Goal Setting During a Pandemic
At the start of this pandemic, my mate Derek (pictured to the right) and I were feeling anxious about how the pandemic was going to impact our families, friends, and livelihood. Fortunately, as coaches, we both appreciated that during times of great uncertainty we needed to be heard and supported by people that could help us process our experience and provide positive encouragement to keep us moving forward.
This pandemic, and it's continuing impact on teaching and learning, is far from over. Despite many educators still trying to mitigate myriad of challenges, I am hearing of some being asked to set goals 'to get students back on track'; to improve teaching and learning. Goals that will presumably be used for some form of performance evaluation, or at a minimum reassure your school that you will be doing something to improve teaching and learning. The sad reality is that many school administrators see goal setting as a check-the-box activity, focused more on the ends, and ignoring the means.
This school year, though, we can't just return to checking the goal-setting box. We need to recognize that now more than ever the goal-setting process, the means, is more important than the goal, the ends. Why? Because many of us are experiencing 'pandemic flux syndrome' and what we really need right now are 'islands of sanity'.
The first phrase I learned of when reading a Washington Post article in August, which didn't quite resonate with me until I read a recent newsletter by Jennifer Abrams. The impact this type of trauma has on goal setting is that educators will most likely set transactional goals that only add to their workload with the resulting burnout negatively impacting their relationship with students and colleagues. Not knowing what next week will bring, whether we will be teaching online or not, or even anticipating potential personal loss, makes it very hard to set goals that will have measurable impacts in the classroom.
The second phrase, coined by Margaret Wheatley, offers us a way forward without compounding the trauma from pandemic flux syndrome. In this paper, she poses an incredibly powerful question: Are you willing to use whatever power and influence you have to create islands of sanity that evoke and rely on our best human qualities to create, relate, and persevere? The power of this question invites a personal connection that transcends transactional goals. This question makes clear the means by which we can achieve the ends.
In this newsletter, I have provided several tools to help you set goals that will give you purpose and guidance for navigating the inevitable challenges this pandemic still has in store for us. To get started I invite you to watch Kyle Wagner and I’s demonstration of a powerful goal-setting tool introduced to me by Chris Jansen at Leadership Labs, the Focus Inquiry Interview.
Don’t let goal setting be an individual burden, but a process that starts with and is supported by collaboration.
