Happy New Year!

January always feels like a new beginning for me.

When I was an academic librarian, this time of year meant starting a fresh new semester. And it meant starting to think about the annual self-evaluation I had to write as part of the regular review process - which included setting goals for the upcoming year.

Now, it’s more about natural cycles for me. We just came out of the darkest days of the year, and every day is bringing a little more light into each day.

Back in December, I wrote about reflecting on your accomplishments to help you think through goals that are aligned with your values as well as your library’s priorities.

If that came through while you were still in the finals week frenzy, or when you were just already ready to check out for the year, then I encourage you to take some time to go back and read that issue before you set your goals for this year (or help your team members with their goals).

Today, I want to talk about how you’re going to set your intentions to move forward on those goals.

So you’ve reflected on your past year and set meaningful goals that you really want to accomplish in 2025.

Maybe you’ve even already mapped out a clear action plan of all the steps you need to take to get there.

Yay!

Now what?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve gone through that cycle several times, and then life got in the way, and I forgot all about those goals until December.

Now is the time to shift into setting your intentions.

What do I even mean by that?

Your SMART goals are focused on measurable outcomes that you’ll meet over the course of the year. But it’s going to take a lot of work to start to actually see some of those outcomes.

Your intentions are focused on how you’ll approach this work today, this week, and this month.

Your intentions are focused on how you want to feel as you work toward your goal, rather than the outcomes.

Your intentions help to keep you focused on the purpose behind your goals in the here and now.

Your intentions help you keep your goals in mind and stay motivated to continue taking those small steps toward the delayed gratification of reaching those outcomes.

What might this look like?

One of the important components of using a coaching approach as a leader is being really intentional in how you interact with your team. Some of the traits of a coaching conversation that distinguish it from a regular conversation include:

• Intentionally using curiosity to explore an issue - it takes work to break the habit of jumping to a solution
• Intentionally practicing active listening to understand - it takes focus to break the habit of listening to formulate a response
• Intentionally asking thought-provoking questions that move the conversation forward - first to a deeper examination of the root of the challenge, then toward next steps
• Intentionally staying focused on helping the person we’re coaching move forward - we take the lessons that we can learn from the past but don’t get stuck ruminating on the past or catastrophizing about what-ifs

That’s a lot of intentional behaviors that help you to achieve any measurable goals that you set with the underlying purpose of empowering your team to reach their full potential.

So if one of your goals for the year has anything to do with implementing more of a coaching approach to leadership, then you may want to set a daily intention to be more intentional in how you interact with your team.

What is one small thing you can do today to keep yourself focused on that intentionality?

That could mean committing to block off 5 or 10 minutes before each 1:1 meeting to clear your mind of distractions, so that you can focus on actively listening. Maybe you use that time by doing a brain dump, writing down all of the things you want to be sure not to forget, so that you can put them out of your mind during your meeting. Maybe you use that time for breathing exercises to bring you back into the here and now.

That could mean committing to asking at least 2 genuinely curious questions before you offer any solutions or advice.

Even if you don’t reach the point of having a full coaching conversation with a single one of your team members in the next six months, just practicing actively listening and/or asking more questions will shift the quality of your conversations and improve your relationships with your team members. And that will make it easier to start actively coaching them later in the year.

One of the things that I love about setting intentions is that it feels more forgiving than a strict action plan.

And they need to be renewed regularly.

So let’s say you set an intention today to clear your mind before meetings, so that you can focus on actively listening. And then someone calls 15 minutes before your meeting with an emergency that you HAVE to deal with. You just barely make it to your meeting on time without having a chance to clear your mind at all. Maybe you’re even more distracted than normal because of that emergency.

OK. Life happens.

You’ll set that intention again tomorrow and try again.

You haven’t failed, you’ve just responded to something unpredictable.

If those interruptions start to become predictable, so that you repeatedly are unable to follow through on your intention, then it becomes time to reassess.

• Is that intention reasonable in your current situation?
• What would need to change in order to be able to actually follow through on that intention?
• What can you do to make that change happen?

But this daily practice intentionally includes space to adapt, while keeping the underlying purpose and the measurable goal in mind.

And yes, I am a big nerd and laughing at myself for writing about setting intentions to be more intentional 🤣. But if there’s one goal that absolutely requires daily focus on your intentions, that’s it!

I’d love to hear what intentions you’re setting for this week.

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