Leveraging Leadership
Are you ready to up your leadership game? Tune in to Leveraging Leadership, where Chiefs of Staff, executives, and business professionals find the tools, strategies, and insights they need to excel. Hosted by Emily Sander, a C-suite executive turned leadership coach, this podcast delivers practical and tactical takeaways every week.
Whether you're tackling tough conversations, fine-tuning your KPIs, or mastering delegation, this show offers new perspectives and actionable advice to help you feel confident and thrive in your role.
Each Monday, enjoy interviews with leaders from diverse fields—primarily business, but also from military, politics, and higher education. Every Wednesday, catch a solo episode where Emily shares concise, actionable insights on a specific topic you can apply immediately.
If you appreciate relatable, informal conversations that pack a punch with no fluff, you’re in the right place. While especially valuable for Chiefs of Staff and their Principals, the insights are useful for any leader aiming to grow.
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Leveraging Leadership
SMART Goals or Mantras? Choosing Your Approach to New Year’s Success (Part 1)
This episode talks about how to set New Year's goals by comparing specific targets like losing 15 pounds by June 1st with broader intentions such as choosing a word for the year like "hello" or "lightness." Emily Sander shares how different people stick with goals and emphasizes picking what actually works for you, whether that's a SMART goal or a flexible intention. She also mentions using reminders, like putting a sales commission number on your mirror, and encourages everyone to be open to changing their goal-setting methods over time.
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Who Am I?
If we haven’t met before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want.
Time Stamps:
01:19 Specific Goals vs. General Intentions
02:23 SMART Goals Explained
04:52 Finding What Works for You
05:43 Flexibility in Goal Setting
We are underway in 2026, and so let's talk about some different elements and components of New Year's resolutions of goals of what do I wanna be when I grow up, how do I get there? The best approaches to set a goal, how to stick with it, all those things. So this is very likely gonna be a multi-part series. I wanted to touch on these things. I've been having a lot of conversations, really good, insightful conversations with family, friends, with colleagues, and, um, some ideas and all the options and different things that are bouncing back and forth in these conversations. I wanna distill the best parts of them and share them with you in case they're, in case they're relevant, helpful, or new. Like, oh, like I hadn't heard of that one before, or, oh, I've, I've heard of that one. I've heard of that one, but it's landing in a different way this year. That one resonates in a new way this year when you put it like that. Hmm. Hmm. Okay. 2026. Here I come. So here is the first installment, of this series. The first thing I wanted to talk about is a specific goal versus a general intention. So a lot of people do the, what's your word for this year? Type of things. You have, um, a word that represents what you want to be about or want you, what do you want to espouse the spirit. You wanna have the approach, you wanna have what you wanna remember at all times in this new year. So it could be, um, it could be deliberate or it could be. Uh, I had someone just say, it was, it was, hello, so it was the word, hello. I wanna invite things in, like, knock, knock, knock. Oh, hello. There's a new opportunity. There's a new person. There's a new situation. I want to be welcoming and inviting and open to the, to those things. So, hello was their word. It could be lightness. I take things seriously. I'm super heavy about things. Light. It's light, it's breezy. Lightness. How can I make this light and easy? How can I make this light and fun? So words and intentions like that could be a word, a phrase, a mantra, but you get the idea. The other side of this would be something very specific. So you think about the smart goal methodology, so that's smart is an acronym. You've got specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. So that's another one. A a classic example there is instead of saying, uh, yeah, I wanna lose some weight this year, that, that would be great. The smart goal around that would be, I wanna lose 15 pounds. By June 1st, and I'm gonna do that by going to the gym three times a week from seven to 8:00 AM with my new personal trainer. So that's that smart goal is, oftentimes more likely to get you to your actual goal. Now, I say most likely, and I wanna, in my head, I say for certain types of goals and for certain types of people. For some people like, mm, that's way too rigid. I feel like I'm in shackles. I don't like that. I want the general intention of Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna get fit this year. I'm gonna, uh, I wanna feel fit and vivacious, and that's kind of my, maybe vivacious or vitality is my word. And that will lead me to working out, or it will lead me to moving more and eating, uh, more cleanly or whatever it is. for some people and for some situations it might be something. It needs to be something more specific, and it could be something in between. It might be, you know, I wanna lose 15 pounds. Like that's my goal. I have the 15 pounds part, but I'm gonna be open to how I get there. I could walk one day maybe when I travel a lot. So that's gonna be a different routine when I go on the road. Um, maybe that's maintenance versus I'm trying to gain muscle or like really actively lose fat on those travel days. It might be, okay, I'm gonna do this all with diet. Like I'm gonna move the same amount I'm moving now'cause that's what I'm kind of constricted with in terms of time or. Or access to things or whatnot. But I, I can do a lot with my diet. I can do a lot with eating more nutritious and more whole foods or whatever it is. So you could do kind of a hybrid approach. Hey, I'm gonna have an umbrella word or notion about the whole year, and then I'm underneath that umbrella, I'm gonna have, more specific goals. Some people are just motivated by that external goal. Like, Emily, I have a sales commission I wanna hit. I'm gonna put that number on my bathroom mirror. I'm gonna look at it every day while I brush my teeth. I'm going to write it down. I'm going to say it to myself. I'm gonna put it on my, uh, phone wallpaper, on my sticky note, on my phone that I make calls from all these different things like that number, seeing that number and really getting that number in themselves every day. That's what drives them and that's what motivates them. And that's, that's great. Whatever works for you. One thing to keep in mind with all of this, the quote unquote best method or the best way to set a goal is whatever works for you. Whatever you will actually stick to, whatever, whatever resonates with you. Like yeah. Like, yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm gonna do that. I wanna do that versus, okay. Uh, I know I'm supposed to say that. I know I'm supposed to do it that way. Let me just do it that way.'cause everyone says that. Don't do that one. Find the stuff where it's like, ye hell yes. Like, hell yes, I'm doing that. Those are the ones you want to build and put in place for yourself. Um, some people just are very, what, what's driving them now? And it might, this might be a, right now for me, I wanna make a partner, I wanna make vp, I wanna make partner, I wanna hit this, uh, comp package. Whatever it is, that, that might be perfectly fine and perfectly appropriate for what you have now. Also be open to, Hey, the way I set goals and the way I approach this might change in different parts of my life. So meaning at different stages or chapters of your life. And it might be a little bit different for, um, maybe, hey, for these work goals, I'm gonna take more of this approach and for these personal life goals, I'm gonna take more of that approach type of thing. The point is there is to be flexible and to do what works for you. Do not do what I other people say, you're supposed to do this, and I have that in like heavy air quotes supposed to, that can get you in a lot of trouble. So I would just play around with this, this first element we've talked about in terms of specific goals, general direction, intentional goals, and where might those things be best suited and best placed in your goal setting system or your ecosystem today.