Setting goals can be a painful, meaningless exercise for everyone, or it can be a powerful way to drive performance and keep your staff engaged and challenged. Here are some ideas for getting the most out goal setting.
Great performance starts with great goals. That’s why challenging and meaningful goals are so important to performance management. When we create goals to align with our department’s priorities we’re also directing our attention and actions to what matters most.
Goals also guide development. Each step toward achieving a goal is an opportunity for you to provide feedback and coach your employee on their actions and behavior. Plus, talking with your employees regularly about their goals helps them to see their progress, and progress is both rewarding and addicting—progress drives more progress. Last, but not least, actually achieving goals builds character, confidence, and self-efficacy.
So how do you help your employees create meaningful goals that are challenging and achievable?
Fewer and Bigger
Talk with your employees about three to five of the most important contributions they can make throughout the year. Setting more than five goals can take the focus off of what’s most important.
Meaningful
A goal is most likely to drive development if it’s created for the purpose of development—as opposed to an administrative exercise. Yet goals should address the most important things that need to be accomplished within your unit.
The best goal is one that will push an employee to put forth a great deal of effort to achieve it and achieving the goal would be a significant accomplishment for the employee and your college or unit.
Behavioral and Objective
How a goal is achieved is as important as what’s achieved. Including specific behaviors with each goal will help to clarify how it will be achieved and also bring to light the skills needed to be successful.
Flexible
Today’s work environment changes so quickly that highly detailed goals often become outdated within a few months. To stay relevant, goals may need to change throughout the year. You can help your employees succeed by working with them to create goals that are significant and important, as well as broad and adaptable.
This is just one reason why checking in on goals throughout the year is so important. Use this time to discuss your department’s priorities as well as your employee’s progress on their goals. If they’re not making progress because of other priorities, it’s probably time to revise the goal.
