What Does Success Look Like?

It’s one of the most powerful questions.

It’s year-end review time.

Many leaders will look back on the past year, and they will feel their way through how the year went. I say feel because we naturally assess the past based on the pain we endured and how to avoid that pain in the future. If you get suckered punched, you start to pay more attention when people around you clench their fists or drop one shoulder. From a leadership perspective, this means you’re prone to judge last year based on your worst experiences and plan for next year to avoid similar experiences.

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

It’s natural. But it isn’t the only way.

What if you looked forward twelve months and did a little dreaming about where you’d like to be? Sure, you’d like to avoid getting sucker punched, but what about beyond that? A simple way to work your way through this line of thinking is to ask a simple question: What does success look like on December 31, 2023?

What do you want to have accomplished when you finish next year? If you don’t set your own metrics for success, there is still time to ask your manager or boss that simple question. “Boss, if I finished 2023 wildly successful for our organization, how would you know it?” I’ve never met a leader who wouldn’t want to get that question from a direct report.

So avoid the sucker punches, but also take some time to define what success would look like after twelve months of hard work.