of personalities. But, being able to take an Assessment of where we are in life and get clear about what we want to change is a key way to move forward and make those hopes and dreams reality. This is also the foundation to identify potential Advisors that have the skills, experience, and expertise in these areas.
While Assessment kicks off the Advisor Framework, it’s it is extremely beneficial to develop an ongoing practice of self-evaluation. Think of this as a habit to develop versus a box to check off before moving to the next step. Circumstances in life change. So, developing a mindset of self-evaluation can prepare us to navigate inventible changes in our lives and take ownership over what we want to achieve. By continually evaluating your personal and professional circumstances, you’ll stay tuned into your own needs and more likely to find the right Advisors that can help you.
Once a comfortable level of Assessment is reached and you can clearly articulate the goal you’re trying to achieve and the “why” behind it, the next step is to work on Assembling your Board.
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