Goal setting is often talked about, but aside from annual appraisals with the question “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” What good is it? And how can you make you make it work for you?
A goal can be defined as: an ‘idea of the future which an individual or group plans and commits to achieve’. It can really help to break the idea down into two categories; personal goals and professional ones. While they often can and should go hand in hand they are not always one and the same.
Personal Goals
These can be either short or long term and should help to keep you focused on the direction you want your life to take. Although this may seem like it’s a daunting prospect, it’s actually just another way of describing what’s important to you. Whether it’s spending more time with family, improving your health and wellness or creating more time for personal relaxation; setting personal goals is not dissimilar to creating a New Year’s resolutions for ourselves.
However, unlike New Year’s resolutions – which, usually don’t last more than a few months you should feel inspired by your goal to stay focused as the ultimate outcome is a happier version of you.
Professional Goals
Whether you’re an employer or employee professional goals should reflect the overall health of your professional skill set and the direction that you wish to grow in.
These will cover a broad scope, so having a clear vision of your trajectory can help you to maintain focus. Some great examples of professional goals are; improving your time management, recruiting new team members to help expand your business or taking a course or seminar to bolster your existing skill set. These are all clearly designed to drive growth in a positive way.
How can you achieve your goals or targets?
So, you’ve identified what you care about and why you want to improve; now it’s time to convert the idea into bite sized stages.
Using the ‘SMART’ criteria to set your targets will help them to feel achievable and easy to manage.
Specific – Having a specific and clear target is important, too vague and you’ll easily lose focus.
Measurable – There needs to be an easy way for you to measure your progress.
Achievable – Don’t chase unicorns! It’s as simple as that.
Relevant – They need to matter to you with clear benefits.
Timed – Use deadlines to keep yourself on track. This will help you to avoid procrastination.
Let’s say your desire is to launch a new website a year from now: Your goal for the following month could be to have an outline for the content you wish to include on the site. And then set a target for the coming weeks to connect with and email web developers who could work with you to bring your idea to life.
Another goal that you could have in your business is to expand or grow over the next X number of months or years. You can begin to tackle this by looking at what growth means to your business. For example, you may need to recruit to allow for this to happen and we at Fresh Perspective can support you to achieve this!
Additionally, if you know that you’re reward orientated you can plan that into your deadline processes, or if you have a competitive edge you can research a similar business in your industry and benchmark your intended achievements against their progress.
Setting goals, either personal or professional is a great way to assess your aspirations, evaluate and measure your progress and make sure that the time and effort you invest into yourself and your career really works to benefit you.
Have a great week!
The Fresh Perspective Team x