Achieving Personal and Professional Excellence Through Goal Setting
Sandra Wiley
In our industry today, performance management has become an essential tool in the retention strategy for firms of all sizes. Management is finally “getting it” that employees need to know the expectations and responsibilities for their job roles. They realize that workers need a plan for where they are going and the need to tie-in employee ambitions with firm goals.
It is not uncommon to find a firm that has a developed system for both professional and personal goals, which are tracked as part of the performance management agenda. Many eager managers and supervisors sit down with team members for performance goal setting and review sessions, only to be stunned when the team members says, “I have no idea what my goals are because I have never done this before.” The eager supervisor is suddenly not so eager! They have never been taught how to coach someone on setting goals, and quite frankly feel that they are not all that good at setting their own goals.
Goals offer long-term vision and short-term motivation—if set correctly.
Part of developing a firm-wide, performance management process is for management to learn how to set individual goals, followed by coaching team members on how to set their goals. Finally, management and team members must make a dutiful appraisal at an established time. Let’s discuss why goal setting is so important.
Why Goal Setting Is Important
Setting goals not only helps the individual choose where he or she wants to go in life, but also how that person will help the firm accomplish its own goals. By knowing precisely what they want to achieve both professionally and personally, employees can see where to concentrate their efforts. They can also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure them from the course.
Properly-set goals can also be incredibly motivating, because when employees get into the habit of setting and achieving them, they find their self-confidence increases quickly.
Successful individuals in all walks of life, including top-level athletes, successful business-people and leaders in all fields, know how to set goals.
However, a person does not have to be a world class athlete or a millionaire businessman or woman to get into the habit of setting goals. Anyone can learn, and it is important for one primary reason: goals offer long-term vision and short-term motivation—if set correctly. They focus the acquisition of knowledge and help organize time and resources so that life can be more rewarding.
Sharp, clearly defined goals offer a rewarding return on investment: the satisfaction that comes from constant achievement. Employees can also see forward progress in what might have previously seemed a long, pointless grind. By setting goals, self-confidence spikes because employees recognize their abilities and competence levels.
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First, decide long term goals and break those “big picture” desires into bite-size pieces that can be achieved in smaller increments. Long term goals may be lifetime aspirations, or they may form part of a long-term plan tied to the firm’s strategic plan.
Getting the Process Started—A Look at Life
What do you want to achieve in a lifetime? The first step for an employee who has never set goals is to determine lifetime endeavors and then move to a more practical, quarterly game plan. By encouraging this mind-set, you will demonstrate how working today at a piece of the overall goal will reap big rewards in the long-term.
One’s first step in setting personal goals is to consider what to achieve in a lifetime, because setting lifetime goals offers an overall framework that shapes all aspects of decision making.
If an employee has never thought of this before, a good exercise is to offer the list below and suggest they set goals in several areas. Don’t worry if they struggle with this the first time; the reality is that it will be a struggle if this is the first time they have attempted this kind of thinking. The good news is, the more they do this, the more successful they will become at it.
Artistic: Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?
Attitude: Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
Career: What level do you want to reach in your career?
Education: Is there any particular knowledge you want to acquire? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
Family: Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
Financial: How much do you want to earn by what stage?
Physical: Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want a lifetime of good health? What steps are you going to take to achieve this? Ensure your goals are personal—not what parents, spouses, family members, or employers may want.
Pleasure: How do you want to enjoy yourself? You should be sure that some of your life effort is for you!
Public Service: Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Once they have decided on their goals in some of these categories, suggest they assign a priority to them from A to F. They should review the goals and re-prioritize until their intentions reflect the shape of life they want to lead. Also ask the team member to ensure his or her goals are personal—not what parents, spouse, family members, or employers want.
The Next Step … Breaking It Down
Once an employee has set long-term goals, break those down with him or her and ask, “What can you do in the next three months that will help you obtain these?” This is where dreaming becomes reality. As a coach, the supervisor should look at the goals and be able to apply them to the here and now. When a staff member understands how his or her job affects the long term vision, the light will go on. At an early stage the goals may be to read books and gather information on achieving them. This will help improve the quality and realism of goal setting.
Goal Setting Tips
The following broad guidelines will help employees set effective goals:
• State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively – “Execute this technique well” is a much better goal than “Don’t make this stupid mistake.”
• Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved a goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
• Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps direct your attention to the most important ones.
• Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
• Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, it can seem that you are not making progress. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today’s goals from larger ones.
• Take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible.
Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. These could be bad business environments, poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
• Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively, you may be naïve in setting very high goals. You might not appreciate obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to perform at a particular level.
• Do not set goals too low: Just as it is important not to set goals unrealistically high, do not set them too low. People tend to do this because they are afraid of failure, or because they are lazy! You should set goals so that they are slightly out of your immediate grasp, but not so far that there is no hope of achieving them. No one will put serious effort into achieving a goal he or she believes is unrealistic. However, believing that a goal is unrealistic may be incorrect. If you suspect this may be the case, work through it by using your imagination.
Achieving Goals
When you have achieved a goal, take time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of your achievement and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately.
With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
• If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
• If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make your next goals a little easier.
• If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
• If while achieving the goal you noticed a deficit in your skills, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Failure to meet goals does not matter as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal-setting program.
Also remember that your goals will change as you mature. Adjust them regularly to reflect this growth in your personality. If goals do not hold attraction any longer, let them go. Goal setting is your servant, not your master. It should bring you pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of achievement.
Sandra L. Wiley is the COO and senior consultant with Boomer Consulting, Inc. In her 11 years with Boomer, Sandra has worked with clients to strengthen their firm’s human capital using strategic planning and Kolbe Index processes and procedures.
AZ CPA – January 2007
