How to Overcome the 88% fail rate of achieving your New Year’s resolutions for your team to have an even better year and conquer more, together.”While over half of individuals surveyed who made New Year’s resolutions were confident of success, in reality only around 12% actually achieved their goal.”
Improve communication
Essential communication skills for leaders: Be willing to adapt your style of communication, become an active listener, be transparent, ask open-ended questions, communicate with empathy, use open body language, give and receive feedback, and learn from the examples given below.
Discuss issues that hinder performance
Companies can make the same mistake as individuals
- When a company begins, there are ways of doing things that are established. As the company grows, these processes improve.
- It is important to recognize when a process is no longer benefiting the company.
Foster better teamwork
Try implementing ice-breaker questions, company social events, and coffee chats
- Example questions: What are your hobbies outside of work? What is your favorite genre of music?
- Do you like to travel? Where have you traveled to?
- If you could meet any historical figure, who would you meet?
Keep asking why
Ask yourself why you set these resolutions. This will help you remember the drive and determination that you had when you first started the New Year resolution, and will help motivate you to achieve the goals that you set forth on January 1st, 2019.
Use Fellow to Keep Track of Progress
Instead of constantly wondering how much work you need to do to achieve your resolution, use Fellow to keep track of your progress.
- When you can visually see the progress that you are making, it is easier to stay determined and feel a sense of accomplishment.
Create a more psychologically safe environment
Psychological safety is a capacity to feel safe to express your boundaries, trust others to recognize your legitimate concerns, speak up about your fears, issues and what needs to change – all without the risk of being shamed, undermined, or penalized.
Ask and give feedback
To avoid repeating mistakes and learning to grow it is important to ask your coworkers and managers for constructive feedback.
- Vocally voice your opinion when you want your team and company to grow, voicing your opinion will go a long way if you want to grow.
Be reliable and foster trust
If your team can rely on you to get things done, they will trust you more
- Being a reliable employee will also benefit you because when big projects emerge that you want to work on, your manager is more likely to assign it to someone they can trust
How are New Year’s resolutions different from goals?
Goals are goals with a concrete date or number that is meant to be hit, while resolutions are more of a concept that your team wants to work towards
- A great way to keep your goals and resolutions separate is through Fellow
- Managers can create a shared stream where team members can add resolutions to a checklist and check them off as the year progresses
Don’t Prioritize Work Over Your Well-being
Remind yourself that your well-being is most important
- Use the parking lot method to prioritize
- This involves prioritizing important work while putting less important work in the “parking lot” and focusing on other things when your load is less heavy
Parting advice
12% is a small number. While it is important to try to hit this goal, as long as you learned from it and grew, you still won!
- If you didn’t accomplish as much as you wanted to this year, learn what went wrong to help you achieve your resolutions the following year.
Create (and celebrate) milestones
Every 3 months reflect on how you have been working towards your resolutions and celebrate that 3-month milestone.
- This can serve as a reminder to work harder towards achieving your resolutions. You can also use this to set yourself up for success in the future.
Make your resolutions public
Sharing your resolutions with your team will help foster teamwork
- This will help you stay in the 12% of people who follow through with their resolutions because when you get busy and forget about them, your team can pick up the slack until you are ready to prioritize them again.
Know when to say no
6 ways to say “no” when your bandwidth is stretched to its max
- Assess the request
- Know your priorities
- Be straightforward and authentic
- Bring up an alternative solution
- Build trust with your bosses and colleagues
- Practice before the conversation
- Remember, when you say no, you are saying no to only one option. No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility
Forget the blame game
Blaming yourself only puts more pressure on yourself and deters you
Make it official
Make your resolutions official – write them down, create a plan to achieve them, tell your team about them, etc.
- Reflecting on your progress or setting aside time each week to work on your resolutions will keep you on track and make you accountable.
Set (realistic) expectations and don’t overcommit
Only take on what you can handle
- Each person’s bandwidth is different, and you need to understand which resolutions are realistic for you to achieve before overcommitting yourself
- Overcommitting to resolutions or committing to unrealistic resolutions will result in more stress
Don’t be afraid of change
A little bit of discomfort goes a long way in terms of personal development. Sure, no one likes feeling uncomfortable, but it’s a big part of improving your performance, creativity, and learning in the long run.”
- Sujan Patel, Forbes Contributor
