Setting SMART Goals - Lesson 5

Well, welcome back. We're gonna bring this course to a close with a number of examples that I wanna share with you so that you can actually see the power of where we're going and what we're trying to accomplish. Because in this session, I'm going to cover a number of different areas.

First of all, I'm going to show you how to read a SMART plan for a team. And then I'm actually going to illustrate how to use SMART goals with an individual's job description so that they can plan out their day and their week and ensure that all of the key elements of their job description are covered appropriately with the appropriate amount of times. So as we go through this process, we are going to help you ingrain the thoughts, ideas, and principles of making this work for you.

And let me assure you of one thing. The more time you use it, the easier it's going to become and the greater it's going to be able to assist you to become more effective and more efficient and more productive at your role in whatever ministry or job that you're completing. First of all, I wanna give you a team exercise example of a business team, a team that's working together to identify prospects and develop that work that they are working on.

So in this group, we see that there is a very strong dominance level. There's a little bit above average influence and steadiness level, but the detail orientation is a bit lower than it should be. So behaviorally, we have something going on here.

We have a group of people that wants to control the process. So we're probably going to have some internal struggles with the group because they each want to be in control and oversee it. The thing is too, with the influence and steadiness, there's gonna be a little bit of a battle about communication and sticking to processes and avoiding change.

But the biggest problem exists with these people that want to control, they're not paying attention to the details. So why are they not paying attention to details? Let's look at their mindsets and you'll be able to see. First of all, the theoretical is a goose egg.

It's zero. In other words, these people are acting instinctively rather than following policies and procedures. And since this is a business development team, we can see why.

They just wanna go do something, they don't wanna have to overthink it. So that low theoretical tells me that there's gonna be a lot of impulsivity and that's actually validated by the high dominance level. We see the utilitarian slightly elevated with a plus one, but what that means is that impulsivity and that desire to control is probably not going to produce the kind of results they want.

Because you see, the utilitarian is low and therefore the return on investment is not as high as it should be. And why isn't it? Look at that minus two in the aesthetic. They're not paying attention to what's going on around them.

They're not picking up on the nuances with the clients and with the customers and the people that they're interacting with. Why aren't they? Look at that next, social plus three. In other words, they're communicating, they're interacting, but it's more conversation than actually dealing with the facts of the business.

And we see too that the individualistic is low, so they may be deferring to other people rather than staying on track with their job. Traditional zero, they're open to anybody and anything. So what do we have here when we look at this business team? We have a group of people that is very focused on getting things done the way they want, even though they're not very efficient at doing it because they're not paying attention to what's going on around them.

They're too busy talking and running their mouths. So with this particular team, there's going to need to be someone added in, especially a team leader that can add some structure and that can add direction and be able to do the research necessary to keep this business team on track. I hope you saw that in your study guide, and I hope that you're able to follow the process.

So let's look at our second exercise here in your study guide, and that's of a support staff. We see that this support staff literally has no dominance to speak of. They are good communicators, they're good in process, but the compliance is very low detailed.

Now, would that surprise you with a support staff? It probably should, because while these people may be good at continuing to come in to work every day, their influence is minus two, so therefore they tend to be a little bit skeptical, and they're not paying much attention to detail. So what you have is a loyal, faithful group, but someone that's always asking questions and probably not paying attention to the details. They show up, but how effective are they really? Well, let's find out by looking at their mindsets.

Here again, we see a zero traditional, which means that they are much more impulsive than they are following policies and procedures, which causes that utilitarian to, shall we say, be in the proverbial toilet. The aesthetic is a plus two, so they are highly influenced by people with a plus two social and plus two aesthetic and circumstances. So what you have is a distractible group with very low individualistic skills and low traditional.

So here we have people that are actually gonna show up, but overall, as a team, they're not very effective and efficient because they're busy interacting and being distracted and trying to hide it by not showing up in a way that's visible with their roles, and just about anybody or anything can distract them. This is a support staff that's gonna need some help from someone who has some dominance and that understands policies and procedures and will hold them accountable. Otherwise, this staff is going to be a big trouble.

So let's look at one more example of how a smart plan can literally order our steps in the day-to-day work that we're involved in. You can actually take a person's job description and develop a smart plan through it. And what we're going to do now is we're going to look at a job description and help you identify the steps that are necessary, and then we'll give you a real life example.

In our job description exercise, we're gonna do something somewhat simple, or it can be complicated as the job description itself. When we use a job description for your professional goals and objective, it's a little bit more complex than the other examples that we've provided for individuals and teams. But the point is, is that any personal or work-related objective can be placed into a smart format and help you manage the process by taking the pressure off of you of the minor details.

So when we break it down into biteable chunks, we'll be able to provide you with an example of how the progression works and how you can take each step. So let's look at a job description, for example. First step, what we want to do initially in developing a smart plan for a job description is address the role and responsibilities you want and need to accomplish.

Or how this impacts your personal life or desires in life. First, number one, identify what needs to happen. Make sure that you understand the concept or the reason behind why it needs to happen.

Otherwise, there won't be any motivation. Number two, take the time to clearly define what's important. Without that foundation, you'll be unable to differentiate between what is important versus what is urgent.

We will provide you with a downloadable format that will show you how to prioritize what's important. Again, if you don't understand what's important and relevant, there will be no motivation to do that. So let's go on to number three.

We have to use the critical job elements of your job description and define the key traits of your purpose and desires simply and succinctly. Now let me explain to you what a critical job element is. A critical job element is not just the tasks.

A critical job element is the process that you're involved with. For example, if you are a customer service or a person that calls on volunteers, then a critical job element would be interaction with the people that I must stay in contact on a day-to-day basis. The task, on the other hand, which most job descriptions include, would be answer the phone when it rings, respond to these particular types of situations, and make sure that your customer or your volunteer understands what needs to be done if they want to achieve what they want to achieve.

So don't mix up the critical job elements and the tasks. The problem is is that most job descriptions include tasks, but they don't include the critical job elements. And you'll see what I'm talking about in just a minute as we go through the example.

And number four, assign how much time. And that may be a guess initially, but how much time do you feel you will need to devote to making sure these things get done? So let's look at our example of step one. In your study guide, you'll see an example of a person who is a human capital specialist within an organization.

And you will notice that their critical job elements are five in number, and it specifies a certain amount of time. For example, one 20%, another 20%, 20, and then smaller amounts for each one. Once that critical job element is there, now you know how much time you need to apportion to each one.

And in doing so, that will allow you to take that measurable step to classify how much of your attention needs to be done. For example, 20% of a week is what? Eight hours under normal circumstances. So what you'll want to do is plug in those eight hours.

Now let's look at step two. Step two is we take those critical job elements and objectives and make them smart based on the explanations and directions in your workbook. Number one, take each critical job element and each subcategory and insert them into the SMART format.

And we'll look at that in just a second. Use plain language so that any superior or subordinate can understand the format and your role can be used as a training tool to assure anyone is ascribing to the exact same format. Now let's look at this.

As you see in your job description, your job has five critical job elements which are all listed on the left-hand side. Then what are the specifics that you need to do to accomplish that step two, the measurables? How are you actually able to illustrate that you did that, attainable? Where do you plug it in to your Outlook calendar or whatever Google calendar you might use? The next thing is how is it relevant? And then what will you accomplish over the next week, the next two weeks or the next month? So here you have what your critical job elements are, what are the tasks, the other part of that job description laid out, what you need to get done, when you're gonna do it, why it's important and what you should have accomplished at the end of the week. Now it's there, very simple to see.

So let's move on to step three because now we're gonna transfer that information into the attainable column of your SMART plan so that it's in your scheduler or Outlook calendar. Let's see what that might look like. Here's your calendar on a day-to-day basis and for each hour that you're at work, you understand what you're going to be doing.

Each day of the week and this is where you plug in if 20% of your time is dedicated to specific types of meetings, then you plug in the two hours that you need four days a week. You block out your time for lunch and then you plug in each and every aspect of the critical job elements into times that work. Now, will you have days when things get a little bit out of whack? You may very well, but the important thing is you have a schedule, you're ordered and here's the thing I love about this type of scheduling is you know when you can take a break, you know when you have free time.

If you look at the example in step three here in your workbook, you will see that there are three hours scheduled in every morning to plug in for those tasks that may not be on your schedule. But then during the other times you have those scheduled meetings that you know you have to go to, that you know you have to achieve and it becomes a rhythm and a routine and it brings balance to your life. Now, that first schedule that you create may not work perfectly for you but after you've modified it several weeks in a row, you're gonna develop the kind of rhythm that's going to help you succeed in everything that you do.

So let's do that wrap up on step four. Keep track of your progress so that you have a way to be held or hold yourself accountable. This is gonna be key to your success.

As we look at this, you take each of those five critical job elements and you tick off the boxes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or whatever days. If you're in ministry, you know Fridays and Saturdays are oftentimes offs because you're gonna be at church on Sundays. But when you take advantage of the schedule, you can put this into a spreadsheet so that at any single time you have a complete update that you can share with your superiors or with your subordinates so that they know when and how to get in touch with you and how to focus when you need them.

So what I've tried to illustrate in each of these cases is that smart needs to become a part of your life. Not so that you were tied to a schedule that dominates your life but so that you know when you have the freedom to rest so that you know when you have an opportunity to take a deep breath so that you know that you have open times that if something important, you know where to plug it in, how to plug it in and who you'll need to meet with. I hope that these job description smart areas are going to be of help to you.

And I'd love to hear your response. So are there any questions at this point? I'm thinking about pushing this into a pure ministry situation where schedules are so fluid and you can't often tell from day to day what's gonna happen. You know, your youth ministry and a kid gets strung out on drugs and all of a sudden your whole day's gone.

Also, the calendar requires a real degree of specificity it looks like. In this hour I'm gonna do this and next hour I'm gonna do that. Can you address, and I think you started to, but can you address a little more how this can be made a little more flexible or can you make it more flexible to work in a church situation? Certainly.

One of the things that may be part of your job description is answering emergency calls, being responsive to people that are in the hospital or being responsive to emergencies. And you may plug in what you deem as appropriate for that amount of time. Now here's the good thing is that you can plug in those open spaces during the times that you find are most often necessary.

And in many cases it's probably gonna be more in the afternoon than the evening. So you leave those and block those spaces off for just such opportunities and that. And then if there are no calls you can jump ahead to tomorrow's information that you're working on or need to be working on and you can plug that in so that you now have open time the next day.

Ministry is one of those things because people are involved, it's never gonna be set exactly. But the good thing is this, not every role in ministry requires that kind of flexibility. For the people that do though, we can build that time in and then if there's opportunities when that time does not need to be used in emergencies and other categories, we can catch up on the other things that are in the objectives.

Okay, thanks. The other question I had had to do with the critical job elements and then a lot of your illustrations were drawn from business. And I was trying to think if I'm gonna try to distinguish critical job elements from tasks, can you give us some examples like for a senior pastor or a youth pastor, but can you help us distinguish those two things, critical job elements and tasks? Absolutely, a critical job element for a youth pastor would be planning his activities for the next Sunday morning and Wednesday night youth group sessions.

And so that critical job element may actually require 25% of their time. So what he does or she does is they schedule the time for research and with a senior pastor, it's the same thing. I know many senior pastors that have 50% of their 40 hours a week blocked off to research and sermon writing.

So that is a critical job element. If they don't prepare their sermons, if they don't prepare their youth activities during the week, then they're caught, they're blindsided and they're problematic. So a critical job element is a role that needs to be performed without specific tasks.

Within that critical job element, you do have certain tasks that need to be performed. And maybe what a pastor does is, okay, he blocks off four mornings during the week. Monday is for research, Tuesday is for application research, Wednesday is for combining them and Thursday is for applying real life examples that the congregation will be able to respond to and understand.

Okay. So let's say the task in your job description for your new senior pastor, the task is preach 40 weeks a year. What is the critical job element? What would you actually put into the job description? A willingness to study and speak or... If I were sitting here and I was having to write a job description, I'm not sure what to put down that would correspond to the task of preaching or the task of teaching the youth.

Okay. So let's think about what does the senior pastor do? Well, yes, the senior pastor preaches, but the senior pastor always performs marriages, funerals and any number of other things that are required for that particular moment. So one particular job element would be preparation of sermons and execution.

Another would be family issues related to marriage and funerals. Another critical job element would be something along the line of working with staff, ensuring that the staff is healthy, et cetera. So each of those things can be blocked out, but what will happen is, as the senior pastor goes along, he's going to begin to get a very good indication of how much time he needs to spend in each area.

And I don't really expect the first job description with critical job elements to be perfect because it's gonna vary from week to week. But here's what will happen, is that after the first three or four weeks, there is going to be a much better idea of where he or she is spending their time and what needs to be done. And in doing that, it allows him or her to have the freedom to plan that time.

Maybe it's Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays and Tuesdays and Thursdays. They block out for funerals or weddings or whatever it might be. So it's a matter now of, yes, being a pastor has to be fluid, but it behooves a pastor to understand where his time is going because if he doesn't, then what's going to happen is he's having to become all things to all people all the time.

And he will quickly begin to understand where he needs help and what kind of help he needs.

As we bring this course to a conclusion, I want you to think about one thing, and that is the fact that you have the ability to work through a process that will help you become more effective and efficient. And the more effective and efficient you become, the less stress. Because I can tell you, after 37, 38 years in ministry, this is a tough job.

It's a stressful job. And it's one that many people in the world won't accept. But the better handle you have on your time, on your resources, and your schedule, the more effective you are going to be at what you need to do.

Some pastors need more time for research. Some pastors enjoy just working off of experience. You're going to be different.

You're going to be unique. But the important thing is to remember what we told you when we started this session. And that was the fact that don't listen to other people.

Pray about it. This is your plan. This is your structure.

And only you can provide the freedom to rest, rather than allowing the stress to put you in a position to where you do not have the joy that God expects you to have in ministering to His people.