What Is A Goal Statement (and why do you need one)?
What Is A Goal Statement (and why do you need one)?
I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about goals, but how does that apply when you’re creating a learning experience? Today’s episode helps you create a guiding goal statement so you AND your learner stay on track and don’t get overwhelmed during the learning journey.
HOW DO YOU BUILD A LEARNING EXPERIENCE THAT IS PURPOSEFUL, TRANSFORMATIONAL AND BALANCED?
Today we’re diving into goals and goal statements and how they can completely transform your online program. You’ll learn what a goal statement is, how it helps you and your learners and why it is so important when you are creating an online learning experience.
Now, before we dive into talking all about goals, I want to make sure that we’re all on the same page. As I mentioned in Episode Zero of this podcast, where I introduced you to the season, this season, we’re going to be following along with the different segments of the Course Wellness Wheel. Now, if you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say Course Wellness Wheel, the wheel is a tool that I’ve created to help you identify specific areas of your course that could be refreshed and realigned and renewed in order to create a cohesive and engaging learning experience. You can get your very own Course Wellness Wheel here.
What we’re talking about today aligns with the structure segment of the wheel. Goal statements are all about how to make sure that your learning experience is purposeful, transformational, and balanced.
WHY DO WE CREATE GOALS?
Before we dive in to creating a goal statement and how it can completely transform your learning experience, I want to ask you a question, why do we create goals?
We create a goal because it keeps you focused on where you’re going. It gives us a beacon, a focal point, something to look at to keep us on track and to make sure that we don’t get lost on our way.
So bringing this back to learning design and course wellness and what we’re focusing on today, which is purposeful, transformational, balanced learning, how does that work with setting a goal for your course?
WHAT WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT…
Now I want to be clear here when I’m talking about goals and learning design and course wellness, I’m not talking about personal or business goals. You know how much money you want to make on your launch or how many people you want to sign up for your course. Those are amazing goals for you to focus on for yourself. That’s not what we’re focusing on today.
HERE’S THE THING…
We all want to create amazing learning experiences that get our clients results, that make a huge impact and that ultimately change lives. It may sound cheesy, but it’s true. We know that our passion and our knowledge and our experience is going to make our clients lives so much easier. It’s going to make our audience so much more successful and we want to make sure that they get the most out of their learning experience and that they really get to that transformation.
Making a goal statement is the number one most important, most amazing thing you could do when you are creating your course, or looking at how you can make your existing course that much better.
There are two sides to the amazingness that is creating a goal statement and the first side is for you.
SIDE 1: YOU
- It makes sure that you stay focused during the creation process.
- It helps you not get so overwhelmed.
- It makes you not have to worry about #allthethings or comparisonitis or putting things into your course because that’s just what everyone does.
The goal statement serves as your lighthouse. It is your beacon that is going to guide you back to the shores when you get lost in that storm of ideas and content and other people’s opinions. Having a goal statement for your course will keep you focused and will give you a point of discernment. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that you can know for sure every single aspect of your course of your learning experience is going to get your learner to the goal as fast and as easy as possible.
HOW A GOAL STATEMENT ACTS AS A POINT OF DISCERNMENT
What does that look like? For instance, if you’re creating a course and you’re not sure if you should include a certain activity, you can look at your goal statement and ask yourself, is this activity going to get my learner to that goal? Is this a need-to-have or a nice-to-have? Am I going to be overwhelming them or am I going to be further supporting them on their journey?
SIDE 2: THE LEARNER
And the other side to the amazingness of a goal statement, is that it helps the learner. It helps them know where they’re going, staying on focus, tuning into the why. Why are they in the program? Why are they taking this course? Why are they doing this? Because they want to get to that transformation. They want to get to that goal statement that you’ve set for them.
How to Create a Goal Statement
Now, if you don’t have a program yet or maybe you’re thinking that just sounds too broad and scary, here’s my challenge for you. I want you to pick one thing that you have in your business, whether it’s a lead magnet, your course, your coaching package, etc.
Okay, do you have it? You have it in your brain. For those of you that completed the Learning Journey Toolkit from Episode 1, I encourage you to look at the markers of your Learning Journey to help you with this brainstorm. For those listeners who haven’t had a chance yet, you can learn more about the learning journey and the Learner Journey Toolkit in Episode 1.
Now that you have your learning experience in mind, I want you to grab your Goal Statement worksheet and come up with a goal statement.
Once you have that goal statement, I want you to do two things.
1) First of all, I want you to look at your learning experience and give yourself a rating from one to 10 and ask yourself with this goal in mind, with this being my goal statement, how purposeful am I being about everything that is part of this learning experience? How transformational is this learning experience and how balanced is the learning experience? If this is my focal point of this is my point of discernment, if this is my goal for the transformation, for the learning journey that I’m leading my audience through, am I achieving that goal? Am I leading them to that goal?
2) The second thing I want you to do is share your goal statement with me. So my favourite place to hang out is Instagram. You can find me there @emily.mwalker or you can tag me (#modernleadersco). I love to answer any questions you may have and most importantly, I just love see what you’re working on.
Once you have that goal statement, I want you to do two things.
1) First of all, I want you to look at your learning experience and give yourself a rating from one to 10 and ask yourself with this goal in mind, with this being my goal statement, how purposeful am I being about everything that is part of this learning experience? How transformational is this learning experience and how balanced is the learning experience? If this is my focal point of this is my point of discernment, if this is my goal for the transformation, for the learning journey that I’m leading my audience through, am I achieving that goal? Am I leading them to that goal?
2) The second thing I want you to do is share your goal statement with me. So my favourite place to hang out is Instagram. You can find me there @emily.mwalker. I love to answer any questions you may have and most importantly, I just love see what you’re working on.
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