Setting Goals – Tips to Get Started

We all know how important it is to establish goals in your career, but it can also be a daunting task. Whether your company calls for you to develop goals or you are proactively finding ways to expand and improve your skill set, setting goals and continually monitoring your progress can help ensure success.

How do you get started?

• Review your company goals – This is a great starting point so that you can get a feel for the company’s vision and develop goals that will help contribute to the overall strategy.

• Talk to your manager – Your department or area within the company may have its own goals for the upcoming year. If you aren’t aware of what those goals are, set up a meeting to discuss what your manager is looking to achieve and the role you can play in meeting those goals.

• Brainstorm with your peers – You can receive great feedback and insight by talking to the people you work with on a daily basis. They may notice an area in which additional contributions on your part would be a benefit to the team and company, or an area of expertise that could be expanded to have an even greater impact.

• Review you daily activities and tasks – Look at what you do on a daily basis. Is there something on that list that you want to improve or change?

• Think back on specific processes or situations – Have there been times during the past year where you’ve wished a situation had gone differently? Think of times where you’ve said things like:
  • “Wouldn’t it be great if…”
  • “How can we…”
  • “There has to be a better way to…”

Will your goals help you or the company?

Once you’ve developed your goals, ask yourself a few questions to make sure they are on the right track.

• Does your goal make sense for you and your position; is it meaningful to you?

• Can you accomplish your goal independent of others?

• Does your goal help the company, your team, or your customers do one of the following?
  1. Achieve something that is desired.
  2. Preserve something that you want to keep.
  3. Avoid something the company doesn’t want/need.
  4. Eliminate or reduce things that you or the company do not need or want to happen.