In our last issue I introduced the benefits of creating alignment and how uncovering and defining your values is a strong first step towards alignment. Values are an essential tool to creating alignment, but they’re not the only one.
Once you define your values, you have 4 additional tools to support alignment – setting goals, identifying strengths, assessing resources, and finding opportunities for development.
These tools helps you achieve. Using these tools with knowledge of your values – what’s foundationally important to you – creates alignment and propels progress.
Let’s unpack an alignment toolbox.
-Set Goals (and Make Them SMART):
Clients come to me because they recognize that they want (or need) to make a change. Those desired changes tie into goals.
I work with my clients to make those goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timebound). We set SMART goals for a reason – they create defined, achieveable goals that help you stay accountable, move closer to success, and see progress as you do so. SMART goals that support values, instead of ignoring them or working against them, can create a clearer path forward.
-Identify Strengths and How to Use Them:
Once you set a goal the next tool comes into play – assessing your strengths that can help you achieve it.
Let’s define strengths as internal traits, skills or experiences that you can draw on. For example, resilience, great communication skills, charisma, being perceptive, persistence, expertise, and welcoming learning opportunities can all be strengths. Once you identify strengths, you can decide how and when to access them.
-Assess Available Resources:
Resources are external aspects that support you in reaching goals. Examples of resources may include strong networks, supportive family and partners, access to child or elder care, access to educational opportunities, and mentors (or coaches). Assessing resources and brainstorming how to use them also helps move towards success.
-Find Opportunities For Development:
Identifying where growth is needed is as important as identifying your strengths and resources. It may seem that by identifying what you think is missing, you’re emphasizing an obstacle. However, once you see gaps, taking action and planning how to address them reveals clear action steps to goal attainment. That builds movement, not obstacles.
-Combine Your Tools:
Combining tools creates the strongest impact. Using values as a foundation reduces friction, impels momentum and provides a standard to judge against.
How To Get Started:
- Start with a goal: Let’s say you’re at a point in your career where you need to book more business, perhaps as you move towards partnership. Your values include family, community, professional achievement, respect and financial security. You’ve decided that you need to network more actively. Let’s make it SMART – you decide over the next month you will look into networking options by checking into your firm’s opportunities, networking groups, and professional organizations, and that in the next 3 months you want to add 2 new regular networking practices.
- Take stock of your strengths: Are you comfortable with talking to new people? Would you rather make a name for yourself with writing or speaking opportunities? What makes you valuable to your clients? What kind of interactions (group, individual, formal, informal…) are you most comfortable with?
- Assess your resources: What organizations do you already belong to that could help? Who contacts do you already have that you can speak with? Does your organization offer any speaking engagement opportunities or mentoring to support you? Do you have previous or existing clients whose business you can expand? Are there other department that could support your expansion?
- Find development opportunities: Not sure where you bring the most value to clients?You can create a plan to speak to clients or other attorneys to find out.
- Combine with your values: Remember the values of family and community? How could they be impacted by your decisions? How can they support your decisions? Perhaps community groups you already belong to can support growing your business. You may have to factor in family goals and responsibilities in crafting ways to develop. That could help you decide between, for example, attending multi-day conferences or joining a lunchtime networking group.
Takeaways
- Values identification is a crucial first step towards alignment, but values aren’t the only tool used to create alignment.
- Goals: Creating goals (SMART ones) that support your values as well as specific needs and wants promotes focus, forward movement, and progress towards alignment.
- Strengths: Evaluating your strengths gives you a strong launch pad to make changes and align.
- Resources: Understanding the resources you currently have allows you to make fuller use of them.
- Growth: Understanding the strengths and resources you need to develop provides an starting point to build from. Using your values as a foundation for that development helps you align your growth around what’s important to you as you achieve your goals.
- These tools support each other to create an aligned life.
Have you identified other tools that can help build alignment? Let me know – I would love to include them in the toolbox!