Understanding How to View Success
Understanding How to View Success
When we work on setting goals, understanding how to view success is a key component in the process. Please read tonight’s blog from Ron to learn more about this critical process, and all of the viewpoints that go into it.
Most of you are by now aware of our goal of helping each employee identify their potential and then put them on a path to achieving it. The keyword there is “goal.” Each person needs to establish goals in their lives. It starts from a young age in how we are treated by our parents and grandparents. They teach us right from wrong and good from bad. In this manner, we start on a developmental path of understanding what we should do. It is our first experience with goals. Be a good person. As Colin Powell is known to say “don’t do anything that will embarrass your parents.” Then we have a transition from family life as a very young person to our school phase.
We go to school and we are taught to read and write and perform arithmetic calculations. That puts us on a path of learning that is aiming at helping us develop our intellect. That is the goal. We also start to experience socialization with a peer group, first our classmates and then our friends, another series of goals in getting along with others. In some cases, we get involved in music or sports and then learn how to get along with others in different backgrounds, again more goals. We have the family, the school, the peer groups, the sports teams and clubs, music and other groups all helping us grow into a complete person. All goals.
And then we have to make a choice at the end of High School or in some cases before, about what we are going to do next. This is, for many, the beginning of making our own decisions and establishing our own goals. This is the next transition from basic learning to specialized learning. To become able to provide ourselves with sufficient knowledge or expertise to be able to look after our own needs. Another transition. A more serious one.
We then go on to Junior College, or a Trade or Vocational School, or a University. We choose the classes we are going to take with a goal in mind. Sometimes that goal is a particular job. Sometimes it is simply getting more knowledge and then deciding what to do with that knowledge. But we are establishing our own goals.
Then comes the next step, another major transition. Getting a job. Finding a career. Becoming independent financially. This is a more difficult transition. Most people do not know what they want to do for a living. Some are very fortunate. They know they want to be a doctor or a teacher or a mechanic. But most people don’t have a clue.
How are we supposed to get the right answers if we don’t know what we are trying to do? We need to establish goals. We need to do a sort of audit on what we like and what we don’t like. What we are good at and what we struggle with. What kind of people we like to be around and which people cause us to want to be somewhere else?
I didn’t have a clue of what I wanted to do. Like most of us, I had been working in part-time jobs. I taught swimming and tennis at a country club. I sold things, encyclopedias. I did telemarketing, selling newspaper subscriptions. I played piano in a bar and organ in churches. I taught education at a University. I wanted to work in data processing but in those years, it was nearly impossible to find work in that field. So, I struggled. I am sure that I was not and am not alone in that fact. I think that most of us struggle to try to find our place in the world, in society.
Let me start by saying that I believe that we all want to be a success. But that is the challenge. What does that mean? Who teaches us or guides us on that path? Is success wealth? Or Status? Or Fame? I submit to you it is none of those things. I would like to say that it is simply being able to lead a healthy and productive and happy life. But what is that and who helps us to understand how to obtain it?
Education has changed today. The choices that a person has in classes are mind-boggling. Ed Gordon, a respected voice in education in America, in a recent newsletter stated “Many parents also believe that their local school is providing a good education to their children. Regretfully this is often not the case. Education levels have not kept pace with skill demands in workplaces.”
We, at Learning Without Scars, are strong advocates of the use of an annual performance review with each employee. This is an opportunity for each team leader to have a productive discussion with each employee and help them understand what they can do to become better as an employee. What they can focus on to be capable of another opportunity in the Company. How the team leader is there to help them. Goals can be established and then the path to success becomes clearer. Wouldn’t we all want that, for ourselves? Someone to help us establish the goals that would help us have a successful life. Don’t you think that would be helpful?
The Time is Now.