Goal setting is a great way to strategically move your career forward. Having work goals and reaching your goals can be challenging, and below are 10 steps to help you better achieve your work goals.
- Get clarity on what you are trying to achieve
First things first – understand what you want to pursue. What do you want? It might be a good idea to start with your performance plan or a set of work goals that your manager has for you. If you don’t have this level of support or structure, maybe the first thing is to have a conversation with your manager to find out what you need to focus on.
If you already know what you want, go for it!
- Get some help
You might need help to achieve your goal. By understanding your team, you can pull from their strengths to help you to reach your goals. You team might be your staff members, your project team, or just co-workers.
When you understand the people around you, you can ask the right people for the help you need to achieve more. If you are a supervisor, team lead, or a project manager, you especially need the help of your teammates.
- Get your supervisor on your side
Maybe your goal is to get on your supervisor’s good side. If that’s the case, attempt to make their job easier. Have a conversation with your manager and ask what you can do to help out. Do what they tell you. Don’t over think it and don’t do what you think will be better. If you want to introduce a new way or whatever you think is better, do what they ask first and then do what you think is better. Then let your boss have a choice between the two products. When in doubt, ask first before you go off and try to predict what your boss wants. Wait until they trust you to try to innovate.
- Focus on what you can control
For every workplace goal, there are factors you can control and factors out of your hands. Be clear on the distinction, and have a plan for what to do if the out-of-your-control factors don’t line up.
In project management, most times project managers are responsible for completing a project, but don’t have total autonomy over the people assigned to their project to get things done. This is a most challenging part of project management. Focusing on things that a project manager can control might be the budget. Things the project manager can’t control might be how quickly team members complete tasks. In this example, the project manage might add extra time in the schedule to allow for team members to complete tasks. Sometimes you got to be strategic on how you accomplish your goals.
- Consider your long term career goals
Where do you want to be in 5 years? What would you need to do to get to that position? Do you need to get a certification? Maybe you might need some additional experience. What is your ideal next professional role? Which success stories will make you a suitable and impressive candidate? Figure out what you want to do and begin to make a plan.
- Go beyond and think of the big picture
You might have opportunities to do other assignments at work. Think about what you want for your career for the future and take on some of those extra projects if you think it might give you the experience or exposure you need to get to where you want to be.
- Visualize as often as possible
See yourself where you want to be. Get a detailed vision. You might create a vision board by adding pictures of things that look like what you want your future to look like. Sometimes you may not know what your typical day will look like in your dream job. But don’t allow that to stop you.
I envisioned getting my project management professional certification. I saw myself passing the rigorous exam and throwing my hands up when I got my score. I saw myself celebrating. While I was studying for the exam, periodically I would close my eyes that think about how I was going to tell my mom. Everything that I saw in my mind, I did.
What can you visualize that will pull you closer to your dream?
- Get some accountability
If you can get your supervisors support, that would be great. However, if you want to get a new job, your supervisor may or may not be rooting for you. It’s tricky when it comes to new positions and having supervisors support.
Having an accountable person to encourage you and help to keep you on track can make the difference. A mentor could potentially give you the support you need to accomplish your work goals.
- Check-in often
Do you know the saying “out of sight, out of mind”? Well, it’s not enough to just set work goals. How many times have you have resolutions and then forgot about them by Valentine’s Day?
It’s important to review your work goals often. Write them down and put them in a place where you will look at them often.
Schedule times to evaluate how well you are doing in terms of reaching your goals. You can do this monthly or quarterly depending on the work goal.
- Align what you do daily with your goals
Do a periodic check on how well your daily to-do list aligns with your big-picture workplace goals. If the two have nothing to do with each other, talk to your manager and take action.
Maybe your work goal is to become bilingual, then your daily to-do-list should include some sort of foreign language classes, foreign language tutorials, practicing the foreign language, etc.
If this is one of your work goals, you won’t just wake up one day completely fluent in a foreign language if you’re not putting in the work.
- Track your progress
It feels great when you can look back over a period of time and see that you are moving toward where you want to be. Tracking your progress will help you to see if you are actually getting closer to your goals or moving away from them.
Goal setting is an art. It takes practice and follow through. It’s wonderful when you can achieve your work goals. The major takeaway is that you want to know what you want, keep it in front of you, visualize achieving it, get support, and track your progress.
