How much time do you want to invest in each of your goals?
You want to carry out your God-given
mission: To empower Christian leaders and
organizations to close the rhetoric/reality gap.
You have reflected on your mission, prayed and thought about what God would have you do in the next 5 years, and established a 2-part vision:
One way you can determine how much time you want to invest is by reflecting on a set of DRAW questions:
Here's a set of DRAW questions you can use to determine how much time you want to invest in each goal:
Define: Get the facts defined.
What excites/concerns you about your mission? vision? goals?
Analyze: Get the facts, feelings, and experiences analyzed.
What’s next?: Get next steps considered.
To see how reflecting on these questions helped me to determine how much time to invest in each of my goals, keep reading.
What’s your God-given mission?
Me: To empower Christian leaders and organizations to close the rhetoric/reality gap. By that I mean, to close the gap between the word of the mission statement and the reality of the current situation.
What’s your vision?
Me: By the end of 5 years, I want to see 200 Christian staff from 40 Christian organizations with increased capacity/results. And I want to see 15 Christian organizations with a total of 25 new annual capacity-building goals.
What are your goals for moving forward on your vision?
Me: To achieve my vision, I want to help Christian staff increase capacity/results through coaching, consulting, networking, resourcing, and training. Within the next 2 years, I want to have empowered:
Some people might only get empowered through coaching. Others might get empowered through training and consulting. So for my goals, I can count a person in more than 1 category. But ultimately, I just want to empower 200 Christians. I just want to achieve my vision.
What excites/concerns you about your mission? vision? goals?
Me: God has put it on my heart to encourage Christian leaders and to help them and their organizations achieve their missions. I’m excited about this. It really turns my crank to help leaders strategically pursue God’s calling.
What concerns me about the mission God has given me is that Christian leaders don’t always seek or welcome being empowered. For example, they sometimes think of empowerment as remediation, instead of as a way to more effectively leverage the gifts God has given them. And if I write an email to encourage a leader on a goal he’s identified (How’s it going with___?), sometimes I’m concerned that he might think I’m checking up on him.
In terms of vision, I’m excited about helping a lot of Christian staff that serve in a variety of Christian organizations. And I’m excited about helping organizations set capacity-building goals—I like a challenge. But I’m concerned that I might not be able to connect with enough staff and organizations.
I like my goals. I like coaching, consulting, networking, resourcing, and training. But it’s hard to know how to set goals that are both aggressive and attainable because its hard to gauge how many people I’ll be able to help in the next 2 years.
In terms of helping you achieve your vision, how would you priority rank your goals?
Me: Before I listed only 5 areas—coaching, consulting, networking, resourcing, and training. I need to add a 6th area—mobilizing. I need to do this because I’m a missionary. To do this ministry, I need to raise support. OK, so in terms of helping me empower Christian leaders and organizations, I’d priority rank my goals like this:
Here’s my thinking:
How much time do you currently invest in each goal?
Me: Probably something like this:
To achieve your vision, how much time do you want to invest in each goal?
Me: Well, I probably need to keep investing the same amount of time in networking and mobilizing. And I need to increase training and coaching. By increasing training, I can help more people. By increasing coaching, I can help Christian staff achieve lasting growth. As I mentioned earlier, coaching is a good way to follow-up on consulting and training.
If I increase training and coaching, I’ll have to invest less time in consulting and resourcing. So, my preferred time investments would probably look like this:
How do your priority rankings and preferred time investments compare?
Me: Pretty well, I think. Resourcing (ranked #4) provides the basis for what I do, so it makes sense that I invest the biggest amount of time (30%) in it. I feel good that my top 3 priorities receive the next biggest amounts of time. I like it that in my preferred time investments, my top 3 priorities get 55% of my time—this is 10% over my current investment in my top 3 priorities.
What helps you move toward your preferred time investments? What hinders you?
Me: What helps me is that I like training and coaching, so having more time for both of those will be fun. What hinders me is that I really like consulting and resourcing—having less time for both is kind of a bummer. But I think I need to head in this direction.
What can you do to move toward your preferred time investments?
Me: I can get more opportunities to train and coach by asking administrators and human resource personnel about what their organizational needs are. I can ask individuals what their personnel needs are. For example, I can ask those I’ve helped through consulting about getting coaching to follow through on the goals they set. I can find additional ways to provide training—like webinars.
I can also monitor the amount of time I invest in resource development more carefully. That should help me decrease it.
What will you do?
Me: I’ll take a couple of hours to explore webinars and the possibility of doing 1-4 of them within the next 12 months. I’ll ask the administrators/human resource personnel from 1 Christian school and 3 missions about what their needs are and how I can help them meet those needs through training and coaching. After seeing what happens as a result of taking these 2 action steps, I’ll consider contacting 5 people that I’ve helped through consulting or training to see if they’d like coaching to help them follow up.
You have reflected on your mission, prayed and thought about what God would have you do in the next 5 years, and established a 2-part vision:
- 200 Christian staff from 40 Christian organizations with increased capacity/results
- 15 Christian organizations with total of 25 new annual capacity-building goals
- 30 Christian staff through coaching
- 75 Christian staff through consulting
- 40 Christian staff through networking
- 40 Christian staff through resourcing
- 150 Christian staff through training
One way you can determine how much time you want to invest is by reflecting on a set of DRAW questions:
- Define: Get the facts defined.
- Respond: Get the facts responded to in terms of feelings/experiences.
- Analyze: Get the facts, feelings, and experiences analyzed.
- What’s next?: Get next steps considered.
Here's a set of DRAW questions you can use to determine how much time you want to invest in each goal:
Define: Get the facts defined.
- What’s your mission?
- What’s your vision?
- What are your goals for moving forward on your vision?
What excites/concerns you about your mission? vision? goals?
Analyze: Get the facts, feelings, and experiences analyzed.
- In terms of helping you accomplish your vision, how would you priority rank your goals?
- How much time do you currently invest in each goal?
- To achieve your vision, how much time do you want to invest in each goal?
- How do your priority rankings (question 1) and preferred time investments (question 3) compare?
- What helps you move toward your preferred time investments? What hinders you?
What’s next?: Get next steps considered.
- What can you do to move toward your preferred time investments?
- What will you do?
To see how reflecting on these questions helped me to determine how much time to invest in each of my goals, keep reading.
What’s your God-given mission?
Me: To empower Christian leaders and organizations to close the rhetoric/reality gap. By that I mean, to close the gap between the word of the mission statement and the reality of the current situation.
What’s your vision?
Me: By the end of 5 years, I want to see 200 Christian staff from 40 Christian organizations with increased capacity/results. And I want to see 15 Christian organizations with a total of 25 new annual capacity-building goals.
What are your goals for moving forward on your vision?
Me: To achieve my vision, I want to help Christian staff increase capacity/results through coaching, consulting, networking, resourcing, and training. Within the next 2 years, I want to have empowered:
- 30 staff through coaching
- 75 staff through consulting
- 40 staff through networking
- 40 staff through resourcing
- 150 staff through training
Some people might only get empowered through coaching. Others might get empowered through training and consulting. So for my goals, I can count a person in more than 1 category. But ultimately, I just want to empower 200 Christians. I just want to achieve my vision.
What excites/concerns you about your mission? vision? goals?
Me: God has put it on my heart to encourage Christian leaders and to help them and their organizations achieve their missions. I’m excited about this. It really turns my crank to help leaders strategically pursue God’s calling.
What concerns me about the mission God has given me is that Christian leaders don’t always seek or welcome being empowered. For example, they sometimes think of empowerment as remediation, instead of as a way to more effectively leverage the gifts God has given them. And if I write an email to encourage a leader on a goal he’s identified (How’s it going with___?), sometimes I’m concerned that he might think I’m checking up on him.
In terms of vision, I’m excited about helping a lot of Christian staff that serve in a variety of Christian organizations. And I’m excited about helping organizations set capacity-building goals—I like a challenge. But I’m concerned that I might not be able to connect with enough staff and organizations.
I like my goals. I like coaching, consulting, networking, resourcing, and training. But it’s hard to know how to set goals that are both aggressive and attainable because its hard to gauge how many people I’ll be able to help in the next 2 years.
In terms of helping you achieve your vision, how would you priority rank your goals?
Me: Before I listed only 5 areas—coaching, consulting, networking, resourcing, and training. I need to add a 6th area—mobilizing. I need to do this because I’m a missionary. To do this ministry, I need to raise support. OK, so in terms of helping me empower Christian leaders and organizations, I’d priority rank my goals like this:
- Consulting
- Training
- Coaching
- Resourcing
- Networking
- Mobilizing
Here’s my thinking:
- Consulting: Through consulting, I can address both parts of my vision. I can help Christian staff grow individually, and I can help organizations set goals. Last year through consulting, I helped 64 people, and I helped 11 organizations set a total of 11 goals.
- Training: I can help the greatest number of Christian staff through training. Last year, I helped 110 people through training.
- Coaching: As with consulting, I use coaching to address both parts of my vision. But last year I helped more people through consulting (64) and training (110) than through coaching (20), so I ranked as this #3. Coaching is a powerful way to follow-up on consulting and training.
- Resourcing: In order to consult, train, and coach, I need to know what I’m doing and I need to get known. Developing resources provides me with the knowledge and tools I need to help others; publishing resources helps me get known. And the feedback I get indicates that the resources I publish help Christian staff increase their capacity/results.
- Networking: One way I help Christian staff is by developing networks and by networking with individuals. And one way I get opportunities to consult, train, and coach is by networking. I’m vacillating between ranking this as #4 or #5. But right now, I’ll keep it as #5.
- Mobilizing: I put mobilizing at the bottom because this goal doesn’t directly address my vision. I recognize the importance of mobilizing—if I don’t mobilize effectively, I won’t be able to raise the funds I need to do this ministry.
How much time do you currently invest in each goal?
Me: Probably something like this:
- Consulting: 30%
- Training: 5%
- Coaching: 10%
- Resourcing: 40%
- Networking: 5%
- Mobilizing: 10%
To achieve your vision, how much time do you want to invest in each goal?
Me: Well, I probably need to keep investing the same amount of time in networking and mobilizing. And I need to increase training and coaching. By increasing training, I can help more people. By increasing coaching, I can help Christian staff achieve lasting growth. As I mentioned earlier, coaching is a good way to follow-up on consulting and training.
If I increase training and coaching, I’ll have to invest less time in consulting and resourcing. So, my preferred time investments would probably look like this:
- Consulting: 25%
- Training: 15%
- Coaching: 15%
- Resourcing: 30%
- Networking: 5%
- Mobilizing: 10%
How do your priority rankings and preferred time investments compare?
Me: Pretty well, I think. Resourcing (ranked #4) provides the basis for what I do, so it makes sense that I invest the biggest amount of time (30%) in it. I feel good that my top 3 priorities receive the next biggest amounts of time. I like it that in my preferred time investments, my top 3 priorities get 55% of my time—this is 10% over my current investment in my top 3 priorities.
What helps you move toward your preferred time investments? What hinders you?
Me: What helps me is that I like training and coaching, so having more time for both of those will be fun. What hinders me is that I really like consulting and resourcing—having less time for both is kind of a bummer. But I think I need to head in this direction.
What can you do to move toward your preferred time investments?
Me: I can get more opportunities to train and coach by asking administrators and human resource personnel about what their organizational needs are. I can ask individuals what their personnel needs are. For example, I can ask those I’ve helped through consulting about getting coaching to follow through on the goals they set. I can find additional ways to provide training—like webinars.
I can also monitor the amount of time I invest in resource development more carefully. That should help me decrease it.
What will you do?
Me: I’ll take a couple of hours to explore webinars and the possibility of doing 1-4 of them within the next 12 months. I’ll ask the administrators/human resource personnel from 1 Christian school and 3 missions about what their needs are and how I can help them meet those needs through training and coaching. After seeing what happens as a result of taking these 2 action steps, I’ll consider contacting 5 people that I’ve helped through consulting or training to see if they’d like coaching to help them follow up.