Homework – Coaching Session #4

My homework summary email this week included a sample structure for my mission statement, and this “example” my coach created for me.

“To generate insightful ideas and create novel solutions that form the foundation of a sustainable process which cultivates self-awareness and inspires people to produce truth and beauty in the world.”

Ha! Example my a**… Raise your hand if you know how badly I want to just plagiarize that gorgeous statement for my own, so I don’t have to try to come up with another one that wouldn’t be nearly as cool! I hate having a conscience.

This weeks homework:

• 10 Most important skills
• 10 Least wanted skills
• Mission Statement
• Roast Toast
• Goals editing

I was supposed to choose the skills I’m best at.  Being an oddball, I color coded and divided the big list into something like Really Good, Good, Okay, Want To Learn and Don’t Care. My Really Good list was very big, so Stacy asked me to narrow it down to the top 10 most important and then to add this to my goals document (hard!).

The skills list my coach gave me was very similar to this but obviously not this same one. Having this list made it MUCH easier to consider a wider variety of skills, and separate my strengths from my weaknesses. The top 10 I ultimately prioritized and added to my goals form were:

• Creating efficient systems
• Identifying/organizing/improving systems
• Analyzing and correcting faults
• Improvising
• Anticipating people’s needs and reactions
• Creative writing
• Creating novel solutions
• Invention (things, and new processes)
• Visualizing concepts and possibilities
• Facilitating self-awareness in others

Also added to the goals document would be the top 10 things I’m good at but do NOT want to do or deal with in future work (piece of cake). Hmmm, there’s only 7. odd. I added the last one as I wrote this. They are:

• Debating ideas with others (discussing them is okay)
• Analyzing information and data
• Using scientific or medical equipment
• Showing sensitivity and tolerance (this takes further explanation)
• Admin/paper pushing busywork without some outlet or reason for the busywork.
• Anything monotonous, lacking innovation
• Tolerating status quo

Eventually I updated my LinkedIn account and sort of created my own mission statement and posted it there for all to see, so that I couldn’t chicken out of saying it out loud without people possibly noticing. It doesn’t have a for who aspect, but still…it is:

Experienced Doctor, manager & leader. A strong writer and teacher offering creative & innovative perspective.

I’m not entirely happy with this mission statement. It sounds too hard to my ears, or abrupt, and lacks a mission feel, but still it’s a start at least towards homework I wanted to avoid.  😉

I have not (as of Feb 20th) written a eulogy for the end date of a future perfectly happy career, and it still makes me uncomfortable, but I haven’t entirely given up that either. 🙂

On my goals overview towards a specific career, aside from the 10/10 best/worst skills, I highlighted these specific aspects of various (copyrighted) sections as being most important:

• Being blunt clear in speech
• Honest and deliberately fair
• Not secretive – open
• Decisive, Creative
• I want it to be okay to reinvent the wheel, and not be faulted for thinking that way.

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• Honest
• Think about everybody in a situation, not just myself
• Open, not hiding or fake (What you see is what you get)
• Try to do the right thing

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• Writing
• History
• Psychology
• Population control
• Interior design

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• No restrictions (freedom from internal/external politics, oversight, fees)
• Beauty and elegance (not cheapness)
• Knowledgeable, rational, fair
• Valuable work with positive impact
• Aesthetics, experiences, travel, culture

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• I’m a Morning person (sleep schedule is important to me, don’t like late nights or ruined mornings)

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• Quality

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• Autonomy, flexibility, adaptability (not rigidity…people at least following standard guidelines)
• Open minded rational coworkers who listen and improve
• Decisive, highly comprehending peers who are hopefully similar to me (on perspective, perception and comprehension).

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• No competition
• No uncertainty, chaos, flighty or flaky (people or work model), uncertainty, unpredictability or inaction.