The Value of Peer-Monitoring
The gem of the ASTD International conference I recently visited in Chicago was Dr. Marshall Goldsmith discussing finding happiness in everyday life. One of the major factors that contributes to the difficulties of daily life, is our general busyness, he says.
One of the best things we can do is to monitor ourselves. Sure life gets stressful, but what is our attiude going to be. It’s easier to change ourselves then change the world, so how about starting with changing things about yourself to become happier.
As Dr. Goldsmith says in Mojo. “Happiness is not a natural state; vision is not a natural state; inertia is a natural state”. So if we’re going to achieve things, we are going to have to push ourselves to get out of our naturally inert state.
When we monitor, we can do just about anything. Consider the success of weight loss programs like “Weight Watchers” or alcohol anonymous programs where the success rate is continued by our peers monitoring our work. Self-monitoring has its place, but we know that feedback from our peers is more likely to give us a new perspective, more like to give us new ideas, and more likely to keep us honest.
One idea that Dr. Goldsmith uses is a daily monitoring checklist. He wrote out a set of questions, 24 I believe, that he would answer every day. These questions were personally important to him. All questions are about an important part of his life. Some examples include: “Did I do do any push-ups today?”, “What is my weight today?”, “How happy am I today?”.
Goldsmit made it a peer-monitoring exercise, because he had a good friend call and ask him these questions everyday.
Sure enough, with this daily exercise, he soon started to see results. Keeping track of the data in a simple Excel row/column matrix, he is able to see the patterns over time.
It’s not only checking behavior, it’s monitoring our attitudes too. When we monitor how we are perceived against how we want to perceived we start to envision a better future for ourselves. We start to see how to grow in that direction.
It’s a small thing, and something far too few of us do. But peer-monitoring, whether through Dr. Goldsmith’s checklist or another creative method can give us the freedom to say “yes, I’ve made a change”.
In the words of Dr. Goldsmith “Hope you find this practical and useful, and may you have a little bit better life”.
Greg
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