AC4P with Dr. Scott Geller 009 | Empowerment & SMARTS Goals

Dr. Scott Geller (00:24):
So let's talk about empowerment. You've heard that term. What does it mean? The boss says I empower you. You know what that means? It means get 'er done, you know, with fewer resources, just get the job done. But my question is, do you feel empowered? What does it take to feel empowered and what does it take to help other people feel empowered? I mean, feeling empowered is motivational. So how do we know when we feel empowered and how can we help other people feel empowered? Well, it comes right from social learning theory. There are three questions you have to ask yourself and ask somebody else with regard to feeling empowered. Number one, academic term, self-efficacy. What do I mean? I mean, do you believe you can do it? You're giving a task to do, do you believe you can do that task? If you can say yes, you're one-third of the way of feeling empowered.

Dr. Scott Geller (01:33):
That's not enough to say you can do it. Okay. Second question. Will it work? Will it work with what you're doing or what you're asking somebody else to do? Will it work to reach the vision or the mission on which you're on? Will it work? Now that might take some education. You're going to have to show somebody some data to convince them that what we're doing here will work to make things better or to make this job the best it could be. Now self-efficacy, by the way, that takes training. Have you been trained to do the job? Response-efficacy is, will it work? Now, Is there a difference between training and education? How many, we use the terms interchangeably, but we know there's a difference. Would you rather have sex training or sex education? You know, but for driving, is that enough to just be educated, or do you need training?

Dr. Scott Geller (02:45):
So there is a difference. There is a difference training implies that you do the behavior and you get feedback. You get feedback to know whether you're doing it right. Or whether there's room for improvement with you get to rationale. You get to understand "why are we doing this?" Okay. So self-efficacy, I can do it. Response-efficacy, I believe it will work. Third question. Third question. Is it worth it? Ooh, this is the motivational question. You know, I can do this. And I believe if I do this the way they want it to be done, it will bring us closer to our vision, but is it worth it? This is the motivational question. And the term psychologist uses outcome expectancy. Do you believe the outcome of what you're going to be doing, what you're going to get when you do this, is worth the effort? Now, given you feel empowered, where do you go next?

Dr. Scott Geller (03:56):
Well, let's talk about goal setting. You've heard about goal setting. You set a goal. Now there are outcome goals and there are behavioral goals. Outcome goals, you know, I want to lose so much weight, for example. I want to get an A on this test. That's an outcome goal. A behavioral goal is what you do to reach the outcome. So when I talk about goal setting, I'm talking about behaviors. I'm talking about what you need to do to reach the outcome. And perhaps you've heard the term SMART goals. It's been very popular. Zig Ziglar talks about smart goals. Well, I want to talk about SMARTS goals. I want to add an S and I want to relate SMARTS goal setting with feeling empowered. Okay, let's talk. The S the S means specific. And you've heard this before. Zig Ziglar says this too S means specifically, what are you going to do?

Dr. Scott Geller (05:01):
Now? We get to the M of SMARTS. Okay. Now some will say, M is measurable. I don't want to go with measurable. I want to go with motivational. Why? Because when you start to work toward a goal, you have to anticipate the consequences. You have to be motivated to do it. And of course, that means realizing what the outcome will be. Okay. So that's the M. Let's get back to the empowerment questions. The M for motivational means outcome expectancy. It's worth the effort. What I expect to get is worth the effort. Okay? So that's S M, A. A is achievable. Okay. It means I can do this. It might be a stretch goal. It should be a stretch goal. You know, it's not easy, but I can do it. And by the way, that's self-efficacy, I believe I can do it. I've been trained to do the job.

Dr. Scott Geller (06:02):
So that's S M A, R. R relevant. I use it for relevant. Why? Because it connects to that second question. Will it work? Is this behavior, is this reaching this goal relevant to my mission? You know, my ultimate mission, this helps me get there. Okay, S M A R, What about T? Now some will say timely, but I want T for trackable because I didn't use M for measurable, I want to be able to track my behaviors. I want to count them up. I got them on the calendar so I can see how many behaviors will I do to reach my behavioral goal. So that's SMART, but I want to add an S I want an S for share, share your goal with someone, tell somebody else about what your goal is. You know, social support is critical. And if you tell somebody else about your goal, they can hold you accountable at least, or help you hold yourself accountable to reaching that goal. So there we go, folks, that is goal setting, as it relates to empowerment. Thank you, folks. That's our lesson today.