What hat are you wearing today?? Can anyone see the real you, or get your attention while you’re wearing that hat?

In life, we play a multitude of roles, and often our productivity is threatened when we struggle to meet the expectations that come with each role.  One of the best productivity books out there, The 5 Choices – The Path to Extraordinary Productivity, helps us clearly define all the roles we play in our lives.  By defining your roles, you can now allocate the time and energy required for each role to ensure a well-balanced life.

As the book suggests, roles are where life happens and where our relationships lie.  They are fundamental to our identity.  The trick is to keeping all the roles in balance and ensuring we live out each role EXTRAORDINARILY.    Before we can find ways to make each role shine, we need to define your roles:

What roles do you have as a meeting partner?

Here are some common examples of roles you may play in your life; take a moment to plot your own roles onto a circle graph:

• meeting partner
• team leader
• spouse/partner
• roommate
• daughter/son
• parent
• hockey coach
• library volunteer
• amateur cyclist/other fitness and health endeavours

How would you define success for each role?  As a meeting partners, what looks like success for YOU in your professional role?

• successfully negotiating contracts with meeting planners and meeting your yearly goals
• building new relationships each month with new and potential clients
• building relationships with other destination partners to attract business to both my hotel and to the destination as a whole

Now that your roles are defined, how are you doing in each role?  Are you underperforming, doing ok, or handling extraordinarly well?  Your graph should look like a balanced circle with you performing well in all your roles.

If you find yourself falling short of expectations (whether they are set by you, or imposed by others onto you), there are some simple questions you can ask yourself.  By creating this focus, you’re better equipped to manage your time towards activities that will help you see success in each role.

Crafting a Role Statement

For each role that you identified, now we can dig deeper and craft a statement for each role.  Each role can have a number of things you want to accomplish with that role, and actions that must be taken to ensure success in that role.  These actions can then roll up into your goal setting!

For example – your role is a “hotel sales manager”.  Your statement could read:

• As a hotel sales manager, I will create trust relationships with my meeting planner clients by negotiating fairly and taking their needs and wants into consideration.
• As a hotel sales manager, I will meet my yearly goals of contributing value to my organization by closing contracts with existing clients and cultivating relationships with prospective clients.
• As a hotel sales manager, I will encourage my colleagues in their work, by helping them with best practices in the sales and meetings industry.

From here, you can now define ACTIONS that will help you become the role statement you’ve made.

I will create trust relationships with clients and take their needs into consideration by:

• asking them about what is most important to their program – what are the program’s goals and objectives
• outlining some concessions that may be valuable, and allowing them to provide feedback on the ones that matter the most
• taking notes about these needs and wants, and passing them along to other colleagues that may work with this client
• referring to their needs list regularly to see if we are still meeting and exceeding their expectations

You can do this exercise with each and every role in your life.  It can and will transform how you spend your time in each role, and maximize your time and talents with all the relationships in your life!

RELATED – Making Choices With Your Time

RELATED – Different Types of Goals

RELATED – Setting Personal Goals in a Busy Work World