The new year is a perfect time to look back on your performance in the workplace, get an outside assessment, and decide what you want to achieve in the new year. Whether you want to move into a new role or become a better leader, it always helps to have clear goals in mind. But beware: If these goals aren’t specific and actionable, they might end up forgotten like a bad New Year’s resolution. Setting goals is an important part of leadership development and personal progression.
Do you want to develop your leadership skills and create a clear plan for the new year? Learn why personal goals are crucial for leaders and discover how to set goals that stick.
What Are Personal Development Goals?
What would make you a better person, leader, or problem-solver in the workplace? That’s the question you should ask when creating personal development goals. These goals help you determine what success looks like for your career and the steps you need to take to reach that definition of success. While these goals may help your company and employees, they should primarily focus on you.
Why Is Goal Setting Important?
As a leader, it’s easy to get caught up in your day-to-day tasks and forget about the big picture. By setting goals, you can zoom out, decide what you want to accomplish in the long term, and figure out the steps that will get you there, which is important for leadership development.
Many of us have vague goals that we occasionally think about, such as “I want to be a better leader” or “I want to help my employees feel more confident in their jobs.” Turning these into concrete goals allows you to develop a clear plan of action and stick to it.
Leaders who are goal-oriented tend to have a better direction for where their team is going and reflect more on their own performance (Indeed, 2021)
How To Set Leadership Goals That Stick
Setting goals that stick with you for more than a few weeks isn’t easy. If you’re constantly changing or forgetting your goals, follow these four steps.
1. Assess Your Performance and Define Success
The first step in creating a goal is to reflect on your strengths and challenges and determine what success looks like for you. Identifying your challenges allows you to identify areas for improvement, which are great starting points. For example, if your emotional intelligence skills are lacking, you can set a goal to improve them.
Third-party assessments are a great way to get metrics-based feedback on your performance and determine what you need to improve. If you’re not sure where to start, consider getting outside feedback on your leadership skills.
2. Create a Plan
Once you take a third-party assessment and determine your weaknesses, you need to create a plan. This plan should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based, or SMART. For example, saying “I want to be more emotionally intelligent” is not SMART. However, saying, “I will engage with an executive coach to improve my emotional intelligence score by five points before July 1, 2023” is.
3. Track Progress
After you create your goal, you should record the steps you take to monitor your progress. Reflecting on your progress allows you to see what’s working and make changes if you’re not working towards your goal.
4. Make Adjustments
Things change quickly in the workplace. You may think your goal is attainable when you make it, but a new project could put you behind schedule. You may also decide to move in a different direction. For example, a new leadership position could open up a few months into the year, and you may decide that moving into that position is more important than your original objective.
Read our post on How to create your own success as a leader
If you set goals every year and forget about them by the end of January, it’s time for a change. This year, use the ALII-Map assessment from Envision Global Leadership to create goals backed by research.
Our assessment pinpoints your behavioral strengths, and derailers, allowing you to determine what needs improvement. Once you set your goals, our leadership development programs can help you improve your leadership skills and for your team.
Get in touch today to learn more about our leadership assessments and development programs.
