In my last blog post I mentioned a recent coaching assignment in Seattle. I mentioned the miserable weather and the great people. I want to use this post to reflect on one of the sessions I conducted.
I was assigned the ‘blue’ and the ‘yellow’ groups. These were names given to two of the top speed groups in the camp and made up about 25 paddlers ranging in age from 14-18. They were from various club training environments and many did not know each other well. My task was to lead a goal setting session. I dont know about you but when I think about goal setting the SMART goals check list comes to mind. SMART always helps to focus the discussion of goals.
- Specific – Clearly defined that lead you to the destination or outcome. They need to be workable, functional so you are able to follow them.
- Measurable – It is fine to say you want to be better but what is better, how do you know when you are better, are you ‘better’ enough to say you have reached your goal? Goals must be measurable
- Attainable – A goal can be easy to achieve or difficult. It can be something you know you can accomplish or something you believe you may be able to accomplish. Stretching your limits is different from the impossible. Improbable is cool, there is a chance. Impossible is not.
- Relavent – Goals should help you achieve your task, mission or dream. Setting goals that do not do this does not move you forward. There must be some strategic thinking here. A goal is a tool you use.
- Time bound – Time is part of the planning process and we must know when we plan to achieve our goal. We must know when to celebrate. In the case of milestone or sub-goals we must also make goal part of the plan to evaluate and assess our actions. Is what we are doing moving us in the right direction to achieve the result we want. If yes, cool… we can stay on the current plan. If not we can modify our strategy and move forward again. Time provides check points along the way and anchors the final destination making it much more likely we will be successful.
There I was, in a small room holding my hot chocolate to stay warm and with a group of teenage faces staring up. I could only imagine the wide variety of personal goals in this group. How was I to deal with SMART here. Add to this, days of training and fatigue were setting in so they had shortening attention spans. I would need to keep them engaged and active if I was going to hold their attention. This could not be a lecture! To be honest, I had no plan!
So… What do these people care about? What is a common goal we could discuss? I made a bold decision. There would be no talk of SMART goals in this session. No talk of short term, medium term, long term or even dream goals. We would need to talk about what they care about most, whatever that was. What do they value, what do they admire and who? For a group of sprint canoe and kayak athletes I could imagine some general directions they all would agree but I thought we needed to start not at paddlers but as a group of athletes, a group of people.
Not knowing exactly how it would turn out and where the group would lead me I began: “OK, quickly we don’t have much time today, there are some exciting things you need to teach me”, “remember the number I give you.. 1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,……”. I quickly assigned working groups and we started. I was ready at the white board and coach Mia was there to help me as well.
STEP 1: Along the top of the board I wrote: TEAM, ATHLETE and ADMIRE. “OK gang, I am going to send you out of the room and you will have 5 min then come back. We need to know what qualities you value in your team or in any ‘great’ team you can think of. You need to do the same for a ‘great’ athlete you know or know of. Lastly you need to list the qualities you admire in others.
I have a belief that I don’t think anyone would think too far fetched. It is hard to talk about ourselves but we all seem to find it easy to talk about others. Generally the things we value or admire in others are qualities we would like to have ourself. This was not to be a individualized goal session this was to be the start of a conversation around what ‘we’ want to be, what we want to develop into and what we value as a community and as a team. This was workable, this had a chance of success, was relevant and I had 60min to get it all done. OK, so my goal was SMART but the goals discussion format and outcome may not be. To be honest and with their feedback leading the discussion, I didn’t know where it was going. What I did know is that it was going to be a fun conversation. It was going to be their conversation.
Here are the results of Step 1. The blue is what we first came back with.
Looking at the list I was pretty impressed, maybe even inspired. I view this kind of thing as a snapshot of the kind of community and qualities this group of athletes value and wanted to be a part of. This is the list of qualities that could be used to give some direction to a set of value statements for the group. It could be a guiding document or filter which individualized and team performance goals must be in alignment to.
It is hard to say how everyone else saw this but I can tell you how I see it and how it relates to my personal coaching philosophy. My mental model of how I see participation in sports and life…. People want to be able to be proud of the kind of people they are and not only what they achieve but the kind of things they strive to achieve. This list, put together very quickly, gave me a good idea of what we could all agree on as the type of people and team we wanted to be.
Step 2: This would have been enough but we we had 15min to go. From step one we now had an idea of who we wanted to be. Now we wanted to know what kind of paddler we wanted to be. Up to this point I had emphasized the word ‘great’. Great team, great paddler…. So we already had a sense in the room that we were striving for greatness. Striving for greatness as paddlers is certainly a goal but it is not very specific. Each of these young men and women and even coaches or parents in the room with us may have had different ideas of what greatness is, so I chose to give it a bit of direction. I asked what are the physical or performance qualities/elements we can measure that contribute to great performances or great results?
I think this question leads us back to what is more likely talked about and focused on in the regular training environment. These are items the paddler could target to enhance and better their performance. The caveat was that whatever they put on the board had to be measurable. “Same groups as last time, five minutes go!”.
The red print on the board in the image below is what Step 2 created. I must say, it did take some work to keep the answers as measurable and specific but with some quick group discussion they tweaked the answers and here they are. The physical and performance qualities they thought were important.
- ABC + ROM – agility, balance, coordination + functional range of motion
- Skill – Technical and in-boat coordination
- Strength – General and specific
- Power – General and specific
- Endurance – General and specific
- Speed – General and specific
I did not know what was going to happen. This was a coach guided session but it was athlete driven. What is on the board came from questions designed to pull out a description of the kind of people and environment these athletes value. On top of this the group was able to list key elements that they believed were important to be successful from a performance standpoint.
Did any individual come away from this session with personalized SMART goals. No. Yet, that was not the point. What did happen was 60min of active and engaged conversation on what they value and what factors they will need to consider when creating their goals. Did everyone in the room leave with a strong sense of the direction and the kind of people we wish to be. You betcha!!
Did I have fun. Definitely! Watching these kids come to life and express themselves was great. When the athletes lead you it is fantastic. For me… Success was not directly measurable but still, It was obvious. I had achieved my goal, to facilitate a session that would help atheltes develop their own SMART and personalized goals moving forward.
BTW.. I was not the only one taking pictures of the white board at the end of the session. In noticed parents, coaches and paddlers lined up for a pic too.
2 responses to “Goals – Not so SMART”