Scales are great for any development and are used a lot in coaching.
They help you reflect on
Where you are now
Where you want to be,
Where you're going next, and
How far you've come.
For example…if you think about your level of satisfaction with your work/life balance for a moment (or anything else that's on your mind)...
On a scale of 0 to 10
What would 0 look like?
What would 10 look like?
Where are you now?
Where would you like to be?
If you moved up one or two points on the scale,
What would that look like?
What difference would that make to you?
How could you do that? Think of at least 3 options.
So what's the plan? What are you doing to do and how will you make sure you do it?
And looking at scales as circles (of life, or some aspect of it) is great when there is more than one scale to consider and particularly where you want to look at the balance across them.
For example – an equal level of satisfaction across all areas of your life.
And as life includes what we do for any organisation we work for, you could use the circle to look at any business aspect too.
For example – how are we performing as a team across the key areas we work on?
Here's the basic circle scale.
The inner circle represents 0 and the biggest one is 10.
The circle scale
Makes it easy to see all scores in one place and spot the abnormal/skewed scores.
Shows how balanced the scores are in relation to each other. The more your scores look like a circle, the more balance there is across each aspect.
Creates a visual representation of the maximum that you can fit in / the best you can be across the areas being measured.
What can you use it for? All sorts of things!
Including
Addressing your work / Life balance
Life / retirement planning
Career planning
How well are you satisfying your human needs or your values?
(see this blog for more on human needs and if you want to explore values then check out my blogs about acting on purpose and motivation)
Measuring progress on development of something like emotional intelligence that is made up of component parts.
What changes you might need to make across the different aspects of your work?
How is the team/project/business performing across key areas?
…and many more...
How to create and use your Circle of Life
Draw your basic circle scale
Print, or copy and paste the one above, or
Just draw one circle and roughly guess the scales by hand/eye..
Think about the different areas that you want to measure and then plot them at points around the circle
For example, if you’re looking at your level of satisfaction across life or work/life balance, you might find it useful to start wtih this list...but change it to reflect the areas you see as significant in your life and how you refer to them.
Work
Relationship with your significant other
Family
Friends
Fun/self care
Personal development
Diet
Fitness
Add a line radiating from the inner to the outer circle for each one so you can plot your measures...so you might end up with something looking a bit like this (I’ve chosen to add pictures to represent each area listed above).
Add points for the different measures you’re reflecting on along the relevant lines, which normally start with
Where you are now, and
Where you want to be
It’s helpful to use different colours for the different measures.
And if you’re that way inclined, you could use a radar chart in a spreadsheet instead. Not quite a circle at the boundary, but pretty close.
This one shows what you might end up with.
Reflect, learn and plan
…you could use the questions at the start of this blog as a start.
So if this was me right now and this chart was a measure of my levels of satisfaction / how I thought I was doing in each area of my life, my reflections might include…
Family and the relationship with my significant other are areas that are ticking along quite nicely – current level and target are pretty close and they're good numbers.
Things look OK around the right hand side of this circle but the current scores overall are not looking much like a circle, so something’s a bit off. It looks like diet and fitness are the priorities as they are really skewing the balance.
What could I do to move the scores for those toward the grey lines…which are heading in the right direction for balance. What could I do to move by just one to start with?
What might the impact be on the other areas though? What might I have to change to make room for growth in Diet and Fitness?
…and so on.
A rich vein of thought to work with!
Consider working with a coach
Working with a coach on any development like this will stop you from limiting your own thinking and help keep you moving in the direction you want to go, meaning you are more likely to succeed and get the result you want quicker.
Doing a Circle of Life can be a really good place to start if you’re considering coaching as it will help you set priorities and goals for that.
You could have a go at it yourself before engaging with a coach or (preferably) work on it together at the start of your journey together.
So why not give it a go?
What will you learn from your Circle of Life?
If you’d like to discuss this or explore coaching with me, please book a free call.
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