BHAG Goal: Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking. Personal Essay Example.

Every individual organization has specific goals that they aim to achieve. There are several strategies and systems that have been developed that are aimed at helping an individual to make proper decisions, set their goals and achieve them in the stipulated timeframe. BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is one of the key systems that have been identified to help organization in achieving and setting their goals (Collins & Porras, 1996). The concept was developed and proposed in 1994 by James Collins and Jerry Porras. A BHAG is a business statement that the organization adheres to which is similar to a vision statement for the organization. Although, many people may consider that the BHAG was developed for organizations only it can also be used by individuals who want to accomplish clear goals that are measureable and life changing (Collins & Porras, 2005).

In order for an organization or an individual to start working on how to accomplishing their goals using BHAG statement they have to first clearly identify what they want to accomplish and write it down clearly (Collins & Porras, 1996). In this step, I identified the need to overcome fear of public speaking as the goal that I would like to accomplish using the BHAG guidelines and statement. The fear of public speaking hinders may hinder me in future as a leader because I may not be able to communicate properly with the population or the organization that I am leading. According to BHAG, the goal that a person or organization sets should be a long term objective goal (Collins & Porras, 2005). Overcoming my fear of public speaking is a long term goal because it will take time and various steps before I become comfortable to speaking in public. Therefore, this is an appropriate goal for me to use BHAG to plan on it and accomplish it.

After identifying and writing clearly the goal that one wants to achieve the next step according to BHAG is to know why an individual or organization want to achieve the identified goals (Collins & Porras, 1996). An individual or organization should have an appropriate and emotionally compelling reason as to why they want to achieve a specific goal. In my perspective I want to be able to overcome my fear of public speaking due to several reasons. First, I want to gain more confidence to so that I can be able to communicate effectively with a group of people. As a leader I will be responsible to a large group of people in any organization. This means that I will need to be communicating to a group of people consistently. If I am unable to communicate effectively to this group of people who I will be leading the organization will not be able to achieve its own goals hence I will have failed as a leader. Therefore, I want to overcome this fear of speaking publicly early so that when I become a leader there may be efficient communication from me to the employees or people in the group that I will be leading.

Secondly, I want to overcome the fear of public speaking so that I can be exposed to more opportunities in the course of my career. Being able to speak effectively and efficiently in public exposes an individual to more opportunities either it in an organization or the community in general. A fluent and efficient public speaker is usually offered many opportunities in an organization. For instance, Former United States President Barrack Obama was a fluent public speaker. His ability to speaking fluently in public and charisma gave him the opportunity to become the president of one of the strongest countries in the world (Wang, 2010). Therefore, I want to be able to overcome the fear of public speaking so that I can become a fluent public speaker so that I can be exposed to many opportunities as a leader both inside the organization and outside.

In the BHAG system, after identifying the reasons as to why an individual want to achieve a specific set goal (Collins & Porras, 2005). The next step is to identify the obstacles and challenges that they will face in order to achieve their set goal. The first goal that I will have to overcome is by inability to speak good and proper English. As a person born in Non-English speaking country by ability to speak fluent and proper English is poor. My inability to speak proper English is the biggest obstacle that I have to overcome in my quest to accomplish my set goal. Many public speaking forums are conducted in English (Hogan, Andrews, Andrews, & Williams, 2008). As a result I will have to overcome the inability to speak poor English in order for me to be able to overcome the fear of public speaking.

Consequently, I will have to learn to deal with the fame and popularity for me to be a public speaker. The other reason that I am afraid of public speaking is the fame and popularity that comes with it. Majority of excellent public speakers tend s to gather a huge following among those people that they speak to. For example, the speaking abilities of Barrack Obama gained him huge following in social media hence he became popular (Wang, 2010). Therefore, I will have to learn to deal with fame and popularity instead of being afraid so that I can achieve my goal.

The next step in BHAG system when testing the goal set is to identify people or groups that one can work with so that they can be able to accomplish the goals (Collins & Porras, 2005). Depending on the goals that an individual has set they will have to choose an organization or people with whom they will work with in achieving the goals. For my case, I will have to work with my fellow classmates so that I can accomplish my goal. My classmates are the first group of people that I will have to gain my confidence in public speaking with. Therefore, I will have to start working with my classmates through developing friendship and confidence with them hence I can be able to have confidence to speak to a smaller group of people with time until I am able to speak to a much larger group. My classmates will help me by being understanding of my poor English and not critiquing me for my shortcoming in speaking.

The next step will be to identify what I need to know that will help me achieve my goal. First, I will have to develop and improve my English. I had earlier identified that poor English speaking skills are among my undoing when it comes to public speaking. As a result, in order for me to achieve my goal I must improve my ability to speak English fluently and effectively. By improving my English I will have eliminated one of the obstacles that make me to be afraid of public speaking. Consequently, I must gain more confidence in myself if I want to accomplish my set goal. The lack of confidence hinders my ability to face a group of people. Therefore, by gaining more confidence I will be able to face a larger group of people without feeling uncomfortable hence I will have made a step towards achieving my goal.

According to the BHAG system after an individual has indentified what they need to do to accomplish their goal the next step is to plan on action that will enable the achievement of the goal (Collins & Porras, 1996). In my plan of action I have to plan on how I will be able to gain more confidence in myself and learn speaking proper English. My first plan of action will be talking to people in this case I will start with those close to me then to my classmates. Through talking to people I will start to gain confidence in my ability to speak and I will also be able to improve my grammar when talking to people close to me because they will be helping me. Secondly, I will start taking up leadership position in class groups. By leading various class groups I will have to take charge and communicate with all the group members. This will enable me to practice on how to communicate in front of a group of people hence I will be building my confidence of addressing a larger group.

Furthermore, in my action plan I will start participating in classes by speaking and making contributions to all class discussions. Through class participation my inability to speak proper English will be exposed to a larger group of people. This will be helpful to me because, the class teachers and my classmates will know my weakness and start helping me to improve in my grammar. Therefore, through their help my ability of speaking English will improve significantly. Consequently, even if my grammar in English will not be improved, I will be able to learn on how to cope with the ridicule that may come with the way that I will be communicating in English (Zeoli, n.d). By learning on ways of coping with the ridicule that I may be exposed to I will be able to gain more confidence in my abilities hence I can improve in my public speaking abilities and overcome the fear that I have.

Additionally, I will have to work of my stage fright and fear of standing in front of people. The fear of standing in front of people arises from the fact that there may be people who will judge my actions and how I speak. However, I will have to accept that not every person will be pleased with the way I talk when standing in front of them and that some will appreciate the effort that I will have put. There is no perfection in public speaking because even the most accomplished public speakers tend to make mistakes at some point. Therefore, I will have to develop a conscience that will keep going even when I make a mistake. This will enable me to reduce my stage freight that may arise from my visualization of how the audience will respond to my mistakes (Zeoli, n.d). By following this action plan I hope that by the end of this semester I will be able to accomplish my goal of overcoming the fear of public speaking.

In case I am able to overcome my fear of public speaking it will be life changing to me because it will help me in my future career. My future career is in leadership and decision making, in this career line I will be forced to be making many speeches depending on my position. However, no matter which position I am in I will have to be engaged in public addressing of co-workers or the management. For instance, I may be the leader of a group which is developing a new strategy for the organization (Prince, 2015). In this case I will have to address the management on the progress that we will have made hence I need to be an effective communicator and public speaker.

Additionally, by learning and overcoming my fear of public speaking I will be able to develop critical thinking skill which will be beneficial for me in my career. In the course of practicing how to overcome fear of public speaking I will gain an increased ability to think critically. Among the key benefits of improved critical thinking skills is an improved problem solving ability. This will be beneficial to me in my career because as a leader and a decision maker I will be faced with several instances where I will need to have good problem solving abilities to resolve an issue in the organization or community. In addition, my communication habits and skills both verbal and non-verbal will improve because I will have to evaluate and analyze the way I communicate each time I have to make a public speech (Starling, 2010). Therefore, overcoming fear of public speaking will improve my ability to think critically as a leader and communicate my decisions effectively.

Apart from the personal development that I will gain by overcoming my fear of public speaking, I will also be able to make career advancement in future by being an adept public speaker. As a leader my success in public speaking will be an indication of my creativity, leadership skills and critical thinking skills. These qualities can be found to be very valuable in the job market hence I can be able to find employment in various organizations as a lead...