Soft Skills for the Professional Services Industry

CHAPTER 8Setting Goals

A CENTRAL TASK OF EFFECTIVE self‐management and external management is goal clarity. Goal clarity is an essential prerequisite for a successful professional and personal life. In this regard, most people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in the medium term, for example in five years. This applies to both professional and private life.

NOTE

Today, most passenger cars have a navigation system. Google Maps is installed on every smartphone. Therefore, most people today take it for granted that in order to get to a destination, they enter the exact address into the navigation system or Google Maps. If you don't know exactly where you're going, you won't get there. If a ship or airplane changes course only minimally, it will arrive at a completely different place depending on the length of the route. These findings may seem trivial at first glance. However, they can be directly applied to your professional and private life.

The principle of focus goes hand in hand with concentration on a few things. This applies equally to setting goals. The principle applies: less is more. We almost always take on too much and too many different things. This applies equally in professional and private life and leads to stress as a result. Effective professionals therefore ask themselves the following questions repeatedly:

• Does it really matter?
• What happens if I/we don't do this?

The tool “setting goals” is a soft ...