It’s that time of year again—when some of us ponder our new year’s resolutions, determined that this time we will PT more, read more, spend more quality time with our families, and never eat fast food again. And, depending on our level of discipline, some of us may stick with those resolutions for days or even weeks. Few of us, though, manage to adhere to them for an entire journey around the sun. Maybe, just maybe, you’re reading this laughing because you’ve already broken one of your 2020 resolutions. If so, no worries. It’s time to start over again and ensure you meet one goal by resolving to finish reading this short article.

Recently, Field Grade Leader held a timely series of Facebook and online book club sessions to discuss a book that promises to help us actually stick to our resolutions: Michael Hyatt’s Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals. Hyatt offers many reasons why we fail to meet our goals. First, our goals are too vague. Saying you are going to run 20 miles a week leaves too many loopholes for not running 20 miles. A better goal should explain how you will meet your goal, such as “Run at 0500 every weekday for 45 minutes.” Goals are also easier to achieve when one considers the motivations behind them, which helps you sustain them. It is also helpful to figure out triggers that help you avoid stumbling blocks. It’s easier to go running at 5 am if you’ve already set out everything you’ll need.

But you might fail at your goals, and that’s okay. Hyatt actually encourages us to embrace regret rather than trying to put failures firmly in the past because our past failures provide us with wisdom as to how we can improve. At that point it is important to figure out why you failed—was it because you were not specific enough about how to accomplish your goal? Because you did not identify obstacles in your way and figure out how to circumvent them? Or did you just set a goal you truly weren’t motivated to meet? If so, there is nothing wrong with going back to the drawing board.

Goal setting also should be a process that occurs throughout the year. In fact, you’d be better off if you spent a bit of time one day per week preparing for the week ahead and 5-15 minutes each day planning for your day at the beginning and assessing where you’ve been at the end. An easy way to do this is to use a daily planner geared toward goals, whether it is Hyatt’s or another. You can also use Hyatt’s template with Evernote.

Building in accountability also helps us meet our goals. So does the right mindset, which is where you can help as leaders. The main thing that gets in the way of us achieving our own goals is attitude and the beliefs we hold about ourselves, each other, and the world. Hyatt suggests moving beyond a “scarcity” mindset to one of “abundance.” People with scarcity mindsets tend to see a kind of zero-sum world and thus have more pessimism about the future. People with abundant mindsets, by contrast, tend to be more optimistic, open, and selfless. It is that positivity that is critical to meeting your goals, which should stretch you and entail some risk of failure.

As a leader, you can help others around you to reframe their negative beliefs (example: I’ll never pass the ACFT!) into something far more positive like, “I’ve overcome some major adversity in the last year, and I know I can do I again with the ACFT.”

It also can be as simple as taking a moment to be grateful. Gratitude will help reorient your mindset (again, the recommended planners have a spot that let you do that to make it easier than it sounds) because it can “amplify everything good in our lives.” Start off your day when you walk into work by telling someone why you appreciate them. It will do more to energize you and the recipient than coffee, and it will set a positive tone that will be contagious. (You won’t know until you try it, will you?)

Now that you have some goals to set better goals for yourself and hopefully help others do the same, how do you go about implementing this vision as a leader?

• As mentioned already, many in the Army are currently worried about passing the ACFT. Sit down with your soldiers and identify their greatest concerns about the test and help them identify measurable goals that can help them start down a path to success.
• Most people don’t have it all together, even when they seem to be outward successes. In part, that is because they are out of balance. They may, for example, invest too much in their careers and not in their families. Help those you lead discover where they need to improve their balance. Reveal your own vulnerabilities. It’s okay—it will help others mature while embracing one of the Army’s newest leadership principles of humility and empathy. Take Hyatt’s quick online assessment over lunch with a group you work with then discuss it. Did the results surprise you? Were they similar to the rest of the group’s? How can each of you support each other in developing a goal in your weakest area? And, best of all, how will you reward yourself when you meet your goal?
• Set up a poster board at work with people’s names, a goal, and a tracker so people can showcase their path to improvement. Go all out and even buy a package of star stickers to use.

If you have other ideas, please share them on the Facebook or twitter feed!

Other resources from Hyatt other than the book include a podcast and a free downloadable template to focus on accomplishing three things each day here.

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Heather Venable is an assistant professor of military and security studies at the U.S. Air Command and Staff College and teaches in the Department of Airpower. She has written a forthcoming book entitled How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874-1918. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Making Sense of It All: A Modern Soldiers’ Post-War Reflections

A Guest Post by Captain Christopher C. Little

War is a visceral byproduct of failed diplomacy and does not discriminate against either side. War is a strategic entity, one that begs for existence in the tactical realm. This article will examine a former Army infantryman’s perspective while operating at the tactical level during the conflict in Iraq. The book includes leadership lessons learned through deep self-reflection of the author’s own performance in the less than ideal conditions of intense combat.

**This book review is provided by Daniel Von Benken. It focuses on how to apply Syed’s work to the domain of military expertise: training for and fighting wars.

Synopsis: In Bounce, Syed makes a strong and thought-provoking argument that purposeful practice and a growth mindset are the keys to developing expertise. Bounce builds on Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule, an idea familiar to military leaders that expertise requires 10,000 hours of work and not just talent. Syed provides greater context surrounding expertise and how experts are created. He delivers his message in three parts. First, he debunks the myth that natural talent is the key for the most successful people. Second, he investigates the psychology of performance and its interaction with proficiency. He closes with a deep study of purposeful practice and psychology, considering whether alternative conditions for expertise like genetics or geographic disposition enable success. In the end, he crowns purposeful practice and a growth mindset as king. Examples of purposeful practice and a growth mindset are examined below.

Syed uses familiar stories and an accessible writing style, a quality allowing the reader to move quickly through the book. For the military leader, the book’s first two sections drive home the lesson that talent isn’t a natural trait, it is earned. Focus your reflection on the first two sections, and re-read if able. Syed’s third section adds credence to the book’s thesis, but most likely leaves the door open for future dialogue.

Applications for a Military Leader: Syed offers three salient points benefitting leaders responsible for training an organization.

1. Take a quality approach to training. Make training meaningful and resource it properly. The book references a time when Syed’s table tennis coach changed his practice routine and challenged him with a longer table and multiple balls. This forced him to make cognitive and physical adaptations to his game, leading to enormous performance gains in future matches. To a military professional, one could imagine a unique approach to a stress shoot on a rifle range, or even as I have recently seen, a virtual-constructed Fire Support Coordination Exercise. Syed’s training philosophy nests well with the training outcomes we expect in the military: developing Soldiers and leaders able to adapt their physical and cognitive approaches to increasingly demanding conditions in order to maximize performance (e.g., gaining every tactical advantage possible).
2. Evoke a growth mindset. Syed details a psychological study showing students who are rewarded for effort instead of talent choose harder tasks and show greater growth over iterations of problem sets. A military professional who sets conditions where failure in training is accepted and hard work is appreciated, evokes a growth mindset in a unit. Leaders could challenge their units to the edge of their capabilities in training, an approach consistent with the current Army vision of training to operate in the challenging conditions envisioned for future warfare. Additionally, resilience-trained professionals on military installations would provide a great resource for practical and creative approaches structuring training to evoke a growth mindset.
3. “Sets and Reps” as a key contributor to mastery. Being good takes time. Artillery sections require multiple repetitions at emplacement; distribution platoons require repetitions at rearm, refuel, resupply and survey point operations to gain efficiency; infantry companies require combined arms live fire repetitions to mass combat power at the decisive point. Leaders invest time into Soldiers and protect time for key trainers within an organization. Senior leaders at all echelons stress the importance of protecting time for leaders to train their personnel. Emphasis on Sergeant’s time is a great example of how senior leaders in tactical formations make that commitment.