Recently, I was invited to an event to share my thoughts on Enhancing Personal Effectiveness. Employing tips for achieving personal effectiveness is pivotal to growth in all spheres of life: from interpersonal relationships to business, career, spiritual growth or physical wellbeing, and the advent of the COVID-19 global pandemic and the subsequent lockdown has made mastering these skills more important than ever.
Understanding one’s vision, purpose and goals, adjusting attitudes and beliefs, prioritizing winning relationships, mastering time management, and leveraging technology are essential for growth and personal development. They are worth exploring in greater depth:
Vision, Purpose and Goals: Steering yourself in the direction of success
“If you don’t know where you want to go, then it doesn’t matter which path you take.” — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
The first step towards personal effectiveness is understanding what you’re trying to achieve and why it is important to you. Creating clarity around your vision, understanding your purpose, and developing realistic, achievable goals are all part of a personal process that must align with your core values. They cannot be based on societal expectations or comparisons if you truly plan to succeed.
The concepts are different yet interrelated: Your vision is a clear image of how you see your future. It should therefore be aligned with your deepest values and priorities. Purpose is why you do what you do; the driving fuel required for achieving goals and thereby fulfilling your vision. Your purpose lies at the intersection of three factors: your passion, your current skills and strengths, and change you are looking to effect in your world. Finally, the goal is a vision broken down into actionable items. They are specific targets, driven by purpose, that move you towards your vision. Goals can be set for feelings, results, skills, knowledge, income, physical wellbeing or mental training.
Attitude
Attitude can be a defining difference between success and failure. The old cliché of “your attitude determines your altitude” remains true. Two attitudes that will take you far are: an Attitude of Gratitude and a Can-Do attitude.
The current climate following the lockdown is very sombre. We may feel inconvenienced with a restriction of mobility, with many suffering financial losses and a general disruption of life and plans. However, in most situations, there is always something to be grateful for. Many of us have our health, families, loved ones, and a reason to hope. An attitude of gratitude is crucial as it opens you up to see all the blessings and gifts around us. It is also critical for turning around aspects of your life that might not be working the way you want them; helping you to tackle them from a more empowered perspective.
A can-do attitude opens you to immense opportunity to ACT. Once you are operating from a position of gratitude, you can then go on to be productive in almost any circumstance: writing that business plan, learning a new skill, reinventing your business, or simply catching up on things you’ve been meaning to. Rather than harbouring the victim mentality, an attitude of gratitude and a can-do attitude can fuel you to leverage your today to create a better tomorrow.
Beliefs
Somewhat related to attitude, beliefs are how we see the world, our paradigms. It is the inner voice that has either become very skilled at beating us up and reminding us of our shortcomings, known as limiting beliefs, or the empowering beliefs that lift us up and energize us.
Henry Ford said, “The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.” We must be deliberate about training our thoughts; pausing the limiting beliefs and fostering empowering beliefs.
Time Management
Time is the currency of life. It is spent and cannot be recovered. Time passes with every second, our lives with it. We all have the same 24 hours a day. Controlling what we do in that time, successfully managing our priorities will help us achieve our goals and fulfil our visions. Without a vision, it is difficult to allocate time effectively to meet aligned goals. It is for this reason that many people are without an anchor at the slightest change of pace or circumstances, struggling to fully harness their time to be successful.
Time management requires us to be intentional about our day in order to maximise its potential. There are tools that can help in managing time effectively, however, and they can be used in any situation:
- Create master lists, make specific goals to tick off.
- Identify the time of the day when you are most productive and make the most of it. If you are a morning person, utilise your mornings before you start to tire.
- Leverage technology — you can set reminders for important events, hold meetings in traffic, listen to audiobooks while driving, leverage existing online templates and howto guides to give you a headstart, and so much more with devices and apps.
- Leverage people — no man is an island. It is more productive to outsource tasks or to learn from those who already have the skills, than spend hours starting from scratch.
Leveraging Technology
Technology can help us all achieve our goals quicker. Today, we live in a digital world, bridging the gap even during this era of social distancing. Technology is powerful. It transforms lives and businesses. Every day, I see first-hand the empowerment and transformation that is possible with technology. Globally, people are creating new opportunities for themselves, learning completely new trades, accessing the world’s information, and taking their businesses beyond borders with the use of digital technology tools.
With the power of technology, we can:
- Develop ourselves
- Repurpose, realign, or pivot our businesses
- Demonstrate situational leadership
This period will mark a defining moment in our lives and in our history. We can take advantage of this lull in our daily busyness and realign ourselves with our vision, adapt to the new normal, and ensure that we position ourselves for success.
About Juliet
Juliet Ehimuan is Country Director at Google leading Google’s business strategy in W/Africa and Next Billion Users initiative in Africa. Named Forbes top 20 power women in Africa, featured in the London Business School Review as one of 30 people changing the world, and also featured in BBC Africa Power Women series; Juliet is a thought leader on digital business strategy and leadership. She is the Founder of Beyond Limits Africa, a leadership and organizational capacity building initiative. Juliet was also featured as a Guardian Woman and is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council.
