An important first step in setting goals is taking a good look at your values. These are defined in the dictionary as a principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable.

What are your principles? What are your standards? What are your values? Take a notepad and paper and make a list of everything you value in your life.

Your values might include your family, friends, honesty, and integrity among others. This is a very important first step to goal-setting because your values will act as the foundation for achieving your goals.

Don’t take this step lightly. You know as an engineer how important a solid foundation is to any structure. Values are your foundation. Know them and live by them, as they will guide you in your journey, both personal and professional.

The rest of Chapter 1 will guide you through setting your goals and preparing a plan of attack to achieve them!

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To Your Success!

Anthony Fasano, P.E., LEED AP, ACC
Your Professional Partner

William Merunka

Featured Guest Blogger: William Merunka

Follow me on my journey to become a great engineer.

Let’s connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/williammerunka

As 2010 wraps up, we will try to think about the resolutions we made at the beginning of 2010 and which ones we accomplished. While we would all love to brag about all of the resolutions we made and how we accomplished them, the truth is that for a lot of people this may not be the case. This could be the result of several factors including: forgetting the resolutions because we never wrote them down, not aggressively pursuing the resolution and saying we still have time to accomplish it, or even giving up on the goal and say we will do it next year. While we can say that we will do better next year, and won’t fall into the same pitfalls again, we need to understand where we went wrong before we can begin to change our actions.

One of the main reasons we can’t evaluate our performance on reaching our goals is lack of recollection. The body works in mysterious ways, we may say we are definitely going to do something, and then a few months later forget what we were trying to do. The way around this is to write your goals on paper. When writing the goals, try to be as descriptive as possible. For example, don’t just say “get a job”, instead say “get a job with a civil engineering company focusing on water resources and working under a licensed PE who can help me with the process of obtaining my PE license”. Another good thing is to set dates, or measurable factors for the goals. If your goal is to lose weight, mention how much weight you want to lose and when you want to lose it by. After writing your goals, you should make at least 2 copies. One to hang up someplace you will see, and one to give to a friend you trust. By hanging the goals, you will be reminded of them on a daily basis and will always be thinking about them. Giving a copy to your friend makes you accountable for your goals. If you make goals and keep them to yourself, you can remove goals or alter them if you don’t feel like working on it. However, by giving a copy away, you have somebody to push you, and who can help get you back on the correct path when you start to wander off.

It is important to realize that we will not always reach our goals. This can be disappointing at first, but before getting angry at yourself, think about why you didn’t accomplish the goal.

Was your goal attainable? While it is important to dream big, sometimes we try to go from start to finish right away without any detours. When setting and working to obtain your goals, take time into consideration. Was there physically enough time to obtain your goal? Let’s look at the EIT exam as an example, and assume your goal is to take the exam in April. If you are not familiar with the testing process you may see this goal as reasonable and obtainable. However, you will soon learn that the initial registration period needs to start around September or October of the previous year. Once you learn this information, you can adjust your goal to take the exam in October. Time is a roadblock that can come up in many situations, and should be given careful consideration when setting your goals.

Another aspect that tends to push people back is having no idea where to start. Like electrons, most humans prefer to go the path of least resistance. If a task seems too hard, or we don’t know how to approach it, we will push it off, and eventually give up on it. Too prevent this from happening, you need to think about your goal and see if it was detailed enough. Instead of just saying I want to take the FE exam in April and then trying to figure out what needs to be done, list all steps necessary. An example listing would be: obtain application, complete application by deadline, gather all required submittals, purchase study guides and/or look for classes, upon approval register for exam, and finally take the exam. Making the list, you have a clearer path of what you need to do and this once big task now looks much easier. While for some people, the original task may not have been hard to achieve, once it appears to be difficult, we start to go another direction.

It is important to remember that just because we may not accomplish everything we set out to do; it is not a total loss. We shouldn’t stop pursuing our goals, or oversimplify goals just so we could say we accomplished them. Take every experience and learn from it so you can do better the next time. You may not achieve your desired outcome, but I can guarantee you will learn something from it. Think about the goals you set for 2010 and their outcomes. What are some things you learned from them? What things would you change? What things would you do again the same way? Use these answers to help write your goals for 2011. If there was anything you didn’t accomplish this year, you can always attempt it again in 2011.

I hope you were all able to learn something from 2010 and learn even more in 2011!

Anthony Fasano

Did you ever take the time to stop and think, “What is my ultimate career goal?” It’s an open-ended question with tons of possible answers, but it will certainly force you to think about your career and where you are headed.

I am writing this post in response to a question that an engineer asked at one of my career advancement seminars.  The question was something to the effect of, “How does my role fit into the big picture of the world?”  What a great question!  Unfortunately, the only person that can truly answer this question is the person that asked it, however I thought I would share how I would answer this question.

In attempting to answer this question, I would start by brainstorming on the first question I mentioned above, “What is my ultimate career goal?”  Do you want to make a lot of money, be president of a company, work as little as possible and enjoy life outside of work as much as you can, own your own business, travel around the world during your career?

Next I would follow up that question with 3 letters, WHY? Why do you want to make a lot of money?  Is it to support your family, is it so that you no longer have to work?  Why do you want to travel, or better yet why wouldn’t you want to travel in your career?

Once you figure out your goal and why you want to achieve it, then it may be much easier to determine your role or purpose in the world.

My ultimate career goal is to help engineers and other professionals in unleashing possibilities to create a career that is exciting, enjoyable, successful and well-balanced.  I plan to do so in a way that I can still fully enjoy my life with my family as well as an exciting, enjoyable, successful and well-balanced career!

I hope this post helps you to think about your big picture and start taking action today to paint that picture in whichever way brings you the most success and happiness!

Please feel free to share your ultimate career goal!

Featured Guest Blogger: William Merunka

Throughout life, we encounter situations that are challenging and unavoidable.  When in this situation we have two options, fight or flight.  While our ego may tell us to fight and work through it, we usually take the path of least resistance and run away from the situation.  One of the most common times for this to occur is when looking to find a new job or changing the direction of your career.  With the economic recession playing a major role on the employment field over the past year, it has been easy to choose flight and make excuses for why we have not achieved the career goals that we set for ourselves or found that new job after being laid off.

Oftentimes I hear people saying that it’s not about what you know, but who you know.  Personally, I don’t believe in this mindset.  In my opinion it’s about what you do that will help make, break, or stall your career.  Yes, it helps to know people in positions of authority amongst the company or field that you are trying to get into.  However, just having a neighbor or 3^rd degree friend who’s the lead engineer for the civil engineering department is not going to get you the job.

You need to impress in that person’s mind that you are worthy of their time and that you could be a valuable asset to their team and their company in general.  While you have the advantage of knowing the person, you still need to go in and seal the deal.  Your career is not going to come to you, you need to find that passion within yourself and pursue your career.  What makes you special and better than Mr. Smith who submitted their resume through the company’s website last week?

Like any important task that you face, preparation is the main ingredient.  Here are a few simple steps that you can take to help ignite that passion and prepare yourself to accomplish all of your dreams and goals.

• Stop making excuses for why you have not accomplished your goals or are stuck in a dead-end job.  What are you doing to help your career?  Are you reading magazine and forums to stay up to date on the industry?  Are you networking with others in your field or are you sitting at home on the couch hoping your resume will be found on CareerBuilder.com

• Spend time each day and evaluate your actions and what occurred as a result of your actions.  Learn from each experience (good and bad) and alter your actions to reduce the amount of bad experiences that you occur.  Think about what happened and how you responded.  Was this the only way to react? Was there a better way?  While you can’t change the past, you will be prepared to handle the situation differently in the future.

• Take action.  You cannot read 100 self-help books and expect to become a better person.  Utilize your knowledge and implement changes that you feel you will benefit from.  It’s good to be knowledgeable, but it’s useless if you don’t do anything with that knowledge that you obtain.

• Be accountable for your actions.  If you tell somebody you will help them out, keep your word.  If you make a decision that turns out to be bad, stand up for your decision and admit that you were wrong, or that it didn’t work as planned but you will go back to drawing board to correct the problems.

You may think these are a waste of time because you already know the guy and there’s no way our neighbor or 3^rd degree friend can turn you down, but you are wrong.  Smart leaders look at the whole picture and not just 1 task.  You can be the most efficient drafter in the state, but if you act arrogant and disrespectable around your neighbor during leisure time, he’s more than likely not going to bring you on board.  Your passion or lack of passion is displayed in everything you do.  It’s in the way you walk, the way you talk to other people, the quality of work you produce, and even your knowledge of current events that are directly related to your field.  You may not realize it, but you are constantly being evaluated by people.

In the olympics you don’t win a gold medal just for knowing or training with an olympian who has previously won a gold medal.  You need to go out there and stick it.  You need to perform above other individuals who are competing for the same position as you.  If you are just an average Joe you will not win, you need to do something to set yourself apart from the competition.

Do you have what it takes?  Are you ready to go out there and take what is rightfully yours?    Go out there and stick it.

Clearly defining your goal is extremely important.  Use an analogy of driving to a destination.  Is it easier to get somewhere if you only know the city or state or if you know the exact street address?  Your goals act as that street address that constantly tells you where you are going.

In setting these clearly defined goals, you really need to figure out what you want.  Many people will water down their goals during this process because they believe they are too lofty.  By doing this, you are giving up on your goal before you even attempt to achieve it.  Why?  You have the ability to achieve absolutely anything you want to in your career.  When you are setting your goals, just think about your current situation as scenario “A” and the goal you are seeking as scenario “B” AND DO NOT TRY TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET FROM A TO B AT THIS POINT.  When people think about the route they will have to take, that is when they often start the “watering-down” process.  You can worry about action plans and steps you may take later, but when you are setting your goals focus on your desires, regardless of how unattainable you may think they are.

For example, let’s say you have a clearly defined goal of being promoted to Project Manager in the next 18 months.  Attached to this goal is a rule that you set for yourself to work no more than 45 hours per week so that you can maintain your work-family balance.  In reviewing that goal, you might say to yourself, there is no way I can get that promotion if I only work 45 hours per week, so you change it to 50.  You have now altered your true goal and compromised your values by giving up your work-family balance.  This decision was based on a LIMITING BELIEF.

In coaching, we help people with limited beliefs on a regular basis.  A limiting belief is exactly what it sounds like; it’s a belief that you hold, that limits you in some way, shape or form.  Limiting beliefs typically stem from your past.  They may have developed from interaction with someone specific or a certain situation that deeply influenced you.  In the above example, the limiting belief is that you cannot become a project manager by working 45 hours per week.  Why not?  Couldn’t you work more efficiently and delegate more?  Limiting beliefs often prevent us from not only achieving our goals, but from setting true goals.  When you run into a limiting belief, the best way to beat it is to question it!

Where does that belief come from?

How can I let go of that belief?

Now that you are aware of limiting beliefs start to identify, question and overcome yours today.  Doing this will help you tremendously in achieving your lofty career goals!

What limiting beliefs are currently holding you back from achieving your career goals as a civil engineering professional?

Anthony Fasano, P.E., LEED AP, CPESC, CPSWQ, CPC

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