Debbie is a sales assistant for a mobile phone company. She is set rigorous targets each month and her income is both salary and commission based.
Each month Debbie misses her targets by a small percentage, reducing the amount of commission she receives, and every month when her boss, Daniel, gets
her into his office to ask her what she could do differently to hit that target, she makes the same comment: ‘Don’t blame me, I’m doing my best – I didn’t set the targets.’
What impact can this a�itude have on Debbie’s behaviour? Let’s imagine what she might feel, think and do; see Figure 8.1.
Figure 8.1 Debbie and her targets
Sometimes we are in charge of our own goals and our own targets, but there are also many times when we work to company goals and organizational and team targets. If we believe we have no personal power over those ‘external’ goals, we may find it harder to work towards them, and our behaviour will reflect the lack of power and control that we may feel.
So what’s the answer? Let’s look at Debbie’s situation again, and see how her line manager could ask coaching questions to help her:
Debbie: Don’t blame me, I’m doing my best – I didn’t set the targets! Dan: I know you’ve worked hard this month Debbie. What’s helped you
get to the figures you’ve achieved?
Debbie: Well, I guess I was just lucky with some of the customers who came in, but it’s so frustrating. Every month it’s just out of my reach; it’s always the same.
Think:
They don’t think I can do this
I’m hopeless I can’t do this job I want to leave They don’t care I’ll show them
Feel: Frustrated Demotivated Angry Disappointed Failure Confrontational Do: Become defensive Become aggressive Work harder Work less Leave
Debbie
Dan: What targets would you set yourself then, Debbie, if you could? Debbie: That’s da�, because I can’t set my own targets, that’s not how it
works here! Dan: But if you could?
Debbie: Well, I suppose I’d set them just a li�le bit lower, then they’d be achievable.
Dan: What else could you do?
Debbie: Well, I suppose I could tell myself I’ll go the extra mile one month and see if I can achieve them.
Dan: What would it be like to reach those targets next month?
Debbie: It’d be fantastic! I’d feel like I’d actually achieved something. It’d be great to be able to show them I can do it!
Dan: What would be fantastic about it? What would you get from achiev- ing them?
Debbie: I’d feel successful, I’d know I’d done a good job, and I’d feel I’d contributed to the store’s success.
Dan: So what might you do differently next month, to help you achieve your target and contribute to all our success?
Debbie: Could we do something in store for our customers? Something to get more people in here? I’m sure I could li� my sales if that happened.
Dan: How about you put some ideas together and we can all talk them through?
What’s the impact on Debbie’s sense of personal power? How has Dan helped her see there’s a different way of approaching her targets? We’ll look in more detail at how values impact on the goal-se�ing process, and how if we play to our strengths we can influence the levels of success we achieve. If our goal-directedness scale (how clear we are on our goals, and how much our a�itudes, beliefs and actions support us by moving us towards these goals) is high, we’re going to be more able to set goals that are aligned to our values because we understand how important that is to us, and we know how to get there. Our behaviour will support the goal and we’re more likely to do something every day to move us towards it. In Debbie’s case, high goal directedness would undoubtedly have helped her focus on reaching her targets and finding ways of doing it, because they would have been in her plans each day.
Flexibility (how free you feel to adapt your thoughts, a�itudes and be- haviour in times of change) can work with or against successful goal se�ing. Being high in flexibility can mean that we could swing with the wind and lose focus. If our self-awareness is good and if we are aware of the impact of the loss of focus, and that we can play to our strengths, then flexibility can help us see different ways to get to our goals. We are prepared to try
something different and get to the destination via a different route. Debbie may have come up with some ideas about customer engagement, she may have realized earlier in the month that her figures were low, and changed her sales strategy earlier.
Our levels on the self-management scale of emotional resilience (how well you bounce back when things go wrong) contribute to the way we get over the perceived lack of success in reaching our goals. How do you bounce back when things don’t go your way? Working with her emotional resilience and personal power, Debbie could have seen how she could use her strengths to do something differently.
If you set off on holiday in a motorhome, looking forward to the free- dom and spontaneity that being in charge of your own accommodation and location brings, and then the camper van breaks down, how would you deal with it? The emotionally unintelligent holidaymakers may throw the towel in, get the breakdown van to take the motorhome back home and spend the rest of the holiday back at home fuming and sulking, complaining about the unreliability of the motorhome and missing out on the holiday. The emotionally intelligent holidaymakers, however, may engage their personal power and realize that they still have a say in what happens next. Their flexibility would let them see that there could be something to be gained from the situation anyway. They could have the motorhome towed to the campsite (saving fuel) and then get it repaired on site, or even replace it with a newer model for the journey home. Their resilience would help them see the positive side and think of an ingenious solution to the ‘problem’.