Working with Your Spouse

[David Baxter PhD]

Working with Your Spouse
Simp-le Marriage Blog
May 10, 2010

Do you work with your spouse? My husband and I happen to work during the day together, but I am not referring to that kind of work. I am asking if you and your spouse work together to achieve your dreams?

1. What are your dreams as an individual?
2. What are your dreams as a couple?
3. Have you and your spouse mapped out a plan to achieve these dreams together?

In organizations, it is fairly well established that to achieve a desired goal everyone must work together to be successful. Yet in our own families we often fail to set and work toward goals with our spouse. For a long time husbands and wives didn?t need to set a common long-term goal, because it often was just one thing, survival. I am not suggesting we move back to a time when every family toils for unspoken survival, what I am suggesting is that couples should not let their goals remain unspoken and assumed.

Setting goals with your spouse will not happen overnight. It will take time to determine your individual and joint goals. Incidentally, if you haven?t read Corey?s Simple Marriage book, I think you will find it tremendously helpful in laying the groundwork for successful goal setting. Think about what you both desire. What goals you can set for your finances? For your children? For your relationship? For your home? For your health? For your spiritual life? Once you have determined your goals, get to work.

When you think about how to implement your goals with your spouse, think about how a team at your work, school or church would work to achieve a new goal, and do the same. Usually they:

• Write it down so everyone knows about it.
• Communicate about it. There are memos, emails, phone calls and text messages to communicate what needs to be done, who is going to do it, when it will be done, and notification when it is completed.
• Get outside professional help where needed. Maybe you need to hire a financial planner, or a personal trainer or a house cleaner to achieve some of your goals.
• Value feedback and act on it. As you work toward your goal, gather the successes, failures and changes in your situation and make any needed changes to your implementation.
• Celebrate. As you begin to inch closer toward your end goal, celebrate the success.

When you begin to set and achieve goals with your spouse, you will realize just how much fun it can be to work together to achieve something great!

This is guest post from Julie Magro who is the co-founder of Boardroom Couple, a site dedicated to helping couples manage the conference table to dinner table relationship while providing resources like the Free How to Build a Website Yourself Guide for the conference table side of these relationships.