BUILDING SELF EFFICACY & GOALS

"Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings."
~ Samuel Johnson ~

Self efficacy, belief in one's capabilities, affects everything we do and every goal we work towards. So how can self efficacy be increased, helping us to achieve our ambitions?

STEP ONE: EFFECTIVE GOAL SETTING
Research by Albert Bandura amongst others, has shown that setting and attaining achievable goals is essential for increasing self efficacy.

· What motivates you to reach your goal?
Write down at least three reasons for wanting to reach your goal.
· A goal is written with an achievement in mind. It should be SMART:

· Specific
· Measurable
· Achievable
· Relevant
· Timescales

Write a SMART goal that includes your motivation to succeed. An example might be attending a job interview:

'I will confidently describe my knowledge & skills at the interview on Tuesday and be the best person for the job, allowing me to travel more.'

Remember, your goal will be specific (confidently describing skills & knowledge), relevant (including your reason for wanting the job - a desire to travel), measurable (you will clearly know that you have achieved it) and it should contain a timescale (a goal that says ‘I will get my ideal job at some time in the future’ is too vague to be effective).

If you have a long-term goal, break it down into smaller sub-goals, this will help you to understand the smaller goals that need to be achieved to reach the larger, long-term goal. Monitor your progress and continually assess your capabilities.

Why are goals great for achieving success?

Your unconscious mind is always storing information. The unconscious mind stores everything you see, think, hear, say, feel, taste and smell. Your unconscious mind cannot act on it’s own, it needs instruction from you. A goal is an instruction to your unconscious mind.

Once you have written down your goal, your unconscious mind has an achievement to work towards. Your unconscious mind will now alert your conscious mind to any information that can help you to obtain your goal.

STEP TWO: VISUALIZATION
Visualizing succes is a scientifically proven technique which is often used in the field of sports psychology. The principles can be used to assist success with all goals.

We move towards the things that we concentrate on. Using goals is one way to move towards something you want to achieve. Another useful way to focus on your success is to visualise it happening.

What you vividly visualise influences what will happen in future. This includes visualizing something negative. For example, if you have previously not done your best in an interview, when you visualise that incident you are encouraging your unconscious mind to look for information that reinforces thoughts of you not performing at your best in interviews.

Your unconscious mind needs to be instructed by you, once you have programmed it to believe you don't perform at your best in interviews, it will look for evidence to support that instruction. This makes it especially important not to replay past mistakes in your mind. By doing so you are only creating a vivid picture of a mistake for your unconscious mind to work with!

The good news is that you can instruct your unconscious mind to achieve your goal by visualising success, such as a great interview. Your unconscious mind will use the visualisation of you giving a great interview to alert your conscious mind to search for information that will contribute to your success. For example, every time you do well in an interview, your unconscious mind will alert your conscious mind to register this evidence of your superb interview skills.

Effective visualisation should use the following methods:
· Imagine your successful interview as a movie.
· Visualise the brightest possible colours.
· Choose a soundtrack to accompany your success and play it whilst visualising your successul interview. If it feels good to have a loud soundtrack, increase the volume!
· Take time to experience the feelings of success in your visualisation.
· Practise your visualisation regularly, this will focus all your senses on your success.

STEP THREE: POSITIVE SELF-TALK
You have already discovered the advantages of harnessing your unconscious. Your self-talk is no exception.

What do you think would be the affect of telling yourself ‘I just can’t get the hang of doing well at interviews’? It’s obvious that this is another way to instruct your unconscious mind in a way that doesn’t work to your advantage.

Confident self-talk is essential. Remember, your unconscious believes exactly what you tell it. Tell yourself ‘this is easy for me’ and your unconscious mind will ensure that you act according to this positive belief.

Use the following techniques to develop positive self-talk:
· Don’t make negative statements about your goal either to yourself or others.
· If you catch yourself making a negative statement, immediately correct it with a positive comment, for example, by telling yourself that you perform well at interviews.
· Make positive statements to yourself about your abilities and skills.
· Replace negative thoughts with positive alternatives. Remember the vivid picture created
by your visualisation of success.

STEP FOUR: VISUALISING SUCCESS EXERCISE:

· Make sure you have at least fifteen minutes, in a quiet place, to practise this visualisation technique.
· Remember an occasion when you achieved success. What was the event? What does it look like? How does it feel? What can you hear and see? Is there music? Recall your success as
vividly as possible. Experience the amazing feelings of this great achievement.
· Imagine the same feelings of success and accomplishment as you visualise your current goal.
You are now feeling the power of that confidence, success and accomplishment from your
previous achievement as you effortlessly achieve your new goal.
· Well done!

Visualisation exercise adapted from GWiz Training.

"If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning."
~ Mahatma Gandhi ~

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY - USING STRENGTHS AT WORK

The November issue of the Chartered Institute for Personnel & Development magazine, 'People Management', features an article about one of the key areas of Positive Psychology - using strengths.

The article examines the strengths based work of Alex Linley, from the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP), with the board members of aerospace company BAE in the UK. Linley describes how the approach of CAPP is different to that of other organisations that promote a strengths based approach,

"For us, a strengths-based approach is absolutely about focusing on strengths, but it also recognises that if there are areas that you aren’t strong in that are performance-critical, then they have to be addressed as well.”

After interviewing the 16 board members about their ideas of current & future leadership success at BAE, Linley developed a 'leadership strengths profile'. Board members were invited to score themselves against the profile for areas of strength & performance.The board was then allocated key business tasks according to individual strengths, over the period of a month.

Feedback from the board members showed the exercise to be a success, with participants discussing the profound impact that implementing such a subtle change has had on their business practice. As Linley explains,

"...when you adopt a strengths approach, increased engagement and happiness is one of the results. But was that what we set out to achieve with BAE? No, it was about business performance.”

Linley lists five ways to build a strengths based organisation:

1 Ensure that you have a deep and mature understanding of strengths. Strengths are not just the “things that people are good at” but, as we define them, “pre-existing capacities for a particular way of behaving, thinking or feeling that is authentic and energising to the user and enables optimal functioning, development and performance”.

2 Know where the best place is for you to begin. All organisations are collections of teams. As such, building a strengths-based organisation can begin with building a strengths-based culture within a specific team. If you have the option, make this the leadership team.

3 Understand your options for taking the approach more widely into the organisation. These can include a traditional cascade model; taking a “deep slice” of the organisation, using a particular business unit or geographical location; or “lighting fires” – following people’s enthusiasm from the ground up.

4 Recognise the parameters. Do existing appraisal processes fit with a strengths approach? What about performance management processes? Consider a strengths audit to help you answer these questions and explore your options for what you can do about them. Simple shifts in philosophy and emphasis can be all that is needed.

5 Be patient. Creating a strengths focus in an individual, a team or an organisation does not happen overnight. Take your time, understand what works for you, and progress and embed accordingly. Ensure success by evaluating your approach at each stage and refining or refocusing as appropriate.
Alex Linley and Nicky Page, Centre for Applied Positive Psychology http://www.cappeu.org/