Our martial arts program operates on a mentorship model and is capped at 30 students. You can check out details on what our mentorship model is and why I chose to implement it for my program, here.

One of the main benefits of this for my students is their ability to develop a 1:1 mentor/mentee relationship with me at their own discretion as they have access to more of my time each class. Part and parcel with that mentorship process is goal setting for students who choose to engage with me in that way. I’ve put together this article to help students and families understand everything about this topic and process.

What is student driven goal setting?

At Summit Performance, each of my students is highly encouraged to engage in their own personal development through using goal setting strategies to continue to progress towards a desired future outcome. This involves specifying something the student would like to accomplish in their personal, professional, academic, or athletic lives on a document which the student authors based on a template I provide to give them some guidance.  

I encourage my students to engage in this process as I believe it's one of the most important skills to foster in a teen/adult as they work towards a brighter future. This is a task I wish I actively engaged in 10 years ago. I cannot imagine where I would be today if I has started specifying and working towards my goals as a younger man.

Why do it & How it Helps

• Specifying your goals is the first step towards achieving them. This creates the criteria for success. You cannot hit the target if you do not know what you are aiming at!

• Students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own development, but receive mentorship, feedback and resources/ideas which can help them explore, refine, and work toward their objective. My job as the mentor is to foster their creative process, provide meaningful actionable feedback, and inspire my students to strive for the completion of their goals (their Summit!)

• Breaking a large goal down into small actionable chunks is an essential life skill to handle complex, real life personal and professional demands.

• Achieving a goal, no matter how small allows the student to build confidence, add skills to their skillset, and give them the motivational inner fire to reach for even bigger goals!

Goal Setting Process

If the student is interested in engaging in the goal setting aspect of the mentorship process, they will proceed with the following steps:

1. Brainstorm some things in their life they want to achieve/improve upon. Write all these down, as even "bad ideas" give you good direction as to what might be more pressing to you right now. This could be learning how to do something new, improving their ability to perform a task, reach some objective measure in their academics, fitness, etc. No goal is too small, and no idea is off the table for consideration if the student is committed to making an attempt to achieve it!

2. Narrow your focus to a few goals you'd like to achieve in the next 12 months. Of course this can be extrapolated further out into the future for very large and complex goals, but I encourage my students to strive for a series of short term "winnable" goals before stretching their limits and trying a complex multifaceted goal until they are comfortable with the process. I am happy to help the student in this process if they would like to share their brainstorming list.

3. Fill out the Goal Setting Action Plan form together. My job as the mentor is to help the student focus their thoughts, ideas, intentions into a clear, tangible and realistic goal that they can achieve.

4. Work towards your goal in a series of short sprints, where the big picture goal is broken down into a series of intermediary steps. This process allows the student to see how small actions accrue into big results with consistent effort and focused intention

5. Every quarter the student should review their goals in a meeting with Sensei. This is not intended as a "judgement" of whether or not their goals were achieved, but as a reflection on what went well, what didn’t, and how to narrow/change/alter their goal or action plan to help move towards it meaningfully in the future.

Notes

• Parents are of course welcome to assist their son/daughter with completing the action plan form and the goal assessment process alongside Sensei/Senpai, however, it might be an idea to let your son/daughter explore on their own some things they'd like to achieve without feeling like the objective is only to appease you as the parent. This serves a double benefit of allowing the student to develop independence, and have them motivated to move forward towards a goal that they chose without undue influence

• All my students have the right to choose to keep their goals private between myself and them, or share with parents per their preference. Parents with questions may of course speak to me directly at anytime about this.

• Parents are welcome to join in the meetings informal or formal to review the student's progress so long as the student is comfortable sharing their goals with their parents.

• I usually recommend this action planning and goal setting process for my students aged 12+ but theoretically, anybody can benefit from even partial implementation of these strategies if they are even younger and have the motivation to do so.