I really want to think of objectives as sexy……

Ok, I am going to be brutally honest now – objectives are not sexy!

They are however: essential, important, brilliant to have (when written well) and kind of ….. boring …. dare I say it?

One of my biggest light bulb moments and one of my coaching clients just recently, has been that objectives are at the bottom of everything. If you are,for example:

• designing training
• delivering a presentation
• facilitating a meeting
• meeting with your boss
• emailing a key stakeholder to endorse something you are doing

If you do not have a clear objective for any of the above, the likelihood of the event being fruitful and productive does diminish.

The biggest problem therefore, for me,  is how to get excited enough to write some great business focussed objectives when all I can think of are the great training activities that I am about to design?

Talking with one of my associates, Karen Foundling last week, I showed her a box of cards I had printed, which contained 50 great verbs for writing objectives. They are colour coded:

• Turquoise – knowledge
• Pink – attitude
• Purple – skills to do with people
• Orange – physical skills
• Red – skills to do with thinking and the brain

We sat and looked at some scenarios, for which we needed to write objectives – laying out the cards on the table

The photos show the descriptors for the cards, with the cards underneath. This exercise actually became fun! We chose the appropriate colour, fished through the cards and hey presto, wrote great objectives using Robert Mager’s PCS framework. Just the physical act of thumbing through the cards and arranging them in order helped us both to get our heads around how straight forward writing objectives can be.

I have now expanded my cards to 100 and in the post a few days ago, arrived my little boxes…… just wondering how useful anyone else might find them?