Leadership is a process of helping a group define and understand its goals and of helping a group reach the goals it has defined. New Year’s resolutions are also goals, and they don’t mean much unless we share them with other people. So the way we make or break our New Year’s resolutions should tell us something about the way we lead and follow. Some people never bother to make New Year’s resolutions at all – which may mean that they think they have no flaws or that they are afraid to commit themselves to goals they can’t achieve or that they don’t believe in setting goals at all. Some people make grandiose resolutions every year and then forget all about them by Groundhog Day, demonstrating the demoralizing power of unrealistic goals or their own lack of personal resolve.
Those who both make and keep their resolutions tend to demonstrate the first rule of goal-setting: namely that goals should be within reach but not so easy to reach that they fail to inspire. At any rate, whatever goals we set for ourselves and our organizations reveal our concerns and our priorities, and the more publicly we express them the more likely we are to hold ourselves accountable for them.
One of the nice things about setting goals at the turn of the new year is that we all get to do it together. We all get to share in that rejuvenating sense of starting over. We may spend a little time each New Year’s Eve trying to remember what we resolved last year and figuring out whether we succeeded or not. But even if we didn’t, we get to try again.
So give yourself a break as the old year gives way to the infant new year. Give yourself something to shoot for, but don’t set your goals out of reach. And whatever you resolve, have a Happy New Year from Leading Together.
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