Learning to learn

4.4.4 Specific

You need to be quite clear what you are setting out to do. If you are not clear, your goal may be open to different interpretations and you may become unsure of what you intended. For example, suppose you chose a goal like ‘to get better at giving people feedback?. This could be interpreted in at least two ways:

1. To improve your self-confidence about giving feedback, so that you no longer get nervous about having to do it.
2. To improve your success rate in giving feedback so that the people on the receiving end do what you ask of them without getting angry, resentful or fearful ? or you feel able to enter into a rational discussion of alternatives with them if they do not agree it needs doing.

The important thing here is to be as clear as possible, so you might want to have a couple of goes at writing a goal to check that it can only be interpreted in one way. So rather than just saying ‘get better at giving feedback?, you might write down something like ‘provide feedback to two people without feeling nervous while doing it?.

This would mean that you look for different things in monitoring your progress ? which leads us into the next element.

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